Been Away Too Long

As much as I love unexpected time off (snow days, boiler died days, police are running drills in the Bunker parking lot days...), the past few days have been a bit much. The online tool which is a necessary component of my "day job" went down sometime last Thursday evening, had to be rebuilt, and just came back online yesterday afternoon. For anyone who's counting, that's nearly a week without being able to work. (Not to mention a week of not getting paid.)

Friday was nice -- we got a lot of work done around the house and spent a lazy afternoon knitting and weaving. Monday was also kinda nice -- got the rest of the cleaning done and spent some time reading. By Tuesday, it was getting really old. I actually read an entire book on Tuesday. Wednesday, well, Wednesday is the day I head in to church to do some proofreading/editing work and have lunch with M, so it wasn't so bad. Today, I can finally go back to work. Hooray!

So, if I've had all this time off, why haven't I blogged? Well, you know how they say if you want something done, find a busy person? You know how sometimes when you only have one or two things on your to do list, it's hard to get motivated to do them? You know that feeling of uselessness that comes with not being able to work? All my excuses for not blogging the past couple of days.

And I don't even have pictures of scads of knitting I've completed while I couldn't work. Nope, I've turned the heel and done about two repeats of the monkey pattern on the second Crazy Monkey sock, and I wove a whole three inches of the scarf I'm making from the Lorna's Laces rainbow sock yarn.

Oh, but I can confess that the scarf won't look like the picture I posted of the warp on the warping board for the simple reason that I was an idiot.

I diligently tied the ends of the warp and tied the choke ties, and stupidly forgot to secure the cross (weavers will know what this means). Basically, it means that once I had the warp off the board, I had little hope of ever keeping the order of the threads straight. Oh well, it's still colorful and I think I'm going to like it. I believe the tencel in the weft is red purple, but don't quote me on that (I need to get a colorbook from WEBS).

And, yes, I'm using the reclaimed yarn unwashed. I'm hoping that the tension on the loom will pull out the curlies as I weave (in these pictures, I've relaxed the tension on the warp since I'm not actively weaving on it) and that what's left will add a little texture. And if not, oh well, I've come to believe this yarn is doomed anyway. But it is curly:

And, of course, in the way of the world, I got the yarn and pattern for one new sample project -- and the pattern and contract for another -- yesterday. Why couldn't this stuff have arrived when I was temporarily furloughed from my day job?!

And finally, since I got my new desk chair, the Queen has laid claim to the old one:

She especially likes to get it spinning. Don't know what she'll do when it goes out tomorrow morning for the Boys & Girls Club to collect.