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It's been a while since I've done a proper WIP roundup. For once, my WIP list is actually not that long!

But first, I have to post something that breaks my heart.

RIP, first socks ever:

click for a little bigger to share in my misery

We had C's 7th birthday party this weekend, and part of the getting ready was obviously a ton of cleaning and tidying and all of that. My wonderful husband did much of that housework, knowing that I tend to get overly stressed about such things. It was awesome. However, part of the tidying included taking care of some clothes and things that had been strewn next to my bed. My first socks ever and my Zinnia Jaywalkers were among those items. I still haven't mentioned it to him, but these socks don't have a chance of ever fitting again, and the Jaywalkers are stretched to an inch of their life to get over my heel. I'm going to try to wet and stretch those, though, they're my favorite socks. As for these red and orange ones, I guess I'll see if our 10-year-old friend will fit into these to use as house slippers. They're SUPER felted. KP Wool of the Andes will do that, of course, and that's what these were knit in. Worsted for my first socks, the basic socks out of the Knit Socks! book (the one that's shaped like a sock), which I had checked out from the library. In any case, these socks served me well, both as a learning tool and of course as foot warmers, but now they will need to find a new (smaller) home.

On to the WIPs!

First comes SIL's Jaywalkers. One is done, using US1 needles this time, and this time it fits!

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...but what's that there?

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Yep, these are on hold until I can get to an LYS to get another set of US1 DPNs.

Next is some somewhat secret knitting. I'm test knitting a pattern for a friend who will be using it as a submission to a certain popular online knitting site, so I'll only show this much, until I hear from her that more is okay:

Then comes something new and not previously blogged about, Branching Out in some Karabella Breeze that I got from Cookie A in a destash sale she had a while back. I have to say that for yarn that's 60% silk, 40% cashmere, it is curiously non-soft to knit with. I'm hoping that the magic will happen when I wash it. This will be for C's wonderful first grade teacher at the end of the year.

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I'm not even going to photograph Icarus and M's Adirondack sweater. They look the same as last time.

And now, I've received my first meme tag! I did that last one without being officially tagged, just because I was curious to see how many knitty things I could check off of the list. This time, I've been tagged by Jacque for the "7 random things about you" meme.

Here are the rules:

List 7 random things about yourself on your blog.
Tag 7 others.
Leave a comment on their blog to direct them to your site to get the rules.

And here are my seven things:

1. Up until his comeback mission on the Space Shuttle in 1998, I had more time in zero gravity than John Glenn. Granted, mine was all in 30-second increments on the NASA Reduced-g airplane, but if you added my 1000+ parabolas together, it accumulated to more time than that historic first orbital mission. I think I've done around 1500-2000 parabolas now. In the photo, I'm the one at the top, with my hand on the ceiling:

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2. We moved from Bellingham, Washington to Fullerton, California when I was 11. We moved about 6 weeks before the end of my 5th grade year. Throughout the rest of my school years in Fullerton I made a lot of great and really close friends, but the truth was that even seven years later and all the way to the end of high school, I still felt like the "new kid." As long as I'd been there and as close as I felt to people, for some reason I just never felt like I totally fit in with that same core group from the 5th grade who had all known each other since kindergarten. I always felt somewhat like an outcast. I'm sure that none of them felt that way about me and certainly never treated me as such, but that's how I felt inside.

3. My hormones completely whacked out on me after I had kids. Ever since having J four years ago, PMS, which was never too bad before, has been totally out of control. I cry almost every day on the way to work listening to NPR. Whether it's beached whales dying in Austrailia, a kid who beat cancer, or something about the war, I tear up pretty much every day over something or other. I'm moody and get irritated easily, and I hate it. Damn hormones.

P.S. Lest you think I'm just "dealing" with it, know that I've been working with two doctors for more than a year to figure out how to get things back to some form of normal. Nothing has helped much yet.

4. I put strawberry jam on the top of grilled cheese sandwiches. My mom always made them that way. Now my kids like it, too. M has tasted it and thought it was okay, but doesn't choose to eat them that way. I had a friend in college who thought it was the nastiest thing he had ever heard. George Duran made the same thing on Ham on the Street one time, and I felt redeemed.

5. I don't like most stand-up comedy, I just don't find it funny most of the time. I also especially hate "cruel" humor, such as the show Punk'd. There's almost no emotion worse for me than embarrassment, and even when the people who are made fun of on that show take it well and think it's funny, I can't help but think about how I would feel in their shoes, and I don't find it funny in the least. I just think it's mean.

6. I am far too into the show Lost. In the first months of watching it, I discovered the ABC message boards for the show, and found my way into two very intelligent and thought-provoking threads about the show. Most of what goes on in those boards is pure idiocy, but the "Episode Titles" and the "Joop" threads keep me coming back to my Lost friends, even now.

click for Lost-nerdness (I couldn't find the correct credit for this map, but no, it wasn't me)

7. I was always the shortest kid in class growing up. But in high school, when all of my friends stopped growing, I kept going and sort of caught up. I grew at least an inch or two even after entering college. Now I think I'm the "short side of normal" at 5'4", instead of being just plain short.

I'm not sure that I know of seven people who haven't already been tagged for this meme, so I'll just blanket everyone. If you haven't done it and would like to, do it. Thanks!