Here is a "before" photo from the perspective of my desk:
and, again, here:
Here is a photo from my current perspective:
I must admit that it has been interesting, albeit a little disconcerting, to have such major modifications taking place in such close proximity. They are removing the entire front (brick) wall of our building and replacing it with floor-to-ceiling windows. They are also removing the suspended ceiling (at least in the area directly over my head) and exposing the original pressed tin ceiling. We are in one of the original buildings from the city's early days and I feel like we are bringing a bit of history back into view. I just hope that no one drops anything on my head.
Enough of that! Back to Knitting!
I have a new project on my needles. Several of us from the Chains and Purls Knitting Group are having a Knit-A-Long and making the Swallowtail Lace Shawl by Evelyn Clark. We are using KnitPicks "Shimmer" yarn, each in a different color. I ordered everyone's yarn so we could get the free shipping and took it to our group meeting Monday night. "Shimmer" is a beautiful, hand-dyed blend of alpaca and silk and, like most nicer yarn, comes in hanks rather than pull-out skeins. That means it needs to be wound into a cake or a ball before it can be used (or else it will end up as one big tangle – ask me how I know).
Remember my swift that I bought last year? You can put the hank on the swift to make winding a LOT easier, so I took the swift and my ball winder to Borders Monday night. We set them up in the café area and everyone took turns winding the balls. That made me a very popular person because we each had about 850 yds of very fine, laceweight, yarn to wind and that would have taken all night to do completely by hand.
I got off to a slow start but picked up speed as the pattern became more familiar and, by Wednesday evening, had 5 pattern reps done. I laid it out on a light colored towel and stretched the lace out so that I could see the design. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself until something odd caught my eye - the bottom half of the lace had the right side facing me but the upper half had the wrong side. Somewhere along the way, I had either skipped or repeated a row. I had to rip the whole thing out and start over. I'm just glad I caught it so quickly. Here is the reborn beginning:
It looks like a blue sting ray, doesn't it? Or, to be more precise, a "Turquoise Splendor" sting ray. If you look closely, you can see that there are 4 pattern reps so I have nearly made up my lost work.
In the photo, I have it pinned out on my cubicle wall. I never thought about using them in this way before, but this was great! I have a gray wall for dark knits and a blue wall for lighter knits (whoever ordered these walls was obviously a Cowboys fan). No one wandering through my workspace has commented on it -- my coworkers just accept I'm a "little different" and move on.
Later that same renovation...
It is really hard trying to work under these conditions. I am trying to concentrate on building a Prediction Management page while saws, drills, hammers, and (I'm not making this up) a JACKHAMMER are all being employed a few feet from my desk. When the jackhammer starts up, I can hardly read my monitor because one of us (I hope it's the monitor) is vibrating so hard.
I've gotten pretty good at tuning out the clamor, but someone suddenly yelling "Catch it! Catch it!" followed by a horrendous, shattering crash could not fail to catch my attention. Fortunately, it was one of the old windows that was dropped (I'm sure shards of glass we scattered all over downtown Allen) but it still causes me to feel very uneasy at my desk (and not at all focused on Prediction Management).
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