It's November!

Can it really be November already? It's amazing how time can fly. Working full time and living for the weekends makes the work week seem long, but then all of a sudden another month has escaped. Where did it go? Did I do anything worthwhile? That's something we've been pondering over here in AZ. Did I do anything worthwhile? My life here is amazingly ordinary. It has been for a while and I don't much mind it, but it drives the BF crazy to go to work, come home, eat dinner, piddle around for a couple of hours, and do it all over again. He's in search of something, but he doesn't know what it is. It's mildly frustrating for me because I don't know what he wants (as he doesn't, either) so it's hard to help him feel anything but restless.

Mainly our remedies have been trying to do different things. Today we're going to South Mountain. You can drive straight up to the top and there's a great view of the city. The weather is starting to be mild, but the highs have still been in the mid 80s, Friday the high was 90*. Current temp, at 11:08am is 79*. It's odd. Yesterday I went swimming, and in Ohio it was snowing.

I'm not sure if I'm kosher with the lack of seasons here. It's something I've always said I wouldn't really like and it turns out that I'm pretty much right. While I enjoy that I am currently ( on November 7th) sitting here in pajama pants and a tank top with all of my windows open I still miss the fall. I miss the cool, crisp air. I miss the leaves changing, making driving from country to city beautiful with their reds, yellows, oranges, and browns.

I will also be missing the first snow. The way it blankets the ground and quiets even the city streets, making everything pristine (at least until the snow plow comes). I am certain, however, that I will not miss the first blizzard of the season, my car being covered with ice, or -15* mornings.

The BF made a trip over to Portland recently. He had a friend from Ohio that moved over there, and he had some extra vacation time so he spent 5 days there. He said it was beautiful. He got to visit Multnomah Falls. For which I am supremely jealous. Of course in my mind Multnomah is synonymous with the shawlette by Hello Knitty.

And it's GREEN! I also miss things being green. Oh, there are some green things out here (bushes, palm tress [LOVE the palm trees!]) but they aren't GREEN green.

He also saw Haystack Rock on the west coast. (I don't know that I've ever set foot in the Pacific before)

Beautiful, no? Also I was jealous of his trip to Portland because it's a knitterific city, home to the likes of PDXKnitterati's Michele and  Marnie Maclean, as well as knitting events like the Sock Summit. The BF said he was lots of people knitting in public in Oregon as well.

If you've been reading my blog for a while then you'll probably remember my considering Portland nearly 2 years ago (Oh my goodness, was it really 2 years ago??).

Portland's back in the mix. Why? Why not. AZ is pretty OK, but I'm not sure it's the place for me (Someone at work said they'd like to see Sarah Palin as president in 2012......). We'll see.

The Move

Hi all! Today, finally, I don't have a million things that I need to get done, so I thought I'd go ahead and do a little recounting of our journey, along with some photos that I managed to capture. Most of them are from the window of the moving truck, because we didn't make many stops and none of them were for scenic purposes.

I have to say that I was dreading the 4 day drive across the country, I'm not one for long road trips. It actually ended up being okay, though. In part because my boyfriend did absolutely all of the driving. Seriously. I only drove the truck when we picked it up on Monday. He felt bad because he sprained his ankle and wasn't able to help me load the truck, so he did all of the driving.

We split the move up into 4 days, so we wouldn't be driving all day every day. We also visited some Ravelry friends in Tulsa, OK. It was so amazing to meet them! The lovely and generous Kat allowed us to stay in her home over night. She is possibly one of the sweetest people I've ever met! Her kids and husband were awesome and in general they were a joy to be around. I also got to meet Calista as well at their weekly knit meeting (It was purely coincidental that we happened to be staying there on Wednesday which is when they meet. It was awesome to meet some local knitters!) Silly me, I left my camera in the car, but Kat managed to get some great pictures which I will now steal:

This is Calista and Me, as well as her Dread Bump Wesley (Baby bump!) and some friends. See that snail? I made that in on the drive to Tulsa for her. It's from the Amigurumi Knits book.

Kat took a couple of pictures of it before he went to his new home. He's made with acrylic and cotton so as to be easy to clean if the baby gets anything on him. It's an adorable pattern, but so fiddly! I grafted about 130 stitches, 90 for the shell and 40 for the snail body. Gah! You can't argue with the adorable results, though.

So, day 1 we drove to St. Louis, MO.

St Louis Arch.*

Day 2 to Tulsa, OK. Day 3 was our longest day. We drove from Tulsa, OK to Holbrook, AZ. It ended up being about 15 hours of driving. Ugh! We went through 2 time zones, so even though we left around 8 AM, we got to Holbrook around 9 PM.

Wind energy in OK.*

The flat, flat panhandle of TX.*

Cool plateau in NM.

We drove through a rain/hail storm in NM on a mountain. It was scary!*

The end of the storm. The sky looked so cool!*

Day 4 we finally made it to Tempe, AZ. We got the keys to our apartment. We arrived around 1 PM, just in time for the hottest part of the day, so we ended up going out to lunch and doing some shopping before we unloaded anything.

Mountain in AZ.*

More mountains!

Cacti!*

We spend the weekend unloading the truck, unpacking a bit, and furniture shopping. Every night I've gone to bed exhausted. Today is the first day I haven't had a million things to do and it's kind of weird.

Once we get our couch delivered and have the apartment set up to our satisfaction then I will take some pictures and post them. I think it will be a great living space. The apartment is a little long, but that's okay. It has 2 balconies as well as a garage and a washer/dryer. We are very pleased with it.

And since I think that's about enough information to pack into one post, I'm going to leave it at that. =)

*These pictures were taken with my Droid phone because either I didn't have my camera, or I was sending them via picture message.

Yarn!

Still no knitting, but I do have lots of spinning and some BIG news to share with you!

I finished the falkland from Cosy on Sunday. I have to say that I LOVE it, even though it's not as even a weight as I had hoped. It's on average, a worsted-aran weight. I can't stop petting it!

Soaked and thwacked to finish!

Next up is the silk yarn I bought back in September. It was a little graduation gift for myself. It's from Gnomespun, and the color is "Demeter", although I tend to think of earthier colors when I think of Demeter as she's the chaste earth goddess. Although she did preside over the harvest too, so you can think of this as her golden waves of grain. This is 2oz of tussah silk top. It was super easy and fast to spin. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. But it's shiny and nice enough to look at right now. =)

This is a picture of it before the twist is set, you can see some of the kinks in it. I left it as singles to get the most possible yardage out of it. I'll get a better picture of it once the twist is set.


I promised BIG news, didn't I? Okay, well, I think I mentioned before that my company is opening a new call center in Arizona and that I applied to go. Well, they pulled me aside on Monday and told me that I was one of the few that they had chosen to reloacte! EEE! In just 4 short weeks I will be living in Arizona. They certainly are not giving us much moving time, they want our last day here to be May 26th, and our first day there to be June 1st. That's a mere 5 days to drive across the country. However, I requested the 24th-26th off so I'll actually have 9 days to get moved.

This will be the longest road trip I've ever taken and I'll be going through a lot of states that I've never been to before. It's exiting and scary. I've already called a few places about apartments and I think I've found one that I really want. It's 1050 sq. ft. for $725/mo, with a balcony and a washer and dryer in the unit. None of the utilities are included so that's kind of a down, but it would be great to have all that space!

Until next time.