Sorry for the whole drive by blogging yesterday. There have been things going on that have distracted me from the whole knitting scene. Bad timing what with the Olympics starting tomorrow, but thems the breaks. What it involves in the whole living situation. Before I get to those, I’ll throw some fibery goodness at you first.
While there was no knitting again last night, I skeined up that bobbin worth of BL/Wensleydale that I plied last week. A quick weigh in on the postal scale and a loop count revealed numbers that I was pretty content with.
I must say, I’m pretty darn pleased with this yarn. It is about as even as I’ve ever spun and it appears that plying during "24" is a good thing. Nickel is there for reference. The numbers? 308 yards @ 5.9 ozs. (167.26g). Doing the math, that is approx 184yards for 100g. Yardage is darn close to the Jaegar Shetland Aran (180y/100g). My brain is too tired to do the full math as to how much total yardage I should wind up with.
Sara did her duty inspecting the new yarn to make sure it was safe for its intended purposes. Nice of her to risk one for the team. Tonight I’m hoping to work on the second Claudia sock. I’m about a round away from starting the short-row heel. If I push, I can finish these before tomorrow night when I’ll cast on for the Olympic Vest! I could take a late lunch and start it then, but I really am not all hot and bothered to cast on 200+ stitches at lunch. I can’t begin to imagine what my buds would think of me after they watch me count the same number of stitches three times to come up with different totals. Thanks, I’ll do that in the privacy of my own home!
Now, for what’s been going on. I’ve posted in the past about my living conditions. That post was at the height of my discontent, but for good reason. Actually it has been much better recently, especially since the gloss of the trampoline did wear off pretty quickly. That didn’t obviate the need to go running upstairs two weekends ago to tell them to quit it as I was watching my living room ceiling bow and form a few cracks. Anyway. My moving options were and still are pretty limited due to the high property costs in northern NJ together with the daycare costs for 2.
That was when my father put forward an option. We’d put an addition on their house and the monkeys and I would move in. I gave it some serious thought and decided to go ahead with that plan. We’re there 5 days a week anyway, returning to my place simply to sleep and get ready for the next day. So this kind of move would make both ends of the day easier, especially since I wouldn’t have to pack up the kids after dinner and take them home only to put them to bed.
The addition would add a master suite, giving me and the kids the original 3 bedrooms. Fabulous as the twins would have to be separated at some point in time, but definitely not a possibility in my current 2 bedroom apartment. Another plus. Not to mention, the school system is far superior to the one where we live now. They do miss the kindergarten cut off by 9 days, but hopefully I can fight that when the time comes and I’m not entirely sure when the cut off is in our current town. It wouldn’t be a free ride as the budget for the addition would result in payments approx. what I pay for rent now and I’d be responsible for that. I’d be a fool not to take the folks up on this offer and while I’m crazy about fiber, I’m no fool.
The folks have already consulted an architect and are getting ahold of a builder (though he seems to be a bit unreachable at the moment) with the aims of starting construction after the summer, hopefully finishing by Thanksgiving. Two nights ago, dad added a new wrinkle. How about we move in before the summer, before construction. This way the kids could enjoy the backyard, the pool, the big house. All good things considering that I spent a number of hot days this past summer sitting on the front lawn with a tiny blow up pool and no lawn furniture. I doubt the in-ground pool is an option with two little ones (though bigger than last year), but it is fenced off from the rest of the backyard, I can still use a smaller pool and there’s a girl next door who’d make a fine mothers’ helper. There’s also the fact that at the end of April the folks’ boat goes into the water and they disappear during the weekend until the end of the summer. The transition period, I think, would be a little bit easier with my being at work during the weekday and their being gone almost all weekend.
So in the end, the short people, the animals and I will be moving. I see a light at the end of the tunnel and it makes listening to the damn noise upstairs tolerable. I do look forward to giving them my notice! What I don’t look forward to is packing. Just wait for the stash clearance sale.
Craft on!
