Progress, of a sort

Progress thing the first: I have finished five more holes. I think the secret is to not try and do all the holes at once.  You have to make one, then wander off, do something else and then come back later when you’ve forgotten the holes are annoying. If I do too many at once, then it takes longer to forget.

Progress thing the second: Joe and I had a date night last night, and went out to celebrate an album he just finished producing, The Motherland. (It’s The Bidiniband, and “All Hail Canada” is a favourite around here – though it’s not what you think. If you click on that link you can listen.)

bidiniband 2014-05-30

We were out for a long time, and in the dark and I was ever so glad to have my boring sock with me so that I could appall hipsters with my dorkiness at the Dakota. I got a big chunk done.

Progress thing the third: I jumped on my bike this morning and went down to Arton Bead.  No time like the present, right? I’d been putting it off because, frankly, I thought it was going to be a ginormous pain in the arse.  Arton Bead is huge.

artonbead 2014-05-30

That’s a picture of on teeny tiny corner, and there are still millions of beads, and I imagined myself going in there with my wee bit of beads and trying to match them and it taking so long that I had to pack a snack.  Instead I was there about two minutes.  I walked in, someone asked if they could help me, I said yes, and showed them my little bag of beads.  “Right” the girl said, and she walked down one of the aisles with a hundred million beads in it, put her hand out, plucked the exact right ones out of the bin and asked me how many I wanted.  My mouth hung open.  I have no idea how she could possibly keep track of all those beads – it was like telling someone standing in a field that you needed a piece of grass that was exactly 4mm wide and 7cm tall and watching them say “ah yes. I just saw one like that” while they reached down to the ground and passed it to you.  It was miraculous. It took longer to pay.

Progress the fourth: Well. There’s not progress on Adrianna, but I did decide I would knit on it all weekend (except for the holes) and see what happened.  Thinking about knitting it surely counts for something. Right?

Unrelated: It is Amanda’s birthday today.  She’s 25, and the last time those numbers were in her age she was 2.5 and she looked like this.

amandabikebaby 2014-05-30

We like to start ’em on bikes young around here, and look how it’s ended up. My sweet girl is a quarter century old, and using the one week of vacation she has this summer to ride her bike to Montreal to help make the world a better place. (Again. She’s amazing.)  If you were so inclined to send her a birthday gift, she’d love a few dollars towards making it to her goal. You can pledge her here. Don’t forget to send your name in for Karmic Balancing if you do- and remember, if you donate twice, send your name in twice. It’s double Karma!

Happy Birthday Amanda!

(PS. I may or may not have stopped at a yarn store or two to get the yarn I needed for those Starry socks. Whatever.)