Tuesday, May 30, 2006

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 : )

Thursday, May 25, 2006

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.

Monday, May 22, 2006

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.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

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.