well, we have been without heat and hot water now for two days at chez gleek. this morning, our boiler repairman showed up at 7:15AM (15 minutes early! can you believe it? around here, it takes significant bribes to get anyone to even show up, much less ON TIME), poked around in the boiler closet for an hour, pronounced the sucker dead, and then fled from the scene before we could ask any questions like “how long will it take to replace it?” my lovely landlord will be spending the rest of the day finding someone to work on it soon but who knows how much longer this will go on? it would be a week before i get a hot shower at home. thank god i have the gym at work but KP is really upset. he has no place to go for a hot shower unless his work ships him off… and then i would have to deal with the boiler all on my own. this is a no-win situation. i expect i’ll be complaining about it a lot over the next couple of days. THAT and work has me totally swamped so in order to stay home next week (work from home AND handle any workers IN my home) i have to work this weekend. christ, this situation can only get worse. i can feel it.

not like it really matters… the boiler sucked rocks anyway. it’s been threatening to die on us for over a year by producing grinding and clicking sounds that would wake the dead. i’m kind of glad it’s gone. maybe we can get something quieter.

amidst my boiler troubs, i curled up on the couch last night and started watching prime suspect 6 while knitting on the embossed leaves socks. the good news is that i have finished them! i cranked out the toe and weaved in all the ends with a grateful sigh.

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my good friend kat in tokyo is always talking about having to do interviews (or turn down interviews) for the japanese media on knitting in the big city. her tokyo s’n'b has received plenty of fame for doing something rather radical by japanese standards.. and the japanese are just eating it up! we here in NYC are the subject of much chagrin to felllow new yorkers. people walk by the point on a friday evening, look in the window, and point. some make such a scene that it’s hard to concentrate on what you’re doing. two or three weeks ago, some tourist thought that it was the weirdest thing he had ever seen and took four or five pictures to prove it to the friends back home that, oh my god, people knit! IN PUBLIC!

so it came as no surprise that a news crew showed up at the point on friday night.

¿usted hace punto?

what did surprise us was 1) the news crew was from/for a spanish news channel and that they were hoping to elevate the craft of knitting in spain by doing this piece, 2) they avoided the spiders table till the very end. do we look intimidating or what?

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man, i feel like i was run over by a truck.. or a bus.. or some other large moving vehicle. remember how i was feeling crappy? well, it hit me like a ton of bricks and tuesday and wednesday i was laid up at home, barely able to move, much less go to work. i ask KP to get a gun and put me out of my misery at least twice but he refused. he’s a good man. as is my usual style whilst sick, i sat on the couch all day and watched movies.

have you seen shall we dance? not that crap jennifer lopez remake but the original japanese one? so very cute. i actually lifted my boycott of subtitled movies (this boycott is in effect only because i can’t knit and read subtitles at the same time.. well, i didn’t think i could but now it seems possible) and popped this in on tuesday. there’s just something about japanese men and women ballroom dancing that is so strange yet endearing that i couldn’t help but laugh and cry at many points in the film. yes, i’m sick but that doesn’t mean i’m overly emotional. i highly recommend it.

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well, i came back to work all excited about going to the gym and really getting started on all of my new projects for the year.. and i totally forgot about how going back to work also means returning to an office full of germs. yep, i’m sick. i felt it coming on friday with a cough, then on saturday i felt run down, sunday i was feeling better, but today the nose has decidedly backed up and i’m feeling like utter crapola. i’m sneezing and blowing my nose every three or four minutes. not happy! all i have at my desk is a packet of halls and like a hundred sudafed that expired two years ago. looks like i’ll be making a trip to duane reade soon.

the good news is that i’m making great progress on both of my current projects. on the somewhat cowl, i have about two more inches to go in the top before i can move on to putting the sleeves on waste yarn. this project feels extremely slow but when i unfurl the fabric i’ve already made i realize just how much progress i’m really making. it’s quite deceiving this whole top-down raglan thing. no seaming.. and that’s quite ok with me. i’m a little bit slower on my embossed leaves socks. i’ve made it to the heel on the first one but not much farther. i’ve been feeling lazy about following any sort of directions so the somwhat cowl suits me better in this respect since it’s just miles of stockinette. sorry i have no progress shots. i keep forgetting to take pictures in the daylight.

but i have other photos to show. friday was our biggest spider turnout ever at the point! we took over the entire large table and the little side table too.

there’s much knitting discussion going on here

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