Eastburn Adventures

My first pair of socks for Summer of Socks are finished! These are the Tidal Wave Socks pattern, knit in Hand Maiden Casbah in the Amethyst colorway. This yarn is so yummy, and seriously, after I was finished, I probably had eough yarn left over to make another pair. Steph from work loved it, though - purple is her favorite color - so I gave the rest to her. (Oh, and yes, I know the photo's wonky and it looks like the bottom sock doesn't have a heel - it does - it's just my sock blockers are 2 different sizes and I didn't realize I had the one sock turned wrong on the blocker.)

Pair #2 is started. I'm making The Lucy Sock by Wendy, and using Misty Mountain Farms Jubilee in Waterfall. I completed the first toe last night at Knit Together. Also at KT, I cast on for the Swallowtail Shawl. Then I frogged it when I made an error on like the 8th row. Then I started over. Then my cable caught on my knitting bag and pulled the needle out of all my stitches. Then I decided to wait until I wasn't so tired to start over. More updates on that later.

The other thing that's been going on is our air conditioner has decided to die. It's still working, but we have to be very fiddly to keep it going, and it's time to replace it. My dad, who was formerly in the business, after retiring from the fire department, was still able to get the equipment for us at cost, but because of his health is really unable to install it. So he lined up another firefighter who does HVAC on the side who agreed to install the equipment this past Wednesday. When this man came to our house on Monday to look over the equipment, he claimed that it wasn't any good and he backed out of the installation. What we believe really happened is that he recalculated his bid and decided he wasn't going to make enough money on the installation alone since he couldn't mark up equipment to sell us at a higher price. (The equipment is fine; my dad absolutely knows what he's doing, and this is the same brand that's currently installed in our home and original equipment, and it's lasted 19 years.) So, a warning to my Springfield, Missouri area readers - DO NOT do business with Jeff Owings. Period. We've made other arrangements, and in a couple of weeks we'll have a new high efficiency HVAC system.