Knitting updates and practical gift lists

Sorry, my titles are so lame. I can't think of anything when I'm ready to post. Oh well.

I thought I'd finally add my Harry Potter countdowns since I'm starting to get excited about both the movie release and the book. I'm going to be out of town when the last book comes out, but that doesn't mean I won't be looking for a bookstore to buy one while away :)

I've been knitting away on my 2nd half of the sock during my lunch hour at work, then I come home and knit away on my felted tote for the International Tote Exchange swap. Haven't posted any photos of my progress on that at all on the blog, so thought I'll go ahead and do that.

These are the yarns I'm using for my pal's felted tote:

Aren't they such pretty colours? I'm almost wanting to make one for myself in these hehe :) I've managed to get this far on the soon to be a felted project tote (don't mind the kitchenaid attachment and junk along the border of the photo - as you can see, I need to clean up some clutter off the table):

I still have a bit of a ways to go. I'm kinda keeping the pattern a secret for now. The pattern originally only called for 3 rows of the dark purple colour, and a few more in your second contrasting colour, but I wanted more a visual contrast with the colours I chose for this tote, not just to use the additional colours to add a slender stripe with no visual interest whatsoever, so I decided to make the stripes a tad wider. I'm trying to knit as much as I can so that I can get this felted and see if it turns out alright. This is my first time participating in a swap where I have to send something I've knitted on my own, so I'm a little apprehensive, but I guess that's why I wanted to do something felted, just so I can hide my knitting in case I do goof a little here and there. But so far, so good - I'm liking how it's turning out!



This past weekend, my family and I got together to celebrate father's day with Dad and to celebrate my birthday which is coming up in a few days. Every year around my birthday and the same thing around Christmas, my sister and my mom will call me up asking me what I want. I guess to them I'm a rather difficult person to shop for because they consider my interests and whatnot to be "weird", so I've decided to make it easier for them by asking for gift certificates. However, my sister threw me in for a loop by saying she was tired of getting gift cards and wanted me to give her some actual ideas. So I spent the day thinking of things I could use and that they wouldn't have difficulty finding and I call my sister up.



sister: "so you have some ideas for me?"



me: "yeah. I could use some toothbrush head replacements for my sonicare."



sister: '"TOOTHBRUSH REPLACEMENTS??? uhm... what else?"



me: "How about those green plastic backyard lawn chairs? My white chairs got all mildewy and I can't get them clean so I want new ones."



sister: "lawn chairs??? *sigh* ok... anything else?"



me: "I could use a new omelette pan and some shampoo and conditioner" (my sister's a beautician, so she usually hooks me up with some hair salon products for a good deal)



sister: "you have the WEIRDEST lists for presents."



But do I? Hey, at least they're things you know I'd use, right? They both think it's "weird" for me to be into knitting now and at least from my sister I got the "shouldn't you be over 70 to start knitting?" - I got that from a few other people. Sheesh. They don't know what they're missing out on, do they? :)