2015 in Review

Tiptoeing into the second half of the last day of the year. What a year!

In my head, 2015 was another year of making the creative tradeoff between crafting and writing/reading, with writing winning out. However, it turns out I made 52 items in 2015. Holy crap, right? Especially since so little of that was documented on this blog; you'd be forgiven for thinking my sewing machine and knitting needles spent the year gathering dust, apparently this is what my brain thinks, too, despite evidence to the contrary.

Granted, that number includes items like panties (9) and leggings (4), but it also includes things like quilts (4) and handknit sweaters (4 - of which 2 were knit on size 3 needles!!) It also, unusually for me, includes a decent amount of unselfish crafting, including scarves (3), hats (1), hand warmers (1), handknit socks (1 pair), swaddling blankets (2), and 2 of the aforementioned quilts, as well as boring, functional stuff like curtains (a pair for me, a pair for a friend). I also seem to be doing a lot more functional crafting in general, stuff like tap pants (more needed!) and Watson bras (hate bra shopping!) and lounge pants. In fact, I rather miss my whimsical crafting days. I know we've talked at length about the merits of frosting vs. cake, but damnit, sometimes the frosting is just so much fun! Also, all my frosting seems to come out in summer in the form of frothy, impractical dresses (doubly impractical because Portland summers are so short) - which seems to give short shrift to the other nine months of the year, where practicality reigns. Mix-and-matchable garments in solids or near-solids somehow just isn't as fun as frippery and floatiness, it seems.

 

I commented awhile ago to Ali (with whom I like to swap bra FO photos via text message, which, if you haven't yet done so, is really one of the best kinds of texts to get - in vitro photos of course) that my writing/reading tends to go in small bursts, and I can always feel when I've reached the end of a burst when I start to get the urge to make something with my hands. It seems I find the tactile nature of crafting a nice creative rejuvenation for my mind. "Filling the creative well," as Julia Cameroon (or was it Twyla Tharpe?) might say. And then at some point, either my patience wears thin or my mind starts bubbling forth with new ideas, and I return to the writing and reading. Often I find I need to ease myself back into reading with something Decadently Unserious and frothy (hm, perhaps noticing a theme here with my crafting as well!) This year, I've read a great YA mystery series about female teenage sleuths in Victorian England, a brickload of mysteries in general, and am currently on a Middle Grade series about a 15 year old nanny governessing children raised by wolves. Yes to all of the above.

Which is not to say that 2015 wasn't a banner year for writing. This year I churned out a second draft of my book (bringing the total # of drafts up to 3), realized midway through the year that the book and I were at an impasse, whereby I placed it in the proverbial drawer and spent the summer being bitter and mournful about that. Ultimately, though, I think to what my best friend John says: If it's not the right time to write the book, trying to force it now may mean shortcutting from what the story was ultimately meant to become. Sometimes the problem is in the psychology of the writer, and I finally had to accept that I would need to grow into a new person in order to write the book I wanted to write. Which is frustrating and a wee bit heartbreaking (you know how impatient youth can be!), but ultimately, it's amazing what else you can let into your life once you let go of something that isn't working.

A statement that applies to both writing and life. At the start of this year, I quit a job that was in the same professional sphere that I've occupied for 5 years (and loosely, for another 4 years before that) so that I could create the temporal and mental space for writing. It's been a crazy, uncertain, and bumpy ride - and continues to be so, as I work out a mix of part-time activities that let me pay my bills sufficiently while still leaving enough juice for writing. It's been simultaneously easier and harder than I thought it would be. They say starting your own business takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you imagine, and I can definitively say, as a self-employed person: absolutely! But at the same time, for the first time in my life, I feel really centered and sure about the decisions I've made, and motivated as I've never been before to make this lifestyle work for me. I feared the uncertainty and instability of such a move, not realizing that the emotional certainty and clarity it would bring would create the energy to tackle the rest (due to no longer having to fight against myself so much). And as my old Japanese roommate used to say, slowly slowly. Twice as long and twice as much, right?

This fall, I enrolled in a 1-year writing program at a local non-profit that really embraces the DIY spirit. Our final project will be to produce a self-published book or zine of some sort. It's me and 8 other students with our fantastically supportive instructor, and I really feel like I've grown tremendously on this journey with them. Each piece I wrote and workshopped with them (1 short fiction, 2 creative nonfiction) has been a stretch that totally surprised me with what I was capable of, not just in terms of the technical aspects of writing, but also in terms of the psychological, emotional aspects. As though by letting go of the form of the book, I was able to begin tackling the content that eluded me for so long.

