Penguins frolicking in the

... green green grass?

[Edited to fix image.]

You may not remember, but our trusty friend Greg is still on his panamerican bicycle tour, and he's made it to Tiero del Fuego on the Chilean side. There are pictures of more penguins here. Soon his trip will come to an end, and I wonder how he'll adjust back to living the regular life.

Adjusting back to regular life post Olympics has been difficult. Or maybe I'm just having one of those weeks. It's hard to tell. It started with my car dying. Again. And then we got notice from the landlord that they want to sell the property, so we have to move out. And then the inability to knit post-olympics has been an odd phenomenon. What to do? At Nathania's closing cerermony party, I cast on and unraveled a couple times. Nothing was sticking. I did have a wonderful time there though. Despite being bummed out by the sudden news that we have to move, the knitterly love was fabulous.

What next? Looking at the VK sweater dress pisses me off because the pattern is so messed up, but I think I've figured out how to handle the collar finally. I just need to (a) disassemble the mannequin to get the dress off, (b) find the pattern, (c) find needles for the collar (I need the pattern to know what size needle that was supposed to be), (d) get a crochet hook of the appropriate size to do the crocheted detail, (e) just do it and weave in the ends.

Other failures this week included trying to start a pair of socks. I got as far as setting up the swift and ball winder, but the yarn was not cooperating. It is Hand Jive Knits fingering weight that I got from Hollis's sale. Admittedly, Freecia did warn me that they had some problems balling the hanks because of tangles, but I'd never had a problem with the same yarn in the past, so I ignored her advice. Well, I should have listened. The stuff was a nightmare to ball, and I got maybe a tiny fraction of the way through one hank before giving up. I tried another hank to see if it was just the one, but they were both horribly tangled. Even in its tangled state, it's awfully pretty, isn't it?

So I did what I had to do. I consoled myself by making a big cup of tea and treating myself to an episode of 24 (we're trying very hard not to watch them all at once and are saving them up until the end) and started a mindless stockinette sock with pre-balled yarn. I'll probably rip it out later and do something more interesting with the yarn, but for the moment it was just what I needed.