Thursday, December 24, 2009

Christmas!

Merry Christmas : ) Hopefully there will be pictures and things to post soon, but for now I just wanted to say that and promise to write more later. Enjoy today and tomorrow!

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving break!

It's been so much fun being home for the past few days : ) I got back Tuesday afternoon and get to stay until tomorrow! My brother is home, my family is all here, and it's just been really nice.

I've been knitting not a small amount, trying to finish the afghan for my grandpa (I'm so close!) and working on the second scarf for a friend. Hopefully I'll have more pictures to post soon, I'd like to be able to leave Grandpa's present here when I go so my parents can mail it to him soon. I made a trip to the yarn store the other day and got enough yarn to finish the afghan and start on other Christmas gifts, so I'll be pleasantly occupied for the next few weeks. It's always nice to have something to procrastinate with during finals time!

In other news, I left a comment on Juniper Moon Farm's post about a Shepherding Camp Giveaway! I know how unlikely it is that I'll be chosen, and even if I am I might not qualify because I didn't quite follow the post specifications...but it's still fun! (If you try posting, make sure to include who you would take with you if you won!)

Haha so I'm glad to be home for Thanksgiving, and I'm really looking forward to being home longer for Christmas. Happy Holidays!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

And hello once more . . .

So it has been a very long time, sorry, things have been all over the place for the past few months and I'm only just now catching my breath. In as few words as possible, here is what's changed:

1) I moved out of the co-op (yay!)

I was not happy there, I didn't really connect with most of the girls and just generally wasn't enjoying the house, so I had very little motivation to do the five hours of work required each week to have the right to stay there...so I moved out! It was relatively painless, once I decided to do it.

2) I moved into an apartment (yay!!!)

I am completely in love with this place, it's a one bedroom with a kitchen and full bath, and it has such a nice feel to it. Open, pretty without being showy, I'm comfortable here. Plus it's only about a block from campus, on the side I prefer (it's much quieter here). It was sort of a long process to find a place, move all my things out of the old room, move them into here, and then hunt for everything I'd forgotten/didn't have/etc. (e.g. a broom, toilet cleaner, fun stuff...) but it's all finished and I'm so much happier than I was all semester.

3) I re-evaluated my attitude towards school right now

While I was pretty miserable in the co-op, I started questioning how much I really wanted to be here going to school at all. I thought about taking the semester off (which was very, very strange to find myself wanting to do) and coming back in the spring. It was odd because school has always been the one thing I was constantly sure of, and enjoyed, and knew that I wanted to do, so to be questioning it was a big indicator to me that something was seriously off (hence leaving the co-op and all that).

4) (I also started seeing a professional to help sort things out generally. She's lovely.)

5) I feel more committed to being here now that I've consciously chosen to stay (hooray!)

I'm thinking about graduate school, still trying to double-major (and currently that still seems possible, despite budget cuts), and really enjoying what I'm doing -- peer counseling is amazing, the preschool is fun, and classes are going well.

So! That's sort of what I've been up to, in a nutshell, now to the reason why I started this post in the first place......I finished something! So here are pictures!


I started this just this past Monday, after purchasing the yarn I wanted for it at ImaginKnit on Sunday. And it came off the needles just a little while ago : )

It's a gift for a friend of mine for Christmas, I'm making another one for one of my other good friends in a different color. It's made with Rowan Kidsilk Haze in "Trance" (shade 582) and I was inspired to try out the yarn by a pattern I saw in one of my knitting books. At first I was going to try to make it using the pattern, but after starting a gauge swatch I realized it was going to be ridiculously hard to pull off and wouldn't really look any different in the end than just doing a simple garter stitch, sooooo yeah. I went the (very) easy route haha : )















Here is what's left of the "Trance" yarn, compared to its original size. It's next to the yarn I have for the other present I'm planning to make.



I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, I'm planning to make a few more things to give to these friends too (and everyone else I'm hoping to make something for...) so hopefully there will be more pictures soon!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Hello again

My goodness it's been a while...school and mini-crises have kept me away, so I'll try and sum up the last few weeks: I've managed to get through the first round of papers and midterms, made a bit of progress on the afghan, found an apartment, and am generally trying to figure out how to take care of myself up here.

The knitting is coming, but very, very slowly. I think most of it is just that I don't like the yarn I'm working with, I think it fits the project but it's not a favorite. I want to start planning out future projects but right now there's just too much I'm trying to keep on top of, and watching more than half of the first season of Weeds in one day is definitely not helping haha...

