At the hotel, been here since Tuesday. It’s not bad, we have a teeny kitchen, which is nice, and two double beds, which is silly. I’d much rather have another table, as the current kitchen table is hidden under a desktop computer, and my laptop.
Today was a day off for me, which was exciting. I don’t get many of those. Tech week starts soon, which means almost no knitting, blogging, or sleeping time.
I didn’t take pictures of the Roza socks today, I didn’t want a hotel bedspread as the background. Those things all look the same, no matter what hotel.

I’m about halfway up my Dollar and a Half Cardi sleeve. My gauge is a bit small, so I’m making the 36″ size, and it should come out somewhere between the 32″ and the 36″, which is perfect. I also haven’t blocked my swatch (gasp!) because the sleeve is my swatch (double-gasp!) I figure a sleeve doesn’t take terribly long, and if I manage to block it to the size and look I want, I’ve got one of the 5 bits done already.

I’ve half been thinking about taking up podcasting. I know. Scary. I’ve found all sorts of links recently that I like and want to share. As I don’t have a mic, or the know-how (the actual recording and content stuff doesn’t scare me, but what do I do with the file when I’m done? I have no clue) right now, I want to share some links. Maybe I’ll just make the blog more podcast-y, and have sections. This can be my first linksharing bit. I just need to think up a clever name. The Link Menagerie? Possibly.

Knits a Beautiful Life a blog by a fellow Canadian! We’re in the same province even! I’d say ‘a fellow Albertan’, but still consider myself a West Coaster. Tangent aside, she has just finished a project from Fitted Knits that looks very nice. And the website! Beautiful. I wish I knew more about such things. Although, I’m fairly happy with this layout.

Kathryn Ivy another new-ish blog on the block, but this one sprang up with free patterns and a pattern for sale already there! Again, I love the layout of this one, and I love the tabs across the top so you can look at reviews or patterns. I want to review more things.

Pieces of String an online shop, with the BEST price around for Mountain Colours Bearfoot. Yes, I have ordered yarn for the Swedish Heartwarmer Shawl. I’m not entirely sure how the colourwork will be done (stranded? intarsia? a combination?) but I figure I’ll cast on and figure it out from there. That’s how I approach most projects.

CROQ Zine I just heard about this on CraftyPod and I’m so tempted to subscribe. And order the back issues. It’s quite cheap, which is what is tempting me…

Etsy.com. We all know Etsy, but I have just rediscovered my love for it. So many amazing things! How cool is having an old hardcover rebuilt into a journal? I love the inclusion of pages that aren’t blank. And couldn’t you just plotz from the cute of these knitted-then-felted critters? I have to admit… I did buy those patterns. They were too adorable to pass up. I also think that you could practice needle felting on them, for the faces and things. That’s something else I want to try.

Buying from Etsy always makes me feel good, because the money is going to someone like me, just a random person who likes to make things. It’s like spending money on myself!

So this week was the whole moving-to-a-hotel fiasco. I won’t get in to moving day, apart from asking what MOVING company shows up with NO boxes? Yeah, I thought so. But all that aside, the long day, the sitting in the empty house, the problems at check-in (damn tiny credit card limit) etc, Tuesday was stressful and I was kinda late for rehearsal.
Yesterday, we had a nice meal in the restaurant downstairs, and then I went out to my car to get to rehearsal on time this time. As I approach my car in the parking garage, I can see something funny about the driver side door. It doesn’t look quite… closed. True enough, I didn’t slam it hard enough the night before, so the little light inside stayed on until the battery ran out. I turned the key and it didn’t even make a peep. So I waffled about waiting for someone to drive by in this parkade that would actually stop (and it was rush hour so everyone was in a hurry to go sit in traffic) and know how to jump the car.
I talked to my wonderful boy, and he suggested a taxi to rehearsal, followed by bumming a ride home, and he would get his car and jump me (heh) the next day. That seemed better than my waiting idea, so I went and stood outside the hotel to wait for a taxi. In rush hour, it’s hard to get a taxi. They are either (a) full or (b) on the wrong side of the street. But that eventually happened, and me, the one who is supposed to be in charge and on time, straggled in to rehearsal late.
Oh, and did I mention the terrible wind and rain/snow mix that was going on? Yeah.

But in better news, I have a pair of finished Roza socks! I Kitchenered the toe just this very minute. Pictures some time on Saturday. I knew I would finish soon after we moved out, so I brought yarn for the Dollar and a Half cardigan from the same magazine. I’m going to start on that now.

I have a new project that I love. That makes me sigh whenever I look at it.
It’s the Swedish Heart-Warmer Shawl from Handknit Holidays.

So pretty! I was going through my knitting books the other day to relax a bit, and saw it. It didn’t strike me when I first got the book, but now… oh be still my needles!
I really want to make it. Even though I never saw myself as someone who wears triangular shawls, I want this one. And I’ve searched the ‘net, and can’t find anyone who has made it. Most reviews of the book seemed to mention it and say how lovely it is, but I can’t find a finished one.

But that Webs yarn arrived the other day, and so I’ve got all sorts to knit. I think I’ll finish the sock soon, I just need to pick out what project to come after it. Which do I take to the hotel?

Well, I can’t start anything from Victorian Lace. I packed up my craft books tonight, and I know for certain that VL is on the bottom of the box (big books on bottom!). I’m waffling between the Cabled Bandeau or the Dollar and a Half cardi, both from the Spring IK. If I had the book, I’d start on Crinkle (Rowan 39), but I still need to get that pattern.

