Totally Busted

I was just so busted by my nephew and I knew the only place I could get any understanding was from fellow knitters. At Christmas two years ago, I had started knitting him a scarf. It turned out looking half-assed so I bought him a gift instead. My mother, being wonderful, told him that I was making him the scarf and showed it to him. I didn't rip it out and restart it for almost another year. This past year as Chirstmas was approaching, I bumped his gift up to a scarf, hat, and fingerless glove set. I knew I woudn't actually be seeing him at Christmas, so his gift got bumped in priority of finishing. I DID finish all the knitting, just not the weaving in of ends. He came over in January and I showed him the set, which he was impressed with, and told him that I would have it finished very soon. About a month and half later, I ran into him at Walmart and asked about it. I told him that needed to know if he wanted scarf fringe or not........It's now the very end of July. He came over for a surprise visit tonigth and saw his *still* unfinished gifts laying on my chair. I am a TOTAL LOSER, people. This time I said that since it had gotten so hot, I knew he wasn't going to be needing it so I just left it alone....and that I needed someone to show me how to sew over the holes in the thumb attachment. I have serious, SERIOUS issues with finishing projects.

While it's true that I'm sometimes an unfaithful knitter....

Okay, I'm totally feed up with my publishing equipment. The program I have apparently doesn't work AT ALL. The pictures won't go where I want them to go, I can't add captions....I'm thru. I am adding finding a new alternative to my schedule this week. As much as it pains me to do so (because God forbid I should want to add a photo or two to my blog) I present to you one completed jaywalker, as shown above. It's in Opal sockyarn, but I must admit that I have yet to figure out the German mumbo-jumbo on the label to identify any sort of specific yarn name. I know from reading that they do HAVE actual names, but it's just beyond me at this moment.
And as proof that I didn't fib about starting the second sock immediately upon finishing the first, my black sheep tape agreed to pose with the cuff of the second.

I did mention the other day that I'm a terrible, unfaithful knitter and started my RPM's. I had a system worked which involved planting the RPM's at my kitchen table and leaving the jaywalkers in my office. That way, if I was upstairs, I was forced to work on the jaywalkers exclusively. In fact, I even finished the 2nd sock! Amazing. The sock has yet to make it's photo debut, but it soon will along with the baby bits of my 1st RPM.

Lucky day for knitting

Today was a pretty good day, knit wise. However I sense that I am waaayyyy on the verge of cheating on my second jaywalker and dive into those RPM's. Hey, I found the yarn for it after all! I see that as a sign that the socks must be made post haste. Or I'm just good at justifying my totally irresponsible knitting decisions. But.....I also found some size 2 needles hiding under the seat in my car, which I need for the RPM's. My size 2's are currently occupied with another pair of socks I started a good while ago but had a terrible accident involving a 24 row lace pattern and no clue where I was in the chart. Ughh. I also bougth some Feza Cotton Candy today at work. I'm planning on making a bolero/shrug/shoulder warmer thing akin to a One Skein wonder but a little different in the arms. Hooray knitting!
I'm very sad that I didn't get to go to the Columbia Sit n'Knit tonight, but I was busy saving the battered women of the county. I really wanted to go.

P.S. I'm leaving all photos out of this post because I actually made an effort to learn how to correctly utilize my publishing stuff and they are experiencing difficulties. That made me angry so I just left it all alone.

Looky what I found!

I must be losing it

I'm having some serious sock yarn issues. Now, I realize that I have what may be considered an obscene amount of yarn. Even though I'm far (FAR) from being the most organized person in the world, I have my own odd little system which allows me to process all the disaster and know what I have and roughly where I can locate things. Here's the thing. I know that a few months back we got in a huge shipment of sock yarn from the new Skacel collection. We got their new 100g balls of the stuff with the little metallic strand in it, Trekking, and that Step stuff that has the aloe in it. I clearly remember this because it happened while I was in New York and I nearly passed out when I walked back into the shop and saw it all in its gorgeous sock-yarn glory. I also recall this situation clearly because right before my trip, I happened across some Trekking at a shop which shall not be mentioned and decided to treat myself to some. I had never seen it before, thought it was awesome, and was hella pissed when I saw the saem friggin' yarn at my shop where I have a lovely little thing called an employee discount. I scooped up a ton of it. I bought three balls the first day and at least one more at a later time. Those first three though....they've got me stumped. My little detective story goes like this:
1. Look at new sock patterns on Knitty.
2. Decide that I wish to make RPM but can't think of which yarn I'd like to use.
3. While in a state of confusion, my brain switches back to pomatomus and I decide that the pink sparkly stuff I got way back when is a super option.
4. In thinking about that yarn, I try to recall the other yarn I bought then.
5. Dead air.....lots of dead air.
6. I remember that when I hd that bag of sock yarn laying here in its bag, I decided to go out and buy a new trunk to stash yarn in and placed the sock yarn in it.
7. Go thru trunk. Find 2 of the 3 balls of yarn.

I am now going nuts. Both of the ones I found are the sparkly stuff. I have a very strong feeling that I bought some more of the Trekking in a more neutral colorway. Where the hell is it thought?? I KNOW I bought that third ball of yarn. Why would I have put it in some random place while I put all the rest in a special home?? These answers I do not know. What I do know is that I want my yarn. Even if it isn't the suspected Trekking. I want it now.
Speaking of socks...amd speaking of things which won't make me crazy, I finished one of my new Opal Jaywalkers. I'm not doing flips over the colorway, but everyone else seems to like it a lot. I don't think I've ever gotten so many compliments over any other sock yarn. It's not that I don't like it, it's just not super cool in my eyes. This sock didn't tke me nearly as long as the lone Jaywalker I made of the magic stripes. And contrary to my usual one-sock-and-I'm-done routine, I have alreasy cast on and knitted a fair deal on the leg of a second. Hooray for me. I will get pics up as soon as the camers returns from its trip to Ohio. I must say though, working this much on such tiny needles is taking a toll on my hands. I'm quite achey.
As to not continue on and on with no pictures to entertain, I'm going to call it a night. Happy knitting.

Yarn, yarn, yarn

As much as I enjoy yarn there are several problems with it.
1) It's addicitive to buy

2) It costs money, and sometimes a lot

3) It requires minor home renovation when you accumulate enough of it. I don't even know how many times I've rearranged my closet and had to run out to Target to buy more shelving units.

and 4) ......dammit, it all crumples up into unmanagable knots and tangles all over the floor and everywhere else it twists and lands and you end up with an office floor that looks like it's covered with one gigantic, colorful, terribly intricate cobweb that refuses to succumb to your hours and HOURS of painstaking picking apart work!!

I swear, I'm so close to just trashing the whole glob of it that's laying there. I think I've separated out most of the "important" stuff, but I'd still be tossing at least $150 of fiber. I just can't take it anymore. I have to get this place looking like a grown human rather than a messy chimp lives here and the yarn is just out of control. I'm thinking that if it's gone this long without me touching it that it clearly is not high on my Things to Knit list. However, I'm kind of a pack rat and there WAS a reason that I bought all of it. I just don't know what to do with it.
Okay, I'm done venting and am going to go back to it. It feels a little better each time I get at least one piece out. Seriously though, I think I'm about to just take the loss and grab some scissors and a trashbag.

Contrary to Popular Belief.....

No, I'm not dead. I haven't been abducted by aliens, or even been away on some fabulous world vacation. It was brought to my attention that I need to be a much more responsible with my timely blogging duties, so here it it.
Big thing number 1 is that I went to the TNNA convention in Indianapolis....back near the beginning of June. Since it wasn't a cash and carry event (thank God because I'm broke), I have little to show for it but we will soon has much wonderfullness filling the shop. The main things I scored were some needle cases and I picked out some yarn to try out on Forcast (from Knitty/ Stephanie Japel).
Big thing number 2, and the main reason why I have virtually nothing to show for summer knitting/ seem to everyone to be in hiding or something is that I am doing two bits of research over the summer. Since I wasn't talking any summer classes, I decided to fill up my schedule with pretty much everything else under the sun. I'm a busy, busy girl these days and essentially have an average of zero days off a week. Yay!!
Well, that's that. I'm scheduled at the Howard County Domestic Violence Center on Thursday nights, so I will only be able to attend my knitting group in spirit for a good while. My morning meeting pretty much preclude my being able or wiling to do much at night anyways. That kind of sucks, but at least I feel like I'm doing something for the greater good and all that jazz.
I think I have food burning in the oven now so I guess I'd better run. I don't really have anything else intetresting at the moment, so cya later.

