Jeans and Sneakers

So I went to the recital yesterday, and had a good time. My brother in law was really good, and so were some of the other people who preformed.

Classical guitars yeild very beautiful music. I didn’t know that the proper way to play was propping your foot up on that little stand!! I was so confused when they brought that out. Oh well. It was a good time, and the teacher was very cool.

Afterwards, we all (everyone who was in the recital, the teacher, another woman named Sue, and my sister and I,) went to this Korean restaurant for dinner. I had no idea what to expect. I found out I don’t like Korean food. Lol, at least what we had. I tried a little kimchee, some weird vermicelli rice noodles my sister had, and I got some dish in a sizzling stone bowl that had mountain vegetables and spinach over sticky rice with tofu. . . I thought it’d have sauce, but it didn’t, and I wasn’t a huge fan. At least I tried it though.

Then we went back to my sister’s apartment, we were going to go out and karaoke, but it was getting late, and I just wanted to go home, so I did.

But I got lots of compliments on my socks!

Yay for making matching socks!! I was so pleased with how the stripes came out. The pattern was good, very simple, although I must be stupid, because I flew through the first sock and had absolutely no problems understanding the pattern. Then I took a break from them and did my friend’s socks, and when I came back to do the second one, I lost intelligence somewhere around the heel. I don’t know what happened, but I wasn’t sure (even though I was kind of copying the first sock at that point too) how many rows the pattern said to make the heel flap, and even now, I think I may have done the first sock wrong, and consequently, the second sock wrong as well. But I think that if I did it the way the pattern called for, (to knit as many rows in the heel as were sitches in the heel flap), the heel would have been ridiculously long.

I think the heel is perfect though. I only made the heel flap as long as half the stitches on the heel flap. But you’ll also notice, that I didn’t come out with the same number of decreases on both socks, which means I picked up a different amount of stitches along the side of the flap, even though the flaps have the same number of rows in them.

?!? I have no idea either. The stripes still ended up matching though. Which was all I was really concerned about. And they look so awesome!! I was worried that I had made the ankle cuff too short to look good, but they are perfect, and look really cute with my sneakers!

See! (Please excuse my dirty kitchen floor. My roomate has not completely moved out yet, and thus, I haven’t cleaned my house yet.)

I’m wearing them today with a skirt, (a denim one though, don’t worry, the jeans and sneakers title is preserved!) and my new sneakers that I bought last year but never wore. They look awesome! *Pats herself on the back for a pair well knit*.

Ok, enough gloating. On to further business.

Tomorrow I’ll get the birch pattern, and I’ll have to immerse myself in it. (And have no excuse to continue to ignore Sonnet, which I haven’t forgotten about, but haven’t picked up either.) So hopefully I won’t lose my marbles. I’m both excited and worried about working that pattern. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.

In the mean time, I’ve gotten this much done of my first jaywalker.

Isn’t it beautiful!? The colors remind me of a ripe apple. I have a feeling I might slip and start calling these apple jacks. I guess I’ve fallen for Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn too. And metal dpn’s. It’s so nice to not have to fight your needles to pull the yarn over to the other side. . .and a bit tricky at times to get the yarn to not leap off the tip of your needles! But I’m enjoying it. It’s a shame I’ll have to stop just about here to start really working on the Mother’s Day presents. Oh well, I’ll come back to them and have a ball!

Check out the green of this yarn. I absolutely love this color way. Even if it doesn’t come out in stripes. And it was so much fun to roll up on my ball winder and finally get to use my swift!
Oh. Speaking of stripes. I *MAY* have purchased some superwash self striping sock yarn for my mom and I yesterday before I left the house. :-O My mom was surprised to hear that I can knit socks that are thin enough to fit into shoes and wear in the summer (she’s going to see my Karen’s socks today, I’m going to stop by and say hello), and I thought it would be great if I could make her a pair of simple socks in great purple stripes, since purple is her favorite color. I might make her jaywalkers. It depends on how well I take to the pattern, and also, they will not get started until after Mother’s Day and after I finish MY jaywalkers. The yarn I bought for me was a colorway I was actually thinking of trying to dye myself. So since here it was, superwash and already dyed, I figured I’d buy it, and if I really liked it, I could dye some more of my own. Which led me to add some superwash undyed sock yarn to my order. !!! I know, so bad, but it was at a great price!!

