No Knitty, Just Dotty

Another week has gone by with no discernible progress in my knitting. Frankly, I'm sick of the sock I'm working on and reading has been taking up a lot of my time as well. So today you're excused from more yarn talk for another week. Well. Sort of anyway.

~ Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch is a book sock knitting friends of mine have for a long time encouraged me to finally buy. I pooh-poohed it somewhat - there are tons of sock patterns online for free and I can be a cheap ass when it comes to buying knitting books but when I had a Amazon.com gift certificate to blow I bought it and it arrived today.

Holy smokes people - if you knit socks and don't have this book, you're not getting the most out of your sock knitting. It's billed as the only sock knitting book you'll ever need and I'd say it lives up to that. It's set up so that all you need to do is, pick a pattern, pick a yarn, pick the needles you want to use, have your leg measurements, know your gauge and you can knit dozens of different socks without the agony of worrying over whether a pattern is going to fit someone properly. It gives some styles based upon certain types of stitch patterns and then cleverly adds a stitch dictionary so that you can substitute different patterns with ease. Just when I was feeling a bit burned out on socks, this book arrives and rejuvenates it.

Since it was one of those "buy this book and get this other book too for this amount" deals, I bought the second book, More Sensational Knitted Socks, at the same time. For anyone interested in getting it for themselves the difference in the first and second books seems to mostly be the patterns offered...and the patterns offered are pretty gorgeous. The instructional part goes over the basics just as it does in the first book, the tables are basically the same and then there are some more techniques introduced like different cast ons for top down socks and bind offs for toe up socks. There's also another stitch dictionary provided. I'd say it's worth buying this second book.

I must stay strong. I must not cast on for new socks until I finish what I'm working on now.

You can peek again! Yarn talk is over!

~ It's tempting to say "Holy shit, it's hot here!" but it's not particularly hot. What it is is humid. The sort of humid where even the slightest amount of exertion turns me into a sweaty mess. I have spent the entire day with most of my hair soaking wet. When I was in high school I worked in a dry cleaners and laundry and I don't remember sweating that much there, even in the middle of the summer. It's the sort of humidity where you can't bear for any part of your skin to touch any other part of your skin and should you have a puff of a breeze touch you, you nearly weep with joy. It's humidity you could surf on.

~ I'm going to blame this next part on the humidity and its ability to make me stupid. I went today to the immigration office to get my residency visa transferred from my old, expired passport to my brand spanking new passport. The residency visa has my photo on it. Did I think to bring a new photo with me? Of course not! That would have made this trip entirely too efficient and my time well spent. I got two photos when I renewed my passport so I have a biometric photo already that I can use - my only problem now is finding where I have it stashed. At least I made an appointment for my return visit to speed things up when I go back so there won't be any waiting in line. And I'd like to take this opportunity to compliment the ladies working at the immigration office. Nice, nice, nice and extremely patient. Friendly as all get out. I thought my MIL (who I like to take with me when I go do important things just in case there's one word I don't really understand) was going to invite them over for coffee and cake 'cause they were just so danged friendly! They may be a little dick-heady at the Bürgerbüro (for those of you not in Germany, that's a bureau that takes care of citizen matters - you get your national ID there, get a passport, register your residency, etc.) but by golly the ladies at the immigration office are top drawer!

~ I bought gasoline about 10 days ago. I don't drive a whole lot and my Toyota Econobox Starlet isn't exactly a gas hog so I fill it up usually every 7 or 8 weeks. Yay for good public transportation and living right in the middle of the main shopping district! Anyway, when I filled up I paid 1.36 € per liter for super unleaded. We'll not go into why I'm putting super unleaded in an 11 year old Starlet. I'm not even sure I have a good reason why. At the time I nearly fell out when I saw what I was paying for a liter of gasoline. The time before that when I filled it I paid something like 1.23 € per liter. I was a little mad with myself that I'd evidently picked a bad time to buy gas but I had to have it. Today I saw that super unleaded gas is going for 1.45 € per liter. Converted to American dollars that's about $1.95 per liter. Nearly $8 a gallon, folks and it's only going to get worse. Until people start getting serious about using less gasoline it's going to get worse. If not bringing a photo to the immigration office made me feel dopey, buying gas before the price spiked makes me feel like a genius. Or at least at the right place at the right time.

~ Mmmmm....coconut and chocolate ice cream. It doesn't cure sweated out hair but you care less about it.