Ok, they don’t really call me Ant Beth… but it’s funny, because I do have an Aunt Beth, my name is Elizabeth (though never Beth - Liz, perhaps, but never Beth), and yesterday, I spent the morning dealing with ants.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to find a trail of ants marching into the living room - I had left an empty can of coke on the coffee table, but apparently it was enough of an attraction for the little buggers. So I spent the morning throwing out the trash, vacuuming up the ants, scrubbing down the hard surfaces, and placing ant deterrents at the spot where they were coming in (a line of ground cinnamon and a wadded up paper towel soaked in vinegar placed at the small crack that I think was their entry point). So far, it’s seemed to do the trick - I haven’t noticed any more ants inside (though they still seem to be finding stuff on the porch… but I’ll deal with that later).

Ants dealt with, I picked back up on Sahara. I finished the neckband and got it seamed up on Tuesday, and spent yesterday on the sleeves. I was initially planning on knitting the sleeves a little longer than the short-sleeve version, but I ended up deciding that I liked the way the shorter sleeves looked, and just followed the pattern instead. However, after I bound off the first sleeve and tried it on, I realized in horror that the sleeve was wide enough to hold like two of my arms (and that’s saying something, ’cause I don’t have tiny arms). Not feeling like frogging another part of the sweater yet again, I left it for the time being, and decided just to settle in and watch the season finale of Lost (we’ll get to that in a minute - let me wrap up my Sahara talk first).

The finished neckline on Sahara

So then today, I started on the second sleeve, ignoring the presence of the first to-be-frogged one, and altered the pattern a bit to cut out about 2 inches from the circumference. That’s about all I could justify taking it down to, since it’s just a cap sleeve, and I was limited by the size of the armscye (and there was no way in hell that I was ripping back the body to that point). The pattern called for picking up 92 stitches around, but I consistently ended up picking up 80 with a pickup ratio of 2 stitches per 3 rows, so the decrease of 2 inches didn’t really cause it to pucker at all, which was nice. And the new sleeve, while still a bit larger than I’d like it to be, is far prettier than the initial attempt. By that point, I was finally ready to suck it in, rip out the first sleeve, and reknit the sucker with my new dimensions. And so now, all I have to do is weave in a few loose ends and block the sweater. Whoohoo! I’ll save final assessments of the sweater as a finished garment and modeled photos until after I’ve blocked it, but so far, I’m quite pleased with it.

My finished Sahara - all that’s left is blocking

One thing I’m not so happy about is that very obvious stripe at the bottom. I honestly didn’t notice it til I was looking at the photos I took tonight on my computer. I’m hoping it’s just the flash that made it so obvious, because seriously - I’ve tried it on countless times since I started fiddling with the sleeves and the neckline, and looking in the mirror, it was never at all apparent. Still, it looks like that last skein - the one I used for the bottom part of the body and for the neckline and sleeves - is just a skosh lighter than the rest. I’ll block it tomorrow, try it on, and see if it’s obvious enough to try to fix. Not that I know how I’d fix it… Overdye the entire sweater? Would that fix it? Who knows. Anyway, moving on…

I’ve found myself becoming addicted to podcasts. I never really jumped on the podcast bandwagon when it first took off for a variety of reasons: mainly, because I didn’t have time to concentrate on actual talking when I would normally be listening to radio or mp3s or whatever… It’s hard to concentrate on work when there’s a podcast going in your ear. But with my endless free hours during the day now, they’re the perfect solution to kill my time while I knit. I started listening to Lime & Violet (and was surprised and pleased to hear my mom’s store mentioned, though not by name, in this recent episode - apparently their friend Platonic Boyfriend (aka Bill) lives in Huntsville and is a customer of Yarn Expressions - whoohoo!). I’ve also grown fond of the new kid on the block, Socks in the City. How could you not love a podcast that’s 30 minutes of nothing but sock talk?! (And I absolutely love the title.) Together, those two podcasts have got me hankering for some new yarn. Badly. I’m serious. It’s something terrible, this longing to spend money I haven’t got.

Luckily, I’ve got some new sock yarn on its way. My wonderful SP10 pal, whom I affectionately know as “Adia,” has sent me a package. However, because it’s coming from BC, not only does it have to cross international lines, but it has to travel cross-country, too. So while I understand why it’s taking so long, it’s got me acting like a little kid who’s not really sure when exactly Christmas is… Every afternoon I go to my mailbox and check for that little slip of paper telling me there’s a package waiting for me in the main office. And every day so far, I’ve been disappointed (though I did get my federal tax refund yesterday, so that’s something, at least…) I have no idea what’s in this package, except that Adia told me to “get ready for some sock yarn!” Whoohoo! (And I had to laugh when she added this to the email: “I have to be honest, I got a bunch of peanut butter cups for you, but I ate them all.” Girl after my own heart!) But, it’s only been ten days since she mailed it, so I can be patient. It’s just so hard when I know there’s sock yarn on the way!

Okay, I said I’d talk about the season finale of Lost. I won’t go into it too much, since I don’t want to be spoilerish, and this is a knitting blog, not a TV show blog. But man, I’m loving this show. And I love how they’ve set up a shift in the story for the remaining three seasons. There are very few shows out there that I’m actually really eager to watch, but Lost is on the top of that very short list. I dunno if I’ll be able to wait til next February for season 4 to start. :) My friend Mary, a fellow Lostophile, pointed me towards an awesome link the other day, and I had to share it. One of her friends has done these Lost recap posts in her blog, and they’re hil-fuckin-arious. Seriously, I was laughing so hard there were tears in my eyes. :) So if you watch Lost, go and laugh yourself silly. Just be warned - they’re pretty harsh on Jack (which, IMHO, makes them that much funnier).