Scarf of Procrastination, and Amber Waves of Grain

So, I finished the scarf of procrastination, which I gave to Daisy in honor of her successful thesis defense last Wednesday. Congratulations Dr. Daisy, although I'm sad that this means you will no longer be obliged to come visit Seattle to finsih your thesis! Here is the scarf: I also took a photo on a dark background because I couldn't really tell which one showed the colors most accurately. Really neither of them are that great, but such is the lighting in my apartment, especially at night.

Project Stats: Noro Striped Scarf for Daisy
Pattern: Noro Striped Scarf, made popular by Brooklyn Tweed. Raveled here.
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, colorways 205 (2 skeins), 245, and 249. Yarn purchased at Weaving Works last fall.
Needles: Size 8 Clover bamboo, 37 stitches.
Time on Needles: 12.1.08-12.12.08.
Impressions: I love this! Thankfully Daisy also loved it :) It was really fun to knit, and I've already got the yarn to make another one while I'm home at Christmas. I'm going to use this yarn: It's also Silk Garden.

I know I've been slacking, and I have no excuse. I've been a bit busy preparing for the holidays and, once I was finished procrastinating, finishing up the Christmas knitting. Here is my finished Waves of Grain stole, which is for the grandmother who appreciates my knitting: The photo is of it blocking this afternoon (I fly out tomorrow, weather-permitting). I hope to get some good modeled shots after it's gifted. Be assured there will be a project wrap-up when I have more photos. The other things I knit are still absolute secrets but will be revealed in good time...
I really hope I can get out of Seattle tomorrow but I'm not confident. We're having the worst winter weather in a decade, and it's actually winter weather, not just Seattle fearmongering. A lot of flights were canceled today and although things are supposed to taper off tomorrow I'm concerned about getting to the airport. Plus, I'm flying through Chicago, which is also having severe weather, and into Cleveland, where the bad weather that snarled Chicago today should be arriving just in time to greet me. Lovely. I fly every year at Christmas and I've been really lucky for the most part, so fingers-crossed and send good travel vibes if you can spare them!

Apparently it's the right time...

I have a problem. Completely of my own doing. I have fallen prey to the Noro striped scarf phenomenon. Now, I can't really blame the Yarn Harlot for this particular problem, although she did bring the idea back to the forefront of my mind when she went on a striped scarf binge last week. I mean, loads of people have knit this scarf (there are 2378 of them on Ravelry), so it can't be entirely her fault. I've actually had this yarn in the stash since last fall, and every time I started a project I thought about it, and every time I dug through the stash I found it, and every time I stopped myself because it just wasn't the right time. Apparently, the right time is when I'm in a battle with laceweight Christmas knitting. I made a lot of progress on the lace over the Thanksgiving weekend, and as a reward (apparently) I decided to start this scarf of procrastination. I've not touched any other knitting since. I even brought the scarf to work yesterday to work on at lunch. It is pretty though, isn't it?

Books!

I think I might have done this before, but I believe this is a different list, and anyway, I love books, and lists, so I'm doing it again. Borrowed from Saffron...

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read (Honestly, I thought I'd have read more of these!)
2) Underline those you intend to read (Apparently there are a lot in this category for me - I am full of good intentions.)
3) I added this - *** for books I own but haven't read yet...
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte***
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (parts)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens***
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy***
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot***
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy***
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy***
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy***
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas***
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce***
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray***
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (and in French!)
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams***
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo***