Moving soon – let the pain begin!

Moving is a pain in the rump. When I moved into my house in Atlanta, I had movers do it. I’d had movers do it ever since the one apartment move just about damned near killed me and my friends I’d been able to beg to come help me. After that, I said “Screw it. $300 for two guys and a truck to get it done in 3 hours? Sounds great.”

When I left Atlanta, it was a self-move. I just didn’t have the money to hire a truck and people to move us. Instead, we talked to the guy that was doing the build-out on the store and he knew of a couple of guys that would be happy to earn some extra cash to help Jared unload the rented truck. Me? I know my limits. I stayed upstairs and pointed where everything would go, while reassuring the cats that they weren’t going to die and everything was okay. Oh and I passed around water bottles. It was hot as hell that day.

Last Friday, we got new neighbors. And aren’t they a treat. It was bad enough that a building that had been blocking the view and the noise from the railroad tracks on the other side of it had been knocked down, but the new neighbors neglected to find parking suitible for them, as well as all of their friends. What neighbors? A bar. A glass-fronted bar. Not a suitibly sound-proofed with a double door entry way that blocks the sound, but a plain old plate glass all across the front of the whole damned thing with no sound proofing qualities at all bar. Oh, and they have live music. Joy.

Now, back in the day, I used to go to bars. They were also properly sound-proofed. (Hey Jas, remember Netherworld? ::grin::) I don’t go to clubs anymore, and even if I did, this would not be a club I’d go to. It’s been a bad build from the start, with a small fire, arguements with the historic preservationists, permit issues, and then the cracked slab that would have been for parking, except they didn’t bother to check to make sure there wasn’t a hole underneath the slab of the early 1900’s building they tore down. So we got to watch everyone circling the blocks for parking (this is not a complex I live in, but refurbed early 1900’s stores/offices, so it’s street parking for all), and then Saturday night, the 3 cop cars coming to deal with the one drunk guy stupid enough to take his shirt off and start screaming obscenities at the bouncers.

Yeahhhhhhh, so not where I want to live. Did I mention I’m literally across the street from this place? /growl

It all got capped off with me having to call the cops an hour after everyone had left and the bar had closed for the night because we had more drunks standing out on the sidewalk in front of our apartment being loud and I couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired, cranky, and wanted SLEEP! The cops came, and told the people to go home and the people… stayed. /sigh A couple of them live below us, and they didn’t go inside their apartment, so I slept on the couch.

However, the lady that co-owns the store with Mom, the store that I’m the manager of, she also owns some “apartments”. They’re called apartments, but I went and looked at them yesterday with Jared. They’re bloody townhomes. Small, only 1100 square feet (the house in Atlanta was 2100 sq. ft.), but that’s about what we’re living in now. We’re also not using 1/2 the bedroom (bad positions for load bearing posts), and a 1/4 of the living room (more bad load bearing posts). It’s got carpet (yey! no more cold feet!), brand new appliances (yey! no more questionable freezer closing!), and two bedrooms (yey! seperate room for the comps!). Best of all? TWO AND A HALF BATHROOMS! /swoon Hey we’re dealing with a 1 bed, 1 bath right now, and when Jared’s gut and my gut are both having issues at the same time, it gets dicey.

The new place comes with washer/dryer connections, but she’s going to order some for us on Monday when she gets back into town, so we don’t have to worry about having to buy some. The kitchen’s a bit small, but I’ve lived in worse. Best of all? There’s covered private gated parking. It’s quiet. And there’s not a bar in sight.

So some point in the next week and a half, it looks like we’re going to be moving. Tonight, Jared and I get to sit down and discuss when we want to do this, when he can get his friends who’ve already offered to help in exchange for free lasagna to commit, and when we can get all the utilities on at the new place. the biggest issue is going to be the cable/internet, but that’s always the way. Me? I’m just hoping that this weekend is the last weekend we spend here. It’s been lovely, but we really need to go now.

It’s cold

It’s cold outside. Yep, cold. And I’m somewhere between “yey!” and “…hate you”. “Yey!” cos I’m tired of the hot weather. “…hate you” cos I loathe being cold. And I haven’t finished my first pair of hand-knited socks yet. I kinda got distracted with the WoW guild going boom, the release of Dragon Age: Origins, and restarting playing Lord of the Rings Online. Whoops. ^^;

LoTRO’s going well. I’m having a fun time, other friends are poking their noses in and checking it out, and while I still adore my hunter there, I’m having some amusement leveling a Guardian, which is a tank.

