All the Pretty Words

After months of searching, we found a really cute little apartment in the Eastlake neighborhood of Seattle. We found it three or four weeks ago, but didn’t get to move in until Saturday. We made a seven-hour IKEA trip on Sunday (it was truly epic) and have been assembling furniture since it got delivered this afternoon. We just finished assembling the bed at 1:30 AM and we are tired but it’s so worth it! We’ve been sleeping on a teensy futon on the floor, and it is wonderful to have a real bed again. We even got the slatted mattress support that folds up into a sitting position, which is pretty awesome.

We don’t have any photos yet because the place is a cardboard whirlwind right now, but the pictures will be copious once everything is set up.

Wheeee!

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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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Today is our first anniversary, and I came home after a full day of running errands to find these:

They’re pretty, smell quite nice, and came with a very sweet note. To celebrate some more, we went out for some pretty tasty (but huge!!) sushi and watched The Lives of Others, which was a great film. This first year has been a great one, and I hope we have many more together. It is rare to find someone who loves you and understands you so completely, and I am so happy to have found such a person.

During the errand-running, I went on a bit of a yarn crawl through Edmonton and discovered River City Yarns, which I think will become my new LYS. They have a great selection of yarn, most of which I have used and liked or have heard about and want to try, the lady there was very friendly, and I found out that they have a weekly knitting night on Thursdays. I’m planning to bike over tomorrow evening to try it out! I’ve never been part of any sort of knitting social circle, so I’m both excited and nervous about it. I think it will probably be fun, though. Anyway, here is my haul for the day:

I almost came home with a Della Q bag, but decided I should think about it for a while first. I might buy it tomorrow, though…

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I made it to Toronto without any trouble, and we spent a few days there having quite a bit of fun. Bryan showed me around town and took me to several really good restaurants, and we also went to Toronto Island and rented bikes, which we rode around for a couple of hours. I really liked getting to see Toronto, because it’s a great city–lots of things to do, but it’s not completely overwhelming.

We left Toronto Sunday morning around 11:00 AM and it’s now 1:30 AM Monday morning in Marathon, Ontario. We have discovered that Highway 17 is a vast stretch of trees and rocks and water. And more trees. And lots of inuksuit. And NO GAS!!! We got to Sault Ste. Marie, decided half a tank was good enough, and kept going. About an hour later we found that we really needed gas–and a man at a motel said the only gas station for 40 miles in either direction was the one just down the road, which was conveniently closed for Sunday. We had to drive back almost all the way to Sault Ste. Marie before finding a gas station and turning west again. This little adventure lost us a full hour, but we did get to see a moose on the way there!

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