And really quick about the roomate situation. . . here it is, the last day of April, and he’s just started to REALLY start moving stuff. Yesterday he told me that he’d be back and forth all this coming week to move things. I got pretty pissed at that. We told him a month and a half ago that he had until May 1st to be out. Not that he had to start moving out May 1st. >:[ I’ve started to think, just so long as he gets out, ever, I’ll be alright. I dunno though. Whatever.
I have to get ready to go, so I’m gonna end here. More soon though!

I’ve finished Karen’s Basic Socks.  :]  They are comfy!!  I won’t have any pics until tomorrow, since it’s 1:30 am and I want to shower and go to bed, but tomorrow I’ll be showing them off and hauling around my camera, so I’ll take pics!!

I also cast on a few stitches for the jaywalkers.  I was all worried because I knew I’d finish these socks tonight, and since my pattern is on it’s way (but won’t get here until Monday now,) I won’t be able to start birch yet.  I was considering starting the hat but I knew that it might not be as portable as socks.  I totally forgot that I was going to make these.  So they’ll be accompanying me on the train tomorrow to Manhattan.  I’m going to my brother-in-law’s recital, and it should be a good time.  But it’s likely I’ll get there early, and it’ll be good to have something to work on.  :]

On that note, I’m going to shower and go to bed.  More tomorrow, I promise.

Teaser: The roomate started moving today and isn’t home yet.  It’s quite possible he’s not coming home tonight.  We threw out all of his rotting food from the fridge and cabinets.  :]  I feel a lot better already. 

I was all excited because I was going to go to the Knit Group tonight. But the store is closed until May 1. Karen’s mom died, and Karen went out to the mid west to be with the rest of her family. I hope she’s ok.

In less depressing news. . .my mom’s yarn came!! YAY!!!

Even Rob commented on how soft it was when he held it. It’s so pretty!! I’m just hoping I can knit with it and not make a horrible mess.

You want to hear something absolutely stupid though? The yarn came, but the pattern’s on backorder. >:[ They didn't charge me for it, so that's good, I called and cancelled that item, (they were closed, and I left a message, so hopefully they won't like, get it in tomorrow and charge me.) and ordered it from Yarn Market. It's more expensive there, but I know they send me a tracking number when they send it out. Also, the site said they have it in stock.

If you weren't already in love, here's a closeup. I tried to capture the color, but it's difficult. On three different yarn sites, the yarn was three different colors. Now I can understand why. It's darker than I thought it would be, but it's still absolutely lovely. I hope my mom loves it.

Now if only I could get my hands on the pattern, I'd start it! I'm so apprehensive about this project, it's a first for so many things, my first shawl, my first lace, my first mohair, my first circular needles, my first gift to my mom. . . I hope it comes out alright. I'm just not going to worry about it, because my first project ever was a lot of firsts too, and that came out great!

Work was better today. I had more stuff to do. I think my boss and the other guys were just pissy because they were having problems with our site's ranking. Today they were joking with me and it was much better.

I came home today and made pancakes and sausages. It was so fricken good, my whole house still smells like sausages and every time I open the bedroom door, it's like this wonderful wafted smell of yummy sausages and my mouth waters. :]

An update on the roomate situation, he’s still not out yet, but he told Rob that Friday will probably be his last night here. YAY!

I’m going to finish that sock (Karen’s) soon, I made it to just before the heel last night, and once I finish this post I’m going to hop back on it. Actually I think I’ll do that now!

Edit: Oh yeah!!  I took this picture from my back deck when I went out to take pictures of my yarn:

Especially me actually liking a job I’m working at. Maybe after awhile I just go looking for things to get mad at. I like to think that every time I get a new job, I honestly try my best to do good and be hardworking and everything. . .but there always comes a point in every job I’ve had where things just take a turn for the worst and never turn back around. It may very well be too early to decide if I’m going to hate this job forever. But I know that although I’m happy with the money and it not taking me any more than 15 minutes in really heavy traffic to get home, I’m not liking it so much anymore.

Little things keep happening, and I swear that someone’s undoing my work. I don’t want to go into it. It makes me angry. So I won’t talk about it, and when it happens, I’ll just fix the issue, take the blame if that’s what it takes, and keep trying. I’m seriously wondering if this job will be the first I’ll ever get fired from, or if this is some kind of test to see if I’ll blow up if someone keeps undoing what I know I’ve done.

Anyway. I finished Rob’s washcloth last night. It’s just an 11″ square of knitted natural colored cotton, so I figured it didn’t really warrant a picture. It’s not the most fantastic thing I’ll make for Rob by far, (last night he asked me for gloves. YAY!) it was something practical, so I didn’t even put it on my progress bar.

But I had to do it. I wanted to make it for him, but I’ve got so many other projects on my plate right now, I was anxious to get to some of the more exciting ones. If that makes me a bad girlfriend then I suck. But it’s done now, and instead of sticking to the plan and working on Sonnet. . . I started the second of Karen’s Basic Socks. It’s been bugging me ever since I abandoned finished sock #1 to make my friend’s socks that I didn’t complete the pair. So I cast on today, and I got a teeny little bit done. I’m going to knit it until bed time.

I wrote to my aunt two nights ago to ask her if she’d ever been to The Yarn Tree before. She wrote back saying that she has, and also that she wants to go with me to the Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck with me in the fall. !!! Holy crap did I forget all about it!! The big one out west is this coming weekend I think. . .no wait. . .two weekends from now, and there’s no way I can make that one, but I wanted to go to the closer one. And it’s a good thing she reminded me, as I hadn’t thought about making reservations for lodging or anything! This is a pretty big event in NY although some people wouldn’t think it, and I had a hard time looking for a place with availability last night as it was. I was looking for a bed and breakfast, since I once worked a job that required me to live in various hotels around the state for a year, I’m hotel’ed out. Every room looks the same, and I just hate it. So I managed to find a nice b&b that I think has availability. I emailed but haven’t gotten a response back yet. Hopefully I can reserve a room and have the yummy sounding breakfast the website described.

Rob was liking the idea of staying at a b&b (did you think I’d leave him at home? lol, I miss him when I go to work!), but wasn’t too thrilled about the festival itself until I told him about the sheepherding trials. Now he’s mildly interested. :] I told him to bring his PSP. And the extra battery.

I’m off to knit!

Edit:  I forgot to say that I’m pretty pissed because I ordered yarn from a website whose name I’ll not mention because I’m mad, and though they sent me an order confirmation, they did *not* yet charge my card for the order, or give me any clue as to when the order will ship or how long it will take to get here.  How spoiled of an internet shopper am I?  Well, spoiled or not, this yarn is for my mom’s mother’s day gift, and I’m going to need all the time with it I can get I think, so I’m pretty mad.  In their defense, I called the 800 number about half an hour ago, and the message said that they were on spring break for a week the 15th-19th, so they’re probably catching up with all of their orders.  What a PITA.

I don’t know why.  Things are bothering me more than they usually do.  I especially feel like no one is listening to me today.  Since that’s the case, I’m ending this post, in the event that I’m right.

So. The Two-Toed Socks are done. First, the pics, then the explanation. Sorry for the low lighting, it’s the best I could do.

The pattern itself is clever. It’s knit from the top down, and when you get to where you want to place the heel, you knit a piece of waste yarn on half of the tube, then go back to your main yarn, and knit over it, and continue the tube all the way down to the toe. Knit the toe, and come back to the waste yarn. I found if you pick up the stitches before taking out the waste yarn, it’s less stressful, since there’s no danger of dropping stitches. That’s a good thing. Take out the waste yarn and knit another toe. Fabulous. Though, I had issues. At the corners of teh heels, there were huge holes that I had to sew up afterwards. That combined with the socks being knitted in two different colors, left too many ends to weave in at the end for my taste. I never know where to put the stupid things, and they almost always end up poking up somewhere on the RIGHT side of the fabric. :[

Here’re some shots of the socks in action. Since they’re gift socks, I was wearing socks under them. Also, keep in mind that these are socks for a dude, so they’re huge on my feet.

I don’t think I’ll be knitting another pair of these. It was a good learning experience, but as the note I wrote to my friend will tell you, I believe these socks are a sub-par example of my knitting skills. I know that doesn’t really make sense, because if I were a fantastic knitter, I could make this pattern work and rock. But I’m not happy with how they came out, and I’m kind of embarassed to send these to him. I promised him if he doesn’t like them that I’ll make him a much better pair out of regular sock wool.

At least they look like socks though. I suppose things could be worse. I hope the color matches his shirt. These pictures really don’t do it justice, it’s a beautiful dark mellow blue color. I have plenty of this color (and the black, and the horrible turquoise that was originally purchased) left over. I have no idea what I’ll do with it though, I don’t especially like this yarn. I’m sure there’s worse out there, but I wasn’t impressed. It was hard on my hands and right in the middle of the second black ball, they’d knotted it together. I mean, really, come on now, does this happen often? That a yarn manufacturer comes to the end of some unfathomably long strand of yarn in the middle of a ball, and they just tie on a new strand so that they can finish out the ball? Do they realize that that leaves a little knot RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY KNITTING?! What the hell is wrong with these people? I digress. But it’s wrong.

