the search is on

After Ryan's hat, I want to knit something large-scale for myself. I'm thinking sweater, since I've decided that I need to stop wearing hoodies all the time. (To demonstrate the extent of my hoodie-wearing habit, realize that a friend in photo club with me has ONLY pictures of me in a hoodie, wearing glasses and with hair in a pony tail. He has some 50 shots of me and tends to only take 2-3 shots of me at any one event. Two years, about 25 separate events, and I'm found wearing the SAME THING EVERY TIME.)

So, yes. A sweater. For me. That is warm, since I am Queen of the Cold. I'm looking for something fitted-ish, classic in style or at least not crazy enough to only be able to wear it for one year, and not overly hard to knit.

I've been debating Blaze from knitty.com. However, I'm pretty sure I'd want to add long sleeves and I'm not sure if that would work with the 16-round pattern. And I can't figure out what size to knit. I fall right between sizes small and medium and have a long torso, so I tend to add length to anything I knit. I suppose I could knit a few more rounds of plain ribbing, without the zig-zag at the bottom. And I might be able to add half a repeat as well. Hrm, ponder.

I also really like this cardigan, but I tend to have issues with buttoned sweaters uh, gapping. And I think this one would have the same problem.

Wendy's Somewhat Cowl, long sleeved version, is another option that I rather like. Not sure I could afford the suggested yarn, however.

Any other suggestions? The Sexy-Little-Knit-Along has some great ideas, but I find it VERY hard to search the blog to find the patterns that they have suggested and/or have knitted in the past.

I think the world's trying to make up for the last month or so. I only think, however, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

First off, I did well on all papers/exams that I was either sure I had failed or too sick to remember how the test went to know if I had failed or not. (Does that sentence make sense? I took the test and was too sick to remember anything after I handed it in, so I couldn't tell you if I was able to answer all the questions or not.)

Second of all, I have a riding lesson on Thursday. I'm a tad nervous about this, but all excited, since I drove out to the barn today and took a quick look around. They have a nice indoor and outdoor, the guy in charge seemed really nice, and there was a super-cute little boy, bout 5-6 years old, getting ready to get on his pony. And also, they have foals every year. BABY HORSES. Riding always manages to keep my head together and it will be good to ride, hopefully to do a lot of jumping over the winter.

Third of all, I started Ryan's hat. He's afraid it is going to look "too girly" what with the slightly-pale yellow. Personally, I doubt that, but he better change his mind before I finish cause I think this thing is gonna take me a while. Size 1 needles? That's a lot of stitches, folks. And I need to come up with a new pattern and chart it, since he doesn't ski. I'll prolly figure that one out when I get to it.


See, Tina's sock: I may or may not finish both of these by Christmas, just as she may or may not finish my quilt by Christmas.


Proof that my camera rocks:

I was some 30 rows up in the stands and holding my camera above my head. And still, I got shots like the above. AWESOME.

long time, no post

So, I remember having this blog, see...

A few excuses for the (major) lack of updates:

I got sick. Twice. In less than a month. It was fun, I swear! Nothing quite like going to bed ok and waking up with a really sore throat, no voice, and post-nasal drip. (The last one convinced me that I didn't have any really weird sleep-walking accidents to cause the other two.) Since then, the throat has gotten worse, I've had massive pressure in my ears, and no runny nose or cough. Weirdest disease ever. I cheered on Saturday morning when I started coughing and was even happier today when I had to blow my nose. My voice is also starting to come back. And cause my body really hates me, I ended up with a UTI as well. The fun just never stops, does it?

Football games. Screaming as loud as possible for 25 seconds (or more) straight can really kill your voice. And heading to the stadium at 5pm only to get home around midnight tends to take a junk of time out of the day. However, we only lost one of the last two home games and I think most of us saw that one coming.

