So not much knitting going on here! Last week my mom came to visit and we spent most of it running around looking at houses and window shopping for her upcoming house update. Much much fun but alas little got done in the way of Thermal. It looks like it did in the previous post just you know longer. I just measured it and it’s at 13″. I hope to get everything done today that I need to and work on it since I know Steve is visiting at some point this week and this weekend has one whole day taken up with more house gunk. I just want to get to where I divide for the arms. The house stuff goes…I narrowed it down to five that I hope we’re going to see this weekend. If we don’t pick one this weekend then we’ll have to wait till November, since Justin will be gone almost all of October. After running some numbers with Justin’s dad I’m not sure we should. Although I very very very much want more house but we’ll see.  I must apologize here to Kraftie and Sarkasmo for yammering endlessly about it. Oh before I talk more about knitting you have to see the horror that is the cabinets they put in these things….

This house is *not* on the list. Horrible cabinets and berber carpet. Berber and cats sounds like a disaster in the making. Anyway….Below is a shot from a brand new house I saw which did make it on the list. At least the model did, I think the lot would be a problem but they could build another.

Anyway yeah knitty is out. I think I’ll make roam but minus the hood. I love Cosmic Pluto’s designs, She really is one of the most interesting of the Indie designers. She’s also sort of built like me so her stuff tends to in theory look good on me. I have some stuff stashed that should work and if not I’ll order some blanks and dye my own. I’m really getting into the idea of dyeing for myself. I think a tonal green or burgundy would be just the thing for me. I also think I have to cast on for something soon before I go into withdrawal. There are so many things I want to knit, just sucks I am such a slow knitter. I shouldn’t be. So I think the goal is more focused knitting. Since speed isn’t the issue so much as how easily the net distracts me.

So I get to start picking the house that makes me weep least on Monday. At least the pre-approval came in for the mortgage, god that was like the most nerve wracking two minutes of my life. Then immediately I had to take a Valerian when I saw just how much our cost of housing is going to jump.  It depends of course on the final price but maaaaannn I think it will be a yarn pronless blog if we do it. Nah it won’t be quite that bad, at least I hope not. I actually found a bunch more I want to see that are a bit less than my original selections. They are also smaller but one has the oh so important wood floors. I’m not asking for much just one aspect of the house that is something I actually like. It’s funny but I’m actually way more picky about these new construction monstrosities than I would be anything I was looking at in St. Louis. I grew up in older homes and that’s just what I prefer. I’ll put up with a lot to have wood work and charm.  I am so over obsessed with this since its our first home we’re buying. I know we’re not buying the house we’ll stay in. My Dad was getting on my case about it since ‘its a starter home blah blah blah” totally missing the point that I have no objections to the size of the places or the luxuries. In fact if you’re going strictly by that they are bigger and probably more luxurious than many of the homes I was looking at in St. Louis. Also I never wanted to live in a mcmansion, all I want is a bungalow of my very own. Anyway this is a knitting blog not a jen whines about her house hunt blog.  So Thermal plods along, yeah that really is all I have for you on that front. I’m almost to 11 inches. I thought I would get way more knitting down this week but stuff came up. I still love the pattern,  although in some respects I agree with yarn abuse on it. She made a demotivator that said “Monotony why bore only myself when an audience is available?” I’m totally not sick of it yet. I still enjoy the stitch pattern enough that it’s fun. So today I spent a good chunk of the day trying to get my camera to give me that oh so sexy shallow depth of field blur. This is my attempt to not buy a DSLR strictly to take yarn pron shots. Cause that would be oh so ridiculous. When I bought my camera in ’04 it was a well reviewed advanced point and shoot. It has full manual control in its range. Now I am such a photog noob that I wasn’t sure all what I wanted. Justin actually majored in photography in college. So I wanted something he might want to use but a dslr was way out of my range. So I got an Olympus C5000. Anyway I’ve been working through the online course in the ravelry group yarnographers in an attempt to sex up the photos. After MANY attempts that were so awful I just deleted them I got some that had some blur and aren’t the worst offenses to the eye ever. I so totally need WAY more light in some of these but it’s been rain-y and grey all week so…

These are supposed to have teh sexy blur:

No Sexy Blur:

Yeah I don’t see much of a sexy blur either.

So sorry for the lack of blogging its been a craptastic week here at chez zyllah. Found out we are not able to move to STL this fall and will in fact be stuck here for the next two years or so. Anyway so I’ve been knitting a way on the trekking socks. I hate them. I hate the yarn…I hate how the striping is working up so frogging will commence and the yarn will go into the box of stuff to get rid of at some point. My friend claire also hated both opal and trekking.  So its not just me! I guess I’ve been spoiled. I’m getting much better at giving away yarn I loathe which is a good thing I guess. So now I will have to pick another sock yarn to torture. Thermal is plugging away. I still think it’s a fun knit but it’s a bit slow going since well you know sz 2 needles.  I must say the best part of thermal really is the fact that at a glance I can tell what row I’m on cause of that nifty row counter. So I’m almost done with ball two and I begin to fear I will run out of yarn. I suppose I’ll be going with 3/4 or shorter sleeves if that happens.  Anyway time to knit…