Yay Bears!


Well, they don't much look like bears yet, but the bear faces are started. The non-knitters that were with me when I was working on them didn't get why I was so excited about this.

More on the jacket saga... we tried some more shops. More of the same. Then we went into a kitchen shop, where Ingi got some little things for his mother and sister. They asked him if he wanted to get their catalogue, like these places always do. "Not unless you want to send it to Iceland," he said. The lady behind the counter says, "Oh, I hear Iceland has beautiful.... (I'm thinking "landscapes? waterfalls?") ...women." Now don't you think that's tactless when I am standing there with him? If the girl thinks I am Icelandic, is she implying that I am not pretty? If the girl thinks I am not Icelandic, doesn't she think that is rude to ask him this in front of me? Either way, it was a stupid thing to say. Anyway, we just laughed about it after and said she must watch too much Oprah. And I finally ordered this jacket.

And I am very happy to have a newly painted kitchen. I was going to put a picture, but it's just a new shade of off-white. The difference is that the old shade of off-white was very dirty, and had lots of weird brush stroke marks and other issues; it was really ugly. Now it looks clean and bright, and the whole kitchen is clean, and it's really nice and cheery. We talked about stenciling some sort of red border to go with the "Drottin blessi heimilið" picture that's up on the wall. I have to find a pretty stencil first, the only ones I saw so far were over the top gaudy. (Of course, having a newly-painted kitchen reminds you of all the other non-newly-painted rooms in the house that are in desperate need of a paint job.) When we were painting, we discovered that the idiots who lived here before put this cheap counter top material on the bottom of the kitchen walls around the sink and the stove. So I was going to put pretty tiles behind the sink, but now I can't, and we couldn't repaint that crap so we are stuck with it, but at least it's a similar enough colour that it's not so noticeable. So eventually we'll rip out the cabinets and redo the whole kitchen, but that's far off.

In honour of the shiny new kitchen, I got a new bookshelf for the tiny little area I have for my cookbooks. (They were crammed on a shelf on the wall and kept falling off all the time). There was a pretty looking narrow one at Ikea, so we got that. We got it home, started putting it together, and realised this decorative molding piece that goes on the top is missing. Arg. We decide to carry on without it, since he's going back tonight and we just wanted to get the thing put up. Then we discover one of the screws (and it couldn't be the type I had extras of) has a big piece of flashing on the end, which makes it impossible to screw in. Luckily, he was able to smash that off with a hammer, and we could put the darn thing together, and it looks really nice in there. I know Ikea is not well known for high-quality stuff, but that sort of takes the cake. Neither of us had ever run into anything THAT bad with their stuff. I was going to send them an email, but their site isn't accepting emails right now. I'll complain about that too when I finally get a hold of them. I hope they'll give me the missing part, it looks OK without it but it will look a lot nicer. But I don't want to return the whole shelf just to get a teeny little wooden part, it's too annoying.

Yep, I'm alive

Things have just been way too busy around here to get much knitting or blogging done.

Easter we had lovely lamb. I got the idea from the current Gestgjafinn to put honey, oregano, rosemary (of course!), and mint sprigs on my leg of lamb, along with the requisite putting pieces of garlic into it. I ignored the rest of their recipe and we just followed the basic cooking instructions on the lamb site. It came out perfectly. And farm lamb is really good anyway, better than you can get in the store around here.

Last week I fell down the stairs. Nothing broken, but I bruised my iliac crest (the big sticky-up hip bone part). It did its job and protected all the smaller, more fragile bones and parts. It hasn't been pleasant though. Certain motions give me excruciating pain. Yesterday was really bad, but today it seems a lot better so maybe it's one of those "worse before it gets better" things. And the good thing of it was Ingi got to extend his stay an extra week so he'd be able to help me around the house while it was still hurting, because his work was understanding (they are so nice).

My vintage leather jacket that I fixed last summer broke again, so I decided I wanted a new summer jacket. Apparently this time of year it's harder than it seems. I should have bought it during a blizzard. We went to The Gap last night, which had some cute jackets on clearance, but the only small sizes they had were too small even for ME (wow!). You have to be my size AND have no chest. (B, helpful 10 year old that he is, says to me, "Oh, you could just lose more weight." Thanks. We looked at him like he was crazy.) Then we tried 2 other stores, with no luck. Apparently the only thing that's in fashion this year is denim jackets, and I feel like too much of a rokker if I wear that kind of a jacket. And once again, everything is in clearance.

And I started the bears, well, sort of. I have to rip that part out (5 rows). You start the edge stitches for where you cut for the sleeves in the bear section. I read this already. But I had forgotten it when I started on the bear chart, for some reason I thought it came AFTER the bears. Then when I got to the first row of bears and got to the end, the numbers didn't work out. Back to the pattern. Oh look, here it says I need to start the dividing for front and back stitches (putting a purl stitch on each side). No wonder why my bears don't work out, because the working area has two less stitches. Why do I always do these things? Argh. (This is after some confusion the other week where I had done the right thing but when reading the pattern and it said pink (means green in my version), I ripped back what I had done, only to finally discover by looking at the photo again that they meant "light pink" (light green) and I really HAD done the right thing originally.)