So that was 2015 for me, in a nutshell. When I talk to people, I constantly hear that 2015 was a weird, hard, bad year and that they're ready for it to be over. World and national events aside, I guess one way of looking at my 2015 would be to concur with the above statement. Certainly, I've probably never looked less "on track" than I do right now. And yet one of the unexpected side effects of quitting my job and jumping into the writing pool, for me anyways, is that I'm slowly coming to (imperfectly!) learn to embrace the uncertainty and impermanence of every part of daily life. Nothing will be here forever, and all cylinders of my life will never fire simultaneously. What I'm left with is a daily attempt to appreciate what I do have, to accept it for what it is instead of hating it for what it isn't, and to know that, no matter how good or how bad, it won't be here to stay. Live in the moment, love in the moment, feel the sun shining and be grateful for its presence, see the blue sky and be grateful to still have one's eyesight. And really, this privilege to be able to build my life around writing, at least for now, instead of shoving writing into the cracks of daily life? This incredible luxury to have sewn or knitted 52 items this year?

Wow. Thank you, life. Thank you, world. May I have the courage, serenity, and wisdom to face whatever 2016 brings. And may you too, dear friends. Happy 2016!

Toasty Warm Toes

My growing sock collection!  With a ball of Crazy Zauberball thrown in for good measure.  I’ve posted some of these before, but wanted to showcase one of my new favorite things about winter.  Handknit socks!

 My “vanilla” socks.  As I often knit sweaters and rarely can resist the temptation to go offroading when I do, it’s a real treat to have one type of knitting project where I can fall back on safe, boring predictability.  Especially of late – I seem to have less and less patience for fussy crafting.  I just want to knit rectangles.  Even hats, with their decreases and brims – oh heavens! – can stall for weeks on end.  One thing I like about these is the reinforced heel flap, as that is often where my socks wear thin.  Mmmm … so warm and comfy.

Vanilla with sprinkles on top.  You’ve might recognize the pair on the far left.  Gosh I love this pattern!  The fit is superb, the pattern is simple enough to memorize but incredibly neat and fun.  It really is about as easy as a vanilla pattern, but with a very light twist to it.  I highly recommend.  I actually knit up a fourth pair for Grammy before she passed away.  She always delighted in wearing them and looking at the bright pinks and purples and reds, but my parents never let me leave them with her at the nursing home because they thought the staff would just lose them in the wash.  So I brought them with me whenever I visited her, and when she passed away I slipped them into her casket during the viewing.  Is that morbid?  Personally, I like the thought of my grandmother going to the next world with a warm pair of socks that had been stitched with love.

Roo posted up an interesting sock pattern that looks like it could become my next vanilla-esque sock pattern.  Chocolate chip, perhaps?

Blog relaunch + socks

Hello there!  Thank you so much for your comments on my last post, they were incredibly sweet and supportive.  I've decided to relaunch this blog elsewhere - new space, new me, that sort of thing - and refocus towards the topics that are more relevant to where I'm at right now.  Writing, creativity, food, short vignettes from my life, adventures large and small, musings.  I'm much more of a "stories" kind of blogger than I am a "hey, lookit this cool thing I just made!" kinda blogger.  The latter feels awkward to me, and I don't possess great technical skills nor do I get adventurous with the latest patterns (the exact opposite, in fact, I am slower than slow to hop on bandwagons).  Trying to force this blog into that mold has left me feeling stymied.  Whereas I love telling stories and thinking about life, so that's where I'm taking things.  I still sew and knit and I still plan to blog about those projects now and then because they are still a large part of my creative life, they just won't be all that I blog about ... which is what I've felt like I'm "supposed" to do with a blog with the word "craft" in its title!

Anyhow, I've been a bit snowed under by other obligations, and I'm still trying to figure out which blog hosting service to use (probably Wordpress?  Gotta love the price tag on free!).  I am also taking a month long trip to Turkey and giving my mother a heart attack because I'm leaving in less than 2 weeks and haven't much of a clue of where I'm going or what I'll be doing.  I've got 6 nights in Istanbul booked for when I land, and beyond that?  Not sure.  Jodi was kind enough to provide some suggestions, but if anybody has been to the area, I'd love any and all recommendations!  But I will try to relaunch before then and to bring my camera uploader with me, so that I can post up some photos as I go.

