The Firebird Progresseth

So I've been busy working on the firebird. I started on it the same day the package came in the mail, sort of. I wound the wool, cast on as directed and got to the 9th row when I decided that there was no point continuing. I somehow managed to make some kind of mistake on EVERY one of the lace rows. Every single time I forgot a yarn over somewhere. This is what it looked like when I quit for the night.

In the light of day I decided that I couldn't live with having jury rigged solutions on every row, so I ripped the whole thing out. I started over and went v e r y s l o w l y, making sure that I checked the stitch count at the end of the lace portion every row. I finally managed to figure out the basic part of the pattern, so things went much more smoothly.

I have progressed on past the toe (which will be the tail feathers on the bird) and have moved on to the belly of the bird. If you look carefully at the photo you can go ahead and pretend that there's not a cable needle hanging there with a stray stitch that dropped from who knows where.



In other news, I am a little hesitant to use my computer lately. Technology seems to have decided that I am not its friend. Last week I threw a load of laundry in the washing machine then went over to help out at our church office. One of the things they wanted me to do was shred three bins full of old stuff. I got the shredder going and started in. This was the kind of shredder that you'd use at home, not really intended for industrial use, where you feed in up to 5 pages at a time. Let me tell you that 3 bins full of stuff, 5 pages at a time, takes a long time to shred. Sadly I can't tell you exactly how long because after about 15 minutes the shredder decided that I was expecting it to do a whole lot more than it was willing to do. Perhaps it was a union shredder and was expecting a break at 12, I don't know. The only thing I am sure of is that it stopped. No smoke, no funny noises, no sputtering, just stopped dead. We were unable to resuscitate the poor thing so I was unable to finish my shredding. Ah well, these things happen.

I headed on home and took the next basket of clothes down to the laundry room and was greeted with the sight of my whites load, still swimming happily in the wash water. Needless to say, nothing I did would get it working again, so I got to bail all of the wash water out, then I ran the rinse cycle, mostly to get the soap out of the clothes, but also hoping that maybe after the rinse cycle it would drain, but naturally it did not. In case you're curious it takes about 87 dips with a 2 cup measure to get most of the water out of a medium sized load of laundry.

On a final note, when did the price of a load at the laundromat go from 60 cents to $1.50?