My sister just went home to Florida. She finished college last week, and Michael and I bought plane tickets for her to celebrate.  Thus it has been a busy five days.  (A partial list of the visit’s delicious foodstuffs: St. Clair Broiler, Italian Pie Shoppe, Grand Olde Creamery, Brasa, Psycho Suzy’s, Coffee Bene, Manny’s Tortas, Izzy’s, The Blue Door Pub – if nothing else, she’ll be thinking of the Twin Cities as a place where she’s well fed.)

We took her to the Mall of America (and a cheese shop) as soon as she got here.  Next day, walked up and down Grand Avenue and looked at all the shops.  Thursday she helped me pick out scrubs for my new job, and we had dinner and drinks with my friends  (followed by more drinks at home, and some harassment of my neighbors, but it was for a good cause).  Yesterday I got an Hourcar and drove her through downtown Saint Paul and Minneapolis, wandered around Midtown Global Market, and shopped for yarn at StevenBe.  Then we all drove out to Saint Louis Park and watched The Avengers at the fancy Icon Theater.  This morning, she and Michael walked up and down Summit to look at the pretty houses, before we swung by Trader Joe’s, drove down to Apple Valley to show her where I’ll be working (starting next week!), and then gave up stalling and took her to the airport.

We spent the last five days trying to show her the best of the cities, but mostly I was just happy to be in her general vicinity.  Someday I hope that we live close enough that we can just watch some tv together, have a coffee and knit for awhile, or lay around and be silly for a few hours without feeling like every moment has to count.  Those quiet, natural moments are what really makes a relationship, and they’re hard to catch hold of when time is so short.

We cried at the airport, she got her standard “random” bag search (possibly because she looks like a person who would have nice underpants), and then Michael took me to the Minnesota Valley Wildlife Refuge to cheer me up.

From the observation deck, you can see forest, prairie, and wetlands all at once.  It’s beautiful (and smells amazing).  I was mostly okay again by the time we left, bar a few confrontations with songs on the radio.  Stupid leaky eyeballs.

I start my perfect job on Monday.  We’re getting a new car in a few days. We move into our upgrade apartment in a couple of weeks.  And I’m unendingly grateful that Michael is here with me.  But just for tonight, I’m going to let myself be sad about the distance between me and my sister.  My life won’t be 100% right as long as we’re apart.

Someday.

I went to the Shepherd’s Harvest Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday.  Four barns of vendors, a barn of sheep, another barn of camelids, plus assorted rabbits, fair food, and demonstrations.

So much yarn for sale, guys.  Somehow I managed to save back some of my budgeted funds, and I’m really happy with what I did bring home.

Three skeins of Sweet Georgia.  Rachel’s doing a Color Affection, so I have to do one, too.  Logically.

Two skeins of Blackberry Ridge for a pair of Chawton Mittens I’m making for my friend Mary as a wedding gift.  I’m going to replace the cameos with silhouettes of her and her beau; she’s so excited, I predict much knitting for her in the future.

This is just awesome.  Rainbow sock yarn, you are awesome.  Pride armwarmers, perhaps?

The place was really crowded, but in the best way.  There’s a certain atmosphere when everyone present is a fiber person.

Emily was nice enough to take me to the festival, so I was nice enough to enable her yarn purchases.  She was also able to stay within her (modified) yarn budget – I provide rationalization assistance as well as enabling services.  I am a one-stop stash enhancement support system.

Wool “from sheep I know.”  How precious is that?

Balls of roving the size of my head.  I don’t spin, but they make me happy, anyway.

Ms. Sheepy lives a highly undignified life, but she doesn’t struggle (unlike the alpaca, which was tied down and someone was sitting on its head).  The shearer flopped her around all over the place, and all she did was occasionally go MEHHHHHH.

MEHHHH

This llama belongs to Emily’s aunt.  S/he didn’t like me much.

I learned that llamas always look like they are posing.  Excellent posture!

Classic lamb.

A 4-horned Jacob sheep.  Apparently male Jacob sheep my have “any number of well-formed horns.” I wonder how many are possible.

I didn’t get the breed name on this guy, but I love her face.  She looks like she knows the joke.

Sheep in jackets!

Babydoll sheep have the best faces.  The mama there looked like a little furry hippo.  I told Michael that when he wins the lottery, I’m getting me some of these just for snuggling purposes.

Got my hairs cut on Friday; Sara F. gave me exactly what I wanted.  Otherwise, it’s been a pretty crappy week for communication, though it worked out in the end.

