Fiddle-de-dee

I have been back in the USA for two weeks now, back in California for almost one, and I should have more to show for myself. And I do, sort of. I mean I took pictures of my Arietta sleeve (which is progressing quite nicely, thank you very much) and have fancy things like my Fancy Food Show name badge to show you, but I am stuck in the DARK AGES with mother's Windows ME. Sigh.... So a little more patience is in order, I am afraid.

The good news: the new computer will be purchased tomorrow, and then it'll take the Geek Squad (the *Geek Squad*, I love America!) about 5 days to patch the pieces of my old computer into my new computer, and I will finally have access to alll my graphics software and will be showing off once again! And here is the cool bit, I saw my computer today and IT WORKS! I actually worked from my beloved desktop, opened up programs and files willy-nilly, and even grabbed a couple of forgotten email addresses from Outlook, right there in the middle of Best Buy, at Geek Squad Central. How cool is that! It took a couple hours of fiddling for them to be able to bring it up of course, and the Geek had to pass it on to the Super Geek, but I now have total confidence in their Geeky superpowers to do what they say they will.

My airport experience at Kennedy was less traumatic than at Ben Gurion, but I did get randomly chosen to have my hand luggage ransacked. And the biggest surprise? My seat assignment. I got a door. Did you hear me people, I GOT A DOOR. My legs did a happy dance all the way to San Francisco. And they let me knit! Arietta enjoyed herself, immensely. She also enjoyed her first US knitting group on Sunday morning at the Starbucks on Camino Alto in Mill Valley. Lots of socks - I gotta learn how to make them already! and yarns I have only read about! and really, really nice people. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, even if I forgot the Arietta instructions at home! And I keep getting really great feed back on my color choices, which makes me very happy indeed.

Let's catch up with Arietta's progress. Sometimes it is good to read all the directions before you start a project. Ok, maybe it is always good to read all the directions before starting a project. Case in point. If your remember, I started with the sleeve instead of the back.Well, when you get the end of the increases and are told to: Continue in pattern until work measures 16.5[17.25, 17.75, 18, 18] inches, ending with last pattern row worked for Back at underarm, it helps if you actually have a Back to see what the last pattern row was. So the sleeve went onto a holder and work on the Back begun. I got past the lower Back and to about Pattern Row 30 before I had to put everything away for the 9 Days. But come next Wednesday night, nothing will stop me. He, he, he. And by then, the new computer may be ready and I may have some pics to post.

There has been lots of talk about Ravelry.com, and all the people waiting for their invites. I may a bit behind the times because I only heard about it the end of May, but as soon as I heard about it I couldn't get over their fast enough to get on the waiting list. And like many of you, I am patiently waiting for my official invite. So many people are waiting to find out their status that Ravelry has added a nifty little search to see where you are on the list. My current status:

You signed up on May 30, 2007
You are #5898 on the list.
71 people are ahead of you in line.
12421 people are behind you in line.
31% of the list has been invited so far

So while there may be almost 6,000 people who got there before me, there are twice that many who are behind. I guess I wasn't as behind the times as I thought. And now, only 71 people in front of me! Just a few days ago it was over 350. I should be getting that invite very soon!

Until then...