Quasi-FO

Well, now that school had started back up I'm afraid that I won't be able to knit as much. In order to try and counter this and other things, I've devised a plan. Each day I'm going to make a little goal chart that will include a goal, even if it's really tiny, in each category of home, personal, and knitting. Today my goals are to remove my laundry from my bathroom floor (home), look presentable at school (personal), and try my damnedest to finish one of my grandpa's socks. Other than that, I present you with one of my latest endeavors, a Noni bag.

This fits in with my earlier goal of stash busting. I even was able to incorporate some ultra crappy Fun Fur. I still need to trim down this big flower a bit.

I noticed that I didn't put anything on the bag for scale post-felting, so having the phone there pre-felting really serves no purpose. Oh well. Here she is about a day out of the wash.

I really like it. A lot of the times when I've made felted bags in the past, they haven't come out exactly as I'd pictired or they turn out to be something I really don't think I'll use. I think this bag is very chic. At least for a felted bag. I'm already making another smaller version with the very first Cascade 220 I ever bought. Oh, btw... all the yarn in this bag/flower is 220. I don't know the particular colorways. Sorry.

Now all I have to do is pick out handles, pick out/purchase fabric, learn how to sew in a lining and do so.

The stash groweth

Last night I was knitting my grandpa's birthday socks and realized that I was going to run out of yarn....again. Normally this would not be such a big issue. A normal person would just walk into the yarn shop, pick up an extra ball of whatever and buy it. I see it all the time. I work in a yarn shop. This is not the case with me. The first time I ran out of yarn I went in and picked up another ball of my Chunky Al. It's right there next to the door at Fiberworks. However, I then walked right past the checkout and headed straight for the Noro. I ended the day with this, minus 4 more balls of Kureyon that are already scarfified.

The green/gray stuff is Noro Transitions and the other is Kureyon in some un-remembered colorway. I got the wool to remake the Hurry Up Spring wristwarmers in Stitch n' Bitch Nation, but now I'm questioning that. I have no immediate plans for the other.
Today I went for JUST the Chunky Al. Same routine. Walked in, turned right there next to the door and picked up my yarn, then walked past the checkout towards the Noro in the back. This time I stopped midway and picked up some Elsabeth Lavold Hempathy, too.

In all fairness to myself, this trip was less selfish in nature and therefore doesn't count......much. Oh, I also picked up the Manos throw book I've been questing for. It turns out that it's very old, which is opposite of the new books I've been going through looking for it. The Hemp yarn is for the washcolths that I've decided to go ahead and make for my sister. The really wonderful, pretty, pretty stuff is Noro Silver Thaw in purple (obviously). Here is a closeup.

If this were a man, I'd marry it. Except then I would be the least attractive in the relationship and that may upset my preferred power balance.
I need help. I should never be allowed into a yarn shop unsupervised, or with anyone who may encourage buying. All this is excluding the Noro I bought on my initial trip to buy sock yarn. I will save that yarn porn for another day.

It's snowing!!

And that really sucked earlier while I was trying to drive from Ellicott City back down to Silver Spring. I won't go into it much, other than to say that at one point my car skid about 200 ft travelling perpendicular to the road, then spun around headed the wrong direction before finally spinning around again and letting me go on my merry way. My car and inclement weather....not such good friends. On the happy side, I had both gloves and a snow scraper inside my vehicle so I was much more prepared than usual. This would be perfect weather to wear my lovely double knit mittens that I've been planning/working on for a time period too long to reasonably fathom. However, they are not yet done. More on that later.
One thing that IS finished, since it's like the last thing anyone would ever need to defend themselves against cold and ice is this:

I picked up the new book Knitting Pretty, or whatever it's called by one of the women from Stitch N' Bitch Nation. At first glance I thought it was really good. Now that I've actually looked at it I don't know how many patterns I would actually take the time to do. Nice stuff, just not necessarily for me. One thing that did kind of strike my fancy was the idea of gifting people with hand knit washcloths and designer soap. One of my sisters is getting ready to move and I thought that may make a nice little housewarming gift. To test the practicality of the idea, I first made a washcloth for myself, only I used cotton instead of the hemp called for in the pattern. It started out as a way to knit thru some of my stash, but then I ended up frogging the stash cotton and buying this stuff at Walmart. The colors match nothing, but they made me feel a little brighter. It's Peaches and Cream cotton on the lemon-lime colorway. It actually isn't as low grade as I had pictured in my head, but my hands wanted me to just go kill myself after knitting just a few rows. Cotton just isn't my thing.
To end, here is a gratuitous photo of the boys. I'm sure that they were fighting each other or double teaming something else momentarily after the picture was taken.

