alisonknits

So many things to do besides blog...

Here are a few of the things I've been doing instead of posting on my blog:

• buying a used Ford Taurus wagon, which we quickly discovered might need a new transmission.  Next time I'll definitely have a mechanic look at the car before I buy it.  We really got taken I think; there's no way the guy we bought it from could have been unaware of the transmission problems, and he had no business charging what he did with a bad transmission.  Caveat emptor, I guess.  But bad karma for him.
• more cheerfully - making new friends, at a knitting group in Newburyport that Julia invited me to.  It means so much to me to have found a wonderful community of knitters so quickly. 
• discovering Sudoku puzzles.  I'd heard about these several months ago from a couple different people, and didn't try them until now because I think I knew I'd get hooked.  So now they are taking up all of my knitting (and unpacking) time.  This will pass, right?
• assorted house-related projects.  How do people do this and work at the same time?
• visiting with friends, including Katie, who I've known since 7th grade.  Katie wants to be mentioned on my blog.  So now she has been.  Katie has been the strongest voice in the chorus of "when are you having kids?"  Katie also, for our entire friendship, has always had the urge to clean my house when she comes over.  During her last visit, we were swimming in the pool when she started commenting on all the weeds in our yard.  And how she had a strong urge to pull them.  And then she did.  I'm sure it would have looked very bad to an outsider to see me lying on a floaty thing in the pool as my guest did my yardwork.  But there you have it.  She was apparently enjoying herself.  I told her she could come back and pull more weeds anytime she wanted.

Lots of other projects and events have occured since I last blogged... and it will probably be a while before I blog again.  Time is running out before I go on vacation for a week then start my new job, and there is so much to do!  Really, I don't know how anyone has time to work outside the home when there's so much life to be lived. 

(Actually, I'm quite excited about my new job... more on that another time.)

Back to my busy puzzle-solving schedule.

Home at Last (sort of)

We are officially moved in to our new house.  The amount of unpacking we have to do, and the number of projects we have or want to do, is staggering.  I was not really sad at all leaving New York, mostly excited about our amazing house.  And it is amazing.  But it's also a long way from feeling like home.  I forgot that it will take a while - months, perhaps - before I feel settled.  And not feeling settled feels pretty awful to me, actually.

But we have nice neighbors who made us cookies and blueberry bread.  And a pool (frogs, too, no extra charge).  And I have a month before I start my new job, so I'm doing lots of reading, swimming, and knitting in between setting up the house.

Scott's sock was getting really boring, and I finished the Peacock a week before we left (I'll block it soon and photograph it), so I needed a new project.  Given that I'm not working this month and have lots of things to buy for the house, I couldn't quite justify spending money on yarn for a new project.  But I really was in the mood to start a new St*rmore Fair Isle... I haven't made one of those in a long while.  I resorted to the stash.  It was a good motivation to set up my knitting room.  Oh yes, I have my very own knitting room in my new house.  It's a good excuse not to have kids anytime soon - I might eventually have to give up my room. 

An aside: now that we have this huge house, I am getting inundated with "when are you having kids?" from all sides.  Even at the closing, the previous owner (who has five children) wouldn't let it go.  He insists that I should have five also.  He also wanted to know if we're Republicans.  Clearly, he has no idea who he sold this house to.

Anyway, so I unpacked all my knitting books, and got all my yarn into my room.  I remembered that a few years ago, I stashed yarn to make Boudicca's Braid from Aran Knitting.  Then I couldn't get gauge, so I decided it would become Katherine Howard from Tudor Roses, but I never started that project.  I decided that it really does want to be Boudicca's Braid after all, so I managed to overcome my gauge issues.  This is a fine-gauge sweater with cables in different colors over a dark plum-colored background, and is sure to take a very long time.  Longer than a fair isle, because I won't have the rhythm, especially as I need seperate lengths of yarn for each of the strands of cable.  Here's what I've done in the last couple days:

Okay, that's probably pretty hard to see, since the colors are so dark and I'm rather Photoshop-phobic.  Ah well.  At least you can sort of see what it will become.  And you can see many of the crazy lengths of yarn sticking out from the back.  Scott remarked that it's amazing I can keep them all straight.  (I replied that it's easy - you just knit with the strand that is attached where you need to knit it.)

So that should keep me busy avoiding the housework and unpacking.