In the meantime, I leave you with socks, because they have become my latest knitting obsession.  I spotted this great ball of Zauerball at a LYS a couple months ago and fell in love instantly.  It was one of those impulse, stash enhancing purchases, but after a tough week at work, I figured "treat yourself!" was in order.  The instant I finished the first pair and put them on, I was overcome with this intense desire to wear nothing but handknit socks to sleep.

Our house is cold in winter, so cold, in fact, that I finally sewed up some simple heat packs which I would pop into the microwave every evening, right before bed, and then slip them between the sheets to warm the bed as I brushed my teeth, just like they used to do back in the frontier days.  I would also layer a couple quilts upon my bed, and, on the nights when that failed to warm me up, I would pull a pillow beneath the blankets and squarely over my stomach, because when I was in college I found this was the single most effective way to get warm enough to be able to fall asleep.  The heat packs got me through January and February, and so did socks.

It sounds so melodramatic, but insomnia has rendered me a finicky sleeper.  Anyhow.  Socks are small, portable and fast, plus I love wearing them.  And to keep the project on the level of "autopilot," I picked one sock pattern and just kept making it, with little tweaks here and there.  I think I've got it memorized.  My second pair has cables, as you can tell.  They're not hard to shoehorn into the pattern, just take out two 3x1 repeats for each cable and put in a 6-stitch cable, with 1 purl on each side.  For now, I think this is as crazy as the socks will get.  I don't like monkeying around with cable needles and slipping stitches front and back, especially not on socks, where the repeats come up way too often (as opposed to, say, a sweater, where you've got miles of stockinette before you have to contend with the fiddly bits).

I love this third pair.  Props to my friend Rita for finding the pattern and suggesting a knit-along.  As I was knitting it up, I thought, "Wow, this is fugly."  And then I knit some more rows and thought, "Wow, this is getting fuglier by the row."  And then I knit some more rows and realized, "Holy crap, this is the awesomest sock I've ever knit!"  That fine line between fabulous and hideous, I do love it so much.

Ode to Stripes // Your Opinion Please

Hello, hello!  I'm not sure why it took me so long to get on the stripey bandwagon, but the bug has bit me in a big way recently, and in the spirit of the spontaneity that I hope will characterize the rest of this year, I sat me down at the sewing machine and whipped up a couple makes.

Dress #13 // Johnnie B.
Pattern: Sewaholic's Renfrew, scoop neck with cap sleeves (no cuff), lengthened to dress length (no cuff), patch pockets attached (finished dimensions: 4.5"x6")
Fabric: 1 yard, striped cotton/lycra/rayon blend

So totally get all the Renfrew love that's gone around the blogosphere forever and a half already.  (I know, I'm so late).  Inspired by the Boden aesthetic, I was originally going for a tunic, but like it as a short dress instead.  I think it'll work well with flats and leggings in spring, with chunky jewelry and sandals in summer, and with a cardigan, tights and boots in fall.  My kinda Cake!  Next time around, I'd move the pockets up 2".

Blouse #12 :: Refashion #34 // Airelle (Wearable Muslim)
Pattern: Deer & Doe's Airelle, size 34 with heavy mods
Fabric: XXL Mens button down blouse, quilting cotton scraps

Credit for this blouse goes to Roo, who every time she makes something, inspires great bouts of covetousness combined with envy that seems to land me in the "monkey see, monkey do" camp of unabashedly copying her.  I took a page from Paunnet, too.  My workaround for the C cup drafting was to cut a smaller size in the bust - and somehow between the measuring and the adding and then the subtracting out darts I seem to have lost 4" or so, because this blouse is clearly too small in the bust and shoulders, yet somehow my math indicated I'd have a good 2" of ease.  Hm.  So I let lots of seams out and lowered darts and everything, and this was the best I could come up with.  I think it's going in the Goodwill pile, unless anybody out there who is a 33" bust or so would like a package in the mail :-).

(I've been bitten hard by the sock bug of late)

So here's my question for you.  Of late, I feel as though I've lost my blogging voice, and I'm curious what you like best about this blog?  What do you like to come here and see, and what leaves you feeling kinda 'meh'?  I thought about quitting this blog entirely, but I knew I'd miss you all, and I do like writing ... so I thought I'd see what you all thought!  If you've got a moment, please help me out and give me a little something to chew on :-).

