Home, home, home. Home for two days until I bolt off Wednesday (June 4th) to Kingston, Ontario (Chapters, 2376 Princess Street, 6:00, big fun) and then off to TNNA, which I’m pretty excited about as well. The house is trashed, I’m super tired, Joe’s leg is still broken (he’s allowed to put some weight on it now, which is a huge help, the next x-ray in next week, then we’ll know how much longer for the cast) every stitch of clothing in the house is dirty and there are no towels… and I just found the scariest thing in the fruit bowl I have ever seen. (I think it used to be a peach. Maybe a mango. The fact that I can’t tell is really messing with me.) Clearly today needs to be spent reclaiming this place, doing laundry, buying groceries and trying to get things back to a place where I can walk out again. (Yes, I know that all that means is that when I come home again I’ll have to do it again. It’s a cycle. They trash it while I’m gone, I come home and clean it up, and then leave so that we can start from the beginning. I think these people must think I find housework fulfilling. No amount of denial seems to shift them.)

That’s what I should spent today doing. Instead, I want to spend at least part of today blocking Adamas, which I finished on the plane on my way to LA. It still looks pretty scruffy here, in it’s pre-blocked state.

I wanted to block it right away but didn’t have blocking wires or pins. I had a brief plan involving many, many, many, tiny little hotel sewing kits…but the plan would have taken a long time and someone would have noticed I was missing from BEA for sure. Besides managing the duet of sock picture dorkiness from yesterday, there was neat stuff everywhere at BEA. I got advance reading copies of the new Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. (Not sock pictures though. Didn’t see them.) I met Lynn Johnston – who it turns out is a knitter. (Sweaters. That’s her thing.)

I chilled at the Interweave booth for a while. It’s nice to find a knitting oasis in the middle of something like BEA.

While I was there I scored blads (“book layout and design”) thingies for both Franklin’s book and Judith’s book. They both look beautiful and I can’t wait to get them. Judith’s comes in November, Franklin’s October. (The blad for Judith’s book has only the first page of the introduction in it. It was so “Judith” that I can’t believe I have to wait to read the rest. Wicked teaser.)

I saw Crazy Aunt Purl.

She was very funny, but I never did find the “wine booth” she kept talking about.

I found knitters… but I am a terrible person who can’t remember their names even though they were just about the high point of my days there…. Emily? Lynn? Son-of a moth where is that piece of paper?

On a rather wild impulse I kinneared Marilu Henner. She’s 56 years old and I swear that you could bounce quarters off any part of her. Her stomach is so flat that it makes a pancake look like it has wild topography.

I had a lovely time with Melissa.

I even had a couple of moments with Christopher Paolini and his sister (once I convinced the Random House people that I wasn’t actually a crazed stalker and that Chris would really, really want to hold a sock. I admit. The whole sock thing can be hard to get ordinary people down with.)

Chris reads the blog sometimes for the writer stuff (or so he claims… I suspect that he has knitterly urges that he just hasn’t entirely given over to yet) and his sister (pictured here being shy) is an avid knitter and fibre artist who knows her stuff. They are both just lovely.

Finally (and I know that this is really what you care about) here’s the sum total of the BEA knitting.

Meagre, I know. This is still The bleeding heart stole turned scarf and my handspun has run right out. I went with A in the end, majority rules, and I’ve feathered it into the handspun so that it isn’t a jarring change.

I think it looks awesome. The green, although very, very close, wasn’t just right, being too blue a shade in real life and the dark pink….truthfully, I couldn’t get the image of the whore’s panties out of my mind. Too much contrast for me, and more importantly, for the intended recipient. I’d love to spend another few hours working on it, but for now I’ve got to go. I’ve got a shawl in the sink.