Immer wieder

Baby sweater finished and well received. I ended up not finding any suitable Mickey buttons and the letter block beads my mom had picked up didn't quite work. So I ended up using ladybug buttons instead. It was very cute and I took a picture and will post it at some point later this week. My aunt mentioned that my cousin had a little sweater just like it, but with a hood, when he was 2 or 3 that she found in going through his baby box the night before, so the new baby will have mine plus the one from his dad when s/he gets bigger. Kinda neat.

I ended up ripping out the Adamas shawl four times Friday night because I kept losing the pattern and making mistakes and trying to fix them and getting even more messed up. So for the first time (of, you know, the whole twice that I've done large lace patterns *smile*) I learned the value of lifelines. And, of course, as soon as I start using one, I end up knowing the pattern well enough that I finally don't need it - I find mistakes (usually missed yarn overs) in the purl row and fix them immediately rather than stumbling across them in the next right-side row. In any case, I'm now finished with six repeats. There are sixteen total and each repeat adds two squares, so progress will likely slow down a bit, at least in terms of how many repeats I finish in a couple days. But I have until 2/10 to finish it, and then I focus on the Knitting Olympics and Fair Isle 101. (My yarn should be here tomorrow. *squee*!)

I was up at mom and dad's for the shower and in this morning's paper there were some really good coupons for one of the grocery stores that we don't have down here - a bunch of buy one, get one free deals on ham and pork and ground sausage. I stopped on my way out of town and got about $150 worth of pork products (two full Cure 81 hams, two half Cure 81 hams, two Hormel marinated pork loins (lemon garlic & mesquite barbecue), and a couplethree pounds of ground sausage), some pizzas (also on sale - 6 for $10), a roast and some steaks for $85. Not a bad haul.