Crocheter's Lament

I have been wanting to learn how to knit solely so I can make a few of these adorable wool soakers for Baby Boy. So I bravely took knitting needles and yarn in hand, and...found out that knitting is (to me) way more complicated than crochet. Not only is it way slower, but it's hard to insert the needles exactly where I want them and the yarn keeps sliding off the hook-less needle ends and I keep dropping stitches or adding stitches or twisting stitches...you get the idea. With crochet, when you mess a stitch up, you just slip it off the hook, give the yarn a tug, and you're good to start over again. With knitting, it's not the simple. I E-mailed the designer of the soaker patterns I linked to above and asked if she would be coming out with a crochet version any time soon; her response was a definite no. I know there are crocheted soaker patterns out there, but none of them are as cute as the Little Turtle Knits patterns. I'm fairly crafty and it's usually not too hard for me to get the hang of a new skill, but I've given knitting more than a fair shot and I'm thisclose to giving up on it.

In other news, it's been HOT here--around 100 degrees. We don't have air conditioning...well, we do have a small unit, but we can't use it...mainly because in the complex we live in, you're not allowed to install air conditioners in any windows visible from the street. Our air conditioner is only strong enough to cool a small room, like a bedroom, and since our bedroom windows face the street, we're out of luck. Annoying regulations. :-P We've been opening up all the windows until around 10 A.M., then shutting up the house and even closing the blinds to keep the heat and sun out until late evening. It's been working all right, but things are still pretty sticky around here. Baby Boy is sleeping in just a diaper.

We're having transmission problems with our car again, so Hubby has been taking public transportation to work, and I've been walking everywhere I need to go (which isn't really much of a change for me, since I don't have the car during the day anyway). Early this morning, before it got too hot, Baby Boy and I walked about a mile to the nearest grocery store and came home with six bags of groceries hanging from the stroller handles! Baby Boy sometimes gets bored when we're shopping, especially because I like to compare prices and use coupons, so I'm not a very fast shopper. I got a store advertisement and kept giving pages of it to Baby Boy, who had a blast tearing them in pieces the whole time we were in the store (I picked up all the pieces, of course!). I do hope we get our car fixed soon, though. The transmission is still under warranty from when we had to have it fixed last Christmas, but the problem is that the shop is a 90-minute drive from where we live (we broke down halfway to my parents' house last Christmas Eve). So now we have to figure out if it's cheaper to have it towed all that way and get it repaired for free, or just pay someone in town to do it.

I want to go to a fabric store to pick out some fabric for some nursing dresses, but it's too far away to walk, and it would take too long to get to via public transportation, so I'll have to wait until the car is fixed. I don't really know how to sew (I made a few articles of clothing in high school with help from my mom), but I'm planning to learn. Hopefully, that will be more successful than my experience with knitting. I ordered this nursing dress pattern from Elizabeth Lee.