Hopefully once I'm moved and settled in things will calm down a bit, I've been all over the place lately and I'm looking forward to less crazy times. I want to get the afghan off the needles by the end of the month so there should be new pictures to post in the near future too : )

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Compare :

Yesterday...being in the office for the first time (!), vanilla latte and pumpkin bread, visiting used bookstores, hanging out on the roof, getting locked out on the roof and climbing down the fire escape to get back into the house through a window haha, watching Life in the Trees (!!!) and just being in a good place generally : )

Today...in class til 3, calling about a prescription, walking to the pharmacy to pick it up, having to wait 30 minutes so walking to a copy shop far away to pick up an expensive reader, walking right back to the pharmacy and having to wait another 10 minutes for the prescription to be filled, a nice half hour of reading in a used bookstore (at least there was one nice thing), walking back to the house, completely forgetting about the payment that was due today, freaking out and sliding the payment through the door slot, hoping it will get processed tomorrow, reading about grad schools and finding nothing that looks like what I want but starting to stress about the whole process all the same, now off to do a late-night dish shift and lock up. Oy.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Tuesday

Today was a very good day : ) Maybe later in the week I'll write about why.

Edit: That was my first office hour! I spent it sitting on the couch enjoying the feeling of being there, ready to help someone if they needed me. I still haven't seen any clients, but all the same it's nice knowing that you're able to.

Monday, September 14, 2009

So the knitting has been going slowly as of late, school is taking up pretty much all my time and when I'm not in class I've been reading textbooks/frantically trying to add units/freaking out about life in general/wishing it were next semester already. That last one is one of the hardest to deal with, as we're barely into this semester. Yeah. Um. I usually don't start my end-of-semester countdowns til we're at least halfway through, but this year I've started early. Only a little over 12 weeks to go! Slightly more than 3 months! Yeah...

Despite the almost-meltdown last week, things are going pretty well now. I just finished my first kitchen-dining room combo mop shift (yay!) with minimal pain and embarrassment (yay!!!) and had really tasty chicken for dinner haha. This past weekend, I went to SF to have lunch with Mom and afterwards had some absolutely incredible chocolate from Chocolate Heaven, some sort of milk chocolate marshmallow and a milk chocolate caramel marshmallow (seriously, so so good) and some milk chocolate fudge, just for good measure. It almost made everything better just from being so milk chocolate-y : )

[Here's the site, just in case you want to check it out! http://www.chocolateheaven.com/index.cfm]

And the peer counseling orientation yesterday was really fun, a very necessary reminder of everything that I do like about being here at school. I have my first office hour tomorrow (!) and I'm excited to see how that goes.

Sooo life generally is alright for the moment, hopefully it will continue to be so for at least a little while. I could definitely use a break from stressing out over every little thing. And tomorrow I begin something that could actually help a lot with everything that's been going, so things are definitely looking up!

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

So . . .

I guess I just need to get over it already, and let the not-so-fun moments here make me appreciate the good ones more. Right? Right.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Getting into the swing of things

I'm finally mostly settled here, classes are sorted out (with a preschool volunteer program for 2 units and SSPC for 1 unit to get up to the 13 required to be a full-time student) and I only have 3 real ones with outside work, I'm in my permanent room with my actual roommate and we seem to be getting along okay, and I have my permanent workshift schedule. Oy. It's actually not bad at all except for the hour and forty five minutes of mopping I get to do every Monday night...ugh. I might try and switch it with someone but I don't see that happening, no one will want it. Well! It's only 13 or 14 times, right?

It's sort of bizarre though, I've been thinking a lot about things that won't be happening for a very long time and it's hard not to wish that things were different right now. That's vague enough, no? There is specifically one thing that keeps coming to mind, but even aside from that with all the books I've been reading - stuff for my sociology class, all my knitting books, other blogs, anything - it's hard not to think about what I want the far-away future to be like.

Mostly the thoughts come from reading Knitting in America and The Second Shift. Knitting in America has the stories of a bunch of knitters all over America and how they got to be doing what they're doing, living on farms, designing knitwear in cities, running yarn shops, whatever they're up to, and I can't help thinking about what it would be like to do something similar. The Second Shift is for my sociology class and talks about how working parents of 2-job families (where both the mother and father work) deal with "the second shift" of caring for the house and child(ren). So I'm thinking about where I want to be living, what I want to be doing, and how I want to be living with the family I will hopefully be doing it all with, and it's all very different from the present...living in a co-op in Berkeley while I try to manage the two majors and squeeze in time to knit whenever I can. I guess it's just strange feeling priorities sort of shift or just be reconsidered at least and not exactly be completely in the moment anymore. The thing to do would be to try and accept that everything I'm thinking about will have to wait and just be where I am for now, but it's hard to stop once it's started.