The Hidden Evil of "Simple" Projects

I went to my knitting group tonight and had a pretty excellent time. It was so hot and terrible at work that we closed early so I actually got to the meet up early instead of my usual rushing in at the end bit. I worked on my Mega Boot sock, which may have been a mistake because I was investing much more of my attention in talking rather than counting rows. I didn't bring my other sock with me either so I had nothing to compair it to. With the dark yarn, it was too difficult to accurately cont my stitches, so I just guesstimated and did my heel turn when it looked right. I ended up having to rush out on the group, whoch I regret now. I have issues driving on wet roads and my mom gets stressed when the power goes out unless it's pure daylight outside. Also, I wanted to be home when my sister came home so could witness any "stuff" that may hit the fan. Hehehe.....I'm a little troublesome. Traffick was so bad coming home though and before I even got to the turn for 29, the rin was pouring down in a way that I've never, ever driven through before. I couldn't see a damn thing. It let up after about 5 or 6 minutes though, but that proved to be quite a freaky experience. It turned out that it didn't even rain in my neigborhood and my nasty sister still hasn't shown back up.
In working on my sock, I've found that I really, REALLY need to pay more attention to the things I'm doing, especially when I find what I'm doing to be easy. I've made so many socks that I don't even think about it. usually it works out fine. These socks may or may not be. Here are all the boring details: With each sock, I cast on 52 stitches. For the heel turn, what I do when I'm not using a pattern is use the formula where you divide the number of heel stitches in half, then subtract 3 to get the number you need to knit across before your first decrease. Since I had an even number, I increased a stitch to make 27. For some reason, the heel turn on the first sock would NOT work out. I don't know what was going on with that. I even ripped it out and did it over a few times. I keot ending woth way more stitches on my purl side than the knit side doing the short rows. At the end, I just messed with it and "finished" the turn with some unknown number of stitches. Then when I went to pick up the gusset stitches, I know that I picked up some really high number, but what that number actually is, I have no clue. Now that I'm doing the second sock, this lack of information is proving troublesome. Stupid sock......and maybe stupid me, too, considering that I seem incapable of writing anything useful down.
On a happy note, I was gifted two fabulous hand made stitch markers tonight. One made by Jody and one by Margaret. That comes in quite handy since I currently need exactly that number of stitch markers for my socks. Lucky me.
OH yeah.....and huess you got straight A's this semester?? That would be ME. I suspected I may have but officially found out tonight after I got home. Very cool, indeed.

Heat Sickness! Tendonitis! Oh My!

So today basically was horrible. For starters, I woke up to a blinking alarm clock again this morning so had to rush around in the heat to find out if I was way late for work or not. I wasn't. In fact, I ended up being up waaayyyy earlier than I had wanted to be. It was SO HOT. To motivate myself to move from under the fan and get ready, I envisioned being at work with the chilly AC blowing my hair back away from my face as I charmed customers with a big smile on my face. Plus, I have AC in the car. Turns out the AC at work is busted, too. Again. SO HOT. I couldn't even go into the main room because of the stagnant heat. I got chewed out by a customer because of the heat also, which was really fun. I definitely had one of those 'True Lies' moments where I imagined doing.saying totally different things to her than I actually did. Anyhow, I did make some progress on my Green Gable but I decided to leave it at work since I'll be there tomorrow. Pretty much as soon as I started adjusting to the heat a small shipment of yarn came in. I made the mistake of believing my arms were healed enough to lift the little box and carry it into the back room. Then my stupidity continues as I unpacked the yarn and tried to put it out on the shelves. Those two little actions pretty much started me on a downward spiral of arm horror.
Once I got home I was faced with surprising (NOT) info that my wonderful sister had refused to help my mother prepare for her big recital tonight. I won't go into details, but let me just say that before my butt even hit a chair, I had vacummed two rooms and rearranged the furniture in my living room. All with one arm. I'm sure I looked very cute doing it. I got everything done though and my mother is completely ticked off with my sister, which is always fun for me.
During the recital I fell asleep. This is where things went very, very worng. My house was so hot and horrible. As I was laying there, I started hearing strange things. This should have warned me to perhaps not continue to lay in the heat. I woke up a few hours later when my mom called to tell me the recital was over. I was just pure nastiness. I was covered with sweat, my skin was all hot, I had a killer headache and was sick to my stomach. To make things even better, my tendonitis had flared up in a major way and I could not use either of my arms. I went downstairs and tried to shake the heat-grossness off, but I just kept getting sicker and sicker. Within about 20 minutes from waking, I felt like I was going to pass out and had to prop myself up on a chair outside. This made me feel slightly better because it wasn't as warm, but I was still in terribel shape. Finally, my mom had to pack me up and take me down to my grandpas so I could lay down in his cool air while all the pain meds for my arms kicked in.
I feel a good bit better now, but I'm back at home and already the heat is making me feel like my skin is burning. I should have just spent the night and my grandpa's. Too late now.
That's about it for today. Tomorrow night is my knitting group so that should be a good time. Hopefully I'll be done with this second Mega Boot sock soon so I'll have yet another goody to show.

I may have hit the point of no return

First off, I have to say that I don't know what the crap is up with the positions of these pictures. There's something wonky going on with the system. Needless to say, I've been busy with the needles since the semester ended. Ocer to the side there is something I'm quite proud of. My very first crocheted item!! Granted, I don't know who exactly is going to be making use of dishcloth around here, but it's done and relatively mistake free.

In actuality, I finished that thing a long time ago and just found it while I was cleaning under the cushions of my overstuffed chair. I still had to tie off the end and weave in the ends, so technically it's stll a new FO.

