Lune dager

We have been having a surprisingly mellow spell these past few days. On Thursday we were invited along with E to visit one of his class mates and have dinner. They're a really charming and intelligent couple, and E plays really well with their son, after a bit of a rough start when they first were getting acquainted. I really wasn't aware how much fun it is to just sit around and B.S. with adults while the kids hang out together. My parents did that all the time when I was growing up, but somehow we haven't yet worked out routines for it. It looks like it's starting to happen slowly but surely.

Yesterday I stayed home to work on my book, and had a productive day. E was invited to another friend's house. They picked him up from school and he was having such a good time that KE didn't pick him up until 8pm. It was a little weird not to have E around all evening!

Today we've just been hanging out in our p.j.s. We took down the tree and packed away all the ornaments, which was a smaller task than feared and a big relief. Then KE and I watched both Petter Northug (cross country) and Aksel Lund Svindal (downhill) win their respective races on tv. It reconfirmed my sense that cross country is by far the more exciting sport to watch. The tactical aspect of the sport is fantastic. I'm a huge fan of Northug, despite his "bad boy" behavior, simply because he is such an incredibly good tactical skier. Sure he pouts and fumes when his equipment or his body lets him down, but when he's got everything in place he is just such an amazingly smart skier.

We had a bit of a sock crisis. Over the summer I knit two new pairs of wool socks for E to use this winter, and both pairs have disappeared. That's four entire hand-knitted socks that have vanished. Grr. The only solution was to sit down on Friday and start knitting yet another really boring pair of socks. Here's the first of the pair, finished this afternoon:

It's identical to the ones I knit before. The yarn is Zitron Trekking, and the pattern is the Classic Sock Pattern from Nancy Bush's Folk Socks. It's practically the only sock pattern I ever use. I have loads of this yarn left, so I imagine I'll be knitting dark blue socks for E well into his high school years!

Since I wanted to photograph the sock, I figured I'd take a quick snap of my finished Plain & Simple Pullover too:

I didn't feel like getting dressed for a modeled picture, and the light is too low for one anyway, so I just threw it on the coffee table. It's a good fit, but I'm still skeptical of wearing a short sleeved wool sweater in the winter. I'm such a wuss when it comes to cold. I even feel the chill when I wear my black sweater with 3/4 sleeves. We'll see. I'm also not totally crazy about the buttons, but I couldn't find anything that really appealed at the one store I had time to go to this week.

So that's it for now. We're just going to make some pizzas and I'm going to keep going on that second sock.

ETA: Pizza's in the oven, and it's a weird one. I almost always have yellow onions in the house, but this week I ran out, so I'm trying leeks instead. We also forgot to buy things like mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes. Spacey.

EATA: I also conveniently was in denial about my final goal today, which is folding a week's worth of air-dried laundry:

Gulp. That's not pretty. I'm saving it for a trashy television show later tonight. In the meantime, it seems to grow larger and larger as the day progresses. I'm guessing I'm not the only person in the world with a nasty corner like this, though...