2 FOs; Ali sighting; Treat Yourself

First finished sweater (and handknit) of the new year:

 

Fiber #58 :: Andi
Pattern: Chuck
Yarn: Cascade 220, a shade my mom calls "more brown than yellow" in response to the "Asians shouldn't wear yellow!" that I keep throwing around.  I need more mustard in my life like I need more handknits, but hey, it's a gorgeous pattern and I love it.  (Color on the right is more true to life)
Mods: added an extra cable twist, lengthened pattern to hit at high hip, used 2*2 ribbing instead.

I took a hard look at my handknit sweaters and realized the ones I wear most often are long sleeved, unfussy pullovers, and in colors that match everything else in my wardrobe.  So I decided those were the types of sweaters I'd knit more of.

And a skirt to go with it.

Pattern: Simplicity 2451, again
Fabric: Liberty twill Mirabelle, plus leftover red piping
Mods: shortened at hip and skimmed some of the curve out of the hipline, added a Rayon bemberg lining.  This skirt was meant to be piped!

Also, for those of you dying for your Ali fix, rest assured, she's still alive and kicking.  Late in 2012 I asked if she would be willing to do a swap, a handknit hat in exchange for a couple Renfrews.  I think I came out ahead, check out the stripey beauty she made me!  (Erg, the hat is awaiting a second skein, via Ravelry, to be completed).  Ali and I wear roughly the same size, and sometimes when we grow out of enamorment with our own handmades, we'll do a swap.  We had a stripey exchange, one might say!

Over the holidays, my brother and I took a quick jaunt up to Portland for a couple days.  The city is on both of our "maybe, someday" lists and we thought it would be fun to treat ourselves to a bit of a relaxation.  We found a place to stay through Air BnB - which I highly recommend - and opted to use Portland's public transportation the entire trip - which I do not recommend, not in winter, at least.  There was a lot of waiting for buses in the rain.  However, if I had to do a lot of waiting for buses in the cold, cold rain, there is nobody I'd rather do it with!

We napped.  We cooked.  We spent a lot of time in cafes.  I knit and read and wrote and dreamed and journaled and people watched.  We stared off into space.  We took a ridiculous number of "use iPhone to take pictures of self" photographs that we then had way too much fun hipster-izing with Michael's phone's editing tools.

Michael really likes the show It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and during the trip he told me about one episode where the characters decide to treat themselves for the entire day.  I haven't seen the episode, but apparently it involves people running around in Batman costumes, increasingly ludicrous scenarios (as seems to be the show's mantra), and a whole lotta "TREAT YOURSELF."  So, that was the motto of our trip, too.

Jessica (in fabric store): Hm, that's kind of a lot of fabric.
Michael: Jessica?  TREAT YOURSELF.
Michael (reaches into wallet): Here, I'll treat you to this one.  *Hands me bill, pats topmost bolt.*

Michael: Fake Moleskine?  Real Moleskine?  I came here to buy the fake one.
Jessica: TREAT YOURSELF.

Jessica: Should I get that flourless chocolate cookie the size of my head?
Jessica: You know what, I should really TREAT MYSELF.

So ... I treated myself this holiday season.

Some Liberty and Sewaholic patterns.  Will 2013 be the year I finally tackle pants?

Some Cake and organic jersey.  Trying not to go too crazy in the knits department, but it's so tempting ...

A yummy new pattern, and some stash yarn.  My latest attempt to control the yarn stash is this rule: for every project I take on with new yarn, I have to complete a project using stash yarn.  Now, some of the stash projects are hats, which is not as stash busting as, say, a sweater, but I will take all the help I can get.  Perhaps I should extend this rule to fabric, too.  Anyways, I used my Christmas money to splurge.  Usually I use my Christmas money to buy boring things like groceries and pay for electricity and such, but this year I figured, it's been a long year honey.  TREAT YOURSELF.

Since this is not exactly a sustainable trend (Christmas money comes but once a year!), I started thinking about the small ways I like to treat myself.  I find it hard to walk that line between frugality and, well, misery.  Sometimes I feel guilty that I am indulging too often in 'simple' pleasures of the non-free variety, but other times I remind myself that it's important to be nice to yourself.  Maybe it's just a question of degree.  Anyways, here are some of my little indulgences.  I figure it's never a bad thing to have a list like this to turn back to from time to time.

