Phew.

We live in a fairly small apartment. Today, we had some people over for baby’s not-christening. We managed to fit 14 people, including the celebrated little thing, around our kitchen table, temporarily moved to the living room. It wasn’t exactly quiet…

Anyway, now they’ve all gone except baby’s grandparents who are staying the night. And the apartment is finally clean, most of our stuff is unpacked, and, well, I’m sort of in heaven. I wasn’t this past week, as we were trying to restore the apartment to some kind of working order after all the moving chaos.

So I knit. I may be crazy, but when I’m in panic and Armageddon looms, I knit. It’s the only way I stay sane (and drive the people around me completely mad). The other night I got tired of Forecast and decided to see what my greenish sock yarn would look like when knit. I found myself an old Bernat knitting book and cast on for a cabled sock. (Yes, I know, not the best choice for self-striping or variegated yarn. This sock yarn happens to be both.)

I call it Camouflaged Cable. Do you see it?

Oh, and for anyone who’s interested, this is as far as I got with Forecast before temporarily giving up on it:

I’ve gotten about 1-2″ past the row where you divide arms and body. As usual, the colors are really weird and don’t come close to the dark blue of reality. (Poetic, aren’t I?)

Actually, I think the correct quote from Pride and Prejudice is “A whole camp full of soldiers!” (uttered by Lydia).

Why is there not a single online bookstore in this rotten country that sells this book? Argh! I want it! (And preferably yesterday…)

I’ve had dealings with the Swedish post today. They’re why this is a rotten country. At least today; maybe I’ll think better of them if and when they deliver a certain package to a certain person.

Someone was very interested in his food today. Someone kept jumping up and down in his chair waiting for the spoon to enter his mouth — while jumping up and down. I repeat, jumping up and down. Constantly.

Argh.

I do not want to count the stains on the rug, I really don’t. Fortunately we’re getting it cleaned as soon as we, um, get the time and/or money for it. Or maybe we’ll just get a new one.

Anyhow, what matters is that baby’s full (of Beef Stroganoff) and I’m happy because it’s almost raining and hopefully baby will fall asleep soon so I can knit.

I really hate this weather. Here’s why:

There’s hardly any wind, and it’s so hot and humid you can hardly breathe. Much less knit. Especially when the yarn is a wool/cotton blend (why, oh why, do I knit with wool in July?) and my hands are so — sweaty? not sweaty, but sticky that the yarn sort of clings to my fingers and to the needles and I have to go wash my hands to unstick them before getting back to knitting and stickiness.

I prefer summer when it’s not this humid — I wouldn’t mind it that much if we had some kind of air conditioning at home, but alas, we do not. We got in the car today, rolled back the roof all the way to the… well, all the way, and went shopping, just to get some wind in our hair. (I doubt if anyone’s interested, but if anyone were, they would probably be happy to know that we found The. Cutest. Stroller. for the baby, and it was on sale = really cheap, too!)

Anyway, back to the stuff that really matters: knitting. I’ve managed…

[off to count bobble repeats]

a little more than three repeats on the lovely Forecast. My baby. (Well, not technically, but it will have to do since the real baby is asleep — thank Someone.) Here’s a pretty okay picture to prove it:

I really, really wanted some cookie dough last night, so I made these (but managed not to eat most of them before baking). They turned out absolutely delicious. Chewy in the middle, crispy at the edges… mmmmm. Yum. Just had to tell the world about it.

when I went there the other day (or was it yesterday?) was stitch markers. I thought I’d seen some there earlier, but nope. And Forecast is absolutely impossible to knit without stitch markers, at least for someone as inattentive as yours truly. So I had to make some. By then it was 9 p.m. so I had to make do with what I happened to have at home, which was… some kind of extremely thin elastic thread for making jewelry, and tiny pink beads.

The result was, fortunately, satisfactory. Here’s one of my pink darlings in action:

Pretty okay, isn’t it?

(On a totally different note, but still re: the yarn store — they’ve updated their webpage, which would be great if it weren’t for the fact that it absolutely doesn not work with Firefox. Seriously, who uses IE these days?)

