All the while

It's Friday? Thank God. Everything I've done this week has been wrong. Actually, that's not true. I'm helping finish up Bucky's project, and even finished two tables in approximately correct style. He says he'll take Helen and me out to lunch if there's time. I'm not sure I want to sit through a lunch with him, but I'm not as violently opposed to it as I would have been earlier this week. I think realizing that all he really wants is someone to listen to him talk--not necessarily pay attention, but just be there--helped. I'll have nothing to do next week, but Huxley has finally agreed to meet with me to discuss work and writing proposals and things like that, so maybe I'll get something out of it--or if not, at least the satisfaction of knowing that I'm trying and he's not.

I've been working on the first sleeve of Mariah for forever now, mostly because I started it last winter and then put it away. I'm about twelve inches up. Today (while sitting on the couch trying to convince myself to get ready for work--no, that's not true; I was simply sitting there not getting ready for work), I wrapped it around my wrist and lower arm, and it occurred to me that most sleeves are not rectangles. So I dug out the pattern--I've just been following the chart--and read the next page, where it says

Work sleeve in patt as set until work measures 6 inches, ending with a WS row. Increase Row [RS]: K1, m1, work in patt as set to last st, m1, k1.
*Work 9[7, 6, 5, 5] rows in patt as set.
Work Increase Row. Rep from * 9[12, 15, 17, 17] times more, working increased sts in patt as set in Chart A. 86[92, 98, 102, 102] sts.

Translated to normal English, this means: follow the chart(s) until the sleeve is 6 inches long, then start steadily widening the sides. As I said, I'm about 12 inches in. Dammit. I considered starting from where I was and hoping it would fit anyway, but that wouldn't work out when it came time to attach the sleeves to the body. I'm going to have to rip out 6 painstaking inches of work and try again. It's a good thing I pulled this out again now. I may have it finished by winter, even. Maybe.

(Oh, yeah! I finished the Unbiased bag--the knitting part, at least. It needs a lining, though. I still have no idea how to put a lining into something like this, unless I take very tiny stitches very close to the folded-over ends of the fabric. I'll give it a shot if I ever do the laundry and thus wash the bag to make sure it won't change shape on me. Come to think of it, everything I've knitted has expanded when I got it wet. Maybe Mariah would be okay--? But no, still wouldn't fit to the body.)

I need to job-hunt and finish quilting TST (I meant to this week, but then came the project) and write (I did a little on the T2 but I haven't counted it) and sand those damned bathroom drawers so I can paint them. And get an oil change. And work in the yard. One afternoon of getting rid of weeds and dead plants would do it, but I never seem to want to and I haven't been home on the weekends in a month--but next weekend I will.

I dreamed last night that it was 9:28 tonight and someone was telling me, "The new Harry Potter book is out, and no one knows what's in it except the people who are reading it on the West Coast, and they're discussing it in the chat rooms Amazon set up for them." Obviously my subconscious doesn't fully grok what direction the Earth turns, but I thought it was interesting that I dreamed not only about the book (which I discussed yesterday) but also the fact that people on one coast will be able to get it before people on the other coast (would anyone near a time zone divider be fanatic enough to cross to get it an hour earlier? Or attend the parties for longer?) and also about Amazon.com at all (congratulations, consumerism: you win).

Aaaand my computer says "Do you want to restart your computer now? Yes" so I'm publishing this and restarting, cursing Windows all the while.