We had an early morning here at Casa Katya . . .

We had a big 'ol storm roll through here about 530 this morning. My poor sweet Maggie Girl hates lighting and thunder, so we were up. She's done pretty well through some other storms we had this week, but this was a doozy, and she just totally freaked out. We went back to bed for a while after the storm had passed, but I couldn't go back to sleep. However, nothing stops my girl from sleeping when she wants to:



I promised sock pictures, so here they are. The first are my Koigu socks in Wendy's Toe Up Pattern:



Missy and I had a laugh after listening to the YarnHarlot's interview on KnitCast this week. We've always pronounced it "koi-you" but apparently the correct pronunciation is "koi-goo." Missy's comment--"Well, she's Canadian, and the yarn's made in Canada, so I guess she probably knows how to pronounce it." Nah, I still want to say "koi-you." Actually, I think they should just call it "crack," as in "something so totally addictive I want to sell my first-born-child, of which I don't have one, but hell, I would buy several kids if it meant I could buy as much of this as possible and fill my bathtub with it so I can lay in it up to my chin whenever I want"--yarn.

The second sock is the first half of my Fortissima Colori socks:



I'm to the heel on the second sock and hope to finish it this week. The striping matches up really well and the heel turned out pretty cool on the first one, but I'll be danged if I know whether the second one will even be close.



The last sock photo, I'm afraid, will prove to the world just how weak I am. Not three days went by before I caved and started the Opal Lollipop socks:



I love, love, love this yarn! Although I've had Opal yarn sitting on my shelf for quite a while now, this is the first time to really knit a sock (I started a Tiger sock once, but it didn't work out and we don't talk about it in public). I'm afraid I have worked on this and neglected my other sock this week, but I promise to work on the Fortissima this weekend. It's just that I hate knitting heels--it's that whole purling thing, it slows me down.

As for the shawl--haven't touched it. I'm working my way up to it. Same for the spinning--it just feels too hot right now to mess with it. My pretty spindle is still sitting on my coffee table, just crying for attention. I pick it up and play with it every so often, but that's as far as I've gotten with it. I'm just in a sock mood lately, I guess. I blame it on the internets.

Weekend gardening today has consisted on trying to save the second Gerber daisy I have killed in three weeks. I've never had this problem before--I don't understand it. I also cut back one of my grape tomato plants--it didn't look good, but there was new growth at the bottom, so I thought, "why not?" I figure if it dies after I pruned it, it was going to die anyway, so it wasn't like I intentionally killed it. I have a jade plant and a mother-in-law plant to repot. I'm hoping they'll both do really well after they get a new home.

I've found a new use for sock yarn! I decided to trellis my mandevilla plant--she's growing like crazy and needs some support. So I put four cuphooks up by the walkway ceiling and tied a piece of sock yarn to each one and then tied the other end down to the support stakes in the flowerpot. Hopefully this will work. If the yarn starts to fail, I'll go buy fishing line or something, but I'm trying to be frugal here, you see . . . .



And here's the last two pictures, just random shots of my pretty flowers:




Finally, this was my "Hallejuah, brother!" moment of the week (if you are easily offended or don't like really foul language, you should pass this up--I'm not kidding).