Poor grebe

I have been frogging as much as I've been knitting lately, thus not much to show, so here are three photos of an injured grebe we saw on the beach this afternoon. In the second shot she's trying to walk and cannot get her left leg to work. There is a wonderful lady who is the liaison with the rescue service and we knocked on her door and arranged for her to keep an eye on Bird and call if she didn't rise before dark.

Here's an origami box that shows a good plan for a knitted top. The triangles would go under and tuck through. I have them set up as "over" because it shows their format better. I did get a few more inches knit on another pair of socks for my brother yesterday while spending six hours at the doctor -- the orb is as well as can be expected, which is very good news. And I got a thank you note from P's family. His little sister is healthy and wearing her bootees constantly, so I will whip out a few more pairs. It takes only a few grams of leftover Lorna's Laces, of which I have a bin.

I stopped by ArtFibers yesterday after the tests. It is such a welcoming, interesting yarn store, and the clerks are the best. AF has added quite a few luxurious yarns that aren't their usual novelty style but are practical at the same time as being truly gorgeous. They have also improved some of their laceweight gossamer yarns, which frankly I had thought couldn't get any better -- they are!!! The colourways are, as always, widely varied and exquisite. I allowed myself only ONE ball of deep green Tsuki, which was painful self-control but I've reached stash saturation and need to knit it down to size before more purchases. Of course I've been dreaming of that olive silk blend sportweight, the sage green bulky soft wool, the wide ribbon with silver horizontal lines, the two large hanks of fine mohair in the sale annex, and the other shades of the Tsuki silk/mohair I didn't buy...
Out of curiosity, I ordered some PHW "Chunky" from Elann. It is, IMO, only suited to use in fulled bags. There is almost no twist in the singles and barely enough in the ply, and the yarn compresses down to a slender sportweight. "Chunky" is a misnomer!!! The colors are lovely, so I'll cast on for a bag and let the teens at club have at it. Oh, an excellent teen knitting club activity is to make pom-poms, if only because it teaches them how to tie a square knot. It boggles my mind how few practical skills your average teen knows nowadays. I frogged that bit of fingerless glove on the needles because DD's hands have grown since I measured them last week, so the cuff was too small. No surprise there!

I've moved on to swatching for FLAK with some Cascade 220. I've decided to do it properly instead of trying to keep pace with the crowd. [Things like bootees for P's little sister are a higher priority.] I began the math today for using some Lavold open cables for the center and side panels after digging through books and sweaters to find cables I like the look of *and* want to knit. Have you ever noticed the horrible creases in some of Starmore's cabled sweaters? It looks as if they were folded and the creases need to be blocked out -- or is that just my wonky vision?