Look! FOs!

To continue the saga of the dying computer -- well, it's dead.  I am posting from my pretty new MacBook Pro.  It's a bit heavier than the MacBook Air I had before (which was first-generation and taught me to avoid first-gen in the future) but I like it a lot -- and I won't have to keep editing the contents of my hard drive to keep it below the 80 gigs of my old MBA.

The big news, though, is that I have finished two projects!  Well, almost -- if you're really picky and insist that the ends be all woven in and the buttons on and all the blocking finished, well, then, they aren't done. But they're close enough for me!

Several days ago, I finished the knitting on my Catkin.  Here is Alice, helping with the blocking (and notice the ball of yarn, which she picked up out of the yarn basket and carried around without unrolling it!):

Sorry about the laser eyes!

Here's a perhaps better picture:

The yarn is madelinetosh sock in Citrus and Baltic (aka, Illini orange and blue).  Because of my freaky loose knitting, I ran out of Baltic and had to order a replacement skein from the Loopy Ewe, whose service was amazingly fast.  And the second skein matched just fine. Because I then had so much extra of the blue, I diverted from the pattern a bit, doing the last bit in blue rather than orange, and adding a couple extra rows, too.  I still need to weave in some ends and find buttons, but it's so close to done!

The second almost-finished Finished Object is the first of two Baby Sophisticates.  Two of my co-workers are expecting baby boys in the next few weeks, so they will have coordinating sweaters.  I'm making both in the 6-12 month size because Ravelry says the pattern runs small.

Pardon the weird looking hand...

The yarn was some stash-busting Knit Picks Swish Worsted in Fired Brick.  Swish is a great yarn - I'm glad I had enough in the stash for this project.  This was a quick knit - Ravelry says it took me about 3 weeks, but most of the knitting was done in the last week.  I need to find buttons for it, too.

So - there you go -- a new computer, two finished objects, and yet another cat assisting with the blocking!

No pictures, and almost no computer

I am SO close to finishing Catkin.  I've changed the color combination a bit and added a few rows to make it a bit longer, but I only have five (very long) rows left to knit.  I could show you a great picture, if I had one.  Or, actually, some way to post a picture.  You see, my three-and-a-half year old MacBook Air is dying.  It starts up about halfway, then just sits there.  I've gone through all sorts of suggestions I found on the internet.  This weekend, I'm taking it to my brother, who is great with computers, especially Macs.  In the meantime, I have my seven-and-a-half year old iBook, which still runs but needs everything updated, and a loaner PC from work.  I can't post pictures from the iBook and don't want to use the work PC for pictures so you'll just need to use your imaginations!

I've also started not one but two Baby Sophisticates.  Two co-workers are having baby boys in October, and I need to get knitting on them!  One is in brick red Swish Worsted, while the other one (for the mom who knits) is in a beautiful undyed grey (color 1518) Cascade Eco Alpaca.

Samantha Alice -- now just called Alice except when she's in trouble -- is feeling right at home.  She loves the yarn, so I've had to reorganize and actually put away all the living room yarn.  Harley still find her too rowdy, but Alice follows Harley around and clearly wants to be her friend.  It's really cute, and I'm pretty sure she's going to win Harley over completely before long!

Oh -- and we are back in our library, but still under construction.  We have no ceiling tiles and temporary lights everywhere.  It's interesting!  In my May post about the move, I mentioned that we were configuring some of our shelving for ADA compliance and weren't sure if everything would fit back.  In the comments for that post, a couple people asked about the possibility of using compact shelving -- aka "stacks on tracks."  We do have compact shelving on the 1st floor of the library.  However, the piece of the collection being reconfigured -- actually the largest piece of the collection -- is on the 4th floor.  Compact shelving is incredibly heavy and can only be used on ground floors or specially reinforced higher floors.  So -- regular shelving had to do!  Luckily, everything did fit back, although we are going to have to do some shifting, once the workmen are all out of the way.