Friday, June 08, 2007

Just Stuff

Here is my update for my Stashalong KAL within a KAL:

I have finished the actual knitting part of both the scarf and hat. I had less yarn left than I thought, so I was able to finish sooner than expected. I still haven't bound off, nor woven in the ends, and I won't consider it a FO until I do.

I got a couple of the nicest surprises in the mail today:


Well, the DPNs aren't really a surprise. I knew they were coming, I just didn't know when. Socks for Soldiers holds regular contests--to try to keep morale up and encourage knitting. Recently, the sarge had a contest of several parts, with many different prizes offered. I won the purple Comfort Zone DPNs. The question I had to answer was:

Finish the following quote and name the author--"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is---"

And of course, I knew the answer was "for good men to do nothing." and the author is Edmund Burke. There were two of us who got it right, so we each got a set of needles. I also found out today that I won another contest. That one was for telling the best watermelon story. There were several winners of this contest, and I was one of them. The story I told was this:

I don't really like watermelon that much, so I don't have much to tell. About my only story is that in 1989 I was in Navy Basic training over the 4th of July holiday. Another company of recruits in my division was having a barbecue, with hot dogs, hamburgers, and watermelon. We didn't have anything like that in my company. The company commander of that other company had taken a liking to our company, so he had bought extra watermelons for us, and sent them over in a big laundry cart. For some reason, however, our own company commanders said that we couldn't eat them, so they sat in our head (bathroom for those of you not up on Navy lingo) until they rotted, then we had to throw them away. 'Fraid that's the best I can come up with...

My prize for that one will be some hand dyed sock yarn. The condition for winning is that I use the yarn for leisure socks for the soldiers, which I have no problem with. I don't know what the yarn looks like, but as soon as I do, I'll post a pic.

The other surprise--and this one was truly a surprise--was the sweetest little thank you note from Sus. Note the absolutely darling Hello Kitty stationery. I must confess, I am terrible at writing thank you notes. Good job, Sus!

I was in Wal-mart this evening looking for a small shoulder or belt bag that I could use for a sock knitting bag. I have bags, but none of them have shoulder straps or belt clips. Oh, they are nice bags, but it's kind of hard to knit whilst holding them. Everything I saw at the store was either too big, or didn't have shoulder straps. I was about to give up in despair when I remembered that somewhere I had this bag:

It was given to me in 1991 in Rome. A guy, I think his name was Trey, had bought it about a year before. We were on one of those USO trips to Rome, when I mentioned that I thought it was a cute bag, and he up and gave it to me. I was able to find it pretty quickly. It holds the sock just fine, but unfortunately there is no room for the camera in there with the sock. So, the sock is back to sharing space in the camera bag. At least, on trips that require the presence of the camera. Which is just about all of them...

I need to head for bed now. If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I'm taking the sock out on a little adventure.

I'll post a karate update soon--

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