Socks and Sparkly Dice

I wanted to add the sparkly dice I bought at Origins to yesterday's photo, but I couldn't find them. I knew they had made it home with me, because when we got home, I emptied them out of my jeans pockets before I threw the jeans in the laundry. Then where did they go?

Eventually I figured out that I had dumped my pocket contents on the bed, and when my husband got in bed, he put those things . . . somewhere. And eventually I discovered the "somewhere", a cardboard box on the floor.

So here are the nearly-finished baby yarn socks, the red lacquer Chinese dragon I bought (our son got Dragonology and is pleased to let me know it is an Imperial five-toed Chinese lung), and this year's haul of sparkly dice.

I went for variety this year, rather than a matched set.

At the top is the six-sided Origins commemorative, a red and blue Gemini that came free in the attendee bags. Matching sets were sold at the Crystal Caste booth (am I the only one who has trouble not reading that as Crystal Castle instead of Caste?), but the die was made by Chessex. Chessex's website says "The coolest dice on the planet."™ and I can't argue with that. If I had the cash, I would have about a bathtub full of their cool dice.

From Chessex, I got the next one down, the really dark-looking four-sided die (actually pearlescent green), and the bottom two, which are two different colors of Borealis dice.

The green die in the middle is from Crystal Caste, a green and black six-sided Vortex die from their Crystal Dice line. Crystal Caste is the company that makes synthetic opal dice, which I seriously covet. Opal is my birthstone -- and synthetic opal makes very beautiful dice. *sigh* Maybe someday.

Oh, yeah, and the socks. After much knitting and ripping, I ended up right back with a variation on spiral rib. On the left you can see that the ribs on the sides of the sock will form a big diamond, and on the right the ribs will make an upside-down V. The bottom half of the ribbing is K2 P2, knit four rows and bump one stitch over. The top half is K3 P1. I'll knit until I close the third diamond, then cast off.

Dry, dry, dry, it's been so dry here the weeds are wilting. Trees are wilting. The grass went dormant a month ago, and looks like a dry yellow straw field. We got a little shower last night for about an hour, but we need more rain. Too bad we can't ship the drenching Texas rains up here. Meanwhile I am moving hoses around and hoping I'm not too late for some plants.