Oh dear.  Look who has been the worst blogger ever.  Me.  It was me.  I apologize.

I can only think of one reason for why I haven’t blogged in an inordinate amount of time, and that is that I feel like I should write an update on Shelly’s Printed Silk Cardigan.  The problem with that is that I only have so much patience for that sweater, and all of that patience has to dedicated to the actual knitting of it, rather than talking about it, or else it won’t get done in the month that I have left before I head off to Dream School.

As I mentioned before, I was having severe problems reading the chart for the embossed diamond portion of the pattern.  I went on the Ravelry KAL group for the Printed Silk Cardigan, and posted about the problems I was having.  Within a matter of hours, a very kind Raveler provided me with an answer that helped me understand, not only this pattern, but reading charts in general.

But understanding how to do something is entirely different than actually doing it.  Just because I know how to do it does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that it is easy to do, especially when my brain has proven to me time and time again that it just does not work technically enough to grasp how something will work before I actually do it.  Hence, sucking at chart reading.

But, Shelly spent a lot of money on the yarn, so even though this may be the pattern that kills me, I will finish it before dream school.  I’m done with the back, and am nearing the end of the left front piece, and once I am done with the entire sweater, it will be followed with several instant gratification projects.

Moving on to a topic that I find considerably less aggravating:

Last Tuesday, Boyfriend and I had our three year anniversary.  We spent the day at a popular tourist location near the undisclosed location where we live.  Normally, it’s too crowded during the summer to want to think about going, but since it was a Tuesday afternoon, it wasn’t bad at all.

When we left in the morning, it was cloudy and threatening to rain.  I am usually good about wearing sunscreen, as skin cancer is preventable, but it didn’t even occur to me to wear it.  Of course, this meant that I disregarded the idea that it could get sunnier later on in the day, which it did, or the fact that you can still get burned through clouds, which I did, and that burns are worse when you’re near the water, which we were.

I am now a lovely shade of peeling, and have crazy tan lines.

I should also mention, on a completely unrelated note, that I am the worst gift giver ever.  So much so, that I have given up on giving gift, and now people receive gift cards for any gift worthy occasions.  I find that this works out nicely, except for when it comes for Boyfriend.

Boyfriend is not a fan of gift cards.  He finds them impersonal.  Which I can understand, especially since I can’t exactly be like, “Here you go Boyfriend.  Here’s a Target gift card, to celebrate how we’ve been together for three years, and I still don’t know what you want.”

So, instead, I racked my brain, and remembered him saying that there was a new series that he wanted to read of those Japanese manga books that you have to read backwards and that I don’t understand.

And so, Little Buddy and I headed off to the book store, because even though I didn’t know the name of this series that he wanted, I figured, how many could there be?

Oh, a lot apparently.

First off, I have nothing against these books, I just don’t get the attraction of reading a book backwards, and having pictures be part of the story.  If I’m going to read a book, I feel as though the words should paint the picture for me, and pictures shouldn’t be necessary.  Plus, even though Boyfriend has explained to me that the pictures don’t all look the same from series to series, I have to disagree.  I see no difference.

Anyway, at the book store, Little Buddy refused to even go down the aisle with me, apparently scared of hurting his street cred.  He chose to spend the duration of our time there flipping through an Eric Clapton biography, providing no moral support for me, which I desperately need when I pick out gifts.

There I am, in the manga aisle, faced with at least twenty different series, none of which I have ever heard Boyfriend mention before.  There were some that I could quickly rule out (like the one with two cartoon guys kissing on the cover.  Boyfriend likes to read about ninjas.  This didn’t seem to involve ninjas in the slightest.).  I flipped through some of them, trying to find the flap that had the summary on it (it’s on the back flap, not the front one.  I probably should have guessed that.), all the while, a bunch of guys standing next to me, looking at the books like they know what they’re doing, and totally laughing at me in their heads because I clearly had no flying clue.

I finally picked out two books from different series that seemed like something he might enjoy (fighting, weapons, ninjas, no one kissing, that kind of thing.).  I got to the cash register, pissed off because I get intensely grumpy when I don’t know how to do things, like chart reading or picking out manga for Boyfriend.  The lady who rang me out said, “Did you know if you buy four manga books, you get one free?”  The thought of picking out two more of these books, just to be rewarded with getting to pick out another one, almost put me over the edge. 

“No thank you,” I told her.  “I don’t want to get my boyfriend five books that he’ll probably hate.”

Because this is part of being a neurotic gift giver.  Convincing yourself that after spending a decent amount of time picking out a gift, the recipient will hate it.  You should be taking notes.  This is valuable info.

Boyfriend is kind-hearted enough to know that I feel this way, and therefore never ever tells me if he hates a gift that I give him, regardless of how many gift receipts I provide him with.  This time, though, one of the two books was the one he was looking for (yeah!), and the other was acceptable for his reading purposes.

Someday, when I’m richer than he is (because that’s my life goal, to be richer than the man I am with), I’m just going to buy him a car.  All guys like cars.  Cars don’t come with gift receipts.  The only nerve wracking part about picking it out would be what color, but I think I could handle that.

Or I could just get better at picking out gifts.  Whichever.

Song of the Day:
“I just poured my heart out.  There’s bits of it on the floor.  And I take what’s left of it and rinse it under cold water, and call him up for more.” -Maria Mena, “Sorry“