Finally, some photos.

(And an observation on boredom: I have a friend who says that people who complain about other people, or situations, being "boring," are actually themselves boring. I suspect that's true. While I might be confused by a discussion, of, I don't know, advanced calculus, I'm not sure I would be bored. I'd probably be trying to understand what I could and saying to myself, "dangit, you're smart, you should be able to get at least some of it." And I honestly can't say I really know any people I'd call boring. People who have few interests that intersect with my interests, yes, but I've found that people generally have something interesting about them if you look a little bit. As I said to a colleague the other week, when we were standing around while our students collected data: "Everyone's a geek about something. There are people who are geeks about barbed wire. Or trains. Or old books. If someone says they're not a geek about anything, they're either lying or they have a very limited imagination." And actually, it's the place where a person IS a geek that makes them interesting - because they know stuff about that topic and are interested in sharing it.)

Anyway.

I've been devoting most of my knitting time (what I have had) these past few days to starting Rosedale:



The pattern has you do the sleeves first - partly because it's easier if you want to make the sleeves match (I'm not even going to try at this point; partway through the first ball I found a knot and a change in the color sequence. I sighed, remarked, "Some men just want to watch the world burn," cut out the knot, and rejoined).

Noro tends to be a yarn people either love or they hate. I like it for a lot of reasons - the intense colors, the slightly rustic feel (I don't mind picking bits of vegetation out of my yarn; it just reminds me that it did come from a sheep and not some kind of mechanical spider). I like how in some places, you have tiny flecks of one color mixed in with another, and it almost gives the yarn a velvety look from a distance.

I'm not so fond of its high tendency to have knots and odd joins, but oh well.

Of course, mostly, these days Noro is out of my budget (this yarn was bought - gosh, probably 10 years ago now? On a really good sale that TheKnitter or somewhere was having.) I'd like to be able to buy it more regularly because, as I said, the colors delight me, but I can't budget close to $200 for a sweater. (I mean, I CAN, I have the money....it's just something in me resists so hard spending that much.)

I also took some photos of the finished Scrunch hat.

It's a little bit Penny Garcia* but also, I think, a little bit Gloria Swanson. So I'm not so sure about that.

The pattern suggests you can wear it with the scrunched part up front:



(That weird black thing looming in the front of the photo is a defunct lamp that I need to get rid of. It's got a short in it so I didn't want to put it to the curb and maybe have someone take it and think they could use it. The Choctaw Recycling place is having an "e-waste" day where they will take ANYTHING that plugs into the wall, so I am going to take it down there.)

Or on the side:



I think I like the look of it better with the scrunch worn up front. You can also see the rhinestone doo-dads better that way.

(*Another fictional character I would be a bit flattered by being compared to.)

And I'm feeling some conflict between what I SHOULD do and what I WANT to do. I get out of class at noon today. What I SHOULD do is go get my flu shot and then go home and read research stuff. What I WANT TO do is take my coupon for JoAnn's and go shopping. (I suppose I COULD get the flu shot AND go shopping...) One of the local home-health places is offering them again - I don't think they're doing it as a drive-through clinic this year but it would be easy enough to go in and get it. It's supposed to be a nasty flu season and I don't want to risk getting sick.

(And I will say: I'm proud of my brother. He would never, ever get a flu shot in the past because he claimed they made him feel bad, and he'd rather chance the flu. But this year he got one. Because of the baby.)