Naps. Better still, two in one day!

A skein or two of tasty yarn.

Fresh berries in summer. A basket of fresh figs in fall. Heavenly!

Sunday afternoon meals that take 2-3 hours to prepare. Even better is when I clear my plate for the evening as well, so that I'm not rushing around but can linger in the kitchen.

Decaf lattes. Don't laugh, I know that defeats the purpose of the espresso in the latte! I can't do caffeine, but every once in awhile I will hop into a coffee shop and ask for a decaf. It always makes me feel ridiculously indulgent to do this, probably because I take the opportunity to linger in the cafe, do some people watching, or pull out some knitting, my journal, or a book. Ah, unstructured personal time, what bliss.

Filling a large glass half full with ice, topping it off with a fizzy drink, squeezing in half a lemon, and climbing into the tub for a good soak.

What about you?  What are your small indulgences?  I figure it never hurts to have more ideas for this type of thing!

For Boston with love (3 hats)

So I finally finished up those fluorescent UFOs.  Who can stop at just one Toorie?

 

 

 

 

I call these ... Cotton Candy #1 and #2 (Fiber #56 and 57)

 

 



 

 

Behold, my friends of the "matching but not, the brighter pink the better" fame.  I think we're pretty stylin' myself.  The waitress in the restaurant did a double take.  I think she was serious about her request to commission one for herself, except the next time I'll be back in Boston, there probably won't be any snow on the ground!

While there, I also saw my good friend John.  The last hat I knit him was a bit itchy, so I used some of the fabulous Manos that Sigrid sent me to stitch him up a Fortnight hat (by Jared Flood).  Soft, soft, soft.

I think the color's just the thing for a dreary Boston winter morning.  Three hats for three of my best friends in Boston!  (in the whole world, actually)  It was a bit of a bittersweet visit, as this may be one of the last times that I can visit Boston and see so many of my best friends in the same location, as they all will be leaving in the next year or so.  Grad school was tough, but it was a very special time and place in my life, and I owe these 3 greatly for getting me through some of the toughest times of my life.  But the upside of that is, that we came away from the time with some of the deepest bonds imagineable.  When I first went to Harvard, I had no idea that I'd find such incredible friends.

To friendship!  To woolly warmth!  To bright colors in winter!

Fiber #55 :: Tory

My new fall hat!  From the little sneak peak in my last post.

Love it.  Hadn't realized how this color would go with just about everything I own.  Vacillated in the store for ages over whether or not to pick it up.  "I'm not sure I'll really wear this," is how I tried to talk myself out of it.  Thank goodness some inner part of me had more sense than that.

What sold me on the pattern was the detailing on both sides of the hat.  I love these slipped stitches running down one side.  And the gathers and pom poms on the other!  Truly a clever design with very distinctive bits.  You could swap out the pompoms for some ribbon or icord.

Fiber #55 :: Tory
Pattern: Toorie by Carina Spencer
Yarn: Madelinetosh DK, Dahlia, less than 1 skein
Mods: none!  Knit up as is.  Beautifully written pattern, very careful attention to detail.

Photos courtesy of my friend Nancy.  We were out in downtown Los Altos, and the fall colors are still on the trees (though tumbling down quickly).  Couldn't resist the opportunity for a photoshoot, and I have to say, Nancy, you're a natural!  Usually I feel terribly awkward in front of the camera, but she totally kept me laughing and at ease the whole time.  Photo-bombing helped, too.

Haha, oops.  I reached up to grab a branch and all the leaves fell off.  I felt terrible!

To fall!  To independent designers and Ravelry!  To beautiful, squishy yarn!  And best of all, to friends!

Works in process: fluorescent

Is this enough color for you?

Nope? How about now?

Fiber #49 // Stripes of gold

The first FO from my autumnal plans!  I know what you're thinking.  "Yawnzers, Jessica, another sweater?  It doesn't look all that fancy."  Well, I'm here to tell you folks, this was my first time winging a sweater pattern, start to finish, and it turned out pretty darn well, if I do say so myself.  Boatneck secured with little buttons at the collar, 3/4 sleeves, cream and gold striping?  Yes, yes, yes.