Other than that, have fun in the snow and be safe on the roads!

Photo testing

Okay, here it goes. If this works, you all will witness not one, but two great feats. 1) I will have actually published a photo in a manner that suits the ideals I have in my head and 2) You will see that my disgustingly large stash is no longer splattered around my house.

As you can see (hopefully), I have not only managed to shove a lot of yarn in plastic drawers, but I have also taken steps towards organizing my books and patterns. This is mainly just books. The crates underneath are far less impressive, as they are currently crammed haphazardly with loose papers of various origins/topics.

This is another shot that shows the depth of my yarn containment unit. Quite impressive, no? Also impressive is the ginormous pile of rubble that still remains at the foot of my glorious construction. As you may notice, my genious design also includes both knitting and knitted bags hanging on hooks that were stratigically placed for me about 30 years ago when my house was built. Needle holders (please note my fabulous Lantern Moon needle case that was picked out at the TNNA convention and later purchased at work) fit nicely in the previously uncomely space between towers.
Okay, so I've got a slightly better hand on the picture thing now. I still have to fgure out some sizing and placement issues, but I'm pleased with myself none-the -less.
In non-knitting news, I just saw on my scrolling news that they're getting ready to release a Steve Irwin doll. I find this disturbing for some reason. Still, I will have to devise a plan to keep myself from purchasing one.

Thus far, I am unimpressed

I was a little excited when I saw that they had switched up some stuff on Blogger. As I previously said, I have been attempting to update things around here and was hoping to get away from some of the issues I had initially. The first thing that hapoened when I eagerly signed up for this revamped bit was that I downloaded a virus that has been wreaking havoc on my system ever since. The fact that I go back to school ina week and still do not have a working home computer makes my irritation over this matter at least double in intensity. Then yesterday, after running various scans and downloading a bunch of virus killers that seem to have had little effect, I was able to download numerous pictures from my fabulous new digital camera, which I love and desperately want to use. That went as planned, so I signed onto Blogger to do a little update. Seems something is mega-f*ed with it now because I keep getting some lengthy error message saying there's something wrong with my account and gives me all these codes to give to the support guys. Personally I'm not all that vested in it and really don't feel like going thru all the hassle. It shouldn't be this hard to keeo a friggin' knitting blog. It also makes me feel a bit more "special" than usual because no one else seems to have these problems but me. I think I'm going to have to attack a friend or two after I get all this virus hooey out of the way and have them show me a thing or two. I also am quite peeved that after all I've tried to do, I just cannot get a picture onto this thing the way that I want it. Grrrrrrr. I'm still making the effort to update though. That's a step in the right direction. Also, I've been knitting up storm so I'll have plenty to show once I figure some of this damn technology out.

Baby Steps

Okay, here's the deal......in a very compact form.
I am not dead. Due to various computer glitches and circumstance it seems that I have not gotten around to updating my blog in about half a year. Such is life, and I am trying to rectify the non-blogging situation now. I received a new digital camera for Christmas and was eagerly looking forward to snapping some new pics of my knitting. However, I have run into even more technocal difficulties with Blogger. The very first thing that happened, which I guess doesn't really have anything to do with Blogger itself, was that I lost my home internet connection. That was a blower, but I was doing okay with the laptop. I never downloaded any kind of publishing program on it though. Maybe a day after the camera made its way to me, I got all set up to redo the blog and make it oh-so-much-more-fabulous than before. No go. I evidently downloaded a virus when I was updating my bogger account and photobucket apparently does not believe in publishing complete photographs of mine, only thin slivers.
So that's that. I have delved into bits of computer repair and downloaded some kind of program from Norton that kills my particular virus. This is the first time I've been able to stay on Blogger for more than the time it take to type a word, so that's a good sign. I will soon attempt to republish my photos and all that good stuff, and hopefully all will go well.