All the Pretty Words

Behold:

My new haircut! I wanted something new and different, and that’s what I got! I went to a salon here, and I wish I could keep going there because it was so great. The stylist was tons of fun and said she really enjoyed cutting my hair because she doesn’t get to cut curly hair very often.

I also have this:

My other hat is a gray fedora, and while I love it, I think this one better suits me.

As for knitting news, I’ve finished the front and back of the Ogee Tunic and am now working on the first sleeve. I hope I’ll be done by the time we get to Seattle, but we’ll see. We’re going to leave on Sunday, drive through the Canadian Rockies, then camp in BC on the first night. Assuming we survive–I’ve never been camping before–we’ll drive to the coast on the second day and will have a few days to play around in Victoria, a city we both love. I’ll get to visit Beehive Wool Shop, which is my favorite yarn shop ever! There’s also a spinner in Sidney (a few miles north of Victoria) who Bryan’s aunt says will let people into her house to try out her spinning wheels, and I’d love to do that since I’ve never spun on a wheel before. After that, I’ll go on to Seattle and do some serious job-hunting. Wish us luck!

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Woo, the past few days have been pretty busy. We had visitors over the weekend, which was fun. Yesterday, Bryan and I ran a lot of errands, and this morning, we took my car into the shop to be repaired. It has been overheating fairly often, and with the drive to Seattle coming soon, we need it to be in good shape for it to be trusted to make it over the Rockies. It turns out that it needs a new water pump, there’s a coolant/antifreeze leak, there was some fluff and various stuff stuck into a spot where it should not be, and the air dam needs to be replaced, all of which have been contributing to the overheating. The total cost will be $500, which is high, but is still just a quarter of what I had been steeling myself for. We biked back from the car repair place, which took us about an hour. We go on long rides like that maybe once a week, but for some reason my legs were like jelly when we got home! We also spoke to a U.S. immigration lawyer this afternoon, and she said that Bryan will be able to come into the states earlier than we had been thinking. He’s still going to stay in Victoria for a while since he already agreed to rent a room from a friend of a friend, but will join me in Seattle once we’ve found a place to live. As to making it so that he can stay in the states for the next year or so, we might have to rearrange some plans, but nothing is settled yet. We’ll know more after we actually meet the lawyer, who is in Seattle. Speaking of Seattle, I’ve applied for a few jobs, and have heard back from one of the prospective employers. I got an email from them letting me know that I’ll hear from them within a couple of weeks, so wish me luck! It’s a research position, which is great because my master’s program was very research-focused, but the research would be in relationship studies–not really my area. I’ll see what happens and keep applying for jobs, though!

And now for the knitting! I’ve also been busy on that front, as you can see:

My Sockapalooza socks arrived yesterday! Many thanks go out to Odie, who picked a pretty shade of red for me! I also really like the cable pattern. Thanks, Odie!

I also got my Dish Rag Tag team’s box today. This is the dish rag that the previous team member knit for me. I like the pinks!

She also gave me these cute beaded stitch markers. I’ve never had nice stitch markers before, and can’t wait to use these! I’ll use them on this project first:

An Ogee Tunic! The brown is actually a bit deeper than it looks in this photo, but you get the idea. I lurve this pattern: it’s pretty simple to knit, but has lots of visual interest.

I have tons of patterns in the queue, and I just wish I had more time in which to knit. If only I could figure out a way to squeeze more hours out of the day…

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Well, it is! We went swimming today, which was the first time I’ve been in several years. I even had to buy a new swimming suit since I’ve no idea where my old one is or if it even fits anyway. I wound up with a cute black tankini with white spaghetti straps and a skirt-type bottom. It’s so much better than my old swimming suit, and is very comfortable too. We had tons of fun swimming, and I even jumped off the high (3 meter) springboard a couple of times. After we went swimming, we went to a bike shop to ask about a rack to hold our bikes on the car. We didn’t buy one, but now we know roughly how much it will cost to get one, and that we’ll be able to get an adapter to make it work with my bike, which had been worrying me since I don’t have a bar that goes straight across from the handlebars to the seat. Overall, it has been a pretty good day!

Tuesday wasn’t so good, though. I was flying back to Edmonton after going to Missouri for a week for my brother’s wedding, and ran into some trouble with customs and immigration. They wanted to know the purpose of my visit, so I told them that I was coming to Edmonton to arrange a move to Seattle with Bryan, which was the truth, but made them suspicious. Apparently the lady was very skeptical of looking for jobs online, because she made all kinds of weird faces at me while I was trying to explain things to her. I won’t go into it all, but suffice it to say that my life is pretty complicated right now and that does not seem to impress customs and immigration officials. It didn’t seem like she wanted to let me into the country, but she finally stapled a scary-looking paper into my passport and told me that I have to leave by August 31st. This isn’t so bad since we were planning to go to Seattle anyway, but Bryan can’t come into the US for another couple of months since he already used up his alloted six months of visiting time and the cycle won’t refresh until then. So this means that I’ll be going to Seattle early, and some very generous friends have offered to let me stay with them for a while until I get a job and a place to live. Bryan will go to Victoria, BC and move in with a friend of a close friend who needs a roommate for a month or two, so we’ll be able to visit each other, and then he’ll come to Seattle to live with me.

As Bryan says, it will be an adventure! The new situation both removes some stress–no more worrying about finding a job in Canada without permanent resident status–and adds some stress–I had no idea that I was going to be moving to Seattle in just a month! We’ve also made an appointment for a consultation with an immigration lawyer on Tuesday, so we’ll find out more about what that paper in my passport means and what our options are. Wish us luck!

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This has been my morning.

Around 7:30, Bryan woke me up to tell me that my car’s driver side window had been smashed in. It was just sitting on the service road between the house and the actual road, and someone apparently decided it would be fun to smash the windows of several cars along the street. Mine was lucky enough to be one of them. My insurance company says I have glass coverage, but with a $500 deductible, so I might as well not have glass coverage. Meh. I’m in the process of filing a police report and will call a few auto glass repair shops for quotes once they open in a few minutes. Nothing was stolen, because I didn’t have anything of value inside the car.

I think the most irritating thing is that they laughed when they did it (Bryan says he heard a noise from outside, then laughter). I really can’t afford this right now, but I have to suck it up and pay because some jerk decided to have fun at my and several other people’s expense. Ass.

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Well, I finished the Waving Lace Socks for my Sockapalooza sock pal. I think they turned out well, but I’m much more enamored with this:

My first handspun! I bought the roving and a simple drop spindle at Lettuce Knits while we were in Toronto, and had been reluctant to spin it up because I was sure I would mess it all up. Yesterday I decided to just get over it and do it, and here it is! It’s a bit overspun, but I think it will be okay once it has dried and the twist has set more completely. I’m a little disappointed by how little yardage I got out of it, though…only 45 yards or so. I think I might combine it with this wool/mohair blend I got at the street market last week to make a little pouch for socks-in-progress or a small purse, or maybe some gloves. I’ll figure something out, I’m sure.

I’m at a bit of an impasse for my next project. I have some lace yarn, but I’m doing the Mystery Stole soon and don’t think I want to work on two lace projects at the same time. I’m also a little burned out on socks, so my stashed sock yarn will have to wait some more. I’d like to knit a sweater or a cardigan or some kind of top, I think…but I don’t have enough yarn of any single type for that, and it would not be a good idea for me to spend the money on a sweater’s worth of yarn right now. I guess I’ll go back to the Log Cabin blanket until inspiration hits, then.

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