Yep, a TANK. You may now all feel free to pick yer collective jaws up off the floor.

Why? Cos someone had to do it and everyone else is too busy playing healers or DPS and giggling. That includes the “I’m a damned good tank!” boyfriend. He’s off either muttering “burgle burgle burgle” udner his breath before breaking out into giggles, or playing around on his Lore Master (think druid with animal pets instead of animal forms). His LM and my Guardian are the same level, so we’ve been leveing together. Which has lead to some interesting comments between the two of us.

“Grr.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just, if I’m going to try to, well, tank, it’d be nice to get aggro FIRST.”
“…::dies giggling and pulls the next mobs with a spell crit::”
“…::sighs and proceeds to hit every threat button I have::”

My muttered comment to him, since he’s insisting on being Aggro Whore, is I can manage to keep the mobs on me, and not on him, by end game, I’ll be a damned good tank and able to handle anything. His response? “…::gringigglenuke::”

…bastard.

And in a bit of good news, the problems that were plaguing me in LoTRO before, which was my keyboard/mouse would randomly disconnect with no notice, then reconnect at it’s leisure, unless I plugged and replugged the damned thing were fixed. Turns out, the mouse disconnection was strictly because it was plugged into the keyboard. The Apple keyboard was the issue in Windows. Whether it was from a faulty driver, or it was starting to develop a short in the line, it’s been fixed. How? I bought a G15 keyboard. Things are much, much better. ::grin::

So this weekend, I’m hoping that I can get a little more cleaning done on the apartment, fix bagels again, get some LoTRO time in, and play some more Dragon Age. Still haven’t finished it, but been distracted. Oh, and knit! Mmm… knitting. /purr

Well that was fun

Last Tuesday, I got Dragon Age: Origins. I promptly threw myself into the game, cackling over the fact I had the rest of the week off to enjoy it. I’m now almost (or just over, I lost track) 30 hours in on my first character, and damn, I’m in love.

Yeah, there’s some stuff that irritates me, but it’s so minor, it feels like I’m trying to find something bad about it. The conversations that the rest of my party has with each other while we’re walking crack me up. These characters have personality, which can be lacking a lot of times in games. Bioware hasn’t let me down in the past, and they didn’t this time either.

And yes, there’s a romance section. I went for the easy obvious choice for a human woman character: Alistair. He’s irreverent, cocky, cracks jokes at the worst times, and you can almost see him poking and prodding those people that irritate him til they explode, where upon he would run off giggling. At the same time he’s fiercely loyal, honest, brave, and while not ambitious, he’d do whatever it takes to ensure peace, and god help you if you hurt those he cares for. Add in that he’s been sheltered his whole life and has NO clue how to deal with the opposite sex, so he keep trying to not trip over himself and screw things up.

Did I ever mention I have a very large soft spot for sarcastic-yet-sweet knight errants? Yeah, thanks Bioware. I got to hear growling from the other end of the couch while playing this and grinning my head off at Alistair’s profession of love to my character. At least cookies calm the Jared-beast.

The voice acting is amazing (and a little odd when I blink at the screen and yelp “Hey! That’s Shishio!” at a random dwarf), and the storyline is compelling. The only real problems I’ve had are:
1. I’m not at home still playing this and,
2. The Fade makes my eyes hurt from constantly trying to focus.

So all in all, not too bad of a use of my time off last week, as far as I was concerned. Especially since my guild has effectively ended in WoW. Jared and I both sighed and got to evaluating our options. We could either move to another guild for end content, move to another server, stay where we are and accept we’re not even going to do 5-mans within the guild, or say “So long and thanks for all the fish.” Well as of right now, neither of us has cancelled our accounts, but he’s handing the leadership over to another guild member.

We’ve both reactivated Lord of the Rings Online, and have been playing that this week, when we haven’t been playing DA:O. I have so many group quests in there on my main character, it’s insane. Right now, I’m waiting to see if the couple of guildies that are exploring LoTRO with us continue, and if they do, then when they’re at that level, we can do the quests together. Siarian is now level 30, and I’m starting to sweat the gold gathering for a mount at level 35. It costs 4 gold and 220 silver. I have 2 gold, barely.  Did I mention that one gold is 1,000 silver? /faint

So how do I feel about the guild all going their seperate ways? To be honest, not too badly. I keep in contact with a good chunk of them via Facebook and emails, so I’m not exactly losing many of them. And weirdly, when I got the Hallowed title on Wrenn, I thought to myself “Okay, WoW can blow up tomorrow. I’m good.” Would I like to see more of the game? Sure. I’d love to see what the end of Uldar looks like, or any of ToC other than the 5-man stuff. But most of what I was doing in WoW these days was fluff bits – hunting for more achievements and pets. Things that didn’t really advance the game for me. So while I’ve not cancelled my account yet, I most likely will at some point. I’ll be a little sad, but I still have the friends that I made in it, and that’s really what matters.

