just checking in...

That is all, thanks, bye. Or maybe not all, since everyone who knows me knows I tend to talk or write people's ears off...of course that's only if I know them...but I suppose the innernets is just like having 20 million bestest friends anyway, right? Yeah, I know, like that many people would ever read this blog....

One of these days when we finally get another computer when l figure out how to get the pictures off my digital camera without the software (maybe take it to a store or something? DUH!) and then I can post all of pictures of the the inanely trivial things I tend to photograph. I know you are just dying to see them, aren't you?

The epic "ghan of graph" is--dare I say it?--almost complete. No really, despite the self-destructive perfectionist urge I have to make it just a little bit larger--can you believe it, the single crochet stitches made it just a skosh smaller than I thought?! I can't win with this, can I?--I shall not rip it a second time...that is what borders are for, to make the blanket just that little bit bigger. Despite the love/hate relationship I have developed with this thing, I must say some little part of me does think it's quite cute. I'll still be happy to have it done and out of the house, I'm just sayin'.

a great big pain in the...hand

Have you ever worked on something for what seems like ages, and then all of a sudden you come to an awful realization, say like you made a mistake near the beginning of a loong scarf or something and didn't notice until you were almost finished? In my case, I worked over a third of a graph afghan and realized that it was going to be waaaay too big....

I should preface this by saying that my wonderful friend Pammy asked me a couple of months ago to make a graph pattern for her first grandbaby due in the Fall, to which I of course agreed. I started it and then promptly left it for a month or so few weeks to finish a few other things and such, thinking, as all procrastinators do: "Well I have until October, LOTS of time!!!" Then a couple weeks ago I realized my lots of time had ticked away, as time will do, and decided to hunker down and start seriously working on this thing....and so I did...and I worked very hard, trying to bang away 10-15 rows a night...and so my hand began to hurt--a lot--and this weekend I decided to take a day or two off from the marathon of evening crochet...and it was at this point that Cee made this innocent comment: "Gee, that's turning out to be a really big blanket...." To which I replied, "Oh.. no...wait, do you think so??" Heartsick, I tried to float down the river of denial for as long as I could, but once the idea was in my head it wouldn't get out, don't you just hate that? And after I measured and did some arithmetic (never my strong point) I figured that by the time this baby blanket was finished it was going to be over 5 feet in length without the border...I just knew I'd have to frog all 23 inches of my graph ghan in progress. Honestly it's not my fault....the pattern I have was meant for filet thread crochet, so I was kind of winging it for baby yarn, having to guess hook size and which stitch to use....Sure, I could have left it, and then maybe when it was complete, they could have used it for a hallway runner...nothing would appease me, not even Cee saying "Well, just keep this one and start them another one", to which I replied, "But then I'd have to buy more yarn..." At this point he made a noise sounding suspiciously like a scoff and said "You'd do that anyway..." Humph! No, I made the decision, took a deep breath, and started ripping. It took me most of Sunday afternoon and evening just to rip the dang thing out. I was actually nauseous, thinking about all that hard work, all those yarn strands I had to keep untwisting while I worked, and then had to do the same thing when I ripped it back out....live and learn, what can you do? And so now, a few days later, the ghan has been restarted with a smaller hook and in single crochet.....and when it is done I will be very glad to see the back of it....my hand still hurts, and time, she is not on my side...but it WILL get finished!

I harvested the first 3 tomatoes yesterday and took a picture, here it isn't:

Two of my maters were only the size of raspberries, but one was your typical cherry tomato size....they tasted pretty good, and I felt very fulfilled, maybe the way a farmer would when he had sown his seeds and tended and then harvested his crop, well okay maybe not, but you get the idea, I started singing "The Circle of Life" and danced around my kitchen, eating my cherry tomatoes....not really, but I guess this sort of proves that my thumb is a little bit green after all.

still living in the dark ages

Still here. Still breathing. Still without computer. You don't realize how much you have come to rely on 'things' until you don't have them anymore, do you? I mean, if this were 15 years ago, I wouldn't be going through internet withdrawal, would I? I wouldn't be jonesing for a blog fix, or a Youtube chuckle or just thinking up some idiotic thing to type in a search box, just to see if there were sites dedicated to it, now would I? I wouldn't be checking IMdb for an actor I saw in a show and wanted to know what else he'd been in...and I certainly wouldn't be cursing the fact that I couldn't search for knitting or crochet patterns, or looking up how to do a certain stitch or technique either. Ah, c'est la vie as the French saying goes.

We are still 'shopping' computers...which is to say, neither one of us knows a tinker's damn about what goes into a computer and what gigahoosie whatsit we need to run our big, metal picture-box thing. Well, maybe we aren't that bad, but it's a lot closer than I'd like to admit...hopefully soon we will have something.

On the home front, this is where I'd place some pictures of my tomato plants, which are growing nicely and rapidly producing many tomatoes...none of which are ripening that I can see as yet, but who cares, The Great 'Mater Experiment has seemingly succeeded, which surprised no one more than I, you can be sure of that! Only one of the plants seems a little bit sickly, but it is still holding it's own and producing tomatoes, even if they are a little bit smaller than the other three plants.

I've been knitting more dishcloths, and working on what will hopefully be a graph 'ghan, nothing too interesting, but I would still show some pictures if I could. I also just finished a knitted Mr. Bean teddy bear I have affectionately named "Legume"....again, a picture would normally be right in this space:

Sigh.