Life in the Zoo

Last weekend may have been my most hermit-like weekend ever. I didn't leave my apartment whatsoever. I didn't talk to anyone in person. I watched TV, cleaned my apartment, and knit. That was essentially it. You'd think that in my very knit-centric weekend, I would have gotten a lot of progress done on my knitting, but unfortunately, I didn't. I finished my Lemon Giraffe



TOO CUTE. It makes me really happy. I knit the majority of it Friday, while watching Bones and Castle season finales with Tyler. I finished it that night, and stayed up way too late to do so. The head and ears confused me, and I wound up cutting the yarn in the wrong place, but once I figured out I could enlarge the picture of it on the pattern, duh, I finished it pretty easily. I love it- it's adorable! I've already started on another one in shades of brown. I'm thinking I'll probably make another one in yellow and give it to my sister- it seems like something she'd like. Maybe I'll even knit a larger one by doubling the stitches. All the possibilities.



Another thing I worked on was a container house for the hamsters. I had saved a special K cereal bars box for this purpose. I pulled off all the extra bits of cardboard and started painting it on Saturday. A billion coats later, and I'm still painting over it. It's super cute, and it'll help make me look less like a five year old with a billion stuffed animals laying around.

I also worked on my clapotis scarf. Um. Yeah. Let's just say despite the fact I worked on it for the majority of the weekend, I didn't manage to make essentially any progress. I had to frog it three times, and now I have a bunch of tangled yarn and I'm just ready to be DONE with it. I'd much rather be knitting toys. They're less frustrating. Normally I save longer projects like scarves for going to class and such, but I haven't managed to memorize the pattern (and I'm low on printing funds...) so it's been living in my apartment. I wanted to have it done by today, but I sincerely doubt that's going to happen.

Summer Stash Down

This summer, I'll be in Norman for eight weeks, sans friends, family, and significant other. What I will have, however, are classes, books, cable, wifi, and best of all, yarn. Lots and lots of yarn.

I have grand plans for this summer in terms of productivity. I have morning classes so I'll be forced to get out of bed at a reasonable hour. After that, I'll skip to the library to do any homework and studying for the class. And after THAT, I'll change and hit the gym for an hour. Once I get those few things done, I'm going to be free as a bird to do whatever I want. I strongly suspect that whatever I want will include lots of knitting.

Obviously, I have high expectations. Given my level of sheer laziness, I'm going to be lucky if I get half as much done as I intend to.

Two (?) weeks ago, I at least managed to finish my Fable Mitts, but I gave them to my mom and forgot to snap a shot before I left. I'll update with more about them when I get a chance for a photo.

However, I'm not entirely without photos! Today I finished a hat and a hamster. Let's start with the hamster.



I'm not sure what his/her name is, I'm waiting for Monkey to get back from campus to name the hamster. What I do know about this hamster is that the yarn is from my SO's mom, who got it from her mom. The yarn is probably older than I am, scratchy as all hell, and generally awful to work with. It's no wonder it was pristine when I got it. But, it made a cute hamster, and I suspect the rest of the ball will be employed in a similar fashion. This little buddy is going to be stowed away in Monkey's things to keep him company when he's so far away.



The other thing I've finished is this hat! It's my Irish Hiking. After my initial attempt at casting on, I realized it was wide enough to fit around my waist and then some. So instead I CO 60 stitches. I used more caron one pound (ugh) and I still have a ridiculous amount left.



And now I'm off to knit more toys and to love on Monkey before he goes home. I think it's proabbly a bit telling that he's watching Planet of the Apes... And he makes fun of me for watching Doctor Who!

Exam Induced Stupidity

I'm not entirely certain as to why, but every time I feel the looming doom of exams, I panic. Now, I don't stay up all night studying, or go into hyper-drive. I don't get a good night sleep, and eat a nutritious breakfast.

Nope, what I do is worse. Much, much worse.

I decide to watch something.

My senior year of high school, it was the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. I managed to watch all three in two nights. I bet you can guess how much studying I got done then.

My freshman year of college, it was 21 Jump Street. Monkey and I settled in the 12th floor TV lounge in my dorm, armed with more Taco Bell than should ever be eaten in a lifetime and watched Johnny Depp into deep into the night. I think my resulting C in Botany should have been a testament as to why that was a bad idea.

Now, it's exam time again and what am I doing? Watching Doctor Who. I've watched two episodes so far in this stupid marathon, but I want more. I don't want to go back to studying. I want to knit and mindlessly watch the television... It is really just too alluring.

Maybe I do this because I'm secretly self-loathing and I want myself to fail. Maybe watching TV shuts down my increasing panic about tests. Maybe I'm just plain boneheaded and should just live in the library until Thursday afternoon.



In any case, at least this bout of insanity has prompted some productivity. I finished my Mara shawl! It's beautiful. I was worried that the ruffle wouldn't be proportionate to the garter stitch section of the shawl, but it was fine. I used Madeline Tosh Merino DK, and to be honest, I'm not overly impressed with this yarn. It's not as soft as I'd expect it to be, but I have yet to block this shawl. I bought the yarn at the DFW Fiber Fest, and the colors in the Madeline Tosh booth were absolutely stunning, and the color of this shawl perfectly matches some of my nail polish. I think it may take some serious willpower for me to not parade around in this shawl tomorrow in the ridiculous heat.

At any rate, I think I'll actually go to bed now. I'm hoping to wake up at a decent hour and just camp out in the library until I feel somewhat prepared for my Tuesday exam. I'm hoping that I can get that done reasonably quickly so I can resume the utterly idiotic plan of finishing the third season of Doctor Who before this semester is over.

Vinterblomster Redux

Whoops! You know that thing? Where I said I was going to blog every other day? Yeah that went to hell in a handbasket recently. I could give excuses, but I'm not even going to get into that right now.

I will say what I've been doing since my last blog post- a fat lot of nothing.

Well, that's not entirely true. I've been making very bad decisions about food, including a disasterous home-made pudding that I should have left well enough alone while it was cooling and instead I have a grainy mess. I haven't been knitting either, to add more shame to this confession. I've so brain dead lately that all I've been wanting to do is go to bed and sleep for the next hundred years. So I don't have much to update, other than I'm slowly trucking away on my Mara shawl, and one other thing.

Do you remember those mittens I've been complaining about for the past, I don't know, four months? Yeah, THOSE mittens. Those gorgeous colorwork flowery cuteness of mittens?



Well I finally finished the first one. I didn't weave in the ends. I didn't do the thumb in pattern. I kind of pretended to block it, mostly to allievate my fears taht all those darn wrinkles would go away. I even managed to cast on the second mitten! Granted, I'm not even at the real cuff yet, but it's more progress than I've made in several months. I'm not even going to dwell on it. Instead, I'm going to continue enjoying my strawberry limeade, knitting on this second godforsaken mitten, and pretend I don't need to go to the library to work on accounting homework that I'm hopelessly behind on.

Maybe I'll even get frisky and put on some Doctor Who. You never know.