Next to my wonder of a dishcloth and below are two possible causes of the terrible pain that kept me up all last night. I finished my hourglass sweater last week so started Green Gable with some gorgeous Berroco Cotton Twist I got at the shop. I've been a little hestitant with the use of cotton, but I love the color so much and the patterns cute so I went for it. The pattern is fine, but I ran into a good bit of trouble with the needles. I started using Denise Interchangables size 6 with a 20 inch cord. At first, there were so few stitches that even the 20 in was a bit long, Quickly though, I began running out of space. I had to mess with and regroup the stiches so much that it was taking forever to finish a row and putting a ton of stress on my hands and wrists. Not fun. I went to switch to a 32in addi turbo, but the size 6 addi and 6 Denise are totally different! It's like a whole size different. I fretted with the 20in's for a while longer then gave up and went with the larger ,longer pair. It's coming out better that way texture-wise and since it's a top down raglan, the gauge isn't of as much importance.

This guy here is one of my fabulous Mega Boot Stretch socks. I tried and tried to get a picture of the finished one alongside the one far along in progress, but the flash on my camera was making them look all gross.

So on the topic of my horrid night.....perhaps it was due to obsessive knitting or maybe it was just from cleaning. Whatever the cause, I had a terribloe, terrible run in with my old pal tendonitis and was up all night unable to move without sending shooting pains through my arms. It was awful. I finally got up around 8 and began searching for medication. I finally decided on some painkillers I have leftover from something or another. We had not a bit of anti-inflammatory in the house. Luckily, someone was kind enough to go fetch me some since I could not move either of my arms of my fingers by about 9am. That was a really big blower.

On the bright side of the day, I met with a man about the AC and he fixed it, but needs to come back and do about $800 worth of work practically rebuilding the thing. Bad news is that by about 7, anything resembling chilled air stopped moving through the vents. I HATE my furnace. At least having that short time with cool air gave me one less thing to be miserable about while I sat in the kitchen all day not being able to knit or manipulate anything on the computer. I did get to read a good chunk of The DaVinci Code though. I already know the story so it's not quite as intriguing as it could have been if I read it sometime before everyone else on the planet.

So now my pain has subsided (I'm hoping it's for real and not just because I have like 30 doses of pain meds/ Motrin in me) and I'm exhausted. Tomorrow is going to be a long day so I'm going to bed. Whenever I get the AC fixed for good I'll take a picture of it. I don't even want to touch it's wooly goodness in this mess. Maybe I can cause mysle fot have have a dream about being somewhere cool and wonderful where Ican frolick in my Manos : )

I'm so ashamed

I had my last final of the semester scheduled at 8 am yesterday. I woke up at apporximately 8:06 and still had a 45 minute drive to campus. I think a fuse must have gone or something while I was sleeping and someone fixed it. That's all I can figure. All I know is that my alarm was set for 5:30. I woke up to hit the bathroom and noticed that it was light outside and that the numbers on my alarm clock were blinking. I can't think of a momnet were I've felt closer to death. Luckily, my teacher in that class is really nice and he let me make it up later in the day.
I have knitting shame, too. I finished knitting my hourglass sweater. I began to slave away at the neckline seaming. I got about a quarter of the way through and realized that I messed the whole thing up. I read and reread the seaming instructions over and over again and didn't see where I was going wrong. I don't know what's wrong with my brain. Anyhow, I finally realized my error in comprehesion and now have to rip out all that I've done. I don't think I'll do it tonight because it may drive me crazy.
In order to ease the suffering I figured that I'd be inflicting on myself tonight, I bought some Opal sock yarn in a pretty brown/pastels colorway and some orangey-peach Cotton Twist for a Green Gable top.
That's all for now. Maybe I'll go ahead and start this ripping. It's best to just get it over with, regardless of my possible loss of sanity.

