Ikea, Again!?

Of course. See, in the little booklet for the Fit the car is shown outside of an Ikea-esque location loading up with Ikea-esque boxes bearing the not-actually-Swedish words 'ruhm' and 'zuhm' and 'funkshonal' and 'styl'. I simply wanted to verify that there was no false advertising on the part of Honda - that the Fit could go to an Ikea-esque location, load up with Ikea-esque boxes, and still be roomy, stylish, responsive and functional. I am pleased to report that Honda does not lie, the Fit is more than Go. My mother-in-law and I managed to load an entire office worth of furniture into the car, drove 160+ miles, visited the mall, and looked good doing it. The car is such a blast to drive and I adore it. I figured we'd go with the actual Ikea, since I don't know of any other extremely gargantuan yet unlabeled blue and yellow buildings with a large availability of cardboard boxes bearing fake Swedish words. Once again I managed some great scores in the As-Is room - a $70 desk top for $10, cabinet doors that are usually $28 a pair for $4 each, and a slide-out keyboard drawer for $5 instead of the $12 it sells for on the floor. I saved enough to get two little things for Emily - a very cool wooden stacking toy and an even cooler wooden push-along thing. And all at a very comforting 36 MPG at 70MPH on I-91. I love Ikea. I love the concept. I love that they are going to begin charging consumers a nickel for each bag they use. I love that all my stuff is neatly in my garage in boxes awaiting assemby when we need it. I really really love that I just outfitted an entire office including four wall cabinets, a wardrobe, a desk and a printer cabinet - and little stuff for home and baby - for $633.
"But does she knit anymore?" you ask. Yes, a little. I am still working on my Flower Basket shawl, and am actually at the point where it says to begin the border, but looking at the tiny thing I think I will work a few more repeats of the flower basket pattern first. In fact, I was considering doing the border in Franklin, and using all of the alpaca silk for the body of the shawl. It just looks very tiny to me in it's current state, and insufficient for covering much of my person even when blocked. I also swatched for Lucy's Shawl, created by the brilliant Katy Wight, future Fit owner, for Webs. The original is made with Deerfield, a yarn I love to bits. I have no Deerfield, but I do have a very capable Deerfield substitute - I can't give you it's name as it does not really exist; we can call it "the yarn that was supposed to be Deerfield, but wasn't". It's been calling to me from the box under my chair for a while now. I considered, breifly, being very creative and inventive with it and even had an idea in mind but thought it'd make a perfect mindless post-book project. I decided to work it up on smaller needles and add an extra repeat or two of the lace pattern to compensate for the difference in yarn weight. A completed swatch would give me all the information I needed to decide whether to add one or two addditional repeats. My swatch was completed over the weekend and took a spin in the washer after a thorough wetting. Then I forgot about it, what with it's being Saturday (Tequila) night and all. Last night I came home and stuffed my brand new Ikea Andrea Blom comforter cover into the washer, turned it to warm, and this morning removed a very clean comforter cover and a beautifully felted alpaca-silk lace swatch. ***sigh***. So we begin again, or just say "Forget it!" cast on enough for an extra repeat or two, and move ahead. Don't-cha love the stitch distortion a little warm water can cause?? I am finding increasing irony in the knitting of shawls that I will probably never actually don. I like to knit them, but rarely wear them. This is sad, possibly wasteful, and not something I muse on for very long. The soothing rhytym of the shawl is enough to keep me coming back for more. I've also picked up the much neglected Mr Wonderful Dale sweater, begun in 2004, maybe finished in, oh, 2008? I have finished the bottom border and have entered a land of endless black stockinette stitch. I ebt that'll move riiiiight along...
Don't you love this? I do. It's so RED. I want to crawl into it. It's the new comforter cover, Andrea Blom. I needed something sunny before my mind died. I am so sick of cold and winter and this thing makes me feel very awake and bright. I am going to scoot upstairs and put it on the bed and just stare at it for a while and think warm thoughts.