Going Dotty With Dots

I just figured I'd make a quick post saying I'll be too busy to post for a little while, probably. This has been a busy week, town budget hearing meeting Monday which I felt like I had to attend because they are talking about adding artificial turf to a school field (ugh), and then B had a concert tonight where strings musicians from all the schools in town played, ending in a great performance of Ode to Joy with the 4th graders playing the vocal part along with the 5th graders, 7th graders, and high school students. Á morgun Ingi minn kemur. So I won't be taking much computer time. And then of course we have to clean for Easter, and then some undetermined number of people are coming for Easter dinner at my house, which will involve lambalæri and this yummy sounding cheesecake (posting the link to the recipe reminded me that I forgot to buy graham crackers, see, here's that thing I do where I read a recipe but I manage to leave off reading a few important lines).

So I've been plugging away with the bear sweater and I am so close to 18 cm, I think maybe one more set of dots and I will be there. So maybe the next time I post I will have a photo with started bears? If I get any knitting time.

And you know, my blog title has movie in it but I just haven't had much time for watching movies. I managed to squeeze in (spread out over 2 days) watching North by Northwest, which is one of those classic movies that I'd never seen before. It really was a lot of fun, it just shows what a timeless director Alfred Hitchcock was.

Busy Weekend

It was another busy weekend here, got a lot done but not much knitting.
I upgraded my Mac OS to Tiger, because I needed to for a work thing. So far the only real benefit (other than cool dashboard widgets) is it keeps my keyboard setting in Icelandic for ALL programs, instead of me having to switch it in each one.

I went to the yarn store and traded my mistakenly bought needles for this yarn (Opal Rainforest Flamingo):


We went to a local sheep farm and bought a lamb leg for Easter, along with some cheese and honey. I managed to escape without buying anything yarn or knitting-related. The proprietress showed me some photos of a local dairy farm closing up and shipping off their cows which was one of the saddest things ever.

We went to the library book sale and got some cheap CDs, a book on New England for Ingi minn, and some books on organisation (in my never-ending quest to attempt to become organised).

I helped a friend get her router working.

One of my online friends organised a purchase of many copies of a Selbustrikk book and so I should be getting that next week. I'd love to make the baby socks for one of those babies I'm making gifts for, but we shall see if I have time.

I'm on my 3rd row of green dots on the bear sweater. I only have to do 18 cm before I can start the bears, and I think I was around 11 when I last measured.

And here it is Sunday night and there is still loads of stuff to do around the house.

Bear Sweater is past the garter stitch

Well, we've had spring but it looks like it'll be back to winter tomorrow with some more snow. I'm all better, but I still have a nasty-sounding cough, enough to act out Act 3 of La Boheme and sing Mimi's Donde Lieta Usci.

What I like about the bear sweater: the colour change every 3 rows is enough to give you incentive to keep going to the next colour change, and having 3 different coloured dots makes it a little interesting.

What I don't like about the bear sweater: it's teeny tiny yarn and I feel like I've been knitting forever and have maybe 8 cm of progress and I know it'll be forever until I get to the cute little bear faces.

When I was knitting it I found it kind of amusing that the photocopy of the pattern I made myself so I don't rip up the magazine says "NOTE! Photocopying is forbidden" right next to the chart.

Anyway, here it is so far (it's not as blue as it looks in the photo):


Ingi's sister was visiting and saw the yarn he's bringing me in his room. "What's that?" she asked him. He tried pretending it was his, but she didn't buy it. I figure white loðband is not quite the white stuff you expect to find in the room of an indie rock musician. ;)

I'm making tomorrow's dinner and it smells really good. It's rice with spices and chicken and peaches.

Boston Highlights
Yes, I made it to Boston and it was BEAUTIFUL weather. It rained on and off, but mostly it was just a nice temperature. And we had such a good time. It was so great to see my friend.

* We went to The Garment District, near M.I.T., where you can wade through a pile of $1.50 per pound clothes on the floor, and saw the weird new M.I.T. building (can't find a photo, sorry).

* We went to the Lush store. I've only ever been to the one in Reykjavík. This one is bigger (although I don't think too much more stuff), but it's mostly the same fun. They had this crazy giant egg-shaped bath bomb full of goodies. I bought shampoo bars and a bubble bath and a bunny shaped bath bomb for B. who was coveting one of my Christmas present ones. Karma Komba really DOES help with tangles, I think I may like that shampoo bar better than my Seanick.

* We went to Teuscher and bought our guys candy bars.

* I tried on the 2 pairs of shoes I am trying to decide between at Fluevog. And I learned first-hand that besides the quality, one reason their shoes are pricey is AMAZING customer service. They had this crazy shoe-torturer thing that they could use to make shoes NOT RUB my feet! (This is a chronic problem I always have). So once I pick which pair I want, I am totally ordering my shoes from them.

* We went to Oona's in Harvard Square (no link, sorry) where I ALMOST found a dress. It had beautiful fabric but is one or two sizes too big, and not an easy design to alter.

* I freed my first ever Bookcrossing books, one at Au Bon Pain and one on the T train.

* I fell off the coffee wagon, after not having any coffee the whole time I was sick. Oh well, some things in life just make it worth it, don't they?