Ahhh, Clean

Me, that is, not the house. The house is going to wait. If it's lucky, the Halloween decorations will be removed sometime before Christmas.

Just took a shower, so it is once again time to thank our friend Chris, as he just happened to have the tools Mike needed to change the scald-guard setting on our shower. I hate taking lukewarm showers in the winter - give me HOT water. Anyway, thanks Chris. (I would link to him if he had a web presence.)

Zuzu has had lunch, I have had my yearly allotment of latkes, and Mike should be back in the near future. He did his Athens reunion thing this weekend. Hopefully the guys had fun. I feel like a slacker because I did not send any baked goods. Oh well, I had too many late nights last week. Went to bed at 9 yesterday. I was mostly rested when Zuzu woke me at 4. I have no idea how such a little kitty can make so much noise.

To be clear: I am a tea buyer, and not so much a tea drinker. I have quite the variety of teas in the cupboard, even though I rarely drink the stuff. Maybe I just *want* to be a tea drinker. Anyway, I have decided that I need to clean out the tea cabinet, and the best way to do that is to drink more tea. I emptied the Decaf Honey Chamomile Green Tea today. One box down, lots to go. Anyone want to come over and help me drink tea?

And on the holiday knitting front, well, I have 3.5 pairs of men's clogs ready to felt. I have 6 more pairs (women's) to do before Christmas. And quite a few other pairs in the queue, but at least those have some leeway, as they are not Family Gifts, so the due dates are somewhat movable.

I need some mindless knitting, though. The clogs are fun, and go relatively quickly (maybe faster if I can get into the pin-tensioned groove), but they require thought, to keep track of my stitch count and row. Although I *mostly* know the pattern, I still like to refer to it - and will
definitely need to use it when I switch sizes. There's a lecture at the museum on Friday, and I like to keep my hands busy while my brain focuses on the speaker. Thus, I need mindless knitting. Maybe I will start a plain old stockinette sock, or something with a simple rib pattern, so I can just go round and round and round while I think of other things. And most of the Christmas socks I wanted to make (will I? probably not this year) are more intricate patterns. Oh well. I'm sure I can find some nice sock yarn in the stash for that. That's the problem with becoming more skilled as a knitter - I want to make things that are prettier than plain stockinette. Even scarves are more fun with patterns. Oh, and the room is dark during the lecture, so even if I did an easily memorized pattern, I won't really be able to see what I'm doing. Maybe I'll work on version II of Mike's Toque. Oh! I have baby hats to do! Maybe I could work on those, although I kinda wanted to do something more fun than stockinette. Should I start another sweater? Nah, not until January. I'll come up with something, I guess.

What I will not be making: banananana hammock. Someone on Ravelry pointed it out, and I wanted to share.

Anyway, I should get back to my knitting. And I need to do the SAAZ newsletter. I think I finally have everyone's contributions - it will be a short one. Let's try to do that now, although maybe I will see if Mike will be home before or after I can make and eat more latkes. I think I want more.