Renewed

So I'd like to shortly tell you what's been going on in my life, with many more and longer posts to follow (it's late and I should get to bed soon so I'll be able to wake up for work in the morning). I would like to review my March monthly goals and let you know how well I did on them.
I said I wanted to do 2 rows daily on NS's afghan. Until today, I have kept that up faithfully, so I do believe I get a gold star on that one since I made it through the end of the month. Here's a couple of progress photos:

 (I added quite a bit of length, and two new colors: gray and acid green. I actually thought they would look ridiculous together but I like it. The gray highlights the brightness of the green.)

I also said I wanted to do 1 and 1/2 socks by month's end, which didn't end up happening. I managed 1 and the toe of a second. I actually can't even remedy this situation right now because I left the sock I was working on at my aunt's house. My next goal was to reduce my stash by 300 yards of worsted weight, which I did with NS's afghan, but I purchased lots of new yarn the other day for a new project, so I guess no gold star for that. I also said I would read 2 books by month's end and I managed that. I actually read 3: Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones, Unearthly by Cynthia Hand and A Beautiful Dark by Jocelyn Davies (I'll blog about those last two another time). Another gold star! I wanted to get my homework done the night before the day it was due for the rest of the month but I definitely failed on that one. My last resolution was to blog at least once a week, and I do believe my last blog was exactly one week ago today so I'm still on track for that. Yay, my last gold star!

So all in all, I have a good idea of what I need to change about my monthly goals. Here's my updated list for this month:

First, I'm scrapping that idea of getting my homework done early. With the new job, I'm lucky if I get the right one done at the right time. In fact, this week I had an incident where I worked on the wrong assignment all day and had only about 2 hours to do the right assignment before it was due. I'll settle for homework done by the due date, as early as I can manage.

I think I'll replace 2 rows daily in NS's afghan with 45 minutes a day spent on my new project.

I'd like to get 2 books read this month, but I have a sneaking suspicion I'll have a little trouble with motivation for that since I ran out of books I'm seriously interested in. I picked up the sequel to Unearthly but I read the first 2 pages and thought, Ugh I don't wanna anymore.  It's probably something about the angel theme, because the sequel will be the 3rd in a row. I also got a biography called Cleopatra, A Life by Stacy Schiff, that I've wanted to read since I saw the interview with the author on the Daily Show nearly a year ago, but I haven't started that yet.

I want to get mom's socks finished by the end of the month, and maybe one more sock (probably a Clown Lace Sock for DS).

 I'm also going to keep up with the blog by posting at least once a week. I definitely enjoy documenting my progress on my knitting projects, and talking about my life and the crazy stuff that seems to keep happening to me.

I also want to talk about my new project. The other day, I went to my aunt's house to hang out with her and a few of her friends. I brought my projects of course (NS's afghan and DM's sock, which I promptly left there). One of my aunt's friends saw me crocheting and said that it was a dying art, blah, blah, blah. Then she asked if I would make her a hello kitty afghan for her niece's birth. She said she'd pay me. We discussed price and she quotes something insanely high and I nearly did a double-take, then said sure, I'll get that started right away. I quoted her an estimate the next day, after doing all kinds of research and not finding anything acceptable and finally having to improvise a pattern, and my estimate was a lot more fair but still more money than I've ever gotten for any of my work, ever. The project is under way though and must be done by June or so. Here's a progress photo of that:

Obviously the kitty is unfinished, but you can see the general shape of her holding a heart. I bought 3 Pounds of Love skeins thinking Its a blanket, you'll need lots of yarn but those things are meant to make a baby afghan each so I definitely overestimated. I guess I'll be making girl baby blankets for a while. Maybe I can find some sort of charity to give them too, but the yarn is 100% acrylic, and I know charities won't take that for babies cause of the risk of fire and burning synthetics. I don't know. Suggestions?

Anyway, that's about all I can manage for the day.

Quote of the day: "Hey, Ms. F----ker!" (Seriously, a kid said this to me as I was walking past)