Mentally Defective

I've been a busy, busy girl lately. Between finals, papers, and all the other random craziness that comes along with being me, I've surprisngly done a lot on the knitting front. The majority of this knit-"doing" falls into the shopping category. I'm attributing it to a mixture of angst from missing MDS&W this year and massive stress spending. I was telling one of the customers at the shop today that I can think of few days within the past week or so that I haven't made a detour to at least a craft store on my way home from school. Some of the stuff I didn't bother to photograph. Needles and whatnot aren't a ton of fun to look at. My first bit of goodness is this here skein of Mountaincolors sock yarn. I got it with plans to make pomatomus from knitty, but the yarn is way too thick. I'll tell ya, I love that girls sock patterns but the gauges are always T.I.N.Y. I have little to no desire to buy or knot with yarn that is so small.
Items #2, 3, and 4 are these little beauties. On the left is something that I don't recall, but it's pretty nifty and I can see it morphing into a loosely knit scarf so I can show off its bumpy goodness. The red furry stuff is something I got on massive sale at JoAnns. I think it is destined to become either a warm scarf or possible some sort of shrug. On the top right is some Mega Boot Stretch sock yarn from Lana Grossa ( I think). It porduces some pretty awesome footwear.
These here are some balls of a blue and brown yarn I spied quite some time ago and keot lusting after. I finally went back and got 5 or 6 balls of it to make a sweater. Probably a cowl neck one. Yes, it is of the super crappy fiber content variety but the colors rock.
And, because I couldn't exactly justify all the yarn purchases without actually turnong something out......Here is Kate (a la Winter '05 Knitty) lounging in my living room. Her one arm is a little wonky and the stitches are perhaps a little loose for all the polyfiber I stuffed into her, but I think she's cute anyways. You can also tell from her mouth that I'm not exactly a pro at embroidery. Oh well.
I additionally am almost done with my Hourglass sweater. This picture doesn't really do it much justice, but it does display the "almost done" element of it. At this point, that's probably the most important thing to it.
Here's a closeup of one of the raglan decreases. It's mainly just to see the colors better. I like it.
And finally, on par with my usual stress sock knitting, I present my Spring '06 Finals week sock crafter from Lorna's Laces Sheperd Sock in the Black Pearl colorway. The pattern is one of the simple lace ones from Sensational Knitted Socks. I don't recall which pattern it was offhand.
To be honest, the colors didn't come out quite as gorgeously as I had thought they would when I bought it. The yarn is SO SOFT though. I love it to death. I've heard it doesn't wear particularly well, but we'll see. I probably won't be wearing them all that much.
I've actually started working on another pair of socks out of a darker shade of the Mega Boot....yoy can see a little of it poking out in the right hand corner of the photo above. This yarn is so cool. The effect of the colors blending is really unique. I followed a link on the Yarn Harlot's blog and fell in love with the yarn. I'm loving it even more now that I was able to score some of it. I'll have photos of that one soon.
That's about it for the moment. I think I'm going to try and manipulate a new camera put of my mom in reward for my excellent grades. I guess I'm a little old for things like that, but hey. If you've got it, use it.
Sixteen Candles is on now so I must run. Hopefully now that my semester is almost over I'll be better with the updates and such.

Clearly, I suck

I'm the type fo person who gets irritated rather easily. One thing that gets me is when the people who's blogs I read go for long periods of time without a new post. I vowed not to do this when I started here. However, life happens and the next thing you know it's been an eon since the last time you've posted.
I have no photos to show. I have no FO's. I an a loser.
My semester ends in two more weeks (I think, hope) and then I plan on knitting as much as possible. I also plan on purchasing a digital camera and an iPod. The camera will help with be able to take and post pictures. The iPod will just serve to make me happy, and if I'm happy I reason that I'll be more likely to do productive things like knit and follow thru with the posts.
Here is a little breakdown of what I've been doing, knitwise.

1) Almost done with my hourglass sweater. Really, really almost done. I was set to purchase my last ball of yarn for it today but someone beat me to it.

2) I have an awesome felted bag that is all knit, but I have to figure out how to line it, buy fabric, and get the handles on there.

3) As a quick pick-me-up, I knit Kate from the winter 2005 knitty. She's cute. However, she currently has no eyes. I plan on hitting JoAnns tomorrow after I deposit my paycheck. That way, if any yarn or something should fall into my basket, I'll be able to pay for it.

4) I've picked back up a pair of socks that I had set down some time ago. I'm a fan of the socks. I may have mentioned them in a previous post, but I can't remember so I'll talk about them again. They're in a stone-ish colorway of the Skacel Fortissima with the little glittery bit in them. I don't recal the name of the stitch, either, but when combined with the color it reminds me of pretty marble slabs.

I think that's it. I'll spare you from my ranting on and on with nothing to show from myself. As soon as Kate has vision, I'll borrow a camera and post a pic.

Happy Happy, Joy, Joy!!

I got my lovely Regatta Blue Magic Stripes!! I didn't even know it had come. I just went downstairs yesterday and there was my little box sitting on the kitchen table. Now I'll have something that's not all hot and woolen to knit in Texas. I'll bring my hourglass sweater, too, if I can come up with the moolah to purchase the rest of my yarn. I had three balls of it at home for which I couldn't find a worthy project. I saw on someones blog an hourglass sweater made in a similar color, and I had to do it. I had been thining about the hourlass sweater for a good while but hadn't really set my mind to it. When we got in the new Manos shipment at the shop, I stashed about 5 skeins. According to the yarn requirements, I'd still be a skein short. I've been hearing reports that many people have gone over on yardage, so I'm figuring I'm probably going to have to buy 2 more skeins somehwere else. I thought I had finished knitting the body last night, having used about 4 skeins. I then cast on for my first arm. However, this morning when I examined the body, it looks way short even though I went a alittle over the given length. I added a good bit to that, eating up the rest of ny yarn. I have a little left over in the ball I'm using on the arm, but when that's done (in not too many more rows), I'm fresh outta Manos. Hopefully tomorrow I can buy atleast two more of the stashed skeins. That'll get me through finishing the body for good and both arms. I probably wouldn't get much farther than that on my trip anyhow. Especially if I have my jaywalker to do. I'm also considering taking some of that disco yarn I got awhile back to work on some other sock pattern. I'm dying to go thru that Sensational Socks book.
In other news, I really need a pedicure and hope to take care of that tonight before I go to bed. Additionally, This morning when I got up for work, I threw on my robe and felt somethign wet slap up against my calf. I looked and founf that someone, more than likely Riley, had taken the liberty of barfing all over my robe during the night. I'll have to remember to wash that.....

