Getting There

Both sleeves for Blaze are completed! I sat down today and finished the right sleeve because Blaze goes with me to class on Wednesdays and I wanted to be sure that I'd have something to do. (Ok, so that sentence doesn't QUITE make sense...) But now one sleeve is attached to Blaze. See?



Right after I took that picture, I realized that I had started in the wrong point of the stitch pattern.. and had to tink my way back to the starting point. I have managed to catch up back to were I was, however. And I am slowly realizing that the rest of this sweater is going to take longer because, dude - there are a LOT of stitches in each round.

However, I am happy to report that one ball of yarn gives you this:


That's right folks. I knit my sleeves a bit longer than called for in the pattern and was wary about the amount of yarn I'd need. I to knit about 5.5" after this point and I have 3 full balls and most of a 4th. I'm fairly certain I'm going to have enough yarn, even with a longer body and sleeves.

The Pawprint socks are also well on their way. This is what happens when one has three hours (or more) of Paradise Lost to read each week:

That, by the way, is my knit/read set up. My laptop is propped up by two stacks of two Altoids tins in the back. I put my stapler on top of the closed laptop lid and then prop my HUGE text book up against that whole contraption. So far, the two socks are matching fairly well. I'll have to check in a little bit if that's still the case up the leg.

I also kinda feel the need to figure out my next big project. I need to finish Sizzle, which only needs a neckband and finishing touches at the sleeves. Branching Out could be finished. I have two pairs of socks on the needles right now, but I also have an empty set of DPNs. Hrm...

I think I shall be signing up for Sockapalooza this year. I figure, free socks in exchange for a pair of socks! I'm hoping that my pal likes the color blue, because then I can use stash sock yarn - which is pretty much the ONLY yarn in my stash.

In other news, I shall be in Lyndhurst, OH this weekend! I'm so excited! If any of the other many knitters planning to be there reads this, will someone say Hi to me that day? I'm guessing that I'm going to be in hermit mode and also, scared witless because I WON'T KNOW ANYONE. And we all know that's how nightmares start. (Well, either that, or you know EVERYONE. And you are in your underwear, for some reason.) The Urmila will visit the bookstore with me, but she doesn't deal with people. I'll post a picture of myself later this week and which ever project I decide to take with me!

NYC - 2007

The Urmila and I visited New York City this weekend. I was very disappointed to miss the Yarn Harlot on Thursday, but NYC is a 5 hour drive from school, so that wasn't quite going to happen.

We did, however, visit the Museum of Arts and Design and saw the exhibit on Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, which was amazing. There was a dress (that would have fit me!) knitted out of some 800+ dollar bills. Someone else cut a fender, a hood, and a few other pieces of abandoned cars into a form of lace that was quite pretty. I was surprised at how small the museum was, but I think it is moving to a new location sometime in 2008. We stopped at the MoMA store as well, and I got a print of Munch's "The Scream," an all-black dubber ruck, a post card of the "OOF" painting I loved so much last year, and a post card of a Dali print.



Following that, we had lunch (for less than $10) and wandered over to the theater to see Avenue Q. I loved the show and would see it again, if not for the price. Amazing and funny and true and many other things. The show brings up some very controversial topics, such as homosexuality and racism, but handled the issues in such a way to demonstrate that yes, they recognized the problem, yes, they knew that they sometimes added to the problem, and yes, they don't have all the answers. More conservative audience members might have been uncomfortable with puppet sex or a gay character, but I think that's to be expected.



After the show, we wandered around Times Square, ducked into the ESPNZone, visited Barbie's House in the HUGE Toys R Us, and other such touristy stuff until we were hungry, when we stopped into John's (on 44th) for dinner. Very yummy garlic bread and a bruschetta pizza cost us again, less than $10 each. We went to Dylan's Candy Bar afterwards and picked up the same five bars of chocolate as we did last year.



Urmila had picked out two bars she had wanted to try, but they were too far away to make it there, grab a drink, then run over to Dean & Deluca's for Italian Sodas, and then find the bus again. So we stopped in a P.J. Morgans and ordered drinks without being carded. Very strange feeling and neither of us looks 21. Appletinis continue to rock my socks. As do caramel Italian Sodas.