I swear, that magazine is going to get so battered! I drag it back and forth to work for the socks, even though I only need the pattern for the heels and toes. Soon I’m going to be dragging it around for these sweaters. I’m super-picky about my books staying nice, but I think it is fun going through magazines and seeing notes in the margins, and wear on the pages you look at a lot. Although there are some unfortunate water blotches on the front of this one… the girl looks like she has a mustache.

So, I’m going to be rather busy for the next little while. “Even busier than the past month?!” I hear you exclaim. Yes, even busier.
Because not only do I still have regular job plus rehearsals, we now have to move out of our apartment on Tuesday.
Our apartment had a bit of a flood waaay back in September, and our floor is only getting replaced now. It’s very hard to actually pin floor guy down, so when he actually gave us a concrete date he could start on, we jumped at it. That would be the 18th.
It’s all a bit stressy, because we thought the building’s insurance would cover it, and they do cover the floor-replacing cost, but not the moving-all-our-stuff-out-including-us cost! But our insurance does, except the actual movers. It’s all been very nerve-wracking because we found out about floor guy being able to start late last Thursday, so then it was Good Friday and no one was in their offices, and it wasn’t till late on Monday that we found this insurance stuff out.
Haven’t booked the movers yet, because we don’t know who is paying them. Haven’t booked the hotel yet, because we don’t know when the movers can come.
And then the other night our bath tap started dribbling hot water and we can’t stop it, so there’s a plumber looking into it today and it’s all just so much.

Needless to say, I’m rather stressed, because duders is going to be in our house for a week, and this coming week is the busiest week of all for the show.

I think I may just crack!

I also feel bad because I only just sent of my Knitterly Letter Swap letter to my pal. Sorry pal, I’ve been crazy busy!

SO yes, starting Tuesday night (I think), I’ll be in a hotel for at least a week. The following Monday, the busiest week ever starts. The show opens that Friday, we should be back in our home the Thursday. Oh, and did I mention my mum is coming to visit the day after the show opens?

*whimper*

EDIT: 4 hours later: feeling much better now, movers are booked, hotel is booked, leaky tap is fixed ($400 for a dribbly tap! I should have been a plumber). Now for happy sock knitting.

I don’t really have much knitting to report, still going (slowly) on Roza #2. Remember I forgot my new ball of yarn at home, and needed something to do at work, so I started #2 with the leftovers of sock #1? I managed to get almost all 8″ of leg out of that. Unfortunately, I now have more ends to weave in in my sock. Oh well.

What I’m really posting for, is I saw this shirt on Threadless:

It made me think of sock knitters everywhere. And the movement that I see happening in the crafty community of being more eco-concious and having less of an impact. It’s just a great graphic. And Threadless is just great. There’s so many designs I love. I haven’t actually bought any for me, but I’ve bought my boyfriend a few, and the customer service has never been anything but stellar.

Haven’t done any knitting today, we were organizing and Ikea-ing today.

See, we have a storage room in our apartment. When we were unpacking after we moved, we stuffed boxes in there. You know, the giant box with maybe 10 things rattling around at the bottom, but you just don’t know where to put those things, or what they are for. Yeah. Lots of those boxes. So today, my stellar boyfriend and I dove into the boxes and sorted, and threw away, and gave away, and it was great. He is stellar because he is very sick right now, yet he still did it. There was some motivation other than me though, our wood floor is probably going to be ripped up soon, and as the storage room is the only room without wood floor, we’re going to fill it up with as much stuff as possible. That, and the day after the floor is done is the day my mum arrives. She hasn’t been out here since before we moved in, so it’s got to look great! eek.

Here is the sock, on top of some Gorm:

Hopefully by the end of tomorrow, we will have sock on top of put-together shelves. I’d like that.

Here’s some pictures of my Roza sock. I am actually thinking about blocking this one (I never bothered with my other socks) because the ribbing is so uneven where knit meets purl. I’ve never been able to get ribbing to look neat. Then again, I put my socks through both washer and dryer, so that’ll do the blocking job.

I’m not sure what I think about having a pic of my toes on the internet. I don’t normally wear nail polish either, but I got bored the other evening.

You can see the uneven ribbing best here. I pull and pull and pull on those two stitches to get them as tight as possible so it doesn’t do that, but to no avail. There’s an ‘open-work’ column down the side of the foot too, because of the purl stitch that separates the patterned part from the plain sole part. It was even worse because the purl was the first stitch of a new needle.

I like what the heel did though (loose thread was from my floor, it isn’t part of the yarn)

Everyone has been sharing beautiful spring photos of trees and flowers in bloom, and green grass and blue skies and such. Here’s the tree outside our window:

… and our balcony:

Notice the car (mine!): any car that was parked there overnight was icicled to the street. I went to drive off the other day, but realised my car was attached to the road at at least 20 points by icicles thicker than my thumb. Part of me wanted to just drive off to see what sort of noise it would make, but the sensible part of me went around and kicked them all down before I moved the car.

Nope, no spring here.

I knit the toe of the Roza sock last night, but left the Kitchenering of the toe until this morning when I’d be more awake. I brought the sock to work, finished the toe, wove in the ends, and thought yay! Now I can start on sock #2!

And then I realised that my other skein of yarn is sitting at home, and hasn’t even been wound into a ball yet.

Luckily, the sock didn’t take a whole ball, so I’m starting with the leftovers of the first one. The centre-pull ball was all loose and floppy so I wound it here into just a plain ball. I’ve cast on, but I have just realised that I’m now knitting with the yarn going in the opposite direction than before. I think I’ll leave it and see what it knits up like. If nothing else, it will amuse me for today, then I can rip it when I get home.