My sewing machine is still in the shop. I am trying to be patient about it, but it's hard when I have all of the pieces for a quilt cut and ready on my dining room table. I've been knitting instead and have made unbelievable progress on the Acer sweater I mentioned in my last post. I've finished the body already and used a three needle bind off to join the shoulders, which I prefer when matching cable and lace patterns to a sewn seam. Now, I am almost to the sleeve cap on the first sleeve. I don't understand why sleeves take so long. I'm knitting it in the round, so it's like knitting a worsted weight knee sock. Not that there's any rush, since I won't be able to wear the sweater until Autumn.

I also have to decide what to give my grandmother for her birthday. It's at the end of June, so if I want to make something, I should have started it yesterday. I was thinking of knitting her a little tee, but I don't know how well received that would be. I knit her a cabled Aran weight sweater in yarn that can go through the washer and dryer for Christmas, yarn that I would not have used were I not concerned about the laundry situation at her rehabilitation center. It even has a big hood that is perfect for a Lindsay Lohan style nap. Well, she looked at it for about a minute, then handed back to me and told me to take it back to her house, that she couldn't have it in rehab. Darlings, my feelings were *hurt* until my cousin later explained that she planned to ditch everything that she has in rehab and doesn't want to have anything nice there in fear of loss or theft. Fair enough. She probably won't be out of rehab until a couple of weeks after her birthday, so I am torn between giving her something that she can immediately enjoy and giving her something nice that I will have to take over to her house for safekeeping. Maybe a Hey, Teach! cardigan would be nice for keeping off an air conditioning chill. She has to keep it arctic in her basement, where she keeps her television and rarely used computer, in order for it to be a tolerable temperature up on the second floor. Split level houses are a real argument for zoned HVAC, but retrofitting one would be a costly pain in the ass. I digress. I might go visit her on Sunday and take my trusty tape measure to get an idea of her current size. My grandmother's nearly year long bout with cancer has turned her into one of those birdlike old ladies, so I have no idea what size sweater to make.