My 6-month-plus quest for a new floor lamp is now over.

I wish I could say I found the perfect thing to replace our wobbly lamp from Target that broke after a year and a half of use, but after searching all the Crate & Barrels (ugly or boring) and Design Within Reaches (ugly or expensive), I ended up getting a wobbly lamp from Target. It’s really amazingly wobbly, and it came very lopsided too, a feature that I repaired by stepping on the base and bending the poll in the opposite direction.

But I’m determined to make this one work because it looks nice and I’m tired of looking. Sounds like a terrible way to choose a person to marry, but my fingers are crossed that it’ll work well enough for a lamp. Now I can concentrate on seeing things!

Thank you, everyone, who left nice comments for Harriet and Hayden yesterday!

Fillyjonk mentioned that she would like to make a flock of pastel Harriets. Me too!

I also had two great test knitters for the pattern. Bonney helped me try out a few different stitches for Harriet’s “wool,” and gathered her test subjects for a photo op.

I especially have a soft spot for the hybrid mix on the right.

And knittygirlie, aka one of the winners in the Mochimochi Photo Contest, made her Hayden into a yummy stick of butter before transforming him into a yummy haystack.

Ha!

A big thank-you to Bonney and Rebecca!

I just watched the entire second half of Dr. Zhivago without realizing that I was only watching the second half of a movie. It occurred to me that there were curiously no opening credits, and there seemed to be a lot of established relationships that I had to piece together, but still, I had no clue that I didn’t start at the beginning. Curse those confusing double-sided DVDs!

When Dr. Zhivago died just one hour into the film, I was thinking “gee, what are they going to do with the remaining two and a half hours without the main character?” But still, it didn’t hit me until the closing credits started rolling. I thought about flipping the disc over and watching the first half, but I just don’t have it in me now.

This does not bode well for the rest of my weekend.

The highlight of my recent holiday visit to Tulsa (well, aside from Christmas with the fam), was my visit to Loops, the fabulous yarn store in Utica Square.

Since I was from the area, and had been impressed by the store on a previous visit, I occurred to introduce myself to the staff as a pattern designer. I was actually really nervous to do this, since I’d never done anything like it before, but my brave friend Jennifer who was with me was more than happy to loudly exclaim “my friend Anna has a knitting website!” as she bought a few skeins of yarn.

To my utter astonishment and delight, the staff had all heard of me, and a couple of them had even bought patterns from my website just the day before. They gave me the warmest welcome possible, and even had a camera on hand for a picture.

Shelley, the owner of the store, wasn’t in that day, but she posted about my visit on the Loops blog.

After a year of being active in the online knitting community, it was a thrill to do some in-person networking. Loops has invited me back to teach a class in June, so I look forward to being there again!

And if you’re a knitter in the Tulsa area, you’re hopefully already familiar with Loops. I encourage anyone who is not to check it out!