Bad to the Bone

I'm a bad, bad, bad blogger. I don't even want to look at the date of my last entry because it will cause me such horrid shame. I've been busy with school and all that good stuff, so blogging (and sadly, even knitting) has been on the backburner. I haven't finished a project in Lord only knows how long. I did manage to pop out an ultra cool cable accented hat (Coronet from Knitty, to be specific) in some brown Teseo. I'll have to get some pictures together tp update right. Hmmm, what else? I finished knitting a realy noce scarf out of some green Cyprus Mohair and Kid Mohair, both by Feza. Again, I'm lacking any photographic proof. In my defense, I'm also really bad at paying my phone bill and seeing as how I've been using my phone to snap pictures, I've been camaeraless for a good while. Also, I've just been lazy about it. Let's see....I've been knitting away on an Hourglass sweater out of Last Minute Little Gifts. I love it and can't wait until it's both completed and not Spring/Summer so I can actually wear it. I don't quite know what it is with me and my knitting of wool sweaters in the warm months. Last year it was the Pastaza fair isle started sometime in July, I beleive. I'm going to Texas next week and would like to have something non-wool to knit. I did get notification today that my Magic Stripes backprder is FINALLY going being shipped. Maybe I can do my second jaywalker. This will show you how my brain has been functioning for the past few days, but I've been seriousl considering whether or not I want to knoit my next pair of socks together or one by one. Doing the two at a time is best in the loing run, but I'm finding that my 'second sock syndrome' easliy morphs into a 'lose interest while I've got half of two socks done' problem. At least when I have one sock done I can put it on my foot and look at it. I thik that's about it for now. I'll have to make a note to take some pictures tomorrow so I can add some eye candy on here. Words can be so dull.

What's the opposite of progress?

I've gotten pretty much no knitting done over the past few days. I was really busy over the weekend, but I did manage to get the heel flaps and turns done on my baby cable socks. I have no photo evidence of this. Mondsay I went back to school, which was exhausting. I packed my socks up in the morning, along with my laptop, planning to knit and play internet games in the time between my first and second class. I ended up waking up really late and not getting my goods together, so I found I had to return home after class #1. That killed my three hour kntting/playing break. Today I was thinking that perhaps I could knit between class and work, but then I fell asleep in the parking lot for an hour and a half. The first day of school was alright. This being day two, my body realized that Monday had not been some sort of foul trick I was playing on it. I just couldn't take it today. First of all, my teacher wouldn't allow us to eat or drink in class. That meant no coffee. I just had to leave it sitting there on my desk, staring at me and emitting taunting fumes. Once I drove to work, I just set my phone alarm, threw a sweatshirt and coat over my head to block the sun and slept. I didn't get any knitting done at work, either. I did a few rows, but nothing that really counts. It was slow, but I had a lot of organizational bits to do. Considering my lack of knittong time, my mind naturally jumped to future projects. First, I decided on the yarn to make my flowerbasket shawl for the spring. I'm going to order a slightly varigated purple shade of Bamboo from SWTC. Second, I finally dug out the issue of Interweave with the bag I've been waiting and wanting to make. Turns out that I have the totally wrong yarn for it. For some reason, I thought it was felted bag and got a bunch of bulky wool for it. Upon looking at the pattern again, I came to find that it's acctually made of linen and silk yarn held together at a smaller gauge and not felted at all. I love the yarn I got for it though and I really don't feel like having some weird yarn imported from Japan so I can make the bag as per its specs. That would also turn into a huge expense and how can that be justifies when I have so many other yarns I wish to own? I guess I'll just have to modify the pattern a bit. Oh well. A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do. I need to head of to the shower now. I have to do as much as possible at night so I stand a fighting chance of getting out the door in the morning.
Cya

Oh, what FUN!!!