We didn't get back until 2am, so the weekend was pretty much over by that point. Friday night was spent with dinner (chicken with sage and thyme, served over rice with cream of chicken sauce poured over), brownies, and a bottle of wine while watching V for Vendetta, as Urmila had not seen the movie.

We're driving to Cleveland this weekend, which means I get to see the Yarn Harlot! In theory, I could see her in Pittsburgh on Friday and OH on Saturday, but I think the Urmila would cry, as she is NOT a knitter and often says "I need new friends" when we all start talking knitting. So, just Saturday and I need to get directions to the bookstore. I am SO excited, but slightly sad, since I left my copy of "Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much" at home. I'll have to be content with taking Knitting Rules.

Recap

For some reason, my computer does not like to associate with fiber-optic internet service. As a result, it ... doesn't. While at home, I'm forced to either use my father's computer or my sister's computer. My sister's has the disadvantage of being located in HER room. Getting to the computer desk is a feat of balance and flexibility, as there is no walk-way ... just piles of STUFF. My father's computer is not only in a common location of the house, but one doesn't need to warm up before attempting to approach the machine. However, his computer's main language is Swedish. No matter what program you have running - and even if you have an English version of the program - error messages pop up in Swedish. I don't know Swedish. (Neither, for that matter, does my father. That makes tech support quite fun.)

As a result, no blogging. As a result of lots and lots of stuff to do, not quite as much knitting as I would have liked. I did manage to tack on another 5 pattern repeats of Branching Out, for a total of 27, which the pattern calls for. I think I'm going to knit til I run out of yarn, rip back to the end of a full repeat, and finish the thing. Some year. No pictures because it looks like the other pictures, just ... longer.

I finished the one sleeve of Blaze and started the other:



This shouldn't take me too long, as there are only 4 pattern repeats, for a total of 72 rounds. (8 rounds of 72 stitches = 576 stitches. 7 rounds of 74 stitches = 518. 8 rounds of 76 stitches = 608 stitches. And 49 rounds of 78 stitches = 3822 stitches. For a grand total of 5524 stitches for one sleeve. [I'm on round 7 right now, after the 8 rounds of ribbing.] Clearly I'll be done in no time.)

As for my sister's sock,



I also turned the heel, picked up gusset stitches (um, 19 of them, rather than the suggested 16. Not sure what, exactly, I did there), and started the decreasing part. What with the plain stockinette stitch of the bottom, I'm kinda hoping that the foot of the sock goes faster than the leg did. I do have three hours a week to spend on it, though.

Here is Eeyore, modeling the foot of the second pawprint socks.


If they fit her, these socks will go to my mother. These are knit while I'm reading Milton's Paradise Lost.

And then... then I have THIS:



I'm quite sad, even messing around with light balance and color settings, I can't get the real color of this year. There is more green, more blue, more purple. SO PRETTY. That was the awesome part of visiting my mother - she lives in Harrisonburg, VA. So does Claudia, of Claudia's Hand Painted Yarns. As I had hoped, yarn stores round there tend to carry LOTS of Claudia's yarns. I got two skeins, so I'm hoping I might be able to pull off two pairs of footlets. Or maybe this yarn is meant to be a taller sock. Maybe even a toe up pair of socks, so I can knit as much as possible with this yarn. We shall see. I need to finish three pairs of socks before then - pawprint, Bayerische, and this....



The color is very close in this shot, actually. My mother liked the idea of socks with Aloe Vera in them and I can't say I mind the idea of knitting with it. I think I'm going to steal her pair of light cream Opal sock yarn for myself then... This will be her third pair of socks from me.

To completely change the subject, I made the ... mistake? Not sure if that is the correct word... of looking at working student positions for event riding. A found a few that pretty much provide everything I need, plus lessons, horses, coaching at events, a chance to compete.. I wouldn't be able to get one for this summer, but maybe that's what I'll do right out of college. I already know that this isn't the kind of thing that I am going to forget right away, so it can stew in the back of my mind for a while. Until tomorrow, for example.

