all workey no knitty

First off: today is blog action day. I already posted an action topic on our blog at work, so rather than write another one, I'm just going to suggest that you pop over to the Pesticide Action Network and sign a letter to the US EPA asking them to withdraw their stupid, stupid decision to bring a very nasty new toxic pesticide onto the market in the US - one that is sure to harm thousands of farmworkers. Sign the letter, and send it to a friend!

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Okay, on to my self-absorbed little blog post:

There is so very little knitting happening here at the pea headquarters lately. My fingers are itching for it, but they are busily occupied with a computer keyboard at all hours of the day and night.

Don't feel too sorry for me; I am working ahead so that we can go on vacation. Two weeks on the west coast! We are going to have some fun with friends in San Francisco, and then go see beautiful Yosemite. I can hardly wait! I've never been there before, but I understand that in Yosemite they have two kinds of skunks - striped and spotted - not to mention all kinds of weasels, martens, and other interesting animals. I'm sure to come back with some lesser-known critters on my to-knit list.

And two weeks of vacation means two weeks of uninhibited knitting: on the plane, in the car, in line at museums, and just plain old leisurely sitting around knitting on places like park benches. It's going to be fabulous. Maybe I'll even finish something for a change!

But in the mean time, it's nose to the grindstone for me. The most knitting I've managed in the last two weeks has been a couple of rows on a random sock. My dreams of posting a sock pattern during Socktoberfest seem to be slowly fading... if I can get away with posting photos of a lonely single sock with the pattern, it may just come to that. How sad. Of course, some of y'all only knit orphan socks (*cough*GraylaGran*cough*), so this would be the perfect pattern for you.

So, I have to fess up to my laziness and stupidity. Last week I did a post for Sew Green in which I wrote about felting without the washing machine, in a technique that uses the dryer. It was an attempt to save a lot of water, and it worked. But I asked whether anyone had methods for felting that also avoided electricity... well, if you're a Knitty reader you know that I didn't bother to do a lick of homework before writing that post (other than trying to figure out how much water my washing machine uses per cycle. Answer: about 50 gallons. Ouch). Christine Olea wrote a great article for the latest Knitty on felting in a bucket with a plunger. Oops. Only half a dozen people pointed it out to me... This is an important lesson. If I'm too busy and distracted to knit, I certainly shouldn't be trying to write about knitting. Duly noted.

Now it's back to work!