Monday, July 30, 2007

Catching up

My room is a mess (so is the rest of the house consequently), I've hardly knitted anything, I have to shop for furniture/clothing/and knit stuff before Monday the 6th, I leave for a month out of town (on a train!!!) on the 6th and Matthew leaves for MCRD (hell...) on Tuesday the 7th and I'm just not sure how it fit it all in.

Well we got back from our honeymoon (no knitting was accomplished-though I had good intentions and brought my bag) and the very next day I had work at 10am. Odd since normally we only have shows on the weekends. After work, Matthew and I watched HP movie 1 and generally slacked off. I got a wild idea to paint my room (everything had to go since our queen sized bed was moving from his place to mine) so late wednesday night I started taking everything out of the room. Thursday we painted ( I managed a few rows of knitting) Friday we painted some more (I knitted a bit more too) and Saturday we moved in the bed. Once everything is said and done, I'll share pictures but as of the moment, it's all a mess.

So thanks to the Ravelry Forum boards I got a lovely list of Podcasts to check out and currently I'm listening to Stash and Burn. My only issue is that I can't download them all and listen. Once I DL something the next one I DL replaces the previous one. Any suggestions? I'd love to have the full list of that one and a few others to take on the train with me rather than only one for the 3 day trip. Boo.

So the Cable Trim Pullover (Alpaca Sweater) has been shipped off. I dropped it off to see if I could have someone else make it up. I love the look and want to wear it, but I'm sick sick sick of making it and it looms over my head. I couldn't enjoy starting a new project with it siting there. So off it's gone and I'm currently working on a bolero in Rowan Calmer (i think). I'll have to give you more info later but my brain is sleepy which is usually my cue to head for bed.

P.S. I'm buying more sock yarn tomorrow. I'm really excited.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Busy, Busy Busy

Life has been mad crazy this past week, and the sheer lack of Blogging (and knitting for that matter) is horrible. Sorry! Once I can give the full update justice I will, but for now, I leave you with a picture of my Handfast. :)

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Sunday, July 15, 2007

Quilt Run

Quilt Run= No Knitting.

Well, ok, so I did some knitting, about 4-8 rows on my MIL to be's socks, but that was since Thursday. I have however visited 14 stores in 10 hours over a span of 350 miles (Thursday) 6 stores in 4 hours 70 miles (Friday) and today I went to 3 stores but they were pretty far and I had work at 3pm. Tomorrow I'm volunteering at my local quilt shop since I won't have time to run to the farther off shops. I'll have to save those for next Thursday. Bleh. But I've gotten a ton of charms for a charm bracelet and fabric galore. Lovely. I wish there was a yarn store equivalent in So. Cal.

I am, however the lucky recipient of a Ravelry invite. Be envious. It's ok, I was too.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

So Much in Two Days!

A ton has happened in two days I am happy to say. On Tuesday Matthew and I were on his way to my house and decided to stop off at Living Spaces to look around since we are shopping for a new bed. We wandered around a bit and saw some nice beds but nothing stood out. We turned a corner (read:walked past 2 closet/dresser things) and stopped in out tracks. We both were amazed at the bed. Our issue has been we both have extremely different tastes in bed styles. I like the deep maghinogy sleigh beds, he likes the metal bars look. This, ladies and gents has both!

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It's been decided that we need more pillows because that head board looks massive with just the 4. We were going to buy the Euro Shams but they were $50.00 each! The bed skirt was $69.99. Since I'm thinking of getting a different set later we decided to wait. It's currently at his place since my room is still full of furniture we need to sell. If anyone is interested in a Teen Girls bedroom set you can find my listing on Craig's List: http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/fur/371149266.html

I also finished his socks (finally!) Tuesday night. I think I should have made the heel longer on one of them but it's too late now and I'm not sure he likes them...He's not sure he likes them. Thats ok though, he'll eventually come around I'm sure.

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Yesterday, we bought a storage unit to hold all of his (and my) stuff while he's away in Basic Training. Nice. Like a closet but bigger!! You know what this means right? I'll be able to put more stuff away in the storage unit to make room for more yarn at my house! Sweet! I also Made a scarf from One Skein Wonders, Filippi Scarf for my brother's fiancee. I used Andina in an Dark olive Green for the yarn (40%Wool, 40% Alpaca, 20% Acrylic) and it was worked over size 13 needles. It took mabey 4 hours on and off to do. Lovely! It was so quick in comparison to the Sportweight Alpaca on size 2 needles I'm using for the cable trim pullover. I was very pleased.

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Sunday, July 8, 2007

Lovely, Lovely Yarn

Well, Thursday was fun I must admit. I went into my LYS with 6 hanks of yarn to be rolled (2 for the Cable Trim Pullover...grr 4 for the Irish Yarn...grr...) and wound up buying more hanks of yarn (yea!). So in total I had 9 hanks to roll and needed to use her ball winder and swift (I really need to break down and buy my own). I didn't feel too bad because 5/9 hanks were bought from her and with the Irish yarn, I'm buying everything I need from her to make something with it. Not to mention I did all the winding. It took about an hour and 15 minutes to do so but it was enjoyable none the less. I like sitting in the yarn shop just being there has a calming effect and the product selection could not be finer.

