Yo la Tengo!!

Yo la Tengo

Iveira has been working on my Spanish. Mostly I can just say "que frio" and "que lindo" and I can explain rummy hands perfectly (don't ask). But, I used to see Yo la Tengo stickers all over the cars in Athens, Georgia - I think it was a salsa band - and Iveira translated it for me.

I've got it!!

The IT. What other IT could it be at this moment in time? What else but the book whose cover I've been staring at on Amazon.de for the past couple of months and longing to turn the pages myself. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Yarn Harlot : The Secret Life of a Knitter. It finally came yesterday, just minutes before we left to drive to the Munich Oktoberfest for the evening. I'm not much of a car reader, but I left my current book at home (a really thick historic-novel about Dublin with absolutely no knitting content - how am I supposed to stay focused on that??!) and read the first couple of chapters before it was time to hunt foot-long sausages and candied-almonds. Irishboy had a work colleague visiting from Boston, who, for some reason, everyone says look like he's my brother. I distracted myself all evening by asking every girl in a dirndl stand next to my brother for a photo. They all fell for it and he's got some great pics to take back with him. And, somehow, I don't think he minded.....

So, now I've shipped the Irishman off to Bordeaux for the week (anyone know of nearby yarn shops?) and I've got a quiet house, lots of frozen pizza, a ridiculous amount of stash yarn and a brand new Harlot book. Hit it!

Soft

The weather's been fairly soft lately. Soft rain, soft breezes and it's turning everything in the house (from cookies, to books, to hard wood) just as soft. Usually in Germany I can leave cookies out overnight for a couple of days and they might actually loose moisture. But last night I forgot the Swedish oat cookies on the counter and was faced this morning with IKEA's version of breakfast oatmeal with chocolate stripes.....


So it only seems appropriate that I grab the softest sock yarn known to man. I needed to break the sock curse that has haunted me for the past couple of months. First I tried 3 different socks in Neatby's book and none of them suited my style or taste of any yarn I could find and then I started a sock 3 times and knit forever each time to find out it didn't fit the size 12 foot I was knitting for. I'm blaming the yarn on that one.....

A couple of weeks back (when it was roaring hot and there was no rain in sight) I discovered that Regia started making its silk sock yarn with self-striping yarn. Yipppeeee!!!! I had like 3 seconds to pick a colour and I'm not sure I came out with the prettiest - means I have to go shopping again :) but I am in no way complaining. I cast this baby on yesterday and am already knitting the heel. I think that's a personal best. I got a Regia Silk leaflet with the sock ( I think it was a frequent-shopper freebie) and a cool new sock pattern. It goes something like this:
Row 1: K3, P1, K4
Row 2: K1, Cable 1 back, P1, K4
Row 3: K3, P1, K4
Row 2: K3, P1, Cable 1 back, K2

I like the way it gets the colours a bit mottled up and you still get the white spots mxed in, but it doesn't look like the conventional K1 white, K1 coloured which always looks weird when I knit it. We're giving it a 2 thumbs up (that's the royal "we", hehe) and can't wait to try it on my other striped yarns :)

If Only I Could Knit Sudoku

Hi

My name's Kathleen.

And I'm addicted to Sudoku.

It's my mum's fault, really. She was telling me about it on the phone one evening and asked if I'd seen the like over here yet. Nope, no idea what she was on about, but, as fate would have it, soemone passed me an English paper the following day at work to read between phone calls. After I finished catching up on who was sleeping with whom and got my fill of papparazzi snapshots, I came across a puzzle that looked a lot like the one Mum told me about. So I gave it a shot and thought it was a great little puzzle - full of numbers, but no math (my favourite!!). That evening, I raced home immediately googled sudoku and printed out 20 sheets of puzzles to do at work the next day.

Things got bad after that. It took my attention from knitting because sudoku didn't cause my hands to sweat in the summer heat. And I felt awfully clever whenever I finished a "moderate." Kind of hard to quit ego inflating of that scale ;)

Things have gotten better since. I'm limiting myself to the harder puzzles that take more time and now that there's "Killer Sudoku". So I keep it down to the Times printout - 3 puzzles daily and I'm turning my attention back to my knitting now that the weather is getting cooler and the new Knitty is out!!! I think Samus would look gorgeous on me in seafoam green.....will have to do some swatching today to make sure.