It's been over two weeks since I blogged, and I haven't done a lot of crochet in the last week, either. Getting back into a routine at work after vacation was harder than I'd expected. So all the good crochet karma I had going during vacation, to the point that I was madly hooking in the airport while we waited for the plane to arrive, evaporated in my exhaustion and frustration at being back in the pit of doom (aka the mall).

I did get a lot done on the baby blue afghan over vacation, however. Here is a shot from one of the first days of vacation, which pretty much sums up the entire week: yarn and the pool.

I suppose I have to acknowledge that today is Groundhog Day, an absolutely ridiculous "holiday" (nobody gets a day off so I put that in quotes) wherein a sleepy rodent supposedly predicts the end of winter. There are two choices: right now, or in six weeks. The actual end of winter, per science, is March 20, almost 7 weeks away. And for that matter, it's been pretty nice weather the last two days — warm, if also wet, in southern New England where I am. So who cares about some glorified rat?

While I love to crochet (and knit), I absolutely hate seaming. I suppose most people do, but if you're going to make anything other than a scarf or blanket, or a hat worked in the round, you're pretty much stuck with seams. The best-case scenario is to work your patterns so there's a minimum of seaming. For example, the baby overalls I'm designing will only be seamed in the inseams of the legs. With a tank top, I can often get away with a single side seam.

Well, I had quite the rough week last week! We had a floorset (rearrange the entire store to promote the new stuff) and then we had inventory, plus my regular shifts to run the store, plus my usual personal life stuff. I've got vacation coming up next week (we leave on Saturday and the computer is staying home this time), so I've got a lot to get done before I go. And when I get back... taxes. :(

While I haven't gotten quite as much crochet done as I could have hoped, I did have a good long stretch of quiet time on Saturday morning and I got as far as I could on the boy's overalls I'm designing. And then I ran out of yarn. Dear Red Heart: Thank you for not having dye lots!!! I'm going to leave early for work today and stop at A.C. Moore to re-stock.

I woke up a bit later than usual today, the weekend having been a particularly physical one for me and my body needing the repair time. Apparently it wasn't enough repair time, because I have a nasty sore spot (although no bruise) in the middle of my back, my right leg is not moving well at all, and my left leg is not much better. Ow. But that's what I get for being on ladders and doing heavy lifting all weekend. Oh, and carefully picking my way across unplowed parking lots covered in snow, slush and ice.

The result of all this concentrated sleep time was some interesting dreams, including one dominated by crochet.

It's feeling like the smaller the project lately, the longer it's taking me to get anything done on it. I started an argyle swatch yesterday at lunch... then pulled it out after dinner and started over because I was getting strange pulling and I had a horrible tangle of yarn. Well, I'm still getting pulling on the new swatch, and the yarn is still somewhat tangled, but the larger swatch seems to be helping, at least in terms of figuring out the color changes.

It's funny how one random thing can spark so much creativity. For example, on Monday I was reading Crochetbug's daily entry, in which she linked to a page with a bazillion pattern links (some of which are dead, but thank goodness for the Wayback Machine). A random clicky got me to Rupert Jetson's Dork Wallet pattern, which is a nice tight example of crochet argyle. I've been thinking about argyle in a general sort of way, since I'm in the "coming up with ideas" phase of my baby boy pattern book — argyle is a great, classic way of adding color and pattern into a boy garment. I just wasn't sure how to execute it... until I saw this wallet pattern.

Oh dear. Well, I fell off the crochet wagon with a big thump; I did not crochet on Sunday or Monday, and I honestly don't remember if I got anything done on Saturday. I also didn't blog Monday or Tuesday. Why? Between work and Boyfriend, also known as that-which-makes-me-cranky and he-who-makes-me-not-cranky-anymore, I was pretty busy. Sunday we went to IKEA, which was superawesomesauce, and I have lots of new shelving to install (to hold my books, so they can get off surfaces better occupied by yarn), and Boyfriend now has kitchen towels so he can stop destroying the environment with paper towels.

At some point I did figure out why my original blog post got deleted yesterday, before I could save and post it. My laptop touchpad, which has never worked since I plugged in my mouse almost 8 months ago, suddenly started working. Apparently I clicked something with it.

So what happened to today's blog post? Oh, well, my internet connection dropped and, while Firefox saved my post title, it did not save the actual contents of the post. As it's Friday the 13th today, I am pretty sure I should just go back to bed, but unfortunately I have to go to work, and I already know I'll be dealing with a non-working receipt printer on one of the registers. Yay!

Yesterday did turn out well for me crochet-wise, so maybe the highest-tech thing I ought to deal with is yarn and hook!

You know what I really hate? When you spend a good 30 minutes writing an awesome blog post full of hilariousness, and you THINK you hit the space bar but apparently you hit something else, your browser goes back a page, and when you try to go forward again, the whole post has been wiped out.

Anyway, moving on...

Backwards seems to be a theme when it comes to my crochet lately (and apparently my browser) and yesterday was no exception. I'm going to tear out the baby legwarmers entirely and try something different. Something... that actually works.