Tired Nightravyn is tired

This weekend, Exar and I went to go see Mom. Well, that was part of the visit. The main reason for going was what I posted on Saturday: the Ole Miss football game, tailgating in the Grove, and all the rabid Rebel fans you could shake a stick at. It was Exar’s first sight of the Grove completely overtaken with tailgating tents, girls in pearls and heels, guys in khakis, and about half the alums already tanked at 10am. Due to the ticket sales fiasco (major overselling, and people were moved all over the place), instead of the sideline seats we were supposed to have, we were in the endzone. The endzone in the sun. Can we say sunburned? Oh good, so can I. I can also say “Solarcaine.” (Owie.) I’m down to the itchy part, and starting to peel on my face (joy), but at least it’s not the pain that I was in on Sunday when we drove back home. At least it was a good game, and Exar enjoyed himself (and the BBQ nachos, but we won’t go there).

Another part of our trip was talking some stuff over with Mom and her builder. She’s working on putting an addition onto the 1930’s bungelow than my great-grandparents built. The original house is 1300~ square feet. She’s adding 2000 square feet. Yes, she’s got that much stuff, why do you ask? Fortunately her builder is a good guy, and the stuff she needed to go over was quickly taken care of. She still needs to find some tile for the kitchen backsplash, but it’s mostly taken care of at this point. Colors for paint got nailed down too, so that’s off the “need to bug the kid about” list, thank heavens. At least she’s gotten most of the appliances already purchased or lined up. The addition is going to look -good- when it’s finally done. When we were there, they’d managed to get the trees taken out to make room for the addition, and dug the pit for the foundations. Yesterday, it had managed to dry out enough that they could pour the foundations. With luck, the framing guys will be out there within the week to start framing and then they can really get some work going.

As far as WoW goes, we got back on Sunday where we promptly fell over dead. But Monday was a good day for me. I managed to go from 406/700 Kalimdor quests to 445/700 quests. AND I also got the following:

1. To All The Squirrels I’ve Loved Before
2. Explore Darkshore
3. Explore Durotar
4. Explore The Barrens
5. Explore Mulgore
6. Explore Ashenvale
7. Heroic: Azjol-Nerub
8. Volunteer Work
9. Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom (Missed a boss so no Heroic on it)
10. Northrend Dungeonmaster
11. The Old Gnome and the Sea
12. Fish Don’t Leave Footprints
13. 250 Fish (woooo!)
14. Expert Fisherman

I might have been a bit determined yesterday. >.>

Gone Tailgatin’

Be back later…

I mastered the lore in Eastern Kingdoms

Yep I got the Loremaster achievement for Eastern Kingdoms yesterday. It was amusing. After merrily smacking my way through low level quests, running Scholo and Strath cos I’d find just one more quest for them, and gritting my teeth to just buckle down and do it when I got to the last 75 quests, the last 10 quests were more like a cakewalk than anything else. Oh look, it’s a quest chain. Whee!

And what happens after I get the achievement? I suddenly remember I haven’t picked up the two pets in Blackrock forWrenn yet. /facepalm So at some point, I’ll be going back in to BRS to get them, as well as do a few more quests in there, just for giggles.

Also last night, I managed to finish the last piece to a project I’d been working on for almost 8 months now. I’d put it at the end of the list because I don’t have a sewing machine readily available to help finish it, and I had gotten amazingly tired of knitting one big line of stitches over and over. After the shawl and the baby blanket, though, finishing one last strap was cake. And since we’re going to visit my mom tomorrow, and she DOES have a readily available sewing machine, I’m going to finish out that project hopefully this weekend.

