so what has your pal niqui been up to lately, other than ditching the blog (“old and broken”) in favor of twitter (“new and still broken”)? weeelll…

i went to baltimore again! fortunately this time was not like last time. saw friends. ate junk food. had impromptu (but fortunately non-critical) auto service performed when the check engine light came on on my car for the very first time ever. couldn’t find a yeungling to drink. :( but generally otherwise had a v. good time, although it was a little weird how the police kept raiding the outback steakhouse next door.

while there, worked on my ripple afghan, now in progress for going on two years.

at this rate i hope to finish before i turn 35. (though i have picked up the pace, and now i can do about a stripe and a half in an hour. so that’s good.)

also while i was there, the nice people at my vet discovered they couldn’t read their own handwriting, and rather than trimming a couple of mats out of tiger’s fur like i had asked — since he has to be boarded at the vet when i travel, for his medication — they did a full lion cut on him.

they didn’t make me pay for the grooming, but there was no way to refund poor tiger’s dignity. LOOK! HE’S WEARING LITTLE FUR BOOTIES!! AND A TAIL POOF! HAHAHAHAHA!

after i got home, i glared at my works-in-progress on ravelry a little bit and then decided to try and knock some things off the list. i picked up my 5-1/2 Hour Throw to work on it, which was great because i got about three rows in, ran out of green yarn, and therefore got to declare it done:

it is exceedingly ugly, and i am unimpressed with it. still, it’ll probably be nice and cosy to throw over my shoulders at work, or something.

and i even got some work done on my diamond fantasy shawl:

sadly, i planned badly on the yarn front, and it will wind up more of a scarf size than a shawl size. really it’s too bad, because it’s a great pattern and i’m just settling into it where i can zip along pretty readily, so if there was ever anything i was prepared to do 225 rows of lace on, it was this. i figure i’ll probably make it another 3 repeats or so and then have to bind it off. alas.

and finally, having finished one ugly afghan, i started another: an exercise in stashbusting, also known as the Lion Brand Crochet Sampler Afghan, which is part of a crochet-along:

i managed to get 4 squares done yesterday. there are 3 squares, each of which you must make 10, and then join them all. i can get in a square here and a square there and so i think i might actually get the squares done in something approaching good time, though it remains to be seen how long it will take to turn a pile of squares into an actual blanket.

and last (first, actually, this i did before baltimore): i spun a little. a very little.

berry-colored roving from Loopy Yarns, spun up into singles on the louet, with vague hopes of someday coming away from the bobbin with some actual usable yarn.

but after telling you all that, i must confess that i am feeling a little…

…like maybe i need a nap.