the sucky thing about weekend commuting

I HATE being so far from A all the time.

I do love being closer to the rest of my family though. Even though I mostly see my parents (since I live with them - duh) I try to hang out with the sisters (ginger, sporty and baby. Which makes me posh, I guess, since all of us are equally scary) as much as I can. Sporty has made me promise to join her and buy a gym card, and in exchange I made her start singing in a choir with me. Now it seems like both ginger and baby also want to sing. Well, I guess it comes with the names...

I still don´t have a picture of the socks. One is nearly finished, so there is progress in the knitting. Tonight the LYS are open until nine, so I'm going there to buy Alpaca yarn for that cardigan that I have been wanting to knit forever. I feel a little guilty doing that, because I have promised to knit A a sweater this fall... but he needs to pick out a pattern first. And I can knit two big projects at once, right?

Toasty!

Slippers felted, husband happy.

I started a pair of socks last trainride, from the Nancy Bush's "The travelling knitter". I love this book. I want to make all the socks in this book. Picture of WIP after next weekend, when I have had access to the camera...

Also, I found 500 grams of lovely cotton/wool on sale, but I have absolutely no clue about what to do with it. It's not enough to make a sweater, which is too bad because I immediately saw a lovely pattern from Drops flashing before my eyes, when I laid my hands on these balls. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

LYS:s everywhere

The town where I live (go back to every weekend) is a student town. It's three times the size of the small home town where I now work, and of course I wait until the weekend to go shopping - there are at least ten times more stores, not to mention the coffeeshops.
Yarn is the big exception though. In the student town, there is one very decent LYS, and there is at least one very expensive specialty shop that sell the most beautifyl flax and one-ply wool... but a knitter sometimes need the normal, wool-acrylic sock yarn and the friendly knitter-to-knitter chat. Since I never clicked with the people in the LYS there, I have always felt a bit lost.
Yesterday I took a walk around town here in Cow-ville, and I found not less than two fully equipped yarn-stores with everything from the fancy to the... whatever the opposite of fancy is. I also found three textile shops that has a small but very cheap section of yarn and needles. To add on, I already know of a very very cheap yarn-store just outside of town. Oh what joy!
Yesterday I only had time to check one store out though, but I immediately became friends with the owner and I have promised to go show her my copy of Interweave Knits next week - she has never seen it since you can't buy it here in Sweden.

The good thing about spending 6 h a week on a train

is the time freed up for knitting! I finished a pair of fuzzy feet for my sweet husband (I love saying that) and tomorrow I will felt them for him. I made him a pair last year, from Noro wool, and he loved them and wore them until it was more whole than slipper left. This year I decided to make a pair from more durable wool.





I also started on the Retro Handbag from the new Interweave Knits.
I have almost more handbags than I can use, but I love these needles that I bought for no money at all in a second-handshop, and I have been longing for a chance to use them.
Vintage needles are the best, I think. Some day I´ll buy glass ones and try (mostly because they are beautiful) but until then I'll keep buying needles for a dollar/pair at markets and fairs.

We are having some friends over for dinner tonight. One of A:s guy friends has finally found a girlfriend that seems to last, and I am going to meet her for the first time even though they have been going out for five months now. That gives us a great opportunity to try the baking stone by having small pizzas with artichoces, marinated garlic and capers for entré, and trying the new pasta machine and make ravioli with spinache and Ricotta for main course. A made his amazing Tiramisu for dessert so it'll be an all Italian dinner.

(The baking stone and the pasta machine were wedding presents, BTW. I love presents. Maybe we should get married again...?)

As I said in my last post, I have an amazing friend who spent hours and hours on making me a wedding dress. Here are two pictures from just before the wedding.

We got married in a church from the 12th century, the same church as where my parents were married 30 years ago.

Back to the face of the earth

First of all - if anyone waited for me to post, I am very sorry. I am a bad bad blogger. I am also a bad knitter. No knitting at all has been done this summer. Quick update on my life:

May: I got a job! A great job. The only bad thing about it is that it is 400 km from where I live. It is in my old home town, so 29-year old Em had no choice but to temporarily move back in with mom and dad... I do have my own entrance though, and since I work long days and then go home to A after lunch on friday (it is only 3 hours by train, thank God), I can make it work for a while. The job is amazing. A great merit, pays well, good contacts, a chance to learn... I am so happy that I got this opportunity.

June:Working working working. And planning for...

July: Our wedding! Amazingly enough, my boss WANTED me to take four weeks of paid vacation only six weeks after I started working. And our wedding was just as fun, emotional, overwhealming and unforgatable as I had hoped. I will post a picture of the dress later on, my friend made it from chinese silk that another friend brought home. I loved the dress and I am very sad that I won´t use it again...

And now, I am back to work. Also, the weather is starting to cool off a bit... Sweden has had one of the warmest summer that anyone can remember. Yesterday I picked up yarn and needles for the first time in three months. Yay! I am ready for fall!