Too much of a good thing

Yesterday was my first day back in the office, and it was (mostly) good. A little weirdness, mostly about my new proposed work schedule -- I'm going to be keeping Becky home with me on Fridays so I can spend some 'quality' time with her and then making up for the work time I'm "missing" (Fridays are notoriously unproductive days) by working on projects that don't need to be done during normal business hours -- but mostly it was really good and nice to be back. It looks like I'm going to get to work really closely with the marketing department, so I'm really happy about that.

But I did miss my little Zackerdoodle, so when he woke up at 3am I told Kit I'd take him, even though it's not my shift. Kit was kind enough to allow me to intrude on his quality time with The Boy (read that last bit with sarcasm dripping off it, because I'm sure Kit was laughing all the way to the sleep bank on that one). It was really nice...I changed him, fed him, he fell asleep in my arms, I put him back in the crib, he flailed, I changed him again (flailing during sleep means a wet diaper, usually), he peed all over me, I went to put him back in the crib (after changing his whole outfit and thoroughly waking him up, natch), he spit up all over me (and his fresh outfit)...see if you can pinpoint the exact moment in there it stopped being "nice" for Mommy. I don't know what his father does to him...he doesn't behave like that during my shift!

Lots of big changes lately...got a mani-pedi, and the pedicure was amazing. I don't like pedicures, usually, but my feet were just rough and gross (shaddup, Kit) and it needed to be done so I gritted my teeth and scheduled an appointment and...and...it was seriously amazing. Especially considering how (relatively) cheap it was. I will be going back. I also got a haircut and changed my hairstyle for the first time in I don't know how many years. 5? I was pretty much letting it grow out after the tragic shmeckie head incident of aught one and I just never stopped. So now it has shape and bangs (in a good way -- pics next post) and I feel stylin'.

I'm also trying to dress a little more professionally. Heels, nice pants/jeans, the occasional jacket, etc. The environment I work in is biz cas, but there are degrees, you know? One thing I'm discovering is that pants fit differently when you wear them with heels. Something about the hips, I think. Pants that are even the least bit loose on me start to fall right off if I wear them with heels. It makes for an interesting day at the office. This is also affecting the knitting projects I'm choosing (the dressing better, not the pants falling off), and I'm finding Ravelry to be a tremendous help with that.

The other day I was looking for something to make with a particular yarn I already had in stash but that didn't work with any of the patterns I had in my queue. So I looked it up on Ravelry and went to see what other people had made with it, and a bunch of people had made or were making the Cable Down Raglan (scroll down). Now, I have a subscription to this particular magazine, and never even considered making this pattern. And you know what? It still doesn't appeal to me based on their yarn/color choice. But the ones on Ravelry, knit in the yarn I have, in similar colors to what I'll be using, look really great. So. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere, and it actually reminds me of one of my favorite anecdotes from a few years ago.

I was a member of a huge knitting email list -- one of those where the members all email back and forth, asking for help with various problems, sharing experiences, etc. A nice little community. So this one lady emails the group asking if we can help her find a pattern for a top down sweater. She has a particular yarn in her stash that she wants to use and she just can't find the right pattern. So a bunch of people respond, the links and book recommendations are flying, and this lady is appreciative but none of these hundreds of patterns are really turning her crank. Finally someone asks if she can maybe tell us what she doesn't like about the patterns she's been looking at. She responds that they're very nice and attractive sweaters, but none of them are quite the right shade of blue. Seriously. The lady couldn't bring herself to knit a pattern in a yarn that was a different color from the one in the picture. I kind of feel like the same thing happened to me with the sweater I mentioned above, but the other way around. I know I didn't conciously decide not to knit a sweater becasuse it happens to be a color I don't find tremendously appealing -- I almost never knit sweaters in the yarn shown, much less the color. Nevertheless, I did pass it by, and it's a sweater that has the potential to look really great on me. Something I need to be careful about in the future.

posted by Laura Y. @ 1:09 PM