Like I said before, I was supposed to have the job interview last Wednesday. I’ll not bore you again with the details of my obsessive preparation, but half an hour before the scheduled start time, I was dressed up, sitting with my phone on my knee, glass of water at hand, tabs open and notebook at the ready.

And the call never came.

I gave it half an hour, then sent an email asking if there had been a mix-up, offering to reschedule. Got an email back the next morning saying that they’d called but there had been no answer, and they’d left a voice mail. Since I hadn’t gotten any voice mail, I knew it wasn’t a reception issue; come to find out, after a couple of emails back and forth, that the person who called had transposed a couple of numbers. I’ve never been so glad in my life that someone had a phone log they could refer back to! Phone call rescheduled to this past Wednesday.

Again it’s Wednesday and I’m all set up like before and my phone rings as scheduled. Only now, we can’t get a good connection; there’s a 2-second lag on the interviewer’s end. She hangs up and tries back but there’s no change, and we carry on through the awkward pauses. I think it goes pretty well anyway, and I hang up hopeful.

Friday morning when I’m in the shower, I miss a call offering to schedule an in-person interview. I call back and leave another voice mail, proceed to carry my phone in my hand for the rest of the day. Brush my teeth, phone in hand. Get a haircut, phone in hand. Walk to pharmacy, phone in hand. Order a drink at my Friday knitting group, phone in hand. Sit down to pull out my knitting, check the time on my phone - no motherfucking signal. I do not know how to spell the terrible sound I made when I saw that; I only hope I did not traumatize any of the other customers.

I run to the window, get a signal back, and yes, in the 5-10 minutes I’d been in the building (the building that I knew had crappy reception, why didn’t I stay outside??), I’d missed another call from HR. I called back immediately but went straight to voice mail again; I babbled some explanation/apology, hung up, and tried not to cry for the rest of the evening.

When I get home, I get on the computer – where there is an email from HR, saying if “x” time works for me, she can just email me the rest of the information, since she’s having a hard time getting in touch with me by phone. I notice that this email was sent several hours ago – my damned phone just decided that I didn’t need to know about it.

So now I don’t have to rend my garments and tear my hair all weekend, and I’m thinking it’s a pretty good sign for my chances that they’re persevering through all of these communication difficulties.  I’ll get an HourCar on Tuesday, and with luck, I’ll have good news by the end of the week.  Send good interview mojo if you have it; what you’ve sent so far seems to be working pretty well.

I need to hurry up and post a stash update before the list becomes ridiculous. Between my birthday and a couple of sales, I’ve acquired more yarn in the past couple of months than usual.

Regia Kaffe Fassett Landscape 4-ply in “Exotic Turquoise.” My friend G gave me this to cheer me up the week my bike was stolen.

I won this lovely skein of Twisted from Kmkat’s blog.

Malabrigo Finito in “Piedras” from Mandy for my birthday.  (Piedras = “stones.”)

Valley Yarns Northampton Bulky in “Lake Heather,” the first of this list that has a project in mind.  I’m three skeins in on my Aidez cardigan with this, and it’s knitting up beautifully.

This little guy (in “Tangerine”) will be a pair of socks for Michael.  It’s considerably more monochrome than I usually prefer, but I have a ton of sock patterns faved that really only work with solid yarns; this will become one of those.

Madelinetosh Tosh Sock in “Brothers Grimm.”  It’s so hard to photograph black properly; you’ll just have to trust me that this is a dark, saturated black with green highlights.  If I were a mermaid, my hair would be this color.

Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere in “Cinnamon Girl.”  I am dreaming of a simple v-neck pullover in this yarn.  I’m having a tough time finding it online, but I’ll try not to freak out about it until I have actually saved up the money to do something about it.

My friend K. (Vegancraftastic) suggested Panda Cotton sock yarn to me a few months ago.  I used it to make Michael’s birthday socks and enjoyed it very much, so when I found this in “Leaf Shades” for thirty percent off, I snapped it up for a pair of socks for myself.  I’m thinking Pomatomous, but I’m open to other scaly suggestions.

I’ve been looking for the perfect yellow yarn to knit Netherfield since Mandy bought me the pattern three  years ago.  ”Canary” is it.  Apparently I’ve been looking at it for over a year now.  The Yarnery has most of their sock yarn hung up on hooks, and I’d looked at this CHP many times, but the only skein visible has a lot more white in it, too variegated for my purposes.  At their April inventory sale, I pulled it off of the hook, basically to bitch at it for not being quite right – which is when a near-solid skein fell from behind it, off of the hook and into my life.

