Salvage

K,

Can we salvage the gloves? That is every dyer's worst nightmare...running out of yarn that you can't redye perfectly. You could retry dying something near the same color as that blue, and if it's close enough but just a tad off shade-wise, you can knit every other row with every other strand. Yes, this would involve ripping out and reknitting some of the fingers, but they are so very lovely Karen! You know how I love the angora.

You mentioned that you thought you should have dyed the purple darker? Just a thought, you might not have been able to easily. Angora doesn't take up dyes extremely well, especially the cooler colors. There's such a halo around the yarn too that makes it all seem a bit lighter as well.

I've been skipping around through different projects lately. Last week I was terribly sick. On Wednesday my temp was up to 101.4, and I swear, my brain melted. I couldn't study, I could hardly move, I couldn't think. At one point I went upstairs around 5 to eat some soup for dinner, heated it up, ate one spoonful, then lay down on the floor for an hour and fell asleep. It wasn't good.

Kris got done with classes on early Thursday and, sweetness that he is, he drove all the way down to take care of me in my infirmity. I can't even express how much I love and appreciate him. He stayed and made me dinner, helped me study, ignored all the mountains of tissues and mucus scattered across the floor and bed, and took care of me the night before my first test of the semester. It was really frustrating because I just had no time to study...I'd been so sick I couldn't even think until Thursday night. Kris stayed and made me breakfast and lunch on Friday, then dropped me off at the school for my test and drove home through the icy rain to Des Moines to visit his parents.

I really do love that man.


I'd put away the purple socks for awhile, but they've got a bit extra length to them, and I've started the second one. However, I've been saving that for class knitting since it's portable, and I missed most of my classes last week.


So while I was at home, I started working on my Ambrosia sweater! I really love doing the sleeves at the same time as knitting the sweater. I think it looks wonderful. It's one of those things where you've just got to trust for awhile that it's going to work until you can really see the results. I have a hard time doing that, so instead I kept comparing it to the blue sweater I'd already made with set in sleeves, just to see if it was working.


It was! The first picture has the few more inches I've put on it since this picture. The sleeves are put on a yarn holder while I continue working down the front and back to finish up the deep V-neck. I think it's looking really lovely. I'm a bit surprised, actually, that it's going so well!


While I was picking up a ticket for a performance by the Turtle Island String Quartet on Saturday, I stopped by the Yarn Shoppe on the other side of town to check out their yarn selection. Wow. I forgot they had so much yarn. So much more than the other place here. And so much nicer people! I don't think I'm the normal customer they get at the other place. They have such a small selection and just a lot of space for classes. I think mostly they sell to a lot of rich doctor's wives who don't work and have a lot of play money. Which is a surprising number of women in this town.


Plymouth Boku, which kind of looks like a cheaper version of Noro. It's softer because it's spun less tightly, but that also means that it does tend to un-spin itself and will just fall apart. You've got to watch it while you're knitting with it.

I've been working with it and the Lamb's Pride Worsted up above. I sent you the pattern I'm working on, and when the mitten is finished, if it looks alright, I might just post it on the blog here!

I'm back in the housing scramble once again. I hate this so much. I'd like to find a place closer to the hospital, and I was going to start looking in February. However, my landlord, who is the mother of two of the girls I live with, told me yesterday that one of the girls has a friend that would like to live there if I'm not, and thus they'd like to know if I'm going to. However, that girl needs to know by Thursday when she has to resign her contract, and thus they want to know by Thursday. However, it wasn't in my contract, and I don't have housing secured yet! So I called about nine places today (there are only about nine places) and managed to find two places available that I'm going to look into. Since it wasn't in my contract, the girl and I are pretty much in the same place. We both need to know if we've got a place that will take us in, except she needs to sign her renewal by Thursday according to her contract, and it wasn't in mine. The girl who's living with me was pressuring me as if I had to let her know, but in all honesty, it's not my responsibility. I'd really like to help out my landlords and roommates out as much as possible, but I have no obligation to do their job or help them find tenants. I'm doing what I can, though. It's just a frustrating situation. I'm thinking the best I can tell them is that I probably will move, and thus the girl can probably not sign her contract on the probability that I won't re-sign mine. Is this appropriate? I don't know.

Frustrating.

I'm going back to knitting and studying.

Hugs,
A