As usual, my pictures got all messed up during the publishing process. I don't know what's up with this thing, but it's really starting to grate on me. So, if you'll excuse the total disarray of things, I'll get on with the post. So I finished my jaywalkers sock, which is being modeled in the photo containing a whole sock. To the left of that photo is a progress shot of my baby cable socks.
I'm very happy with them. Making cables without actually having to use a cable needle often makes me happy. Below that pic is a closeup of the cable pattern. I think they'll be extra cool when I'm done with them. I'm going to do the heel flaps and possibly the turn tonight. The foot may take a bit because I have to reorganize all the stitches and knit both together. I'm using a size 2 needle, though, so even being worked together, they're not seeming to take as much time as the jaywalkers on size 1's.

This random picture of wooden reindeer is the main purpose of the post. When I got home from work today my mother informed me that she's decided to leave these Christmas reindeer out all year and she thinks it would be really cute if I knit them all little outfits for the various seasons/holidays. FUN. FUN, FUN!!!!! That'll be a hoot and half. She's already done some wardrobe planning. I'm going to tell her she has to pay me in booze so I can try and get through the whole ordeal. I think it's only reasonable that one drink in excess while creating handknit clothing for a family of wooden reindeer. It would just be weird without at least a few good beers.
On a totally off topic, I'm watching 'Monk' right now and it's just creepy to see the Captain. I just see Buffalo Bill dancing around in his woman-skin suit doing the "pull-thru" for the video camera. Sexy.
~*~ Please disregard all references to phote placement. Once I saw the published form of the post, I saw that the format totally had changed and nothing I said makes sense. I'm sure everyone's smart enough to figure out what photos I'm refering to in the writing. Sorry~*~

Pictures soon to follow

Well, turns out my fear that I was not going to have enough "Ithaca" yarn to finish my jaywalkers was spot on. I drove all over the place trying to find more or it with no luck. I did find the yarn in a different color, but I think that frustrated me more. I dislike that so-close-yet-so-far feeling. I had to break down and do the sensible thing in this situation, which was order it online. Anyhow, I did finish my first sock and took pictures. I just didn't get around to loading them on the computer. To pass the time while waiting for my yarn to arrive, I started some socks with a brown and white Opal yarn. I'm using a Fiber Trends pattern called Angel's Peak. What I'm turning out doesn't really resemble the pattern photo at all, but is an obvious pattern none the less. Interesting. Due to the very, very itchy nature of that yarn, I'm afraid I've already sort of postponed my work on it after only about two inches. To ease my pain, I purchased a crapload of sock yarn and a new sock book from the shop. I worked in a baby cable pattern into socks that I laready had on the needles and I'm loving it bigtime. This also fits in nicely with my plan of new project/ old project rotation. Those socks are coming along quite well. I only have about another inch to go before I do the hell so they won't take too much loinger. I'm doing both at one time, so it'll take a little longer. Well, that's all for now. I need to get some sleep so I'll be bright eyed and bushy tailed for work tomorrow. I'll post the pictures tomorrow.

The never ending "quicky" project

I've decided that my jaywalker socks are never going to be completed. Not that I don't want them to be, or that I won't keep knitting away at them. I've been going and going. Each small section that I completed pleased me greatly. I did then leg. I did the heel flap, that turn, I slowly but surely finished the foot decreases. Now, row after row, I'm trying to tackle the foot. It just never seems to end. Not only that, it doesn't seem to grow! I didn't photograph it because it doesn't really look any different than last time, regardless of the days and work in between. At this point, I'm not even sure that I'm going to have enough yarn lef to do the second one. In a way, that gives me hope because I won't have to start on the second one immediately. That will give me some recoup time. Anyhow, that's about all that's been going on knit-wise.
In other news, I went to the Washington Gift Show today. It was out in Chantilly, VA. Due to lack of intelligent planning on my part, I agreed to meet Carole and the others out in Ellicott City at the shop. It occured to us there that since I live so much closer to VA, it would have been smarter for me to have just met them there. I ended up driving out there with Amy in my car, so I could just go straight home afterwards and Amy could be taken back to the shop by Carole. I walked around so much that I swear I thought my feet were going to be bloddy when I got my boots off. Leave it to me to wear big heels for a day of walking. I should also mention that I was absolutely broke. I didn't get a chance to hit the bank yesterday. I wasn't expecting to have to put gas in my car, so all my cash was eaten up. As I was trying to navigate my way home, my low fuel light came on, even though I had just gotten a little bit of gas before we headed out. It was one of my worst drives home in a long, long time, I was so afraid of running out of gas, I didn't really know where I was going, and I was totally exhausted. I got home okay, and immediately fell asleep, staying in bed until after 9pm. I was zonked out. Now I'll probably be up all night and I have to be up early to help with a meeting in the morning. At least it'll give me an opportunity to work on my socks.
That's it for now. Hopefully I'll have something to show next time.

I love them, but COME ON!!

