The knitting blogworld is going to be quiet for a couple of days, with so many off at Maryland Sheep and Wool. I'll be in Miami until Saturday afternoon/evening. I hate business trips at the end of the week that eat into my weekend like this. The side trip to Elegant Stitches is nice but it still means half my weekend will be spent on the road, when I have so much to get done at home.

May just needs to be the month of great self discipline and getting stuff done. Self-discipline is not one of my things. I need to cultivate more guilt, or something.

I think I'm going to bring The Crochet Stitch Bible and some cheap cotton with me, and spend some time sampling stitches I haven't tried, or haven't done in years. I have an idea for a retro-looking puff stitch cotton bag with bamboo handles, I haven't quite worked out the gussets yet but I'm thinking that tonight in my hotel room I will work on designing a prototype. I'll also sample a few stitches I think have shawl potential.

I finally finished the coral Homespun critter blanket - it's riddled with mistakes. The critters won't care but it is like a diary of my recent "knitting a few rows before falling asleep while very tired" pattern - okay, so sometimes I didn't K2 K2tog YO K2, sometimes I did a K1 K2tog YO K2.... Some of the edge eyelets are out of whack. I prefer to think it gives the blanket individuality. I wouldn't give it to a human being in this condition and I'm a little embarrassed at donating it, but you know, screw it, it's still pretty and the animals can use it.

I haven't even packed for Miami. I think I'm going to leave work around 1 or 2, pack and get on the road so I'm not finding my way through downtown in the dark. It's hard enough in the daytime. I need to pack more than I usually do, since we may be going someplace "dress-up" in the morning and then the document production may be considerably more casual. I plan to throw jeans and flat sandals in a separate bag in my car, so if the documents are, as I suspect, in a mountain of banker's boxes in an empty room, I will not be digging through them in skirt, hose and heels all freaking day. Jeans and kick-off-able shoes, that's the wardrobe for a construction project document production.

Then Saturday I will drive on down to Elegant Stitches. I hope it's not awash in novelty yarns, like the Not So Local Yarn Shop is these days. Rather disappointing - enough with the damn eyelash, it's cute but nobody needs an eyelash scarf in Florida. How about more nice cottons and ribbons for things people can actually wear? Arrrgh. I don't have any purchases in mind at Elegant Stitches, but that's often when I find things I really want.

So I'm outta here until Saturday night. I can't wait for all the reports from the MSW'ers!