I believe I used a purchased sweater pattern as a general guide for shoulders and sleeves, even though my gauge was 22 stitch/4 inch instead of the prescribed 19st/4in.  Living dangerously!  You'll notice I even did some stripe matching at the sleeves.  How's that for getting overly fancy, and all that.

Fiber #49 // Stripes of gold
Pattern: slapdash/seat of my pants
Yarn: recycled mystery yarn from cowl purchased on Etsy; Louet Gems Sport (merino) in cream or ivory, 2.1 hanks
Needle: size 5
Notions: 4 buttons harvested from this refashion

Boring construction notes:
*Used 3 sets of short rows at each shoulder, front and back, so that the pieces would overlap sufficiently to attach the buttons
*No button holes, just stitched the buttons straight on, and secured the seams with some stitching along the ribbing (using the Louet)
*Jogless stripes, going towards the back, and when I got to the underarm split I just switched colors along the edges, which does mean I have one not-exactly-parallel stripe somewhere near my right shoulder blade.

Winging your own sweater pattern does slow down the process considerably, and is generally prone to increased frustration over ripping and re-ripping back sections.  However!  The more I both knit and sew, the more confident I become in figuring out my body, and, just as importantly, getting a sense for what types of shapes, and at what proportions/measurements, create the type of garment I like.  For example, I know I prefer cropped blouses and sweaters - its a petite thing, but it also lets me pair tops with both pants and skirts, which is important for me since mix-and-match versatility is a high priority for me.  Don't have enough hours in the day to go crafting clothing that just goes with pants or with skirts ...

This also means that, armed with a ruler (which I'm often missing when  I knit on the road ... I try to substitute in various body parts of which I have a vague sense of their length ... NOT recommended), some math skills (mine often disappear on me), and a general working knowledge of construction options, increase/decrease possibilities, and stitch patterns ... there is no end to the possibilities!  So expect more of these in 2013.

I am immensely satisfied with this sweater. In fact, I may go so far as  to get big-headed and proclaim myself as making significant progress on this whole "10,000 hours to becoming an expert" thing, and at crafting a handmade wardrobe, no less.  Now, ahem, have I invested more total hours towards crafting or writing?  Erg ...

Fiber #48 // Transitania

I did mention I've been knitting a lot recently, didn't I?

Here's a sweater I started back in April.  I cast on during the wait for my flight to Korea, and over the course of hundreds of miles spent in trains, buses, and planes, on park benches and in hotel/hostel/b&b rooms at night, I just knit, knit, kinit.  Euroflax linen, sportweight yarn on size 3 needles.  Linen is always hard on my fingers when I first start it, but I love the resulting garment, and I think my summer indulgence to myself might be to knit up a linen pullover each year when the warmest season comes around.

This is the Versailles Shell by Connie Chang Chinchio.  You're supposed to leave vents at the sides but I just stitched them up.  Not sure if you can tell, but those are little diamonds on the side.  They're on the back, too.  I'd say this is a designer that pays a lot of attention to feminine details and finishing.  I know some knitters hate seaming and finishing (all edges are finished with single crochet), but to really make garments that stay polished through multiple wears, I think it's necessary.  Linen, for example, tends to get softer and therefore lengthen with wear, which is why side seams and shoulder seams are important for extra stability to the garment.  I think the single crochet is a nice touch, too.

This was my first time knitting lace on both the knit and purl rows, and I have to say, I messed it up quite a bit.  Not such relaxing travel knitting when I got to the lace!  Ah well.  I really like the end result.  The lace yokes give that extra touch of uniqueness, but it could go both formal or casual.  I know the pink kind of washes me out, but not in an "I'm Asian wearing blond colors" kind of way, more of a "I'm going to pretend I'm an Asian who still has pale skin" kind of way.  Generally speaking, I think it works.  I once had a Japanese boyfriend who requested a bias knit striped tie in "sakura pink and gray," and I think that comment must have subtly infiltrated my mind when I chose this colorway (Rose), because I can totally imagine wearing this with gray slacks to work ...

Just had a lovely day with friends - we met up for lunch, and then they brought me along to a poolside party with some coworkers (we all used to work together, and some of them are still with the same agency.  It's that kind of organization - people just flow in and out in an easygoing kind of way, and there's something about the type of people it attracts that makes it really easy for us all to get along and hang out, even if we never actually overlapped in our time there.)  So tonight, I think I'll settle into the couch with, what else, some knitting, and see if I can't hunt up a Poirot movie or two ...