Anyway hopefully I'll be able to show progress on the afghan soon, for now it's coming slowly. Very slowly. But I think I'm off to work on it now!

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Maybe everything will be alright . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcpamvLB2JU

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Ouch

I just finished the dish shift from hell...two and a half hours of scrubbing dishes and wiping counters and tabletops and I missed lunch and I'm exhausted. Gonna try a different shift next time. Let's hope cooking goes better than that just did!

Monday, August 24, 2009

Life in Berkeley

I moved back up here Thursday/Saturday (left to help move Logan into his dorm) and now am adjusting to life in the co-ops. So far things are going okay but I'm actually looking forward to school starting and having some structure to my days. Plus I'm excited about classes : ) Social psychology, personality psychology, sociology of the family and an education class - should be fun.

Today was the first really enjoyable day I've had here so far, I went to Starbucks and got a vanilla latte and pumpkin bread (so very good) and finished Knitting Lessons by Lela Nargi, then wandered around Half Price Books for a bit, bought Knitting for Good by Betsy Greer, met a friend at the movies and saw The Time Traveler's Wife, went to the speed-dating/roommate finding thing put on by the house and met more of the girls living here, went to the kitchen orientation (I am so unprepared to cook dinner for all 50 or so people on Wednesday...crap) and now I've spent wayyy too much time adding pictures of all the projects I've finished so far. It was a good day : )

Dad's koala


Koala 2, originally uploaded by limelady722.

This is the last thing I've finished so far, a toy for Dad.

This is an enlarged version of a pattern I found at http://knittedtoybox.blogspot.com/. I followed the pattern but used a much thicker yarn than suggested and size 8 needles. It looks very, very weird from the back (must learn how to seriously finish something like this, can't sew up things for the life of me) and is another odd, hopefully sort of charming toy to keep the penguin company.

Oh and the face! Haha I had to finish it in time for Dad's birthday so instead of sewing on eyes and a nose in black thread I just colored some fabric I had lying around with a Sharpie (I know, I'm sad) and then sewed that onto the head. Yeah...

Koala!


Koala 1, originally uploaded by limelady722.

It looks pretty pudgy here, but you can see it a bit more clearly.

Mom's scarf


Mom Scarf 3, originally uploaded by limelady722.

After I finished the toys for Tom I had nothing to knit. So I used the green yarn Mom had picked out when I tried to teach her to knit (she didn't really enjoy it) and started practicing stockinette stitch while I worked on a scarf for her.

Once I learned how to purl, it felt like the entire world of knitting just opened up. Essentially everything (it seems) is made up of just knit and purl stitches, so I was finally free to try out patterns and make more interesting things. This was my first experience adding in a second color (even if I only did it once) and I loved how it looked. It was so gratifying to see the neat V's connect in a line, the green divided from the cream.

The one thing I wish I'd known when I made this was how badly stockinette can curl in on itself without a different stitch on the edges to hold it in place. I tried blocking it (another first) to keep it flatter and it sort of helped, but not completely. Oh well! I'll know next time.

Scarf numero dos, from the back


Mom Scarf 4, originally uploaded by limelady722.

Scarf numero dos, all laid out


Mom Scarf 5, originally uploaded by limelady722.

I took this picture standing on a chair off to the right of it, so the perspective's a little weird. The green side is not longer than the cream, actually it's a bit shorter, and the scarf is pretty long.

Tiny bear for Tom


Tom's Bear 2, originally uploaded by limelady722.

I'm actually a little proud of this, I think it turned out pretty well.

As I was working on the penguin and noticing how odd-looking it was turning out, I wanted to make something else to give to Tom. I found the pattern for this at http://littlecottonrabbits.typepad.co.uk/free_knitting_patterns/ and thought he'd like it.

I had to get size one needles and double pointed needles for this, it was the first time I'd worked with anything smaller than size 8. The pattern was fairly simple to follow and the only difficulty was working with the very thin yarn on the ridiculously thin needles. Also had to learn how to make i-cord with the dpns, which turned out to be pretty easy after I got the hang of it.

