A couple of things:

I came in this morning and found something from Jerry Baskin in my mailbox.
It was a reprint request. Jerry Baskin wants a copy of my little paper!
(I realize that means nothing to people outside of, and perhaps even within some areas of, the plant-ecology world. But he's a Big Important Guy in my particular sub-field and so I'm very happy.)

*****

Worked mainly on the pink sock last night. I've got the heel done and up through the gussets. The colors remind me more of spumoni than of a rose garden. (The name of the colorway was "rose garden.")

****

This morning, I had a little time to spare, so I found my November 2002 "Real Simple" (the one with the hat pattern) and found a pair of size 13 needles* and dug out the yarn I had bought for the hats to see if I still wanted to make them.

The colors I bought - they were on a very good sale, closeout, at Hobby Lobby - were called "River Crossing" (nice browns and some blues) and "Coral Reef" (mostly turquioise but there are hints of gold, red, fucshia, and dark green).

I decided that definitely, the River Crossing will work for the friend-of-the-family - blue and brown are her favorite colors and I picture her as being the kind of person who would wear a big bulky hat. I also decided - based on the colors - that my mom would *probably* wear the hat, so I'm going to go ahead and do it.

I've decided to knock out the three gift-hats (these two, and the one from the leftover Rumor) first, then move on to tackling the purse and the hedgehog. If the purse looks like it's too daunting - or will take too long - or the nylon cord will give me carpel tunnel - there are things I have in mind I could order for my sister-in-law.

(*the usual size 13s I use - a set of Pony Pearls - were still in the Bloom shawl. Which, whoops, I tucked away and sort of forgot about. I should pull that out and work on it more).
*****

Got home early enough yesterday evening to clean house. That always puts me in a better mood because I always worry that if someone dropped by and saw all the catalogs and junk piled up they'd think bad things about me. (And a lot of it WAS getting rid of catalogs. I saved the ones I either knew I was going to be ordering from or that I wanted to take more time to peruse, but most of them went out. And I don't know when the trend of companies sending a catalog every two weeks, where it's the same catalog insides but a different cover, got started, but I wish it would stop. The worst offenders of the catalogs I receive seem to be Bas Bleu and Aplets and Cotlets, but I've also noticed that Duluth Trading Company and Signals and Vermont Country Store seem to do it too. At least with Vermont Country Store, the contents of the catalogs may be slightly different.

****
I was going to do my mainly-snark-free assessment of the patterns in the new Interweave Knits, but I think I'll save that for tomorrow when I'm likely to not have anything new and different to talk about from my own work.