Housing stress. Rent next year goes up $100 a person, for a total of $520. TOTALLY not worth it and also, want to get away from the Extra Roommate (more details later). One of my roommates isn't sure when he'll be here next year, since he's looking to take a semester off for an internship/co-op, but that throws ANOTHER kink in the whole "ok, 3 bedroom place then" plan. 2 bedrooms aren't in the price range, so I ended up applying for an efficiency. We shall see how living completely alone my senior year when a large number of my friends, including my boyfriend, have graduated works out. Yay? I'll find out in December which place I got, IF I got a place. But there was much panicking on my part as time ticked away and other people figured out what they wanted to do AND HANDED IN THEIR APPLICATIONS BEFORE ME. Um, no, not bitter about that AT ALL.

Roommate stress.  Oh, boy, was this a BIG one. Female roommate's boyfriend is always. here. He spends every night here, he comes back here after class. And the two of them just kinda ... stopped hanging out with the rest of us and talking to the rest of us unless they needed something and stuff like that. It got awkward, I got pissed. I wrote a letter, taped it to her door, and the whole thing blew up in my face. She was a) pissed about the letter, b) pissed that I was upset about the whole thing in the first place, c) apparently my lord and master, since she told me that I WOULD NOT bring up the topic again, WOULD NOT speak to her until I had "a civil tongue in my mouth", and that he WOULD spend nights here, I WOULD get used to brushing my teeth around him every morning, and so forth. Needless to say, that didn't sit very well with me. At all. I pretty much had a nervous break down while waiting for a chance to (calmly) confront her about it and had to retreat to TheBoyfriend's place for an afternoon/evening. His roommates were QUITE confused with the fact that I spend 6 hours on the floor in the living room, reading Tennyson. However, we had an apartment meeting, she apologized, I apologized, and her boyfriend isn't here QUITE so much and they're now actually cleaning the bathroom. Finally. I'm still a bit angry about the whole thing (she said she "didn't think I was actually that upset about the whole thing" even though I started the letter by saying "I'm really upset with this situation." Bitch) but am able to at least live with her, so things are better.

Fed Ex. Oh, do I hate Fed Ex. Well, I really like two people, since they were actually polite and tried to help me. But, mom bought me an iPod for my birthday and Fed Ex couldn't a) tell me when it would be delivered so I could attempt to be home to sign for it, b) accept that I did NOT want to pre-sign and have them leave it at my door as then my iPod could just walk off randomly with some nice stranger and I'd be able to do NOTHING about it, or c) let me pick it up at a Fed Ex store within two hours of where I live. (No, serious about that. I would have had to drive two hours to pick it up.) When I called to ask what I could do, the one girl said "No" to my every suggestion and then asked "Ok then?" I said "no, but apparently that doesn't seem to bother you much, so I guess I might as well just hang up and get used to the idea that customer service is just a myth." She said "Have a nice day then" and hung up. Somehow, the driver ended up with my cell phone number, called and asked when I would be home, and made a special trip back to my part of town just for me. So, I got my iPod, thanks to an awesome Fed Ex driver.

Computer troubles. iTunes would cause my computer to crash. While I've fixed that, I still have songs that won't transfer to my iPod. OF COURSE those are the songs I want to listen to and/or have stuck in my head. Then my graphic card driver went and with it, my screen. Hard to fix the problem when you can't SEE anything. I finally resorted to randomly pushing keys when booting up and on the third try, that did the trick.

And um, all of the above kinda happened RIGHT AROUND THE SAME TIME. I freaked, many times; cried, many times, and I'm sure all the stress had a hand in getting me sick.  

I finished the Lorna's Lace's socks, one hank did BOTH socks with a little bit left over. Next time, I'll knit a few more rows before starting the heels, this are a little low. If my mom likes the color, I'll knit her a pair, the remaining yarn SHOULD work since her feet are smaller than mine.

Tina's sock was completely frogged when she was here for my birthday. Since then, I've knit back to where I started to rip, using a k3,p1 rib, short row heel, and continuing the ribbing on the top of the foot. Looks pretty good and is a little loose on me, so I'm hoping that they'll fit her. If not, I'm telling her to get smaller feet.

