some knitting but mostly waxing lyrical about a dishwasher

It's the beginning of June, and I am contemplating mittens. It's been cool and damp and cloudy, instead of sunny, and I'm not complaining. There's this pair I want to make that have an inner layer of mohair and an outer, lacy layer of wool. They'll be great in the winter. My hands and feet get cold really easily (so does my nose, but wearing a nose-warmer is really reserved for people under eight or so), and something that warm will actually be nice. I'm finishing a pair of socks right now. When I catch up to where I bound off the first sock, I'm going to undo my bind-off, join the other end of the ball of yarn to it, and put it on a second set of needles. I want to use up the entire ball of yarn.

Since I have put most of my yarn in a box, except for a couple projects that went into the knitting bag, the mittens will have to wait. If I start something new, it will be more socks. We're moving in a couple weeks and that means lots of packing. It's happened pretty fast...we gave notice at our current place on Tuesday and officially have a new place as of today. We get our keys on the fifteenth, which gives us lots of breathing room to move in between then and the last day of June. I'm looking forward to moving. Our current apartment isn't bad, and we've been pretty happy here, and the building's gotten better since we got a new manager, but we have been wanting to move for a while.

I was so surprised to find out for sure today. The lack of pets and the non-smoking thing helped, I think. That and the fact that I'm a geeky grad student with a love for language who likes to knit in her spare time, and J. is a geeky soap maker who likes to play board games. When we have people over, they come over for dinner, and we hang out, talk, watch movies, and/or play board games. Or they come over just to play board games. Sometimes my friends come over for tea. We don't do wild drunken parties, and when I play music, I usually turn it down because I think it's too loud when it's at less than half as a loud as it could be. A night out at its craziest might consist of going to a pub. Well, there was my sister-in-law's nineteenth birthday...we went to the casino because she wanted to see what one looked like. We all thought it was boring, left, and went to a pub so we could buy her a drink to celebrate. Anyway, all that to say that we're fairly mild-mannered.

Our soon-to-be home is bigger, it's on a quieter street in a more residential area, there's a park really close by, it has a dishwasher, it has very decent storage space (and shelves!), and the hallways do not reek of cigarette smoke. My allergies will be less severe. The building has an elevator, which will make my family happy. They've volunteered to come and help us move, and I remember the last time they helped us move, my mother wondered why we couldn't find a building with an elevator. And I feel certain that I will not get "The Look" when they see our new building. I got it when we moved into this one. The building is older and looks like it. The new place is also an older building, but either newer than the one we're in, or better preserved. We still have to pay for laundry, but that's okay, because there's a dishwasher. I'm sort of stuck on the dishwasher. It makes me happy. And the kitchen is bigger. J. thinks it's at least a "one butt" kitchen, instead of the half a butt kitchen we have now.

And while I thought we really couldn't get much closer than a block from a liquor store, we will now be less than half a block from a liquor store. This isn't a plus or a minus, just interesting.

All in all, I'm really happy. But I'm not looking forward to boxing up all the books.