I'm about to leave for a meeting with a faculty member to discuss the possibility of Holocaust Literature as a thesis option. I'm not sure where his office is, even though I've asked twice. Hrm.

Procrastination, how I love thee

I'm currently at the top of page 4 of a 5 page paper. So I need to come up with another 1.5 pages or so. Clearly it is time for a blog posting.

I spent very little time knitting this weekend, as I'm working next weekend and needed to get ahead to be able to finish everything on time. However, two three-hour-long classes really adds to the knitting time. Reading Milton's Paradise Lost also really helps.

I've been knitting Bayerische during Hist 409Y:

Six inch DPN included for scale

A close up of the pattern:

the actual color is somewhere between the two. For some reason,
this color is very hard to capture with my camera in artificial light.

And Blaze during Eng 497C and watching movies for Fr 497B:


That's actually the third attempt at Blaze. I didn't like how the pattern incorporated the increased stitches - purled until all were added, then a new zig-zag just started up - so I started those stitches in pattern a little early. Given that this will be the bottom of the sleeve, I don't think it will make much of a difference, but I like it. I'm really hoping the sleeves won't take too long, but I'm not holding my breath.



And when I remember, I've been working on the second PawPrint sock while reading Milton at my desk. So far, not too bad. I've finished the toe and have just started the majority of the foot portion, pattern included.



Other than the fact that I could be found at 10pm both Friday and Saturday still doing homework, the weekend was good. I managed to get a decent amount of work done, minus this paper that I have no desire to actually work on, minus the fact that I could then go to bed.

Finished Object: Meagan's Scarf!

The Specs:
Pattern: Basketweave pattern. 15 stitches across, switching between knit and purl every 3 stitches and four rows.
Yarn: Lion Brand Jiffy, Thick & Quick, two skeins
Colors: #214, Berkshires, lot 60519
Needles: size 15 Boye straights, 14" long
Start to Finish: Started over Christmas Break, finished on 2/21/07
For: My sister, Meagan

(sorry, forgot to rotate that and am too lazy to fix it)

Notes: I hate the yarn. I hate the color. And I hate the needles. That said, this was a fairly quick knit. In less than a month, I had managed to knit the first half of the scarf and then had to put it down while waiting for the other skein to show up. I think I started it again last Wednesday, the snow day, and I finished tonight. Meagan loves the color and the pattern, so I'd call this a successful project. I think it is a little over five feet long, which is perfect as my sister is a little over five feet tall.

I was too lazy to find my needle and also figured that the yarn, as bulky as it it, wouldn't fit in the eye of the needle. So I used a paper clip. Oddly enough, this worked super well. I will have to keep this idea in mind for the future.

Brought to you by the letter Z

THON was this weekend - over $5.2 million raised for kids with cancer. A couple of us stopped by Saturday night/Sunday morning to see Urmila and populate the stands at 1:30-3:00am. I would have left earlier, but I wanted to see a line dance and they just weren't producing. I think I'll forgive them though.

Other than that, I've started a sleeve for Blaze:



Not really liking the DPNs as they seem really short at only 5" long. And also, this yarn is fuzzy. The wood is smooth, but the yarn still sticks. The cable pattern also makes it a bit difficult, since you have to divide up stitches weirdly to keep from having to cross stitches over two needles. But, dude! Sleeves! That means I'm close. And also, this is going so much faster with only 72 stitches, NOT 210. It is kinda like a sock, since socks suddenly feel like they are FLYING.

And have been knitting away on my sister's scarf:



The thing is about 5 feet long now. She's about 5'2" so I think I might just keep knitting until I run out of yarn or have a total of 58 or 60 pattern repeats. However, that shouldn't take too much longer. The scarf has become my TV knitting, which means that I might finish it tomorrow, what with Gilmore girls and House, M.D.

Other than that, just homework and snow. I had class last Wednesday, when everyone else had a snow day. True, I only had 1.5 hours worth of a 3 hour class on a day I normally spend 5 hours in class. But that's totally not the point.

