Obsessions

Okay, first off, I actually got something done, not just on time, but a few days early! Ta da!

I actually finished it Friday, but just now got around to taking pics. I hate borders, but they do complete the blanky nicely. Gonna toss it in the wash tonight, then wrap it up. I'm waiting until the last minute, as Teddie seems to have developed an unusual fondness for this project and will try to lay on it wherever I put it, including bags, baskets and drawers. I only want to have to get all the cat hair out of it once, and I really really hope the poor kid and her parents aren't allergic to cats! The shower is tomorrow, thank goodness!

Also, got a lot of work done on this:
this weekend. This is the back of the Harry Potter vest, completed. I'm hoping to spend the evening working on the front, and have the whole thing done possibly by midweek. I'm finding myself with a bad case of Finish-It-Upitis. I want to finish things. Ideally, Miter Squares (already finished), HP vest, and Green Gables socks (ha, you thought I'd forgotten about them, didn't you? I've been working on them in the booth!) will all be finished this week. I'm hoping that my yarn for my HSS2 pal will have come by then, and I can start playing with patterns. I hope that the yarn I ordered ends up more varigated than self-striping, but I can make do with either.

It's not very often that two of my hobbies loves obsessions collide, three is much rarer. Yet it happened this weekend! After a long and difficult debate at the Lifeboat (production photos aren't up yet, just publicity ones) opening (btw, I did mention I spent the week in Tech Hell, didn't I?) party (properly held at Olive Garden, I might add), I was talked into getting my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning. Okay, so it was more like "It'd be awesome if you came. You know you want to. A bunch of us are going. Well, gee, okay!" than a debate, but still. I ended up waiting at the bookstore with my light board op and a trio of girls from props I didn't know very well. Of course, I pull my HP vest to work on, and one of the girls pulls out a very pretty pink and white sock to work on! (LL SSock, but I forget what colorway she said it was.) She'd also just picked up Charmed Knits, so we had fun flipping through that. I also had another lady, who looked kind of like Kim, but since she wasn't bundled up in a winter coat, I wasn't sure, compliment my knitting as she walked by. Probably the first person who ever told me my tension was really nice! (Hey, maybe I can do this knitting thing!) So we spent the last hour to the release happily knitting and tossing out theories and in general getting wayy too excited. Once the book was on sale, though, it was needles down. I was last to get mine, then we all met over at the local Dennys around 1:00a and Read (yes, it deserves capitalization). There were six of us crammed into a booth, all with books out, and food and drinks. I read extremely fast (I really can't do the chapter at a time thing. Reading, for me, is sitting down with a novel and reading it cover to cover in one sitting. I've always been like that), and the other knitter was only a few pages behind me, but everyone else was much slower. We developed a rhythm - I'd read something and react, then knitter would and say the page number, and it would go around the table until the slowest reader had gotten to it, then we'd have to pause (in my case sometimes go back a chapter or two) and comment/discuss. It made for slow reading, but it was a lot of fun. The waitress thought we were mad, I think, but it was fun. We finally broke up around 5:00a, when there were only four of us left and our legs just couldn't handle sitting in the booth any longer. I finished it about three hours later. Knitters who work in theater reading Harry Potter. Good things happen in threes. (The copy of the book I preordered and had delivered, btw, didn't show up until almost 4:00p Saturday afternoon. I'm letting my ASM borrow it for now, mostly so he and I and LBO - who finished it this morning - can talk about it during shows.)

I don't want to talk about the book much here, and I don't want a lot of details in the comments, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone. There are some great threads over at the KR Forums and in the Harry Potter Lovers group over at Ravelry created to discuss the seventh book after it has been read. I'd be happy to discuss things via email or IM, though. I will say two things, though: 1.)I LOVED it and thought it was a fitting ending to an amazing series, and 2.)It's war. People will die, no matter how much we like them. If everyone we liked stayed safe and sound, it wouldn't be much of a war, now, would it?

Oh, and because I was the first one in my pool of friends to finish the book, I won!

About a month ago, some friends (online and off) and I each put in $10, went to The Official WB Harry Potter store, and picked out what shirts and stuff we liked. Then we voted on each item, and the winners became the swag for whoever finished the book and posted first. I got a tshirt and messenger bag with the DA logo (the tshirt also has "Dumbledore's Army" written out on the back), and an "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good" tshirt with "Mischief Managed" written on the back. The wand wasn't part of the swag, actually, it was an opening night gift from the Lifeboat director, but it seemed to be appropriate to include it in the pic. It's not an "official" HP wand, but it lights up and makes noise and we have far too much fun playing with it in the booth.

I'm pretty darn tired right now - I did get almost nine hours of sleep last night, but it doesn't seem to have made up for staying up all night and working all day yesterday. Tomorrow isn't exactly calm and relaxing, either, for a Monday, although it does promise to be fun. I have plans to crash a MS3 sit & knit up in Arroyo Grande in the morning, then the baby shower tomorrow afternoon up in SLO, then class in the evening. Must go to class - I haven't been since last Monday, and testing is coming up August 11th. Actually, I really need (okay, want and need) to go to sparring class more than regular class, but oh well. I like sparring a lot more than I expected to - there's just something so satisfying about it, although it's still scary at the same time.

Going to go turn the brain off and maybe watch mindless tv or a movie or something. Have fun!