Ok, on to other business. I’ve come to a couple of decisions late this week. First and foremost, I’ve decided that I will not buy myself a new camera or a spinning wheel until I’ve paid off my debt. There’s not that much of it left, and with this job, I can easily pay it off by the end of the year. I’ve let it drag out for far too long, and I’d like it gone, so that when I do make purchases for myself, I no longer feel guilty because I’m spending money that could be going towards my debt. This is ridiculous. I’ll get the debt gone, and then I can buy whatever my little heart desires. So there.

There is a little clause to that though. I will still allow myself to occasionally buy yarn. I mean, it might seem like a lot to spend at the time (and not always, a lot of the time I find deals on yarn, or just get acrylic cause I <3 my washing machine.) but yarn keeps me busy for months. Seriously. I can take my time with my projects, and actually enjoy them, or I could rush through some of them, but still, that’s spending valuable time making something with my own two hands, that I could otherwise be spending looking at things that I shouldn’t be buying and contemplating buying them.

Which brings me to my next point of business. Now that my friend’s socks are done, I had a whole bunch of things I wanted to start on. I wanted to finish the pair of Karen’s socks that I started right before my friend decided he wanted socks. I wanted to start on the hat from the latest Knitty that I’m coveting. I wanted to start on the Jaywalkers that I’m planning to use my unique skein of Cherry Tree Hill yarn for. I wanted to make socks for Rob, and I wanted to finish a washcloth I started for him last night (I needed a small change. Size 7 needles totally feel weird after knitting on Size 4’s for so long!). I also wanted to finish, sometime before her birthday, the sweater I’m making for Rob’s Mom. AND. . .I’ve been searching for a suitable project to make for my Mom. I knew whatever I made her had to be really nice. I finally decided yesterday that I was going to make her a Birch Shawl from Rowan 34. I bought that issue and some Kidsilk Haze in a light purple color. . .my mom’s fav.

But an email from Knit Picks this morning changed all that. Guess what I forgot existed? Mother’s Day. Holy crap. Now, not only do I feel the need to finish Rob’s Mom’s sweater by May 14th, I also need to make this shawl. Now, I’m kind of lucky, because this shawl is gorgeous, and everyone says it’s really simple. My first attempt at lace. . .on a deadline. I must seriously have some head issues. So, I think I’ll be working exclusively on those two projects for the next three weeks.

I finished His Dark Materials!! How amazingly satisfying those books were! They definitely made me feel as if I knew the characters personally, and when I wasn’t reading, I found myself frequently thinking about them, and the story. I don’t think I’ll be picking up another book for awhile, I’ve got deadlines after all.

I’ve got other things I’d like to mention, but this post is becoming epic length, and I think I should end it. (That and it’s 2 am. We’re supposed to get up “early” tomorrow to go see Silent Hill before we go to dinner at Rob’s Mom’s.)

Oh! But one quick thing before I’m done. The roomate didn’t move out today. At first this afternoon he said just before Rob went out to start helping him with his things into the Bronco, “You guys know this isn’t like, my last night here, right? I’m going to do it gradually.” Then he and Rob decided that they’d have to make too many trips using just Rob’s Bronco II, so the roomate would just wait and move out during the week with his relative’s big truck. Damnit. I can’t wait until he’s just gone. I cooked dinner tonight and had to work around the filth. Rob made it pretty apparrent that he wasn’t very happy with the roomate either, to the point where I think the roomate actually started to notice, which he usually doesn’t. He’ll pretend he does, but he doesn’t really care. But today, he seemed stung that Rob had so much pent up anger towards him. I just laughed.

Sorry, I usually pass these up, but this one was about BOOKS!!

Book Meme!
1. Copy & paste.
2. Bold the ones you’ve read.
3. Add four recent reads to the end.
4. Tag!

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) - J.K. Rowling
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter 5) - J.K. Rowling
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Book 1) - J.K. Rowling
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2) - J.K. Rowling
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Ender’s Game (The Ender Saga) - Orson Scott Card
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Unberable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Hey Nostradamus! - Douglas Coupland
The Nature of Blood - Caryl Phillips
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules -Ed. David Sedaris

Now I feel as if I’d hardly read anything. . . but among good books not on that list that I have read, is just about everything by Stephen King (but not absolutely everything), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, Jurassic Park and Sphere by Michael Chriton, Interview With a Vampire by Anne Rice, The Song of the Lioness quartet and The Circle of Magic quartet by Tamora Pierce, Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl, and probably a bunch of others that I’d gladly reread in an instant. :]

Edit: I didn’t add four recent ones, because they’re already on here.  :[ 

I apologize for my lack of blogging this week. The truth is, nothing really has been going on. Twice this week I’ve come home from work to get dinner and pass out around 7 or 8 pm. Today was one such day.

