Wasn't it great how I just tucked the vital information about me dating someone into the last post? I really didn't want to share my massive change in dating status on the blog until the relationship was established, and at this point it is. Chris, who is the most cutest boy ever, and I met on eHarmony. Now, I don't want this to be a promotional for eHarmony, because honestly, its not a lot greater than any other online dating site I tried. There are still people on there who have a great interest, not in finding a relationship, but the perks of one, if you catch my drift. There are people on eHarmony who are simply looking for love by only looking at a picture. Even though eHarmony has set up a guided communication system, there are people who want to bypass that and just meet, without knowing a stitch about you. It isn't a fool proof method of finding of someone. It does require time and patience, but I think those are requirements for anything worth having in life.

I met Chris after getting rather fed up with eHarmony - or at least with the people I'd met.  I had vowed that I would give it one more go, and lucky I did!   From our first emails and phone calls up to the moment we met, everything clicked.  And I do believe it is still clicking.  I'm so very excited about going home tomorrow to see his smiling face.  He keeps me rational about the irrationalities of life, and I love that about him.  Right now, after two weeks across the pond, I'm feeling rather let down about some things - things that have nothing to do with him, or really anything in general.  I know that just seeing him will put the world right for me again.

He is everything I've wanted in a man.  I couldn't have dreamed up a better guy.  Wish me luck with this one, please!  Though I don't really think I need it

P.S.  Please don't let this post be a jinx

Andi wasn't kidding when she told me it would be "damp" in Leeds. It truly is. If I had the stomach to do it, I'd take a picture of my soaked self, and share it with everyone. It is my fault really for bringing the least sturdy umbrella I had. But its the cutest and you know how we girls are about "cute" things.

I actually had the day (mostly) off of work, so I went to the only legitimate yarn store I could find on the Internet. On a side note, God bless the Internet. When I say legitimate, I mean that it looked like it had more than acrylic, not that there's anything wrong with acrylic yarns. They have their time and place. But I'm in England, land of sheep. I want some wool! So after perusing knitmap, I found a shop in Bradford, a town about 12 miles away, that luckily has a direct train to it. So I hopped the train to Bradford. This is a nice town, but very hilly! The yarn store, Texere Yarns, was more of a warehouse of wool and other various types of fibre (I'm spelling it the UK way at the moment), much like YarnMarket down in Columbus. They did have one room with hand knitting yarns, but they mostly had weaving and machine knitting yarns. They did have a fantastic assortment of dye your own yarn, and if the exchange rate had been better, I might have walked out of there with pounds of the stuff (pardon the monetary pun). They also carried some cold water dyes, but I wasn't sure of how they worked with wool, and didn't really want to take the time to figure it out. I can get dyes and undyed yarn in the states, so I'm not too worried about it. What I really wanted was just some basic wool.

I decided at the beginning of the year that it would be a no-yarn year for me. However, mostly, that applied to sock yarn. I know, sock yarn doesn't count, but when that is the bulk of your stash, it most certainly does count. I have a few baskets of sock yarn, and I really don't need any more at the moment. DK weight wool or higher was my goal at Texere yarns, and I found plenty. Even with the exchange rate, I'd say I did fairly well as far as price goes. I got a LOT of yarn. More than I thought I'd buy, but each skein was selected specifically for a project I've been wanting to do. There was no willy nilly yarn buying.

Let me share the loot with you, and share exactly what I plan to do with each of skein.

This is definitely going to become a scarf, but who gets the scarf is yet to be seen.

After making my no-more-humdrum-mittens, I decided I like the fair isle knitting.  I really want to make a pair of mittens from the same pattern, but wasn't sure about the color combo I wanted.  When I saw this blue, I fell in love, and had to be mine.  I was going to pair it with a charcoal gray, but black made the blue pop more.  The yarn is a DK weight merino, and apparently its from Yorkshire, so I did pretty good getting local yarn.

