I have started knitting the sweater. And I’ve discovered some useful facts about what I am doing.

The first is that when knitting in a circle, if one is very clever and talented, one can somehow manage to actually end up knitting a mobius strip. One will also not actually figure this out until one has spent several hours working on it. While the whole concept of a mobius sweater (which would be as close as I could get to knitting myself a Klein bottle) *does* intrigue the nerd in me, unfortunately its intended recipient probably wouldn’t find it quite so amusing. Or in other words, this discovery required me to take apart the whole darn thing and start over.

The second useful bit of information is that one probably should *not* use a dark colored yarn when learning new things. While the dark color does have the bonus of hiding any mistakes because it’s just too hard to see little flubs, it has the much larger negative of making it extremely hard to see what one is doing.

Regardless of those little setbacks, I’ve managed to still get past the ribbing on the bottom and into the pattern. Of course on row 3 of the pattern itself, I have somehow managed to screw something up and am probably going to have to rip out the entire row and start over. I sat and stared at it for a little while last night, hoping to figure out how I might avoid having to do that. But at least I don’t have to start the entire sweater over. I am viewing this as improvement. Oh yes.

In other news of just how clueless I can be, last night my laptop mysteriously went kaflooey. Every time I typed any letter of the right hand, I did not get letters, but instead got numbers and other odd symbols. While it did make for some surreal conversations with Richard online, I was not a happy camper about this development, sure that I was going to have to poor Hermione back to the store and get it fixed.

This morning while talking to my dad online, on a whim I asked him if he’d ever seen something like this and if he knew how to fix it. "Simple!" he replied, and suggested that I just might want to see if my NumLock key was on.

Uh.

Oops.

So *that’s* what happens when your cat walks across the keyboard…

In my defense, the only time I have ever used a NumLock key is when I’ve got an extended keyboard and am doing data entry. I didn’t even realize this thing *had* a NumLock key!

I pressed it carefully. A little light on the top of the keyboard went off. Amazingly enough, I had normal letters again!

I am just glad that I didn’t end up discovering this while standing in Fry’s Electronics, surrounded by a bunch of white-shirt-clad computer nerds who would all be staring at me with amused and pitying looks that clearly indicated that I apparently Have No Brain.

In other news, in the backyard, we have sod! Granted, just outside the edging they placed around the lawn pieces is a crop of some of the finest weeds we can grow in these here parts (it’s more fun if you say that preceding line with a little bit of a drawl. And also pick your teeth with some hay. Okay. Where was I?) , but it’s a very good start!

Also in other news, Richard flies home tonight. Better yet, he’s given his notice to Benthic Creatures as well so we are both finally free! Free, I say! Woo!