I haven’t gotten much knitting done either, I didn’t even go to Knitters Nite Out on Wednesday. I’ll probably catch hell for it next week if I go, since I said I’d be there this week, and wasn’t. I just didn’t feel like going.

Instead, I’ve been reading a lot. I’m nearly done with the His Dark Materials trilogy. I would have been finished with it already had I more energy this week. They’re really good though.

In what little spare awake time I’ve had this week, I’ve been obsessing over a few things. I figured I’d write about them here so that I could have an excuse to post some pictures. First off, is a new camera. I’d seen the Canon SD600, and found a place with the lowest price possible. . .so I’d been wanting it.

That is, until Rob pointed out just this week that Canon released an even NEWER camera, the SD700 IS, which has image stabilization. It also happens to come in a sexy bluish-silver.

I like it a lot, but since it just came out, the price is retardedly high. I guess I’ll just have to wait for a new camera after all. . .there’s no point in buying a less than worthy camera. Actually, I’d probably still buy the SD600, (or the SD630 that I just found out about yesterday that has a hot black back panel), if it weren’t for the fact that the 700 IS has image stabilization. My only problem with digital cameras isn’t even a problem with the cameras themselves, it’s the fact that I can’t hold them still enough sometimes to get a clear shot. It’s usually not a problem if I’m using a flash, but most of the time, flash lighting is too harsh in photos, and natural light is so much prettier.

Next obsession. . . this spinning wheel.

This is actually the first and only spinning wheel I’ve ever used, and I lust after it. I found the store that sells it at the best price on Ebay. I will get one, I just don’t know when.

The deal on ebay is really good, it comes with a bunch of extras. It comes with 3 bobbins standard, a Lazy Kate for plying, a threading hook, and some wheel oil. The place I found also includes 2 extra bobbins, a kniddy knoddy, and a pound of wool they call “confetti fiber”. I don’t know if that means it’s got different colors or what, but I’m sure it’s fine to practice/learn on. They also give you a how to video from the manufacturer. Sounds like too good of a deal to pass up if you ask me. Especially since my aunt has this wheel, and I swear I remember her saying she spent much more on it and was on a waiting list to get it.

I’m pretty obsessed with the entire idea of spinning and dying yarn. I’ve been reading self-striping yarn dying tutorials this week, and I can’t wait to get some yarn and try it out. The best tutorial I think I’ve found was on EunnyJang.com . She uses Dale of Norway Baby Ull for her self striping sock yarn. . .and I’m convinced that’s what I want to use too. I was going to buy a skein of dye your own from Knit Picks, because they say it’s enough to knit a pair of socks, but the Baby Ull is superwash, ie: you can throw it in the washing machine. Knit Picks’ is just regular wool and from what I hear can felt if you agitate it too much during the dying process.

So I’m kind of at a loss for a color scheme, which is pretty much the only reason why I don’t have some wool rushing to my house right this instant. Not to mention I feel immensely guilty for not having finished my friend’s socks yet, or Rob’s mom’s sweater. Hopefully this weekend I can get my act together and have some pretty FO’s to post on Monday.

Lol, some disgruntled customer said that to my boss today.  We all cracked up pretty hard.  The week begins again, and I’m already missing sleep.  I tried to finish book two of His Dark Materials last night, but I failed.  Got too sleepy, it got too late, and I got distracted.  :]

Today at work was pretty good though, I was busy until later in the day, and they let me take pictures of products for the site.  When I came home my Denise Interchangable Needles were waiting for me.  :]  I don’t get to play with them yet, because I’ve got my plate full with socks and Rob’s Mom’s sweater.

The weekend was great. . .Sunday we went to Rob’s parents house for Easter dinner.  I got to talk to his relatives about knitting.  :]  I’m such a dork.

