Snail Spirals

Well. Well well well. So the mortgage agent (Julie) called on Friday and we have been approved for a loan. Apparently we have excellent credit! We also got word from our real estate agent (Chita) on Saturday morning that the sellers have countered our offer, but their counter is still within our budget and loan amount. We go to meet with Julie this morning at 11 to go over all the numbers again, then will get together with Chita and finalize things with her.

I still can't believe this. It seems far too quick. Exciting though! I keep telling myself that people buy houses all the time, and it's a perfectly normal thing to do, and just keep breathing...

In other, less earth-shaking news, I started the Hanukkah sweaters for the twin boys I used to babysit for. The yarn was backordered, and took forever to come in. I started and finished the back of one of the sweaters yesterday. I charted original designs to go on the fronts of the sweaters, with input from the boys on color and pictures. Maks wanted blue and orange, with a boat; Sam wanted red and yellow, with something like a sunflower (he likes symmetrical things). So I drew the pictures, transferred them to graph paper, and decided on colors. The backs and sleeves will be plain. I've finished the back of the blue sweater. I started out using a commercial pattern for the shaping, but had to heavily adapt it because the yarn I'm using knits up at a finer gauge than the pattern calls for. I just recalculated all the stitch counts/increases/decreases. My calculations seem to be correct, as the finished back is the size I was aiming for!

Emma and I went off-island yesterday, to Costco and assorted other errands. It's pretty ironic that going off island to buy things like diapers, wipes, cereal, and things like that actually saves us money. If we get one giant box of diapers and fill the gas tank at Costco, we've paid for the ferry ticket!

We had fun on the ferry on the way over. Emma is highly mobile and likes to watch people now, so we spent the entire hour and a half doing laps around the passenger deck of the boat. She toddled along, grinning and waving at everyone, with occasional shrieks of delight, and I followed behind. I was able to knit during this, since the back of the sweater is just plain stockinette with no color changes.

All this exercise meant, of course, that she was tired and ready for a nap when we got to the mainland. She fell asleep almost immediately when we got back in the car, so I drove to the farthest-away store first, and she got probably about 40 minutes sleep, what with waiting to unload the ferry then driving time.

So we did all our shopping errands and Emma sang and babbled away while strapped in the cart or her stroller, we had lunch, we did our last stop (Costco), then headed back to the ferry. We walked around the ferry area a little, then Emma was ready for a late afternoon nap. Back to the carseat, she fell asleep right away, and slept the rest of the wait in line (~1.5 hrs.), the entire ferry ride (~1.25 hrs.), and the whole ride home (~.5 hrs.). I guess she was tuckered!