Believe it or not, there has been progress on this shawl.

This is approximately 19 of the 31 repeats done, although I will be doing as many repeats as I can get out of this yarn because I do not want to waste one spare inch of it. The pattern is extremely easy to memorize, so most of the time the pattern stays in my knitting basket. What I am NOT looking forward to is kitchnering all of the stitches across this shawl; the bottom border is stitched to it like closing the toe on a sock, and I manage to screw THAT up enough that it should be very, very interesting to complete the same maneuver on something like 100+ stitches. Of lace. Maybe I should just give up while I'm ahead. I did manage to finish a sock:

Only one, though, so don't get too excited. I haven't even cast on for the second sock. I'm loving the colors, and there is something about the red toe that just delights my little sock knitting heart. They are totally obnoxious and loud, and they will be put away to be used as my Christmas socks. I try to knit a pair of socks for myself for Christmas morning every year. I obviously got a jump on it this year, since it is only Spring (as is evidenced by my AWESOME PLANT THAT I NURSED BACK TO LIFE AFTER ALMOST KILLING IT).

I'm just a leeetle bit proud of that damn plant. I bought it, transferred it to that pot, and it promptly lost all of its flowers. Since I absolutely suck at plants, I figured that I had killed it, but I kept tending to it anyway, and it absolutely exploded into flowers last week. I will take it with us to the apartment that we'll be living in to decorate whatever patio we have, and then hopefully it will make it long enough to get transferred into our new home sometime later in the year. This gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, I can keep other plants alive, too. I've managed thus far with kids; plants shouldn't be all that much harder, right?

The house, it has a contract on it.

It all happened so fast – people came to look at it, then they came back with her fiancee, then they came back AGAIN, then the offer, we accepted, inspection was great, and now…we wait. The couple that are purchasing the house are getting married in the next two months, so they asked to put off closing until the beginning of June. I'm totally cool with that (although, I have to admit, it does make me a little nervous that they might back out or something because they have two months to think about what they are doing) and we are currently researching temporary housing. Why temporary? Well, because we didn't expect this house to go so quickly, we hadn't even started the process of building a new one. We will be getting on that ball this weekend, which also coincides with our 6th anniversary. 

We are absolutely relieved and excited and nervous about a new house and ready to move on. This house was our first house together; we were married while we lived in this house, we brought our babies home here, I learned to knit here (and so started a lifelong obsession). It is a little bittersweet to be leaving it behind, but we're really ready to have more space for our family. And for my yarn. 

Here in Texas, you don't wear a lot of sweaters. Knitwear is kinda thin on the ground here; my love of the hobby is looked at with a raised eyebrow most of the time, because seriously, how many sweaters do you need in a city that really only has four days of freezing weather? But occasionally, I'll stumble across a pattern that I love, and I just have to make it, heat be damned. I think, though, that this takes it over the edge. I've cast on for the Apres Surf Hoodie, which is a lacy sweater in fingering weight yarn knit on US 3 needles.

(For those of you not up on knitting lingo, that's like trying to build your house out of toothpicks. It would take forever.)

I have the perfect yarn (the pattern calls for Cashcotton, but I have cashsoft, which is the same yardage just swapping wool for the cotton content), I have the pattern, I have the needles, but I have apparently lost my mind and decided that this is a good idea. I like the fact that it uses a relatively thinner yarn and that there is some lace on the pattern, making it less warm that some of the worsted weight sweaters that I've made, but again, I live in Texas. Thank God that we are as active with the A/C as we are, because otherwise most of this stuff would never get worn. I am doing some modifications to the pattern, though; I'm not making the hoodie, and I'm shortening the sleeves to 3/4 sleeves, since I end up shoving the sleeves up anyway. And I want to add some length to the body, so I'll have to figure that out, too. I'm not all that great at making modifications to existing patterns, but I'm determined to make it fit the way I need it to, so that will take a little a little extra effort on my part.

On the house front, we're still on the market, getting 1-2 showings in a week. Spring is starting to peek through, and we're hoping that will drive people out to find their perfect starter home so that we can get this one sold.  But for right now, we're still in a holding pattern. I'm trying not to think about it all that much; I know it will sell at some point, but I'm very impatient when it comes to this type of thing. Send good house selling karma this way, if you please!