I woke up around 11am, and decided that I had to go outside.  I took a shower and got dressed in a skirt and took my finished two toed sock to the yarn store to show Karen.  I didn’t stay long today because she was having lunch with her husband (whom, I might add, was pretty handsome for an older gentleman. . .way to go Karen!), and I didn’t want to intrude.  When I came back I woke Rob up with my prattling on about how nice it was outside, and told him that we should do something outside today.  He agreed, and eventually got out of bed.  :]

We didn’t know what to do though.  It’s been a long while since the weather has been nice enough to play in and Rob wasn’t too sick to enjoy it.  We decided to drive down by the beaches.  On the way there though, there were so many idiots on the road that we got discouraged and decided to come back home and go bike riding.  We didn’t go out long, but it was nice.  I hope to go outside much more this summer.  And wearing a skirt wasn’t even that bad!  (I changed into pants before going riding though.)

We came home after a little bit and I told Rob that I was taking him out to dinner whenever he got hungry, since today is two years and eight months that we’ve been together.  We don’t always celebrate the months, but I’ve been wanting to take him out to dinner forever and today I finally had the means to.  We went to our favorite Thai restauraunt in Bay Shore.  The food there is SOOOOO tasty.

Then it was back home again, and we watched the extended version of Gladiator.  All in all, it was a wonderful day.  And tomorrow’s Easter.  I keep forgetting.  I should call my mom.

During the week, Rob bought me the His Dark Materials trilogy of books.  I couldn’t really get into them during the week, at least not as I wanted to, and I still was determined to finish my friend’s sock.  So yesterday I lept into the first book. . .and finished it.  It was really, really good.  Usually when I read a book, there’s so much foreshadowing that I can tell many chapters ahead what is going on, and not much comes as a surprise to me.  At least, not at the late time the author intends to spill the beans.  This book had me surprised at every turn.  It was great.  I can’t wait to get into the second one.

During Gladiator I began two toed sock #2.  I’m worried about the first one, because the ankle is pretty wide.  Even though I put a little bit of ribbing on the top, I don’t think it’s enough, and somehow the ribbed top of the cuff is stretched out.  Maybe I should thread it with some elastic to make it tighter.  I might just do that.  And I’ll make it so that if the elastic is annoying and my friend doesn’t like it, he can just cut it and pull it out.  What a pain!!  How weird that my wool socks are retaining their shape beautifully but my cotton/elastic one has stretched out.  :[

Oh!  And I think I also neglected to mention that the roomate has dumped his gf and kicked her out of the house.  He found out for certain that she was cheating on him, and he ended it.  I say it's about time, and I still can't wait until he's gone.  It bothers me more than a little bit that he thinks that just because he's dumped her and finally kicked her out that everything is ok between us.  He thinks that we can just forget what kind of a scumbag he's been for the past year.  He acts as if nothing had happened.  I keep away from him mostly.

I've decided I want a spinning wheel, and I'm going to get one from a specific seller on Ebay.  They've got the best deal on the wheel I want, and I can only hope that they'll still have some when I have the money to buy one.  I was talking about it to Rob tonight at dinner, and he sounded like he thought that I might just be obsessing over something, as I sometimes have been known to do.  It seemed like he was trying to hint that maybe I shouldn't make such a big purchase on something I may well get tired of.

I don't think that's the case with this though.  I've been knitting for over a year now, and my obsession with it has only grown.  I had a knitting machine, but I pretty much never used it.  I think that, though, that was mostly because the machine wasn't in top condition, and you had to meticulously correct it's mistakes while going along.  It negated it's whole purpose, to quickly and efficiently produce knitted fabric.  I had to constantly stop to fix it's mistakes.  Spinning is something else entirely.  I've used the wheel I want at my aunt's house, the same exact model, and I was good at it.  While I can sort of spin on a hand spindle, it's awkward for me.  But when I sat down at the wheel, everything fell into place exactly where it should be, and it worked.  I don't think I'll ever want to resell a spinning wheel once I get one.  Even if I kept it for 5 years and then picked up spinning, it would still be worth the money now.  In my opinion at least.  But if the inclination struck me, I could easily get back what I paid for a used wheel.

I can't wait until I can get one.  Also, I ordered a set of Denise circulars, and they'll be here on Monday.  I'm so excited, but I know I'll have to wait a little longer before I can start on that hat.

And one last thing.  I want a new camera.  But I know I really shouldn't make two huge purchases like that before taking care of things I've been neglecting for too long now.  Like my teeth.  It's been over a year and a half since I was last at the dentist, and there was some temporary work that wasn't finished.  I need to get two root canals redone, and I'm pretty sure I need a wisdom tooth pulled.  Not to mention a cavity in one of my front teeth that was supposedly taken care of at my last dentist, which has become active again.  I know I should take of myself first and foremost.  :/  It sucks though, because I want things.  :]