I want to learn Fair Isle, cause apparently I don't have enough things keeping me awake at night. Ryan wants a hat and really likes the look of this. I'm hoping I can use the pattern and fudge numbers and stuff enough to knit it using Paton's Classic Merino. Otherwise, I'm not sure if Ryan will be able to afford it and if I'll finish it in time for him to actually wear it this year.

Russian roulette

Ugh.

The internet, it does not like me. Or my roommates. I'm not sure what we've done to anger the internet god(s), but something needs to give. So far, I've talked to tech support for the modem, return the old modem and picked up a new one, talked to India via Linksys and attempted to set up the router, and reset the router about 7 million times.

Reseting the router works for about 20 minutes or so. The worse part is that I HAVE a connection, I just can't DO anything with it. Grr. Angry. And also, sore. I have a bad habit of punching myself to get anger out. (Hey, it means I'll get my security deposit back later. And less likely to break a bone or something.)

So, I have about 15 minutes to type up this entry before I have to take a shower and run over to TheUrmily's for Studio 60. And then home and to bed and ignoring the internet, cause it doesn't want to play nice.

(I've spent way too much time dealing with this problem.)

So... Tina visited yesterday. At which point, I discovered that her feet are a LOT bigger than mine. To the point that the sock I was knitting for her? It didn't fit. So I frogged the whole thing and have decided to try knitting it toe-up. Not sure how that's gonna work, cause I might have increased too many stitches to make sure that the new sock fits. Went from 88 stitches to 92 and it seems a little... big. I guess we'll see. Worst come to worst, I can tink a bit of the short-row toe and make it fit, I think. We'll see. Experimental knitting, such fun!

I finished the first of the Lorna's Laces sock. Need to take pictures, but don't want to waste the time I have with an internet connection. Later, I promise. It fits nicely, though it might be a little short at the ankle... I'm thinking about picking up and knitting a few more rounds of ribbing at the ankle, to see if that helps the problem. Other than that, love it.

And Sizzle is still neglected... Poor Sizzle. I promise I'll do something with you soon. Before I start another project. Maybe. We'll see.

So, 21st birthday is tomorrow. I plan on watching the season premiere of Gilmore Girls and doing homework and going to be early. I live such an exciting life.

Clearly, I blog when I am avoiding going to bed as well.

Clearly, I am not always completely right in the head. I blame large amounts of Victorian Lit.

So, socks for Tina:


They are coming along, slowly but surely.

This side of the heel turned out very nicely, matched the stripes up and all. (And I did that by accident. There's no way I could have planned that, minus counting how many stitches each stripe tends to take place over, figuring how much yarn is used in a wrap and turn and then calculating how many stitches I could knit with each color to make the stripes run. But that, my friend, would take WAY too much work and effort and math.

That's a rather difficult section of sock to photograph clearly - the sock did not want to lay flat. I think I messed up the proportions of a short row heel, so yeah. Is there a formula for that? I'm sure there is.

And then... this side, not so much with the matchy-matchy. Personally, I'm at the point where I don't care. And also, they will be on her feet. In shoes. And if people are staring at her heels THAT closely, maybe they have other issues? Like a foot fetish?


And the Lorna's Laces:

Procrastination, how I love (and hate) thee

Apparently, I suck at up-dating at a regular basis. I feel that this is a result of my need to include pictures with my posts. The fact that I have an awesome digital camera, am a founding member and secretary of the Photo Club, and clearly LIKE photography seems to have no impact on the whole dragging camera out, finding the item I want to photograph, arranging the item in some sort of not-so-boring manner, taking the picture, uploading the picture (which requires disconnecting either my wireless mouse or my printer [and which I will forget to plug back in and then spend 10 minutes cursing as I try to figure out what is wrong with my mouse and/or printer]), editing the picture, and loading it to Blogger.com.