Of course, I’m hoping I’ll actually HAVE the spare time. When we get up there tomorrow around lunch, Mom and I have to go over stuff for the stores, go over stuff for the house she’s building (apparently, she had me so she could have free tech support and design/decorating services) since they’re finally putting in the foundation this week and will start framing next week, meet with her builder on other things with the house, and just chat in general. Saturday is taken up mostly with the Ole Miss/Arkansas football game, and this will be Exar’s first time at an Ole Miss game, with all it’s insanity and weirdness. Sure it’s the normal college football insanity, but then there’s the Grove, and tailgating in the Grove needs to be seen to be believed. And Sunday we drive home, hopefully early enough that I can get laundry done before hopping into game for a while.

Yeah, that’s right, I said “into game”. I still have Kalimdor to clear! A girl’s gotta have goals.

But yeah, it’s gonna be a busy weekend, and one that’s gonna leave me wanting to flop over dead at the end. I’d give anything for a real vacation, where I don’t think about the store, and don’t worry about phone calls, and don’t run around like an insane woman. Dragon*Con is lovely, but I’m so tired by the end of it, I need a vacation from the vacation! So for Christmas this year, I’d like Santa to bring me the following:

1. 10 skiens for Noro Silk Garden in 252 colorway. I have a project for all of that and want to get started nao!

2. A small beach cottage with a good internet connection, one week rental.

3. One week off to pack up Exar and I, and all of our stuff, and go to said rented cottage. I can go say hi to the beach in between knitting and gaming and he can read and game.

4. Oh wait, can I add reading to my list? Yes, reading must be added, kthxbai.

5. I’d also like a 40″+ HDTV at this mythical beach cottage so we can bring the PS3 for console gaming. Oh and I’d like a second PS3 so we don’t have to fight over who gets to play single player games on the one we have right now. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, MADDEN FRANCHISE! /sulks with my Katamari Forever disk

6. (I’m somewhat kidding about the fights over the PS3. I’m just waiting on Dragon Age: Origins right now before I start using the claws and teeth.)

7. And last but not least, a new home to come home to when this vacation-of-my-dreams is over. One without neighbors below me that we can hear talking loudly at 2am, or with neighbors next to us that have a dogs that is howling and/or screaming at 2am, making me think someone’s getting beaten and making the cats completely spaz.

… oh yeah, I could use some sleep about now. -.-

Fall Melancholy

Fall has always been an odd season for me. There’s a sense of melancholy attached to it for me. A bit of happy, a bit of sad. When it came to the happy, I was one of the weird kids that actually looked forward to school starting, cos I loved learning, and cos I got to see my friends again. Yes, I’m one of those people that gets a whiff of erasers in August and has fond memories of shopping for back to school clothes and supplies. Usually by November, the warm fuzzies between me and school were over, and I just wanted holiday break to come quickly.

At the same time, I was sad to be watching the leaves wither and fall to the ground. There was a feeling of the earth dying, showing off in one last blast of riotous color before turning into the grey of winter. If summer was sun, sea air, and the cries of gulls, fall was a cool breeze, dew on the grass and spiderwebs, and the scent of burning leaves.

Scent is a funny thing. It triggers so many things in humans, not the least of which is memories. Back when I was 10, my mom moved the two of us up to Knoxville, Tennessee, so she could attend the University of Tennessee and work on her PhD in Anthropology. (For those that are into that kinda thing, yes, that’s where Dr. William Bass taught, who formed the first and best known “Body Farm”. Mom took classes under him, and he was a wonderfully sweet guy to the 10 year old kid sitting in his classes next to her mom, including his forensics classes.) (Why yes, I did have a weird childhood, why do you ask?) I was not the happiest kid in the world about leaving all of my friends and moving to some strange town, and sulked for a good chunk of the time there.

Around October, Mom found out that Silver Dollar City, a theme park in Pigeon Forge, TN, was having a Fall Arts & Crafts Festival. Mom was a big believer in getting culture and education in while having fun (and if it was inexpensive, all the better!), so we drove up on Saturday to check out the park. When we got there, it was open, tour buses were lined up and dropping their passengers off, and the BBQ pit was in full gear. We spent the day wandering around, checking out the crafts, watching the blacksmithing, glassblowing, and giggling at the lines of people staring at the quilters (my great-grandmother was still alive and very much still quilting at the time). I was fascinated with the chandlery and had to be dragged out of there. The colors of the waxes fascinated me to no end, until we saw the weavers and my brain completely popped.

By the time the day was over, Fall became cemented in my head with a full array of memories: the fascination of learning, colors from every spectrum, the scent of BBQ, charcoal and diesel exhaust, a crisp breeze, red plaid fabric, the sounds of crowds and the crunch of dead leaves, and missing friends and family horribly. To this day, most of those can still trigger a melancholy in me for a moment, but only for a moment. Then the good memories rise to the top, and I start to think of the possibilities that fall can bring.

