The Move Continues

Tonight I sleep in Glendive, Montana.
Yesterday it was Missoula.
Day before that, Seattle.

Yesterday we drove in three different states.
(Washington, Idaho and Montana)
Today we're still in the state we started out in.

Day after tomorrow I'll be in Madison, Wisconsin.
By the end of the month, Winchester, Virginia.

There's not very much knitting going on here.
Mostly I just sit in the moving van and when I get bored of looking at the scenery I sleep. Periodically I take a turn at driving, but I don't tend to last more than a couple hours, so my father's been doing the vast majority of the driving (for which I am very grateful, he's also willing to go faster than I am in a 16' van with car trailer attached).

The project in my bag is a pair of socks, but I haven't done more than a double handful of rows on it since we started.
What I am doing is breathing.

(Oh, and if you want to know my new mailing address, drop me a comment with your email (or email me yourself) and I'll be happy to send it your way)

The Move Has Begun

Well, my father and I left Gilroy this morning to drive to Nevada.
This means we arrived at Grandmother's house mid-afternoon and had the rest of the day to pack stuff up in the house and get it into the car.
We are, actually mostly done and will be headed north to Seattle tomorrow morning.

Knitting is largely at a standstill.
I finished my grey feather and fan lace shawl last Monday while taking 3 days to just sit at a friend's house.
My acid green wristies needed to have another couple inches ripped out. (I'd put the thumb hole up too far and so the second one was obviously longer than the first one).
A suprise present has been started and finished and now only needs its ends woven in before it gets given away when I'm in Seattle.
And really that's about it.
Oh, there's half a sock that I carry around in my purse. I do a round or two on it every couple days, but it's not growing quickly enough to make me happy.

It would grow faster if I knit more.
But that's true of all my projects.

Belated thanks for everything

"So long and thanks for all the fish" ??

It's been quite a ride in my world and through it all I've had packages coming in (and going out) with nary a word on my blog.

Things have settled down enough that I have time to write my thank you posts and I've decided to put them all up in one humongous post so that your feeds are not cluttered with handfuls upon overflowing handfuls of me describing other people's generosity.

(My deepest apologies if I mis-attribute any of the gifts I've received, I didn't have the spare processing power required to keep the packages from intermingling a bit while they were sitting together "over there" waiting for things to calm down enough for them to get photographed. Please write me a note if the photo or description of your package is missing anything and I will make notations of my errata... If any of the chocolate is mis-attributed, there will be no new pictures, I've eaten it all. It was yummy!)

I believe that these are being put up in the order they arrived. I may be wrong.

This is the last package from my SP7 spoiler. I had hoped to link to her blog in this post as I finally got to know who she is, but the note she sent with this lovely package is packed and in another state, so I can't attribute it now. (if you're still following my blog, would you pipe up and let me know who you are again?... Yay, she did. My wonderful spoiler was Marla.)



I adored the blue book, it's a journal full of writing prompts so much that I sent a copy of it off to my SP8 recipient. This may be too much information, but hey, I'm not too worried about it at the moment. The grey yarn is lovely, it's a small farm's product and I'm really looking forward to working it up into a shawl of some sort. Speaking of shawls, the green speckledly background fabric is a lovely little handknit capelet. The envelope on top of it contains piggy stitch-markers (the big piggies now have grandpiggies... yay... more piggies... giggle...). And the card with the puppy pile on it is just too cute.

The second package to arrive looked like this:



And I knew that my Sock Savior had come through for me. Poor Colleen, as a result of my life blowing up in my face, was forced to wait for more than a month to get any public acknowledgement of how fabulous her socks actually are. I'm very sorry that I dropped off the face of the planet so shortly after receiving your package. I wish I'd dealt with things differently, particularly since I could have saved you the worry that your beautiful socks got lost in the mail and would never arrive.

This is what the box contained: A gorgeous pair of Pomatomus socks, and a whole bunch of fabulous chocolates. (they're all long gone by now... I tend to eat way too much chocolate when I'm stressed and life has been nothing but stressful since the weekend of my birthday)


Here they are on. They're wonderfully comfortable. Par for the course for handknit socks, they'll only fit inside one of my pairs of shoes, but I get to see them more often when I wear them around the house so I'm definitely not complaining. (I have wide feet. Handknit socks rarely fit in my shoes...)



