Two more KP catalog projects on their way--Fair Isles and entrelac.  With a deadline of 4 December.  Really, they're both pretty small projects, so I'm mostly worried about the yarn shipping time.  Should be fun.

I am really loving working with KnitPicks.  The woman who's my contact is lovely, and I get to do all sorts of interesting projects I wouldn't otherwise have the time or cash for.  Getting paid for this stuff ain't bad either...

OK, I admit motorcycles freak me out a little bit.  I know how much fun it is to come off a bicycle; I can't imagine it's rendered more entertaining by travelling two or three times as fast as I can pedal.  But people enjoy it, and more power to them.

Many people who enjoy riding mototcycles also enjoy working on them, just like a lot of folks like to tinker with their cars.  In which case, it's cool to have a good online source for Harley parts or Yamaha parts  or whatever--you can't always guarantee that your local shop is going to have precisely what you need, and if it's going to have to be shipped anyway you might as well cut to the chase.

Sure, you could pay someone to do the customization work on your motorcycle, but it's got to be a little more fun to do it yourself, at least as long as you're the mechanical type, right?

Autumn Rose (which I wore yesterday, so it's on my mind) was knitted in the round, from the bottom up, with raglan sleeves.  It still looks good on me, primarily because of the dramatic scoop neck; raglans otherwise tend to be contraindicated for the busty.

This makes me wonder: could I do set-in sleeves in a similar manner?  It'd work in general, by just putting all the armseye and sleeve cap shaping at the "join" points, just as in raglan sleeves; my only question is what would happen at the tops of the incorporated sleeve cap.  Maybe some sort of three-needle bind off, to make the shoulder seams?

I think I need to get out some needles and experiment.

Natural Stitches has Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift.  So, you know, next time I want to knit Autumn Rose I won't have to order the yarn.

Or Venezia, maybe...

I think it's cool that KnitPicks has implemented a wishlist function.  It nothing else, it gives me a place to put things that I want without having to worry about them messing up little orders I might make in the interim.  Also it means I have something to point at when people say, "Hey, what do you want for Christmas?"  Mercenary is me!

I did have to change my last name on the wishlist, because otherwise everyone who looked could see it.  And my last name is not common--the only two people I know personally who share it are my parents, and then there's the one guy in Sweden, and that's about it.  So, you know, stalker potential.

I should go through and figure out what yarns I need for a couple of potential gift-projects, and put them on the list in case someone's feeling generous.

I'm trying to get some odd diacritics to work, so this is my scratch paper.  Nothing to see here, move along...

k̇ ɛ̄ ī ē ā ō ū ɯ̄ ɤ̄ ɔ̄

When I was little, I had a "coin collection".  It was a little change purse mostly full of buffalo nickles; I have no idea where it might be living these days, unless it's in the safe at my mom's house.  And sometimes, I admit, I look at those sales of Liberty gold coins on TV and get a little wistful--the gold in those is certainly worth more than they're being sold for.  But really, if I were going to actually start collecting coins seriously (like I need another hobby), I'd talk to a coin dealer first.  This is a person who makes a living with knowing what coins are worth and what kind of condition they're in; I, who know nothing about the field¹, would do well to talk to someone who does before trying to get into it seriously.

1: Except that the pure silver quarter I have is probably worth as much as 50 cents!

I would love to tell you all about my nifty auto insurance quotes from PremiumnAutoInsurance.net.  They have a nice handy interface; all you have to do is enter your ZIP code and the site presents you with a list of insurance companies just slavering to tell you why they can save you more money than whoever you're currently with¹.  This is not the problem--a nice aggregating site where I can get everyone, instead of having to go around to all the insurance companies I can think of and get individual quotes, is all fine and cool.

No, the problem is with the insurance providers themselves.  None of them would give me a quote unless I gave them my Social Security number.  Which, well, I'm just not willing to do.  I see no particular reason why my Free Auto Insurance Quotes should have to be attached to my credit history, and there really isn't any other reason for them to need my SSN.  So despite the fact that the aggregator site is decent, I'm going to have to decline to actually get any quotes.

Perhaps they can set something up so you only enter your info once and then the results from various companies are displayed on a list; that'd be totally awesome.  As long as it didn't include my SSN.

1: I happen to be reasonably happy with my current company, and especially my current agent, but I'm never adverse to finding out if I could be saving enough money to make it worth my while to switch.  A penny saved and all that.

The other day, one of the women in my office asked me what I was working on.  I told her it was my cross stitch project (Boreas), and she asked if I had a picture.  I was puzzled, because I knew I'd shown it to her before, but I pulled out the picture.  She said, "Oh, I thought you'd be done with that by now."

Um.  No?  It's no wonder people won't pay what this sort of thing is worth; they have no idea how long it actually takes.