Like finally being able to wear things I knitted! WOHOO!

Achievements – I has them

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly working on achievements in WoW. I mean, I finally got enough money in Wrenn’s pockets that I felt I could comfortably afford an Armored Brown Bear. Yeah, I’m paranoid about my money, mainly cos I don’t have near as much as a lot of people I know. I’m currently sitting at just over 2k. Yeah, not a lot in WotLK. But for me, it’s “Woooo! RICH!”. ::grin::

I also have been slowly working towards the Explorer title. Outlands, Eastern Kingdom and Northrend are all done. Kalimdor isn’t. Why not? Well cos I started working on the Loremaster stuff, and Eastern Kingdoms won the coin toss on which I started first. I’m within 25 or so quests of getting that finished, then it’s off to Kal and exploring it. Outlands, I will have quests there to do, and same for Northrend, but I’m more concerned with getting the old world done before it gets changed up. And considering my pace, I’m gonna need all the time I can get. >.>

The pet collecting has been trucking along, and I finally splurged on a few under-25g pets and got my Reeking Pet Carrier. I’m sitting at 55/75 pets now, and still have to go back into Black Rock to get the two pets there. The mounts are coming more slowly, mainly due to preoccupation with other things. I’m sitting at 45/50 with the mounts right now, and hope I can get back to mount hunting soon.

I finally decided to level up Wrenn’s cooking, and have been slowly working on achievements there. Oo wow I finally have 10 cooking awards! Wooo! My fishing is magnificently low, so once I actually get cooking “out of the way”, I will grimace and work on that next.

In a case of “better late than never”, I managed to get exalted with Argent Dawn. I’m still attempting to work on getting Wrenn Exalted with the Netherwing so she can have a space dragon of her own, but that’s gotten derailed by the “OMG OLD WORLD QUESTS!” panic I’m under. She’s sitting at just over halfway through Revered, so it won’t take that much longer.

Pretty much my goals lately have been to try to log in, get at least 1 old world quest done, if not more like 5, then see if there’s anything going on that interests me. Last night, as I was sitting in Strath using ray guns on ghosts, enough people were on that we got a Horseman group going. Sadly, no mount, and for some reason, all the guys in the guild have this tendency to eat tons of Tricky Treats then barf on me. Yeah, me, the little gnome. Even Exar barfed on me, giggling the whole while. He almost got a pillow to the face at 3am in revenge for that. ::mutter::

Tonight is raid night. Uldar. I’m hoping like hell we get to see Freya this week, after regressing and re-progressing back to the point of walking into her room and saying “ooo shiny”. Hm, that reminds me, I still need to watch a vid of her fight so I can see what’s supposed to be done, not what we’ve done, which was run around screaming like idiots.

You know those shirts that say “Life happens”? It’s a semi-sarcastic turn of phrase, for when Life comes and smacks you around. I’m this close to making ones that say “WoW Raiding: Progression Happens”. Owie.

OMG I’m Hallowed

Oh, the world events. Over Brewfest, I managed to get horribly lucky and get a kodo right off the bat. And for some reason, I finally made the mental click on the ram racing and was not doing too badly with it, so the tickets piled up and I was able to get the Brewmaster title. Yey for drunk gnomes!

But the other world events… I’ll be honest. I’ve been staying away from them, other than the easy fluff bits. Why? PvP and I don’t get along. My first intro to MMOs was something called MUDs and MUSHs. For those under 20 (and a few under 30) that have no idea what the hell those are, those are like today’s MMOs, only with no pretty graphics. Nothing but text, baby! /watches as people flee screaming

But the first ones that were recommended to me had PvP. I didn’t know it at the time, just going off of friends’ recommendations. So poor little level 1 me wanders out, and a level 100 person walks over and smacks me into a wall, proceeding to camp me for the next hour. Yeah, not my idea of a good time. And unlike WoW, ANYONE could gank you, your race included. So yeah, PvP and I didn’t get off to a good start with the relationship.

Now then, Siana actually does have a “Private” title in her list. One weekend within the first year of WoW, two friends of mine somehow convinced me to try out this “Battlegrounds” thing, and sucked me into playing in Warsong Gulch. I merrily bounced around, palms sweating, and trying to not screw up too badly. They were amused when I found myself in the horde flag room, all by my lonesome, staring at the flag and wondering what in the hell to do, while the rest of the team was busy trying to smack the crap out of the Horde in the middle of the map. But that 4-6 hours that weekend was the extent of my PvP in WoW.