Note to anyone buying me Christmas/Birthday/Wedding/Just Because gifts: Gift Certificates to my LYS will make me worship the ground you walk upon. Just saying. Not to mention you might get something out of it. :)

Anyway, so I bought sock yarn (one I'd been eying for 3 weeks -to be fair), and cotton yarn for a baby blanket I'm making. The sock yarn in 100% merino from Jitterbug color "Velvet Biibery"..uh yeah...deep, dark purples that blend into black. It's beautiful. The cotton is from Inca Cotton -100% Organic Cotton in natural dyes. How cool is that? Here's a picture of of them with a ball (and I use the term lightly) of the Irish Yarn. It weighs 9 oz so I figure I have enough for a beautiful leaf blanket...but more on that thing later.
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It's hard to tell but the cotton has a greenish color to it, the white from the Irish yarn is just so glaring, shade or no shade. It glows. Anyway, after spending 2 hours at the LYS I went home then came back to pick up an extra class so I could start on my Irish Yarn Leaf Blanket. Pretty and as soon as I have something to show you, I will. However, the %$&%*&^ pattern is driving me nuts. It's not complicated but you have to do about an hour and a half to get to the "first row" (there is a foundation row). If you screw up even so much as one stitch, your screwed pattern wise. I got all the way to the 3rd row and noticed I missed ONE yarn forward. Gah. So I ripped out 2 hours worth of work. I re-cast on the 345 stitches and started again only to realize I messed up AGAIN. At this point I started getting a little angry at the thing (ok I was livid at the first frogging) so I've put it down.

Speaking of angry, I need a new knitting bag. Mine likes to ruin my projects the rat fink. I had just finished the ribbing on the front part of my Cable Trim Pullover before class and put it in my bag to take with me. At some point during the 3 minuet car ride (5 with red lights) my bag managed to rip off a 1/3 of the stitches-most of which ran down several rows. That got frogged Tuesday. I haven't picked it up again yet.

I wound up sleeping at 3am on Thursday evening/Friday morning and woke up at 5:30 in the mother effing morning. I am not an early bird. I'm a (pardon the language) a raging bitch if I have to get up before 9:30 am (unless it's yarn induced like the Yarn Lady's Bag Sale was). But to only function on 2 fitful hours of basically catnaps? Scary. Anyway, I knew I wasn't going back to bed so I decided to be useful. I knit a sock.

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Here it is at 6:00 am in the misty morning. It's for Matthew (not that he'll be able to wear it come August) so don't blame me for the boring color choice. He picked 'em. I finished it around 7:00 am and cast on for the next one. I should make a note (just to be truthful) that I had been working on it the night before so it was about 60% done when I got up on Friday. I'm now currently stuck on the heel bit of the second one because (we didn't have a pattern that was written for his foot size) I think we didn't join enough stitches together. I should only have 64 total, but have 32/21/21 when I should have 32/16/16. Gah. I think I'm going to have to rip it back and have a do-over on the heel bit. I think I'll go in and bother my LYS again like I did today.

Which was when I went in to get the heel turned. But I bought more yarn! More sock yarn really. No picture sad to say, but I'll get one before I roll it up on Monday. It's this awesome variegated yarn of different shades of cream, brown, pink and black. It sounds weird but looks awesome. It's Jitterbug again but the colorway escapes me at the moment.

Whew. That was a long one wasn't it? If you stuck it out this long you've got my thanks. Drop me a comment if you'd like (or even if you don't like) and ...erm...leave a comment. :)

And because it looks like a caterpillar running away, one more sock picture for you:
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Thursday, July 5, 2007

Bah!

I went to knitting class Tuesday night, all set to work on the cable trim pullover and when I pulled it out of my bag....BAM! Half the stitches were off the needle, flying in the air conditioned breeze. Some stitches had run far down so I said, "Screw it" and ripped the damned thing back to the starting point. Hell and damnation. I started on a pair of grey and white self patterned socks for the boy and I got to the heel flap prior to falling asleep at home.

The 4th of July was fun, we hung out at my girlfriends house, went swimming, watched movies and set off a few fireworks. Good times. I didn't however get any knitting done since we got home around Midnight and I was tired. Apparently lazing by the pool all day is exhausting. Who would have guessed?

Today, I'm planning on going back to my LYS to wind 6+hanks worth of yarn and to buy more (woo hoo). I need to run to JoAnns and pick up some material to sew into a few bags because apparently my knitting bag simply isn't cutting it. Bah. Blast.

....And mabey buy more sock yarn....

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Knit, Knit, Knit

I doubt I'll be posting tomorrow so, Happy 4th of July. Enough of that.

Knitting huh? I've been working on the Cable Trim Pullover and I've finished the 2x2 ribbing on the front panel. Next I have the St-St increases then 8 inches of St-St before the neck shaping (I think). I completly missed knitting class last night, I was too busy watching Monk. Monk is fun to watch and since I never watch T.V. you've got yourself a pretty safe bet that it's enjoyable.

Really, nothing else has been going on. I started a cardigan fron Greetings from Knit Cafe but I'm going to rip it. I really don't like how the yarn catches and squeeks on my wooden needles so much so that it's got to go. So now I have 10 skeins of Fa Re Baruffa Maratona Extra Fine Merino (blue purple) that I don't know what to do with. Anyone want to trade?