That is, unless, I am putting something off. Currently, I'm putting off calling my parents (it is Sunday, I call on Sunday. Otherwise, my mother will call to tell me that my cat wants to go outside. Again. After coming in 5 minutes ago. While that all might be true, THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO. Nothing. But she will call and tell me that. Or that my sister stained her placemat again.)

Where was I? Oh, and homework. I have an article to read on Lithic Stone Tools and Stone Tool Technology. After reading the article, I must write up an abstract and some sort of notebook entry on the article.

Clearly, blogging comes first.

And sadly, pictures are NOT forth coming in this entry, unless you want to see close-ups of weeds in my yard. (They are pretty weeds, though.) If you so desire, leave a comment and I will share.

I've finished the major work of Sizzle. Finished on ... Thursday? Wednesday? Don't quite remember. But back and front have been knitted. Then the shoulder seams were grafted, the side seams mattress stitched. I just need to neaten out the edge of the neckline and do that part of the finishing. But. YAY! It fits! It is pretty! I can wear my very first major-knitting project. (Good thing, with the amount of money I spent on it. A pair of socks that doesn't work out... well, that's not so bad. And you could re-knit without killing yourself. Multiple times.)

I've finally, finally finished the heel of Tina's socks (the purple with white/black checkered strips). I knit that heel three times and I messed up on the short rows the third time. I'm trying to decide if I want to rip and reknit. Again. The only reason you can tell is cause the stripes didn't quite line up as they should.... I think it makes the sock more special. I also don't wanna deal with the heel anymore.

I've start swatching with the Lorena's Laces that I won a long, long time ago from Moth Heaven. I think it is finally time to knit a pair of socks for myself. This makes me happy.

Pictures next time, I promise. And is there anything you want me to photograph? I will consider requests.

Dubber Ruckys Galore

A few years ago, I decided I need a rubber duck.

A kind friend gave me one for my birthday, as a joke. My sister found out about it, and my excitement upon receiving said duck, and this is the result:

Bubbles shower curtain and rubber duck bathmat.


A close up of the bathmat.


The trashcan, too, is ducky.


A sticky-like thing that clings to the shower and the bathroom walls. I was told today that the ducks just keep multiplying.


The light-switch plate cover that my aunt gave me for Christmas.

Realize, I bought only the shower curtain - and that does not have actual ducks on it. My sister (or aunt) gifted me the rest. She didn't hear me when I said I don't really like ducks that much.

Least it made decorating the bathroom cheap...

sunshine

I've made some serious progress on Sizzle. Back on ... August 2nd, I had this: Today, September 1st, I have this: A completed back of Sizzle, plus the start of the front of Sizzle, that little bit at the bottom on the needles. Color is pretty close, though I think it might be a little less blue and a little more grey. The yarn is actually that shiny, though. I'm totally loving it. This is what I'm totally looking forward to: Penn State Football. Kickoff tomorrow is 3:30pm, against Akron. We should win. In fact, I'd be scared if we lost. But, new quarterback, lots of new players on the field. Will be interesting to see how the team has learned to work together. My body also wants to kill me. Going from physical labor all day, every day to sitting on the couch, sleeping in, taking naps, etc., is killing me. I'm getting headaches from ponytails, since I've worn my hair down every day. My knees hurt, my back hurts.. I hurt. I think I need to drag my butt up to the gym tomorrow or maybe today. We sent Ryan, one of my roommates, to the grocery store. So far, he's about half-way done his list and has called me three times to ask about what he should get, how much, if we have this, if we have that. He cracks me up. Wonder what he'd do without a cell phone? Or if I didn't answer mine? TheUrmily should be up here in just under two hours, so I prolly have time to get a hair cut, should I so choose, a shower, and maybe even read a little bit. This free time thing is weird. Weird, I say!

The socks, they are DONE

Done and blocked and everything. Already gifted them to my mother, who loves them.