But with the world events, quite a few of them have PvP elements. Cue sweating palms and me rocking in a corner saying “nononononononono”. Yeah, it’s not pretty. But several guildies patted me on the head and said they’d come along for the ride and try to help me get through it. See, I love Halloween. Getting a title of “the Hallowed” for any of my characters? YES PLS! Okay fine, to be able to get that title, now that I’m more or less comfortable with Wrenn, I’ll :;gulp:: PvP.

Those guildies that were online had a good giggle at me flailing in guild chat as Exar patted me on the head and said “Okay, go ahead and click the button. We’re going into AV.” Thank heavens he had a motorcycle, so I could hop into the sidecar, cos damn I would have been lost. I’m still not sure where we went. I know we detoured at one point to get a flag in a cave. And I know we went and smacked around a bunch of NPCs. And at one point, I managed to smack around a priest all by myself, til someone else got the kill shot on him (but apparently I did get a killing blow on a Tauren Druid). And I got 30 HKs in one battle, which Exar’s still snarking over, cos I swear it said I’d only gotten 28, then it gave me the achievement. And then, I got the G.N.E.R.D. Rage achievement. Wohooo! For giggles, he dragged me into Strand of the Ancients, and our team did well enough, we got the Storm the Beach achievement.

Later last night, we gathered up a group and hit the Headless Horseman. Towards the end of the run, I got the Squashling and the last run gave me the helm. I squealed, and yes, I’m now thrilled to be “Wrenn the Hallowed.”

I might not ever take the title off.

Baby knits and pics therein

So the package of baby stuff I’d knitted for friends (that I met through WoW, go geek team!) got to them yesterday, and the Daddy happily took pics of them for me (since I was a dumbass and forgot in the rush to get them to the mail center).  The big item was the blanket. I’d had an idea what I was getting myself into, but not really. That was a lot of knitting. God help me when I actually decide to tackle a sweater. At least the stole was “make you think once every 4 rows”. This was mindless knitting. Which actually was nice come to think of it. I got to watch a lot of TV and get caught up on some series I’d been missing, cos it was easy enough to knit and pay attention to the TV, not my hands. Okay, ignore the bitching. It was just a LOT of pink and normally, I don’t do pink.

The pattern was from a book called Stitch ‘n Bitch. I saw the Big Bad Baby Blanket in there and knew I had to make it at some point for someone. In this case, the someone turned out to be my friends. I still like the pattern, and suppose that for mindless knitting, it works out nice. I just wish I’d been able to work on it a bit more regularly instead of in bits and pieces when Life wasn’t getting in the way. But since they’d requested pink, and since it was for a baby, I declined to purchase a bunch of handpainted wool like the book suggested. Instead, easy-to-care-for, but still passing the “oh that’s nice and soft!” feel test, baby pink acrylic won out. And since that was a hell of a lot of pink, I ended up renaming it the PANK! Big Bad Baby Blanket of Dooooom.

Yep, that’s pink and a lot of it.

While I’d been chatting to the parents-to-be, I’d jokingly threatened to make a hat and booties to go with it. But I didn’t want to use the same yarn as the blanket. Easy care, yes, but wanted something a little more special-ish than what I’d knitted the blanket out of. I’d seen an organic cotton that looked good, but it clashed bad with the blanket. There were a couple of other choices, but they all clashed with the blanket. About the point I was going to give up and just knit it all out of the same thing, I saw some bright pink yarn. Hey, lookie there! They actually go together! One’s just LOUD pink and one’s baby pink! Oh what the hell, it’s worth a shot. After running around on Ravelry for a while, I found a couple of freebie patterns for a hat and booties. The booties were… interesting to knit up. And I think I knitted the hat 3 times before it got finished. Slippery yarn + metal DPNs = dropped stitches and swearing.

See? Rather a bright pink! But do they go together with the blanket?

Yep!

Aw yeah, that’s working juuuuust fine.

Apparently their first little girl has decided that the baby stuff is hers as well, and as a result, I’m currently working on a knitted kitty for her from a pattern I also found on Ravelry, in a soft lavender in the same type of yarn as the hat and booties. Hopefully that will appease her for a little bit til the new sister arrives.