And a close-up of the beautiful colors and stitch patterning. Thank you, Colleen!



Next up is a wee thank you giftieee from my SP7 spoiler. Heather was a joy to spoil, very appreciative of the koigu I chose to make the backbone of each of her packages.

And look what she sent me as a thank you. It's a drawstring project bag made of fabric that says "Creative Hands Touch Hearts" all over it! And a pack of knitter's notecards. Wheee, I am blessed.



That same week I got a package from my SP8 with two skeins of lorna's sock yarn in a heavier weight than I've seen before. (I believe it's Shepherd Sport, but as it's been packed for the now occuring move, I'm not quite certain)

The colors remind me of when I was a kid, I'm really looking forward to knitting some cozy house socks out of this yarn. There's just no way that a heavier yarn will play well with both my feet and shoes and I like the yarn too much to use it to knit for someone else. These socks are going to be mine!
Also included in the package were some lovely stitchmarkers with a different glass bead on each marker and two pots of jam that I can't wait to get into once I and my new kitchen are in the same state.



My Project Spectrum Swap package for May was fabulous to find in my mailbox. There was a lovely green skein of yarn, almost solid but not quite so you can tell that it was hand-dyed, but are still free to use a complicated stitch pattern without competing too much with the colors. An odd little leather basket that I think may be destined to be a catch all by my front door. You know, where keys go to fraternize with odd bits of change and pocket scraps... that basket. Doesn't everybody have one?
The chocolate bars were both in green packaging (and they were both quite delicious as well...)
And the manatee card and bar of soap completed a lovely package perfectly.



My last package was unremarkable in its exterior wrapping, but the tissue paper inside was so cute that it deserves a picture all of its own.



Mia sent me two skeins of Regia sock yarn. I didn't know they made a wool/bamboo blend, but apparently they do and the colors are just beautiful.



The last suprise in my mailbox that week came from the Peacock. She sent me a May postcard that arrived right at the end of the month. Isn't it fabulous in all its sparkly chartreuseness? Thus far I've been unable to make up my mind about whether the embroidery motif is a flower or a peacock's feather. I'm happy with either interpretation, and find it quite amusing that I can't decide.



And that's all for now. (I hope... again, if I've missed you, please ping me and let me know... no oversight is intentional)

At some point in the month of June I mailed and received blue yarn for the Project Spectrum yarn swap. I don't have pictures of the yarn I received... and I'm not going to be able to get any any time soon, either. Bother...

Also at some point in the month of June I received a ball of blue and purple yarn as a prize for naming someone's knitting/stash room The Stitchery. Unfortunately I don't remember who that was, so I've emailed her to ask for a reminder on where to find her blog. I've already cast on that pair of socks, but don't have any pictures.

Again, thank you all for your patience...

Bureaucratic Magic

Yesterday I was waiting with a friend for some prescriptions at a pharmacy particularly known for its bureaucratic nature and he told me, "they said 30 to 45 minutes, so in reality it could be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half."
We talked about running some errands and coming back later, but I thought that sounded like too much running around. So we settled into our chairs to read, knit and wait. I was starting my second fetching handwarmer and mid-way through the second cable row I realized that I'd forgotten to reverse the direction of the cables.
My friend patted my head and I tore back the 5 or so rows that were required to get back to the first cable row. No sooner than I'd turned my knitting into a pile of yarn in my lap did his name come up on the message board.
I'd committed to waiting for a while and they were done... magic!
And he had to wait for me for a bit as I could not just tuck the tangle of yarn into my bag.

Weekly posting

I write this post in order to meet my obligation to post weekly.
(though I suppose only technically... it's not like there's been any knitting content for more than a month)

Hey, I do have some knitting content that I can be happy about.
I saw the new knitty on my last day working at the yarn shop, so I bought myself 2 balls of acid green cashsoft to make myself a fetching pair of handwarmers. I'm almost completely done with the first one and I'm glad I bought two balls as I decided to make them longer before the thumb than the pattern called for.

Good night.