I'm making progress on my jaywalker socks. I finished the leg, heel flap and heel turn last night. I wish they were a little taller, but let's just say that perhaps my legs are a bit too "athletic" for knee socks. "Athletic" is code for too tubby. My legs may not be my best asset, but they are very strong and muscular. I like to keep that muscle safe by coating it in a layer of chub. I swear though, after knitting all those socks for the holidays using size 7 and 9 needles, I'm feeling the pain of using size 1's/ I knit and knit and knit tonight and only did about 1.5 or 2 inches. I'm not even done with the foot decreases yet. While I was at the supermarket, I picked up the new Knit It magazine. It has some cute stuff in it and I like that it's made ut of cheap yarn. The only problem is that of the two patterns that I
really like, one is for small children and the other is made out of a designer yarn that the store doesn't carry. I've heard of it though, so it shouldn't be too hard to track down.
In unrelated project news, I found my lamb's pride fair isle cardigan hiding behind my big chair in the office, I took it to work and made some progress on it. The fair isle part on the bottom is a little tight, but I think that after I block the hell out of it and it's stretched across my body, it'll look okay. I didn't take any pictures of it because it's balled up in my knitting bag. I like it, and I really love the colors, but I'm a bit concerned now about the shape of the thing. I made another sweater from the same book out of some pastaza at the beginning of the summer, which I really like, but the arm hold construction is a little wonky. I'm sure there's a technical name for the shaping that I can't think of at the moment, but it's one of those where you knit the whole thing from the bottom up and connect the arms at the underarm and knit the yolk in one big piece. The shoulders just kind of droop down. I wasn't considering this shaping bit when I knit the first sweater and I oversized it a little. I still really like it though. I'm just being a little over cautios with this cardigan, and that's taking some of the fun away from it.
I'm so tired now and my hands ache from the tiny needles. I need to go to bed. Tomorrow I'd like to get a good deal done on the foot. Who knows, If I get a little over zealous, I may even finish the sock tomorrow. I think that's a long shot, but hey, they're for me so what's the rush?

A lot going on

So much for me doing a ton of knitting for myself over my break! Oh well, stuff happenes I guess. Before the holidays, I was super busy knitting for my family. I followed New Years with getting massively sick. I was totally out of it for over a week, which is far sicker than I've been for a number of years. I really didn't do too much knitting then, mainly because I couln't really breathe and that put a major damper on things. I had to go to Ithaca for a few days right after I started feeling better, and that probably put me straight back to the sickhouse. It was SO COLD. Plus, the city more or less sucked big ones, making the possability of becomming sick again very not worth it. I did manage to knit some on the trip though, and now have a spiffy new pair of arm warmers. I did actually weave in the ends because I needed to wear them. That isn't captured in the photo. I bought some new sock yarn while I was up there. It's really neat looking color and I'm very curious to see what the color pattern looks like when they're knit up. It doesn't show well in the photo, but the yarn is a light blue/white/tan/ lime green mix. Very unusual combination. I'm thinking about doing the jaywalker socks from Magknits. Hmmmm...yes, I think tht's what I'll do.
Before my trip I had to organize my office a little bit, and I had a ton of yarn to deal with. I have yarn EVERYWHERE. I really need to do something about it. Im so disorganized, too. When I was trying to pack knitting for my trip, I couldn't come up with a total package of anything. I'd either be missing needles, a pattern, yarn....just no good at all. Before I go back to school I have to get it all in gear.
Here is an example of my lack of organization. I have several other shots of yarn here and there around the house, but for some reason I can't get them to load correctly. My new goal is to knit one old thing for every new thing I purchase. The arm warmrs cancelled out the sock yarn. I have to finish an old pair of socks though before I can knit the new ones. Speaking of which, I'm going to go back to my little socks now.

I'm so lazy!

I haven't made an entry for almost a month! I have nothing to show, knit wise, life wise, and have been doing nothing but being a big lazy butt. I have no excuse. Well, I sort of do. I've been nasty sick, which while it may not have caused my spree of laziness has most definitly contributited to it's further existance and depth. I lost my voice a week ago and today is the first day I've had it back. I'm feeling a lot better, but I'm still a bit nasty. To the outside observer, I would still be classified as someone one would dread being sat next to on a flight. Due to this illness, I've missed a whole week of work, so now I'm poor as all get out. On the bright side of everything, I'm going to Ithaca on Thursday morning. I was thinking that would be all good, but now my mom is coming down with the same symptoms that I had last Tuesday. Hooray! There's nothing quite like being stuck in a car for hours with a sick person, especially if you're just getting over something yourself. Well, I gotta run now. I'm trying to straighten up my office so my father can actually move around enough to feed the pigs while I'm gone. As I'm going through my stash, which makes up the majority of mess in here, I'm finding so many terrible things I've knit and so, so, SO mush yarn. I'm going to have to find a wasy to work through this stuff!
Happy New Year Everyone: )