Counting

My knitting group met last night, and with their help, I got started on this wrist warmer.

It's the left one. Hopefully, someday, it will be finished, and also, there will be a corresponding one for the right wrist. Already it seems too large, so that I may need to wear it over several layers of long-sleeved shirts, or give it away entirely to someone with larger hands and wrists. Good thing I chose this nice purple color.

I did learn to cable, a surprisingly easy technique. It took a while to get started; what you see here is actually my third attempt, as I had to rip the first two out. ("Third time's the charm," they assured me.) I don't think I've had to count to fifteen so many times in my life. The group - most of whom seem to have PhDs - mercifully refrained from laughing. ("Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven...curses! Where was I?") It probably helped that one of them still has trouble with left and right.

Now that I've cast on, I only have to count to four, then one, then four again, for the rest of the (foreseeable) pattern - and even I can do that.

Because I know you all have just been dying for an update on the African violets on my windowsill, I thought I'd take some new pictures.

You can see Simon the Duckling in the lower left corner of this one.

These are my mini-succulents. One survived my inadvertent attempt to freeze it to death on a previous windowsill (the window didn't close all the way, a problem I solved with bubble wrap, duct tape, and a towel), and the other two are replacements, brought from Reading Terminal in Philly.

What I'm reading: Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide; Charlie Smith, Indistinguishable from the Darkness

What I'm listening to: The Weepies, Say I Am You; the Pixies, Doolittle