The Sweatshop of Love Blog

I’ve had the same Dell laptop for 4 1/2 years. It was really slow (I got a lot of knitting done while it was loading pictures, though!), the internet barely worked on it. I couldn’t listen to iTunes and have two windows open at the same time. The CD tray started randomly opening whenever it wanted to, and not opening when I asked it to.

We’ve been through a lot, me and The Old Lady. We went to Prague together. She was my first laptop. I wrote many many many stories on her. But. Her time had come.

I was wheeling and dealing with my mom in the hopes that I could combine my Christmas and birthday presents with her and my grandparents in order to get a new computer in December. But The Old Lady and I had a rough week last week. She almost got thrown out the window.

And PT came to the rescue.

He bought me a new computer. Exclamation points at this point are redundant. Needles to say, I’ll be picking up PT’s 10 cent wing night at Cleo’s tab for the rest of time. It’s amazing. I’m on it right now! Its the big time! It’s a Dell something something. Its got a ridiculously large screen, as you can see. The Old Lady is trying to share it’s files with The New Lady, but The Old Lady is so old it took pretty much the entire weekend.

There is a learning curve to new things (it’s taking me a ridiculously long time to figure out how to resize my pictures, save them where I can find them, and upload them in the blog), but so far so AMAZING. PT is kinda the best.

I don’t know if you were aware that this weekend was NFL KICKOFF WEEKEND Y’ALL! I’m a huge University of Michigan fan, and the Wolverines won a huge game Saturday against Notre Dame! I’m also a huge Lion’s fan.

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There wasn’t a lot of time between football games Saturday or Sunday to cook, but we managed to eat a few delicious veggie sandwiches and I even sacrificed some football time Sunday to whip up some Veggie Pasta.

We also managed to run to Renegade and check out the crafty goodness. And there was a lot of crafty goodness to be had. There were so many booths we didn’t even get a chance to really look at most of them. We did find our friends Jamie, Caitlin, and Kelsey, who were rocking it out (despite how they look).

With football season comes LOTS of knitting time. I like to watch at least two college games on Saturday and three pro games on Sunday. That is like 9 hours of sitting in front of the TV! At least.

I’m being productive, though. I’m not just sitting drinking beer. So I don’t feel bad about it at all. I did this weekend because it was 80 degrees and sunny both days and I was inside screaming at my TV…

But I finished the Christmas stockings! I love how they turned out. I’ve got to knit another pair because my mom caught sight of them and wanted some. They are coming, Mom!

I also got a ton done on some cabled pillows I’m making for an upcoming wedding present. I can’t do much more because I don’t have a pillow form to size it over, but I think I’m pretty close to being done with this first one. I’ll just fold it in almost exactly in half, seam it up, add a button closure flap and call it good!

I’m playing around with the idea of dying or covering the pillow form in a solid cover fabric, so the contrasting color shows through. What do you think?

(Anne, if you are reading this, happy wedding!)

I am going to change it up a bit over the next couple weeks. My goal is to start writing more, writing more in book form, in the afternoons, giving myself little mini writing goals involving chapters or pages, and the best place to do this is not in my house. And, if you’ve taken a look at the Sweatshop class schedule this week and next, I’m going to be spending a lot of time at New Wave as it is. Why not mix it up during the day?

Today’s location? Atlas Cafe on Armitage and kinda Humbolt. It is small and very quaint and they have been playing The Softies all afternoon (and I know that band, and sound cool, because of PT) and I’m very ok with it. I got a little cookie with my small cup of coffee for $1.59. Free WiFi. Rachel walked over before going to work and we caught up – A LOT has happened since Sunday afternoon, naturally. Now I’m sitting here enjoying my high boy table next to the windows, watching the rain.

Last night PT and I met some friends at Cleo’s on Armitage for 10 cent wing night. We knew 10 cent wing night was coming, but not until like 9:30, so we kept dinner light.

Last night’s salad was cucumber, broccoli, carrot, romaine, tomato, avocado, and mushroom and radish from the farmers market, with my dressing of choice, Kraft Free Thousand Island. So good! And when I ate the Cleo’s max of 12 wings 2 hours later, I didn’t feel so bad.

The salad I made for lunch today was the same, minus the broccoli and avocado. I love huge salads in the summer time. Veggies are so cheap and everywhere, and eating a big salad is so cool and refreshing! I can’t get enough.

It occurred to me that I haven’t been talking very much about knitting on this knitting blog the last few days. My sock is on pause until tonight’s class, sitting, ready to turn that heel. My Knit Pick’s yarn hasn’t come in yet so I haven’t had a chance to work on my Summer Sweater. Leaving:

I’ve been making little progress on my sweater pattern. This weekend was just go go go I didn’t take a lot of time to knit anything after getting done with the foot of my sock. That is one thing about the summer, not a lot of sitting watching movies time. And I didn’t want to watch the Tigers games this weekend. Stupid Pittsburgh.

I like how this is shaping up! I love yarn over increases, so they had to be involved. I love the chunkiness of the ribbing, and the contrast with the blue yarn in stockinette. I’m getting increasingly nervous about dividing for the sleeves, since I have no idea what the stripes are going to look like with the sleeves, how many increases to do, or really what I’m doing at all, but I just have to try it and see what happens.

I let Rachel distract me for a while, so now its after 4 and I’ve got to write at least a little bit, since that is my goal for getting out of the house! You know what its like, HAVING to write your BOOK at the COFFEE SHOP.

I hate myself