Happy Labor Day!

I can't believe it's September already! I can't believe it's the 2nd and I haven't changed all the calendars yet! (That might be easier to understand when you learn that I have four calendars just in my office, and one of the ones in the kitchen is a rack with little squares the I have to take down and rearrange each month.)

September is special to me, because my birthday is this month. In fact, my dear brother-in-law (the one I grew up with, not the one I married…uh, into) has a birthday almost this month (8/30), my beloved niece's b'day is the 7th, a life-long family friend's is the 1st, my sister's is the 14th, and niece's friend-since-middle-school's birthday is the 18th. And while we're at it, my grandmother, a few great aunts, at least one great uncle, a couple of cousins (first and second) and my late aunt were all born in September. It's a good birthday month. (And to save you the trouble of counting backwards, it's the long, cold December nights that does it.)

So I'm glad it's September. Oktoberfest is getting closer, and I'm finally starting to relax about the volunteer stuff. We're more or less covered, except for the Children's Area and, in fact, we could (and probably will have to) hire people to work there. So…so far, so good. And October getting here means it'll be DONE for a while. (There's next year to look forward to. Huzzah.)

I'm working on getting some socks done. If you check out the earlier post, you'll see that I'd better get on it. I've learned—nay, practically perfected—two-at-a-time socks on two circular needles. I'm still working on two-at-a-time on one circular, which is just another way of saying Magic Loop, which truly makes me crazy. (FYI, for you non-knitters, most people like either Magic Loop or double point needles and sincerely hate the other. I'm in the DPN crowd.) Right now I'm searching for the perfect circular needle, the one that will let me use this technique without getting tangled up in curly cables. No luck so far. I have the whole Knit Picks set of circulars. I spent some money getting one Hiya Hiya circular to try out, thinking that a knitting friend had told me they were tangle-free. (I was remembering wrong.) So now I've ordered one Kollage Square circular needle. We'll see if that smooth, soft cable will do the trick, or if I have to go with socks on two circulars forever (not exactly a crisis, as far as I'm concerned, but it's the principle of the thing).

We'll be continuing our Downton Abbey marathon tonight. We started watching it last night, through Netflix, and kept going for four episodes. I had heard it was good, but really didn't realize how fast we'd get hooked! Does anyone know if the second series/season is available anywhere? (I think I'm going to react the same way I did after I discovered Dick Francis and read all his books, one right after another. When I finished them all, I thought, indignantly, "Well, what am I supposed to do now?")

Hope your Labor Day is going well, too.