I VOTED

Man, is there anything more exciting and fun than voting?!? I loooooove it. Absolutely LOVE it. I just came home from voting in my fourth presidential election (wow, I'm old!) and I have to say that out of all of them, this is the most excited and hopeful I have felt. Last time I was just so angry that I couldn't enjoy the experience. This time? I was more than happy to slog through the first real rain I have seen since I moved down here in order to cast my vote in a hotel lobby (also a first for me). I am especially excited about my vote this time because I got to vote NO on Prop 8, which is an issue that is very important to me. (And, as a civil rights issue, should be important to everyone in this country, but I'll save the lecture for another time.) I was lucky (?) enough to be living in Minnesota when a similar bill came on the ballot several years ago. I guess I'm just moving around the country spreading the love, huh?

I finished my sister's legwarmers several days ago and cast on for a project for my brother. He requested a soft, squooshy scarf in heathered "t-shirt" gray. I found some Karabella Aurora 8 on sale at kpixie and I am really happy with how the scarf is turning out. I am using the free Green Honey Man-Scarf pattern by Mary Townsend and it really works well with this yarn. It is incredibly soft and squooshy, but I am a little concerned about how little it seems to be draping. Hopefully when it gets longer and gets blocked, the weight and the bath will help it relax a bit. I'm knitting the cables a little more tightly than I normally would because when I started the scarf, I kept getting these ugly ladders and spaces between them. If I want them to snuggle up together all nicely, I have to make sure they're a little tight.

I also cast on for a sweater for myself: Coraline by Ysolda Teague, out of Debbie Bliss Prima in black. This is a project that I have been waiting a long time to make, so I am excited to get going on it. The yarn is 80% bamboo, 20% wool. It doesn't really have any stretch to it, and the yarn is a little stiff at first like most plant fibers. But my swatch is all drapey and soft and the yarn definitely loosens up as you knit with it, so I'm really looking forward to this one. The only thing is that the yarn seems to go pretty quickly and I'm starting to worry that the 13 balls I bought won't be enough to finish, even though I bought some extra just in case. I can only wait and see (and of course, knit faster so I can outrun the yarn).

Thanks to the kind hearts out there who left comments on my last post about the job situation. It is very frustrating and a little scary but I'm trying to look on the bright side and see it as an opportunity to catch up on knitting and reading and running, etc. Part of me feels like I'm wasting my life but there is honestly not a single thing I can do about it right now that I'm not already doing. I even wrote a business plan, scouted a great location, and applied for loans to open my own LYS...but that was right around the time that the financial crisis hit its peak, so banks weren't exactly rolling out the red carpet for new businesses. Maybe in a few years.

In the mean time, thanks for reading!!! :)