Scarf Exchange

I've just joined the Scarf Exchange and I'm so very excited! This will give me an opportunity to knit for someone else specific for a change. I'm already pouring over patterns, and yarns, and Oh JOY!

In other news, the Giant Desk from My Childhood has been moved out of the office in the basement, and transported to school. "Why?" you may ask. Well, for several reasons. First of all, it's a jeezley huge piece of furniture in a teensy weensy room. Not sensible that, especially since we have 2 laptops, and no longer use the desktop except as backup.

Secondly, I didn't want to get rid of it. I got that desk when I was about 8. It is the size of a single bed, with drawers and a middle drawer, and pull out extra work surfaces, and it help everything in the universe til I was 13. Then we moved and, horror of horrors, couldn't get it up the stairs. My parents sold it, and bought me a tiny desk, one suitable for a young lady. My packrat tendencies with shifted to beneath the bed and in the closet.

Fast forward almost 10 years, and I find my desk up for sale on an intraweb site at work. $80 delivers the hardwood heaven to my apartment, where my darling wife (then my darling fiancee) raises an eyebrow and tolerates it for my sake. She tolerates it through the move to the house here, but puts her foot down with regards to it being in the upstairs livingroom. Down the stairs the three strapping young men take my desk, and, with much groaning and manuevering, they wiggle it into the tiniest of the three bedrooms, where it takes up fully half the space.

So I'm a little attached. Selling it wasn't an option that my wife would entertain (although I think that was because she was scared I'd spend another 10 years looking for its replacement). So she suggested moving it to school. To my classroom.

That's right, dear readers, I have my very own classroom. Four years of lugging everything I own around on my back (because teachers don't _get_ lockers, my dears, they have classrooms, doncha know), and I've received a home base. Happy Happy Knitter me!

Now I'm a-looking for posters and doodads and paper thingies and all the stuff that makes a classroom interesting for the kids. And in the front of it all, firmly marking my territory as mine, and not to be trifled with, will be my huge solid imposing wooden desk.

After all, they can't make me change rooms if the desk is there, right?

So dear wife and I moved the desk up the stairs. Mental note- if it takes 3 strapping lads 20 minutes to move something down some tight stairs, then 2 women should likely not try to move it back up. Or so we discovered, once we'd trapped my wife on the stairs, and me at the bottom.

Sheer stubborn got that desk up the stairs. I have a bruise across my chest where I balanced the entire weight of it for 3 minutes while my wife got her wind back. SHE has a bruised foot where she balanced it accidentally whilst losing said wind in a rather audible gasp. The wall may have acquired a gouge or two in the paint, but I'm not going to pay attention to those yet. After an hour, the desk was up.

The gentleman hired to take it to the school happens to work as a custodian there too. He's decided that it's my room - he's never moving the desk again.

As for myself - I have a room free now, so we're moving the loom and part of the stash and the bookshelves into it, and we shall have a media/knitting room and a library/weaving room.

New knitting, new furniture arrangement, and a classroom to call my own. I'm happy enough I shall go knit a sock.

(Nope, that's not done yet...but it will be. I have Faith!)

In Knitting News

Well, socks and I are still not best friends. I have about 4 inches completed on My First Real Sock. MFRS is so called because I've done four pairs of Fuzzy Feet from Knitty, but have yet to manage to focus on a pair of real socks long enough to finish.

Instead, I cast on for the Faroese Peaks shawl from Knitpicks. I'm using their yarn in the Leprecaun colourway. It's yummy - soft and doesn't split. The variagation is pooling a little, but not badly. Interestingly enough, it seems to be one of the overlooked patterns. Everyone's enamoured with Adamus, but I'm enjoying the simple garter stitch parts.

I have, however, found that the only way I seem to be able to knit lace is doubled. That is to say, I knit a row, count the stitches and yarn overs to make sure it's correct. Knit the locking row (plain garter stitch that locks the lace together) while counting the stitches again from paranoia. Knit most of the rest of the next row of lace before discovering that I have miscounted. Tink two rows. Reknit and achieve perfection. Move on to the next row. Lather rinse repeat.

Nevertheless, I have finished the first chart of the pattern! Picture will come as soon as I figure out how to post the blasted things again.

As for the job....I'm teaching knitting at Yarn Forward! Yes, yes, I know, after that last paragraph I wouldn't hire me either, but honestly I can teach. There are over 150 teenagers who prove that. My DW will be teaching tatting too, so we're both hired by a yarn store. Not just A yarn store, but OUR yarn store, the one we love and cherish.

Louise joked that she should pay us in gift certificates. I think she was surprised when we not only agreed, but begged her to do so. That would solve our overspending on yarn habit. Well, it would hide it, truthfully, since money not coming into the house in cash needn't be added to the budget.

So, a house, a job in a yarn store, and hidden money. I'm a happy happy knitter.

Home Ownership

We bought our house!

One year ago, surfing house sites and dreaming, I clicked on a rent-to-own ad. It was for a townhouse, 3 bedrooms and a fireplace, near my parents and far from the rapidly disintegrating hellhole of an apartment that we were living in.

The lady who was selling offered us a deal - we'd pay rent for a year, and a portion of each month's rent would be counted as downpayment. The rent would equal what a mortgage payment would be, and at the end of the year, we'd have paid a total of 5% down.

On Monday, we signed the final papers to shift ownership from her to us. Perfect. No moving. No set up fees for phone, cable, internet, electricity, etc. Just sign the papers and BINGO you're a landowner.

*looks around shiftily* And there was knitting. A lot of it. And a knitting job.

But I'll tell you all about that tomorrow.