As always, a lovely weekend in spite of, as in recent days, less-than wonderful weather. Friday's snow moved out Saturday morning but the next storm moved in on Sunday. Total accumulation less than two inches, though. Temperatures are set to skyrocket to 15 today. Wooo!

I saw on last night's news that it's supposed to be 81 in Honolulu today, and I don't want to hear about it from you Hawaii people. :) I like living in Denver. Although I'm starting to see the R.C.'s point of view. She wants to move to Arizona, where it's warm. Turns out that they're having a massive ice/snow storm in Missouri and all plans of moving there to be of assistance to our poor, old, widowed mother seem even less enticing in the face of reports that they're telling people that if their power goes out, just deal with it, because it won't be back for two or three days. Of course, it also turns out that they're having unseasonably cold weather in Arizona as well, so....

Anyhow. Saturday was a reasonably beautiful day, with temperatures hovering around 7 and tons of sunshine, so the R.C. and I went out and did a bit of frolicking.

The Container Store, a place where I could spend a fortune if I didn't exercise restraint, for under $20! That's not bad. A plastic holder for 'zines and half the cost of a neato plastic carrying case where we can stash the holiday wrapping paper. We've been using a couple of oversized boxes for years, but that was always meant to be a stop-gap solution. Tonight I'll transfer the rolls to the new case and let's hope everything fits.

No, we have not put the Christmas stuff back into storage yet. This is a thing that's always done by New Year's, but this year we've had so much snow that the narrow drives in the storage facility are still near-impassable.

I finished A Secret Atlas, by Michael Stackpole. I've gone off Stackpole.

WARNING - GROSSNESS

Out of the blue, the love interest for the heroine turned into an assassin with a penchant for S&M techniques and the next thing I know, I'm reading about how she's been drugged so she can't pass out but has to watch in a mirror while this guys skins and disembowels her.

Seriously. Out. Of the blue. At the beginning of a chapter, Stackpole drops in casually that these two are now lovers and, oh, by the way, they're having pain-sex and before I can decide whether or not to stop reading, I'm at the point where they're describing finding her head on a "pile of meat" that, it turns out, is what's left of her body.

/ END GROSSNESS

Normally I donate or recycle books I don't like but this one may hit the trash can. I was seriously annoyed. I like the world and I like the concept of "mastery=magic" and the main characters are all interesting (except for the now-dead woman). I was looking forward to exploring it all some more, but now I'm just grossed-out.

So, the hunt begins afresh for a new fantasy series to read. In the meantime, I've gone back to Pratchett to take the nasty taste out of my mouth.

I have a new Alexander Kent to read as well, so I'm still good for books (in case of another blizzard) but I was really in the mood for a new series. :(

And now, the annoying bit. Crochet! Knitting! Yarn!

I hit Michaels this weekend, too. I know I was going to go to some specialty store and buy really cool yarn, but I've decided to wait and see whether or not this mood to make things lasts before I start spending that kind of money. Michaels has some interesting yarns, though.

The R.C. bought one almost-suede-feeling yarn that's really thick, for a scarf to match her purple winter coat. The yarn is difficult to work with and it was expensive, but it's going to make a really warm scarf when I'm done. (I was bummed last night to realize I'd made a mistake in the pattern about 70 rows ago, but I've already torn the thing out three times, so I'm a little tired of starting over on it. On the other hand, it was kind of expensive yarn, at $6/skein, so it deserves to be handled more carefully than grossly obvious mistake-making.... I may yet pull it all out again. Also, she bought three skeins but I'm thinking she's going to need three more to make a decent scarf length.)

Against her advice, I also bought a really pretty soft white yarn that's all nubbly with bits of pastel colors. Sadly, when I started working with it this weekend, I realized that, when worked into a pattern, it looks like nothing more than like baby blanket material. I'm going to make it into a scarf anyhow, but I don't love it.

I learned a new crochet pattern this weekend, a shell pattern. My first experiments were ghastly, but I persisted and it got better. I'm making a--sort of a thing--maybe it will turn out to be a "lap blanket" or something, I'm not sure, using it. It's going to be pretty, but I'm not so sure it will be warm. I might tear it out now, before I get too far into it, and make it wide enough for an afghan anyhow, though.

I also bought knitting needles. Thanks to Meghan and her knitting group, I was afire to try knitting again.

Now I remember why I gave up knitting. I suck at it.

I printed off two different sets of instructions for "casting on" (that's how you make the first row, before you have anything to actually "knit" with) and couldn't understand either of them. After some fumbles, my fingers remembered an old "twist-and-wrap" method for getting a single strand of yarn onto a needle, so I started there, just so I'd have something to practice on. It works, although it wouldn't do for an actual pattern. It makes a nasty, raggedy first edge.

Doesn't matter though, because my next five rows of actual knitting weren't much better. Shudder. It's really ridiculous, how bad I am with my hands. I do know that these things require practice and I'm sure I'll try again, but crochet is so much faster and easier....

I have no ego about these things. If I'm bad at something, I'm willing to admit it and move on to something else.

Which brings me to another "bad at it" hobby that I'm not planning to drop, so I'm already contradicting myself but without guilt.

Sketching!

Since I got new drawing toys for Christmas, I've been itching to get back to practicing sketching. Up until now, the whole crocheting-knitting thing has been taking precedence, but this weekend I dug out my drawing supplies, brushed off a year's worth of dust and starting sorting things out. I didn't quite get to the point of doing any drawing, but I will. I'm even more exciting to see all of the interesting bits and pieces of--well--of stuff that I accumulated back when the fit first came over me. I'm firm in my intention to figure out reasons to use all of those gadgets and whatnot.

Also, it's very typical of me that I lost interest in the whole thing just at the point where I was starting to produce recognizable sketches of real things, but I'm also firm in my intention of getting back to this and sticking with it this time.

And that's about all I had to say at the moment.