I’ve started on Forecast from Knitty’s Winter 2005 issue. I found some lovely dark blue yarn at a yarn sale yesterday (yarn galore coming up soon, promise) and have now swatched, bought new circulars, cast on, and managed knitting about 1/4″ of the collar last night.

More on this can be found at the KAL I joined for the purpose of actually finishing this project before my hair turns gray. (My first entry here.)

As some of you know, we’ve recently moved to a new apartment. It is slightly smaller than the old one, but has several advantages nonetheless, one of them being that the mail is delivered considerably earlier. At our old place, we would get it anytime from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Now, we usually get it at 10 or 11 a.m.

However, whereas our old mailman would usually bring us even the larger letters/packages and ring the bell for us to come and get them, the new one just leaves a notice for us to pick them up at the local GAS STATION. (Yes, we do have a weird postal system here. There are hardly any post offices anymore.)

Anyway… as I mentioned in my last post, I got one of those notices on Wednesday. I had completely forgotten that my Pal had sent off a package recently, so I was convinced it would be some books I ordered last weekend. It wasn’t.

When I got home, I tried to open the package. I say ‘tried,’ because there was so much tape around the place where I assumed the opening was. Masses of tape. And, of course, the Customs Declaration from which my boyfriend read me the contents before I’d even started with the tape. Argh.

(I know I’m not getting anywhere with this post yet, but have patience!)

I got most of the tape off, not wanting to cut into the envelope for fear of destroying some of its precious content. Here’s what was waiting for me inside (and probably screaming out my name in terror during the horrible PAR AVION ride):

Tissue paper. Lots of tissue paper.

Yarn! Five balls Peruvian Collection Baby Silk in a light green color called (very appropriately) “Peridot”.

More yarn! Two balls Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud in the loveliest of warm browns (”Autumn”). But that wasn’t it:

Two knitting books from 1951 and 1952 (I was practically jumping on the couch when I found these), a tapestry needle set (which I sorely needed), and finally, a 4.5mm circular needle (bamboo!) which I’ve been using to swatch for Forecast. Which is why it isn’t pictured.

I’m so happy! Secret Pal, you made my day. And thank you so much for winding the laceweight into balls! Winding thicker yarn by hand is no problem, but laceweight can be a real pain. And I refuse to spend money on a yarn winder right now.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Pal!

Or so it feels, anyway. I received a really lovely package from my Secret Pal today (more on that later) and was instantly inspired to compose the next package to send my spoilee. Well, that’s where it ended. No idea whatsoever what to send. I mean, I have a few ideas of yarn to get her (okay, so now you know she’s a she, but aren’t about 95% of all SP participants) but, um, that’s basically where it ends right now. Argh.

I just remembered, I’m always like this around Christmas. I can never think of what to get people. I usually rely on last-minute shopping. Argh.

Anyway, I’ve complained about this to my knitting buddy Linster more than once, and she always comes up with great suggestions of what to get my spoilee. Unfortunately I rarely take note of them and in any case feel it’s my duty to come up with ideas of what to send. I really should get over myself.

Well, as you can see, the Knitting Cookie has officially moved. I got so tired of Blogger (I have about zero patience, in general) constantly refusing to upload my pictures, or being unaccessible, etc. that I decided to relocate. I like it!

To celebrate my move, I’ve rediscovered my lovely little camera (well, not exclusively for the purpose of celebration, but it’s turned up anyway) and am therefore including in this, my first post, the following little darling:

It’s Snowdrop!

It’s supposed to have fifteen snowdrop repeats when finished (if I remember correctly), and I’m working on #11 now (I think). Come to think of it, there’s actually more repeats than fifteen, because if there were only fifteen then this shawl would measure about 20 inches from the point to the i-cord edge, and…

[Pause, during which I locate the .pdf pattern and see what I'm talking about.]

Ah. We’re actually talking 23 snowdrops. Much better. (The pattern can be found here, if anyone wants to double-check.) I actually pinned the shawl in progress to the back of the couch (which is just about the only place in our apartment not covered in not-yet-unpacked stuff from the move), and I think it looks pretty good. No doubt a good washing and blocking will make it even more stunning, later.