I am a JRR Tolkien fan.  I have been since I was in 7th or 8th grade.  In those days we had "reading groups" within an English class.  Kids were divided up into groups depending on their reading ability.  My reading group read The Hobbit. 

I was in love.  It had adventure and swashbuckling and arrows flying through the air and a Dragon and gold and greed and lots of other human emotions.

That was the year I had my appendix out.  In 1972 this was a stay-in-the-hospital-for-a-week procedure and then I was home for 3 more.  My Language Arts teacher at the time bought the other three books in the series and brought them to me in the hospital so I would have something to read.

And thus began another lifelong love affair.  These have become my favorite books and the ones I probably have read the most. I have made knitwear from patterns based on these books/characters.  I made my first round shawl (Evenstar), my largest beaded shawl (In Dreams) and a cowl from LOTR based patterns.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone when I saw a pair of socks called Architect of Rivendell.  The design on the toes and the clean lines up to the design around the cuff.  It called to me.  It's a toe up pattern which didn't bother me, I've done toe up socks before and I'm not afraid.

But it's a different cast on and since the pattern is dependent on this cast on, I was determined to get it.  After 12 tries and probably 12 more starts, I have come up with this.  It has taken me 5 days to get this far.  The toe looks a a bit flat/square but I am convinced it will round off as I move on.  It's filled with twisted stitches and I had to relearn how to cable without a cable needle (or go crazy). 

If this time goes south, I may put it in time out for a while.

This is the view down our street last night.  You can see the edge of the clouds as they turn pink.  It was a very welcome sight.  Most everything around here is grey/white/black right now.  This may change as the temps rise to a balmy 40 degrees this weekend.

The program update continues at work.  People are having some difficulty adjusting to Win7 and then our new program goes live on Monday.  By the end of the day, I'm exhausted. 

This cold weather is tiring.  It takes a lot of energy to keep yourself warm!  I have to keep reminding myself that it's WINTER and is supposed to be cold.  I'll appreciate the memory of my cold toes when it's August and I'm too hot. 

Peter Kevin is having some issues at work and they are under a lot of stress.  He's putting out resumes but it's hard when you're in your mid 50's.  It's easy to become discouraged.  Fortunately there's a wood show coming up in February.  That will lift his spirits somewhat.