Saw Five Women Wearing the Same Dress this weekend and loved it. Three of the actors were in the troupe last year for Theatre 100 and it was nice to see them again, in roles that they seemed to really enjoy. The playwright also wrote Six Feet Under and American Beauty, so you know it should be good.

Finals schedule was posted - I have 5 finals scheduled. I'm pretty sure that I only have to show up and take 2 of them, the others will all be papers and/or take home exams. I'm trying to decide if I'd rather have exams or papers. Ask me again at the end of the semester. I'll be here at least til Friday, though, as I'm only done at 8:40PM on Thursday. I think I'm going to watch TheBoy graduate as well, so odds are that I'll stick around til Sunday or later as well.


I've been on a major actually-COOKING-food kick lately. I had broiled salmon with garlic and potatoes sauteed in Italian salad dressing the other night; Sausage sauteed with pepper, cucumber, celery, and garlic with cheesy rice as a side tonight. Stromboli, garlic lemon butter chicken stir-fry, and potato boats are planned for the week.

As I've spent the entire day trying to NOT pass out and failing pretty badly, I think I'm going to go curl up in bed with a book for class and see how long I last. Since I actually want to go to bed early, I bet I'll last a while. Body, I hate you some days.

Signs of life

I'm alive. No, really. And now it looks like I might even be alive for a while longer.

I'm still coughing and hacking up nasty stuff, but much less often than before. And the sore throat has retreated enough that I'm off enough drugs to be able to go out for a friend's 21st birthday and not die if I forget and have a drink.

That being said, being sick has been good for the knitting. See?
I suppose knitting in class also helps... I need to finish a repeat and a half of the pattern, then start the sleeves. I'm not in a hurry, because I can't seem to find a set of US 6 DPNs. A friend has a set of 5s that I can borrow for the cuffs and might have a set of 6s. I don't want to tie up her DPNs for the length of time I'd be knitting two sleeves, so I attempted to purchase a set for myself. Wal-Mart and Michael's were both a bust. I could drive to the LYS, but they don't have cheap needles and I'm a broke college student. However, I am in a hurry cause I want to wear the thing while it is still winter.

I also finally got around to starting the other paw-print sock:
I wasn't quite able to perfectly match up the color repeats, but all in all, it is looking pretty good. And it only took me 4 tries to manage Judy's Magic Cast-On, rather than the 6 for the first sock. I do think, however, that these will be my last pair of toe-up socks. I hate attempting to START the sock and I hate FINISHING the sock. So I put those off and that tends to mean that I don't have socks. And that's just not the whole point.


And while watching a movie last night (Serenity, the movie based off of FireFly), I managed 5 rounds of Bayerische socks.
They aren't looking as clean and crisp as Eunny's but that's ok. Blocking shall solve the problem!

Wishful thinking, much?

It's the fever talking

Well, I'm alive.  I still have yet to decide how I feel about that, but I am alive.

For some odd reason, I no longer get a stuffy nose or a runny nose when I get a cold.  Rather, I get post-nasal drip, a nasty sore throat, and pressure in my ears.  The sore throat gets worse when the coughing sets in, but then it tends to only be a few more days before I can swallow again.  There's no more tea left in the apartment, so I've been drinking hot water.  Yeah, I know.

To top it all off, I have to read a two page paper outloud in class tomorrow.  I can't stand the professor, so I would rather NOT have to explain in the beginning of class that I can't talk.  Also, the guy is going deaf, which does not help matters.

I've been knitting in one class - it is three hours long and discussion based, so he shouldn't be able to yell at me for it.  Or maybe he doesn't notice.  Who cares?

I tried Blaze on the other day, it DOES fit.  YAY!  I think I have about 6" done, only another foot or so to go.  I ought to measure the length of some of my favorite sweaters and figure out how long I want this one to be.

Ok, I can't seem to maintain brain function often enough to write a real post.  And Blogger hates pictures this evening, so no pictures for you.  Maybe, however, there will be pictures after the weekend, when I sit down and take pictures of everything that has changed since the last time I took pictures.

Last week? Not so good for the knitting.

