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Saturday, May 05, 2007

Luna Moth - 1st Repeat

I'm still not over losing the house on Friday. I think we were just too emotionally attached to the house. I was already moving in furniture and buying furnishings for the house in my mind. Now I have to mentally move all that stuff out of the house. Sigh...

Still haven't come to terms with how much our offer was -- it was beyond reason, it was just completely insane -- and how it was insufficient to get the house. Sigh...

Tired. Cranky. What little "veg" time we had before has now been whittled down to nearly non-existent as we spend much of our free time searching for houses, going to open houses, reading disclosure packets, and discussing whether we should make an offer on a house. And I'm trying to prepare myself for Monday & Tuesday when DH has all-day off-site managerial meeting ... which means longs day for both of us.

I have lots of email to respond to, but haven't had the energy to go through them all. Haven't had the will power to pay bills either. Always falling behind with reading blogs and forums. Have lots to blog about but lack the attention span to sit down and type it all. I do much of my blogging in my head (usually while driving or lying awake due to insomnia), unfortunately much of it doesn't make it to my blog. Always want to knit, but usually too tired to concentrate especially when it is a lacy project. Not even doing the "easy" knits in the car, not even during our hour long drive to/from the city where we're looking for a house. I usually drive there. DH sometimes drives back. You'd think that I'd be able to knit during the drive home but I have a hard time concentrating on knitting when DH is tired and swerving all over his lane. Yeah, he lacks the driving stamina that his dad has. So I can't knit while I'm worried about his driving. Lately I've been driving home too... so I'm tired from that and still not getting any knitting done. That's not to say that I don't get tired during our trips. I'm plenty tired. I just have better driving stamina when I'm tired. So DH usually gets a mini nap during the drive in both directions.

We looked at some houses today, and we'll probably drive back down there tomorrow to look at a house again. I already feel like my entire weekend is gone. I can't believe I've even managed to do 2 loads of laundry (plus a few other minor chores) so far...

On the upside, our Russian neighbor's downstairs tenants have moved out which means their car isn't crowding our driveway and we don't have cigarette butts in front of our house. There's one thing I never understood. They park their car on the street blocking the Russian neighbor's driveway and the bit of curb between our two driveways. Now if they're blocking their driveway anyways, why not block more of their driveway so they don't have to crowd into our driveway? It was kinda tricky for me to get in and out at times, especially when I was crowded from our Chinese neighbor's side. The parking space between us and our Chinese neighbor is very large. I never could understand why most people (even compact cars) couldn't center themselves; they usually tended to crowd one end or the other. The cigarette butts aren't really the tenants fault. Our Russian neighbor likes to hose down her sidewalk, and she tends to use the water to push debris (leaves, cigarette butts, etc) onto the sidewalk in front of our house. It's rather annoying.





I finally cast on for my Luna Moth Shawl for the Elann Shawl KAL. I decided to go with worsted weight yarn for a better chance of finishing this project. This will be my biggest knitting project yet! I'm so excited and I have to thank Lisa for organizing the KAL which gave me that little boost I needed to get started. Gosh, I do hope I can finish this one! It's certainly not my first attempt at a shawl ... remember my Flower Basket Shawl? That was a pathetic attempt. That one was started with fingerling weight Baby Cashmere. Definitely a bad choice for a first shawl. And of course having a newborn didn't help (I was breastfeeding around the clock during M's first year and way too tired for something requiring so much concentration).

My shawl doesn't look like much so far. That's what the first 34 rows looks like. Kinda looks like wet cabbage, and I can't quite see the pattern yet. I'm using Highland Wool in Red Maple. This is the first time working with the yarn and I can see why people love it. It feels really good in my hands.

The pattern calls for US9 (5.5 mm) needles which I don't have. I have a pair of 36" (91 cm) US10 (6 mm) and that seems to be working out OK.

I placed markers around the center K1. I am just using yarn bits as my markers here. I have a theory that my knit through ring marker problem was related to placing markers adjacent to a YO stitch. This happened to me twice with my Flower Basket Shawl and I had to cut the plastic rings to free the marker from my knitting.


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4 stitch(es):

Anonymous said...

In a pinch you can use paperclips for stitch markers and you can always unbend them if you need to :)

Good luck with the house hunting!

Joan said...

Poor Marie! The househunting must be so stressful. I had no idea that was Red Maple, I am dying to do a Wool Peddler's Shawl in Red Maple but missed out on the color again this season. Oh well.
I am on my 7th or so repeat on Luna and would like do a few more but pattern fatique is getting to me.

junior_goddess said...

Marie-get with me off line...do YOU have a realtor that works for YOU?? Might be able to put you in touch with someone. It's betsyatvallettakafedotcom. I come from a long line of people who underbid, and was shocked the first time I heard about going OVER the price in SFO.

B

Anonymous said...

Marie,
I didn't know you were in the midst of house-hunting H(rhymes with bell)! You have my sympathies. Last and only time we went thru it I was 8 months pregnant and DH was desperate to get a house. Not much of a bargaining chip. Hang in there, the right house will come. Your Luna's looking good! I checked my Red Maple; I do have a ball and a half of leftover Red Maple if you want/need it.