Well, nearly complete anyway.

I decided that I’d have to be a complete nutter to want to wear a long-sleeved shirt, alpaca sweater, wool scarf, and wool robes in California in July. So I’m stopping short of the robes and will probably still be sweltering, but at least that means the costume will be *done* once I buy a skirt.

The scarf is from everyone’s favorite pattern, you know, the knit.atypically.net PoA one. It’s worked in Cascade 220 — colorway 8993 for navy, and 9445 for the best book!Ravenclaw bronze in the world.

The tie is from wizardties.com and came in a brown paper package with a handwritten note tied on.

The sweater! Oh, the sweater. My mom got me the luscious yarn for Christmas — Classic Elite Inca Alpaca, which is so far outside my normal price range that it makes my head spin. And let me tell you, returning to my old standby, Cascade 220, after spending months working only with this lovely stuff is as disappointing as waking up from an exhilaratingly wonderful dream and realizing that you’re late for work.

But the sweater! Oh, the sweater. It’s a nearly seamless raglan, knit from the bottom up, and is based on no pattern (save the v-neck, which came from The Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns). I took measurements from my favorite sweatshirt, did a bunch of math, added a fitted waist, and fudged my numbers like crazy to avoid decreasing 1.614 stitches every 4 rows. Came out alright, though.

Just bought my tickets to head home for the Harry Potter book release — flying outta here Friday (7/20) night and coming back Sunday (7/22) night.

Such a short trip! But I’ve got a crazy amount of stuff to get done before my AmeriCorps term is up at the end of August, so it’s just gotta be this way. Maybe I’ll make it down there for a longer trip in September.

I must remember to put up pictures of my Hogwarts uniform so far. I’ve got the scarf and sweater done, and bought the tie. I think I can rope Becca into helping me make the robes, and then I’ll buy the skirt, shoes, and somehow procure a wand. That seems like a lot of work, now that I think about it…

Anybody out there know a good PHP/Object-Oriented Programming mentor? I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

The constructor for the Date class (starting on line 107) doesn’t even work.

And goodbye LiveJournal! Does this make me a grown-up?

The answer: no. If I were a grown-up, I would have called one of my coworkers and had them unlock the door that my keys are behind instead of just crashing at work for the night. No, I’m not kidding.