(and her feet are smaller, so they fit her a little better. And is it possible to take a picture of ones feet without giving oneself cankels?)

A close up shot of the stitch pattern:


I really like how they came out, even though they took forever and I apparently knit tightly and loosely at the same time. (As in, with larger-than-called-for needles, I get smaller gauge AND holes in my fabric. What gives, yo?) Started sometime during the school year (you'd think I'd remember) and finished on a Friday. I think the Friday after TheBoy left, so the... 11th. In other words, they took forever. I am a slow knitter, specially when I ignore projects for a length of time.

It has been beautiful out in the last week. A little warm during the day, nice and cool at night. No rain, which we need, but beautiful skys and such. See?


What I call the Dr. Seuss Tree:


It totally looks like it came right out of a Dr. Seuss book. I love it.

See the three trees in the middle? The one on the left looks like a rearing horses, ears pinned back. And the one on the right looks like some sort of cartoon bird. I've been staring at that section of the treeline every day as I take horses out and that's what I think every time. Lexi agrees with me, and we decided that it's a garden-scape of her horse, Scout, fighting an ostrich over that thing in the middle. Someone else said camel, but we don't really see it. Or, the camel has some weird thing growing out of his butt.


Meet Flair. Flair is one of our mares. I dislike Flair. She's very pretty, as you can see. But she's a mare, and thus, moody. She's hard to ride (read: likes to rear) and hasn't been sound for the last three months. In fact, she's spent the last three months in that stall. AND IT DOESN'T bother her. There's something wrong with a horse that doesn't mind being inside. All the time. Alone at night. She's also not all that bright. Not that dumb, but ... not that bright.


Though, tonight, Flair has Harry to keep her company. Isn't he cute? And silly?


This is Rocket. Rocket likes sticks. He's so very cute and has the best sad puppy dog eyes I've ever seen. He makes me feel like the world will end if I don't throw his stick. He'll keep bringing it back to you until he's tired and needs a break. Then, he chews his stick for a while. The result is that you end up with very small pieces of stick that are really better mulch than toys. But don't tell Rocket that, he won't listen.


That's all I got for now. Still working on the back of Sizzle (which Wendy says knits up in about 3 days), about to finish the increases and work on the armholes. So maybe there is hope. Still loving the pattern, the yarn, the resulting fabric. Not sure if I like the increases in the back, they look wonky to me. Maybe I'll mess around and figure out another way for the front, a way that doesn't show as much as my most invisible method of a make 1.

I think I owe a few pictures

This:

Now looks like this:


The socks I started a long long time ago, at school, now look like this:

I'm about halfway done knitting the foot, so the end is in sight. I'd kinda like to finish this before I go back to school....

And because I'm insane, I started this:


I was bitten by a really nasty fly (no idea what kind, either) and my left ankle swelled up something akin to a balloon, resulting in this:


This is the first of the long promised pictures of the apartment:

my bed. Doesn't it look comfy?

This is the bathmat in the bathroom:


And this is what I spent Saturday doing:


I started this within the last week:

Wendy's Sizzle. I am LOVING this yarn (Karabella's Zodiac) and the pattern.

In other news, I move in about ... 30 days and have yet to start packing. I want to finish the one pair of socks, the scarf (so that I can give it to my boyfriend's mother when she moves back into (or near) town, cause that's not weird at all. Right?) My boyfriend will be here on Sunday or Monday, we're both hoping for Sunday. I need to go grocery shopping cause I've heard that eating on a regular basis is a good idea. I want to buy V for Vendetta. I need to buy text books online, at least the ones I was able to get ISBN numbers for from the student bookstore. Tina needs to finish my quilt so that I can take that to school.

My computer remains propped against my printer, my back is killing me as a result. I'm competing again on Sunday. It is hot here, but I have the pool. Of course, that requires walking outside, which is NOT benefiting from my A/C. So that doesn't always happen as often as it could.  

And that might be the last you'll hear from me until I move into the apartment at school- around the 30th.