This yarn is Texere's own milled yarn.  They had several colors and was really liking them al, but I decided that pinks and gray and black would be nice.  Years ago, Better Homes and Gardens put out a knitting magazine that had a wide striped scarf on it.  It was always my goal to knit it, but it seemed so hard to make such a long scarf.  Since my knitting skills have improved, I think I'll enjoy it.  It'll just be a ribbed scarf, with really wide stripes on it.

This is destined to be a hat for someone.  I picked up Son of Stitch N' Bitch a few weeks back, and while leafing through the pages, my boy said he liked the Celtic Beanie (ravelry link).   So I'm going to possibly make that for him.  Depends on if he really likes it or was just saying that.  If not, I can figure something else to do with this yarn.  My knitting group is having an amigurumi exchange next month, so it might become some sort of cuteness!  Darth Vadar anyone?

(Oh, and I know I haven't mentioned the fact that I even have a boy, but I do have to share the fact that he is the greatest guy in the world.  Want proof?  After only a month of dating, he bought me the Knit Picks Options set for Christmas.  Is that awesome or what?)

I wanted to photograph some proof that I'm actually over in the UK. However, since I'm a slacker, I really didn't get out much today. I slept WAY in (no thanks to the fact that I napped yesterday and couldn't get to sleep until about 3 this morning) and didn't get out until about 1. The skies were gray and I really didn't feel as if I should travel all the way to York to just see the Minster. I'd also like to see the Viking settlement, so I'm going to go next Saturday. But even though its a dreary day, I did get out and snapped a few photos.

Don't ask me how much I want to hop into one of those and be like "How do I get to the Ministry of Magic?"

I have been knitting a lot over the past month. One of the big things I've worked on is super secret, as its a design for a book. Took up lots of my time around the holidays. And I am knitting my first pair of fair isle mittens.

I heart these mittens. I'm almost done with them, which should be good news to my No More Hum Drum Mitten swap partner, who has been waiting patiently, and dealing with my many excuses as to why they aren't done. Mostly, it was because of the super secret knitting. They will be done and shipped by the 25th of this month, though. I am so sorry, Jodi!!!

Since I have a little bit to finish the mittens, and since fair isle knitting takes a lot of concentration, the plane ride knitting was just a simple toe-up sock. Before Christmas, I heard tell of Noro Kureyon sock yarn, and had to see for myself what this creation was all about. So I purchased two skeins. The first skein that I decided to knit was the more blueish of my two skeins. The other skein looks a bit greeny. However, I think someone switched the yarn on the insides of my two skeins (when I get home, I'll share a picture of the other skein). The outside of the ball of sock yarn looks like this:

My sock, however, looks like this:

Completely unexpected... and a lot green! But I'm digging the sock. There is no way in the world that I'm going to get the mate to match this! No way!

I've also been working on a scarf that I had started back in, like, April!

I liked the scarf, but made one tiny mistake in the seed stitch border, and then I moved, and blah!  I just didn't want to work on it any more. The scarf is knit out of Debbie Bliss yarn, and what kind of yarn is more English (to me) then Debbie Bliss.  I thought it would be a nice project to take with me.  The yarn and pattern were given to me in a swap that I participated in last year.  I'm completely loving the cables and am one ball away from finishing!  Should keep me warm on the plane ride home.

I brought a few other projects for working on while I'm over here.  I want to finish the mates to two pairs of socks I've started.  And I want to work with some of the yarn I bought in Hong Kong.  For now, though, my goals are to finish the lovely scarf, finish the one Kureyon sock, and get my swap partner's mittens done!   Can I do it?  Tune in next time to see!

That is a phrase I've heard quite a bit this week, as I'm currently on the other side of the Atlantic.  I'm hanging out here in the UK, in Leeds to be more specific.  At the moment, it is cold and rainy, and I'm a bit jet lagged, but tomorrow I plan on getting in some site seeing.  I think I'll hop the train to York and visit the Minster.  Or I might do that next weekend.

Anyway, I just wanted to write a short post to let everyone back home know I was fine.  Three days in and I'm ready to return home to my loved ones, as I miss them all!  But the next week and a half will go fairly quickly.  I'm getting a lot of knitting done (who would have thought that?) and I'm enjoying it!

Cheers!