These are my miniskeins for Hexapuffs, about 85 at last count.  (I have little hope of identifying more than about a third of them, so I won’t try.)  I’ve kind of stalled out around forty puffs, since I can’t get the size/gauge consistent.  Last week, I sorted them into two weights, lighter on the left, heavier on the right.  Technically, they are all fingering/sock weight, but that means “slightly more than lace” to “nearly sport,” which makes a lot of difference when you’re talking about something small and stuffed.  My new strategy is to cast on 12 on 2s for the finer yarn, and stick to the standard 10 on 3s for the heavier yarn, and see if I can get something a bit more to my liking.

Urgh, looking at all of this yarn is making me want to knit so badly!  But I stressed out my left thumb nearly three weeks ago (due to three cabled projects on the needles at once, I think) and it’s taking a lot longer to get better than it took to injure it.  I’m only knitting socially until it’s better, and also washing as few dishes as possible.  (Hey, I didn’t say this was entirely a bad thing.)  If you have any hand-healing tips, I’d love to hear them!

On Tuesday, we signed a lease for a new and better apartment. A partial list of improvements:

• a balcony
• a second bedroom (guest room, office, degus, chest freezer?)
• a half bath in the master bedroom
• closets everywhere
• a dishwasher and a motherfucking garbage disposal
• a half flight up instead of a half flight down (i.e. no mold or centipedes to the face)
• double the kitchen storage
• room for a big dining/gaming table
• on the quiet/shady side of the building
• a parking lot and possibility for a garage space (for the car we’ll get if I get the job)
• outdoor storage to serve as bicycle garage
• a/c in living and bedrooms
• closer to Snelling
• could reach Whole Foods in a blizzard
• more and bigger windows
• cheaper washer and dryer
• front door buzzer
• no “smoking area” at the front and back doors

Complete list of drawbacks:

• half a block further from the bus stops

When Michael got the new job, we started thinking about getting a bigger place – I can’t nag my out-of-town friends to come visit, and when we have people over to play board games, they have to sit on the floor.  The problem was, we wanted to stay in our neighborhood, and being right between two college campuses (campii?), apartments are in high demand.

Also popular with dogs.

So we were really excited back at the end of February when a sign went up at a building just down the street. And I mean just down the street.  This afternoon, I walked out of our current building, across the street, and took this picture:

Arrow indicates new building.

No arrow to indicate bunny next to new building; you’ll have to find that one yourself.

New lease starts on June 1, old lease ends on June 15, so we’ll even have plenty of time to wrap up the move and clean without going frantic.  I’m really excited, and haven’t even started to freak out about packing.  Yet.

Breaking news: interview rescheduled for next week due to misdialed phone number!

No news on the job interview – the scheduled call never came.  I emailed and am hopeful that some HR emergency came up.  I’m really tense, though.  I was up ’til 3 a.m. last night reading up on mission statements and political implications (and then laughing at myself because this is just a glorified receptionist position, I’m not going to be writing policy for Gods’ sake), and then spent a few more hours this afternoon going back over some of my college papers and what kind of answers one is supposed to give to those standard interview questions.  I kept telling myself “It’ll be over in twelve hours,” “It’ll be over in six hours,” “It’ll be over in an hour…” and then it wasn’t.  All this nervous energy is making me twitchy.

I’m in a remarkably good mood, considering.  K was at afternoon knitting and let me vent at her after I fled the apartment in frustration.  Michael was in a good mood, we had a big salad for dinner, and I figured out what was pissing off the big joint of my left thumb.  A friend took me to late night knitting, another friend brought me home, and I got to hang out with someone I’d been worrying about for a while.  I was praised for starting the Twin Cities Ravelry group, I brought home some tiramisu, I have a new project on the needles and a class with Amy Singer on Sunday – what more could I ask for?

How about some double-barreled good news, that’s what!  We’ve been approved for a new apartment (same neighborhood, big upgrade, details to come), and we’re getting a sizable refund check from our old homeowners’ insurance that will help to offset a good chunk of the moving costs.

Maybe all of this good stuff is why I’m not completely freaked out about the mysterious missing interview.  Oddly, I’m less worried about actually getting the job than I am about enduring the interview process. Everything else is going so well, some part of me just thinks this will too, I guess.  I feel like I should be afraid of jinxing our good turn of luck just by mentioning it, but somehow I’m not.

Must be the tiramisu.

So I wrote up the pattern for my silly little jar cozies.  You can download it here, for free.

It’s my first “original pattern” on Ravelry!  I need to actually publish Equation as well – I can’t submit it for publication anywhere, since there are already photos of it on the internet.  So I need to figure out some way to promote it and maybe make a few dollars just selling it straight through Rav.