I added the scarf partly because of Tom and partly to cover up the awkward way I joined the head to the body haha, I just twisted together some gray yarn I had and knotted the ends to keep it together. I sewed on the eyes and nose with black embroidery thread (or muddled through it anyway) and then joined all the pieces together.

Getting ready to wrap it up


Tom's Bear 1, originally uploaded by limelady722.

It's a bit bigger here, but not much...

From the side


Penguin 1, originally uploaded by limelady722.

This was my first experience working from a pattern, I'd found a book about how to knit toys from the library and was really excited to try them out. The penguin looked easy to make and I wanted to do something for Tom's birthday, so I did. Sort of.

I learned how to increase and decrease the way the pattern specified and tried sewing pieces together for the first time. It's pretty lumpy, rather awkwardly shaped, but charming? Right? You can definitely tell it's homemade...

...and the other side


Penguin 4, originally uploaded by limelady722.

Dignified, no?


Penguin 3, originally uploaded by limelady722.

A sort of almost close-up on the face...kinda?


Penguin 2, originally uploaded by limelady722.

From the back!


Penguin 5, originally uploaded by limelady722.

Ahh she's adorable!


Hat 3, originally uploaded by limelady722.

I completely love Mom's expression here : )

Hoyt Hat


Hat 1, originally uploaded by limelady722.

I wanted to make this to wear around the co-op but I didn't make it quite big enough, it doesn't fit my head. I can get it on but it looks a little small. I think we'll send it out to North Dakota for one of the cousins.

Hat on Mom, part two


Hat 5, originally uploaded by limelady722.

I love these pictures so very very much.

Hat on knee (I know, creative)


Hat 2, originally uploaded by limelady722.

I don't know why I thought the knee would be a good place to show off the hat, it looks tiny here. I tried putting it on Riley to give a better feel for its actual size but I don't think that worked too well either....it does fit a human head! I swear! See how nice it fits Mom?

Pup in hat, part one


Hat 6, originally uploaded by limelady722.

Pup in hat, part two


Hat 7, originally uploaded by limelady722.

Last picture of the scarf


Rust Scarf 3
Originally uploaded by limelady722

I really loved the yarn I used for this, it was one of Lion Brand's Thick and Chunky yarns made from wool and acrylic. It was nice to handle and knit up really quickly, even though it took months to finish...I'm looking forward to wearing it this winter!

The scarf all laid out


Rust Scarf 7
Originally uploaded by limelady722

It looks much shorter here than it actually is, when I wear it I fold it in half and wrap it once around. Betcha just had to know that, yeah?

Another picture


Rust Scarf 2
Originally uploaded by limelady722

And again, the scarf : )

Rust Scarf, again


Rust Scarf 1
Originally uploaded by limelady722

The rest of the photos for the scarf will follow in the rest of these posts (which I guess will be seen in the opposite order I add them, but oh well). Then onto the rest of the projects!

My first project! Hooray!


Rust Scarf 6, originally uploaded by limelady722.

The first project I started was a scarf in a simple garter stitch. Dana, Rosie, Tom and I decided Dana would teach us all to knit over winter break last year, so we went to Michael's and picked out yarn and needles. I found this rust-colored thick yarn that looked like an easy one to start with, so I taught myself how to do a long-tail cast-on from knittinghelp.com and Dana taught us how to knit.

I didn't finish the scarf until the start of summer, I'd put it away and hardly worked on it all through spring since the yarn was so hot to work with. I finished it finally after school ended and was pretty happy with the way it turned out : )

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

FOs!

So! Time to start adding some FOs!

I'm going to just use flickr to add most of the photos, so we'll have to see how this all works out. Right now I think I'll just do separate posts for each picture for the sake of ease, so bear with me. Hopefully I'll figure out how to add multiple pictures to each post pretty soon...I'm just not clever enough yet.

Monday, August 10, 2009

The Knitting Begins

I learned to knit about eight months ago and just recently became obsessed. So now I'm adding my voice to the incredible online community of knitters I have started to discover. Hello : )

I want direction for this journey, so I plan to knit my way through a few of the main techniques I want to try. I have ordered several knitting books online and plan to make what I can use and appreciate and give to family and friends. The books are on their way here from across the country, purchased from eBay and amazon.com and local used bookstores. The trek will start when they arrive.

All laid out, so far I have 1) cables, 2) color 1 (intarsia/fair isle), 3) color 2 (intarsia/fair isle), 4) lace, and 5) entrelac. I will try to use these in projects to come every month, starting with a cabled afghan for my grandfather.