I did, however, rip-out the sewn cast off of the paw print sock, knit another half inch or so of ribbing and then try a cast-off I saw on Wendy's blog. I like it MUCH better now. I'd take a picture, but really - it looks almost the same. Just better.

So now I can start the second sock. I'm trying to decide if I want to attempt to make the socks match or just go with it. I think I'll end up matching them. I couldn't bring myself to start the second one when I didn't like the first one.

I also got the second skein of yarn for my sister's scarf, so hopefully I'll be able to knock that thing out in a week or two, just to make myself feel better about the number of things on needles right now.

Blaze is moving along... It would make a semi decent tube top right about now, but not so sure about how much I like the idea of a cabled tube top. Or a tube top in general, so I'll just keep knitting. For the most part, I've memorized the pattern. I just have to stop and figure out if I'm knitting/purling each stitch or crossing them on each round. I've just joined the third ball of yarn, too.

Last week, I somehow forgot to cable and/or cabled when I shouldn't have and had to tink back 4-5 rows to find and fix the mistake. That actually took more time than knitting would have, which was rather annoying. But ah, well. At least it is correct now.

Other than that, working for the first time this weekend - stage crew for the Vagina Monologues. I love the show, but not sure how being present for 3 performances is going to pan out. At the very least, I'll be paid.

Other than that, feeling rather ... off. Somewhat feel like I'm forgetting to do something or am behind or something. Things with friends are weird, things in general feel weird. Not bad, just .. different. And I'm not sure I like it.

YAY for 56 hours of weekend

This weekend was very good for knitting. I finished class at 11am on Friday and realized that I was unlikely to see anyone (other than roommates, and they don't count) for another 6 or 7 hours.

So, I finished two books for classes, sent off a few e-mails, and devoted the rest of the day to knitting.

First and formost, I am officially halfway finished with my sister's scarf:

14" straight needle included for scale: all told, that's about three feet of scarf.

That's the first skein of yarn into scarf. I left the other skein at home, without realizing it, so her scarf is going to have to wait til March or whenever she decides that it is cold and she wants a scarf and mails me the other skein. The color in that picture is a bit muted - the colors are actually a little bit brighter.

I've been working on Blaze and am still loving it. I am about halfway done the first repeat. I'm discovering that this pattern is rather hard to pick up and just "read" where you are - I have to jot down what row/round I stopped on. Slightly annoying, but I shall forgive it, as it is so lovely and soft and squishy.

Not sure, however, if that will REALLY fit me. My gauge is a little bit tighter than what the pattern calls for, but I'm knitting the larger size of the two I fall between, so I'm hoping it will work out nicely. And also, the needle fits around my waist and the pattern is stretchy, given that it is a rib. IT SHALL FIT.

After a two hour break for dinner, I returned home and joined Urmila and Ryan for some 3+ hours of Battlestar Galactica. TheBoy showed up to watch the first episode after the miniseries that sets up the whole series. And in that time, I managed a large chunk of this:

I know, I know. I haven't been blogging about this sock. I got to right before the dark strip before the heel (From the toe) around Thanksgiving and hadn't touched it since. In fact, I left that sock at school over break, so I've knit over half a sock in less than a week, as I cast-off last night. I might un-do the EZ sewen cast-off, knit a bit more ribbing, and try a different cast-off. I don't know how I feel about toe up socks. I suck at the various methods for casting-on for a toe up sock and would MUCH rather graft a toe shut than try to find an attractive cast-off that is stretchy enough to work for a sock.

A close-up of the kitty paw-prints that I randomly threw into the mix just for fun:

I am not sure how much I like them, but they are staying. I suppose I like them enough, as I know the second sock will also have paw prints. However, due to the nature of the paw print, I am trying to decide if I should knit the other sock top-down and compare the two or not. Hrm... I shall have to think on that one.

For now, though, I have season 6 of The West Wing and am slightly ahead for classes this week, minus the 2-3 page paper due on Wednesday that I haven't overly considered yet. But we'll ignore that, allowing me to spend the rest of the evening knitting on Blaze