Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Not too much going on

Alright! I'm being good! Another post within a week!

First, I'd like to share the story of how I terrified another knitter, the poor girl. Yesterday was my first day in my Medieval Jewish History class. Because we only meet once a week, for three hours straight, the professor is going to give us breaks halfway through the class. During this break, I happened to glance down the row of chairs and spotted someone else not going outside to smoke. She was knitting! I got so excited, I promptly went over to talk to her and probably scared the living bajeebers out of her. Whoops. I'm just surprised I went up to her, I'm normally a very shy person. Hopefully she remembers me in a more positive, less terrifying light.

Anyways, on to knitting! The other week, I knit a grumpasaurus for valentines for the boyfriend. The day I finished it, he barged into my room and said:

"Ooh! Is that a grumpasaurus for me?!"

Gaaaah. So I fussed at him a bit, then hid it in my pile of finished objects. He and I made the pact that he would "accidentally" leave out one of my presents. So instead of going out and buying him something new, I've decided to knit him a Gnome!. I'm not even going to get into why he is obsessed with gnomes, but needless to say, we're probably going to see Gnomeo and Juliet the day it comes out.

In terms of other projects... The vinderblomster mittens are slowly, very, very slowly making progress. Notice the words "very" and "slowly". Hopefully I can finish the first one before the end of the month, since this seems to be taking forever.

I'm also knitting another baktus with some Linares yarn that gave me hell. I'll go more into detail later...

Since I'm not really up for dissecting any finished projects today, I'm going to just include a photo of some yarn barf. Enjoy!

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This is not a photo of my current stash, in case anyone was wondering. Just some yarn barf from a few months ago.

And now I'm off to make some scones!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Back from Beyond

Alright! Long time, no blog.

Last week, my friend VeeBee and I had a photoshoot, so now I have photos of a good portion of my projects. I still have quite a bit that needs more photos, but I think I'll takle those this weekend.

I've decided that in order to sustain a more frequent posting pattern, I'm not going to picspam on one post, but rather, space them out.

Today I want to write about my Baktus. First off, the yarn is Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend. It was my first purchase from the LYS in Norman, and I am absolutely in love with it. I want to knit about twenty more projects with it. While I'm not really a fan of purple, I love this project- I've only worn this about sixty times since I finished it a few weeks ago. The pooling really turned out well with this pattern.

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I also included really cute little tassels. Whoo!

As for the pattern itself, it was quick and easy. I kfb on the first stitch rather than do the yarn over that the pattern recommended. Why? Because kfb is my favorite increase. And I'm lazy. Consequentially, this went so fast and now I'm excited to knit the varietations on the pattern. Here's a list of the projects in my queue that are related.

In other news, I've hit a major case of startitis. I didn't recongize it at first since I did so fabulously with the 12 Days of UFO challenge and had managed to knock out four unfinished objects. The next thing I knew, I turned around and I had about a zillion more. Right now I'm working on a super secret grumpasaurus for Monkey's Valentine's Day present. I'm really strapped for cash at the moment, and I've wanted to knit this for him for a while. I think next year, I'll continue the knitted tradition by making him an R2D2 Hat.

One of my favorite traditions we have is to not spend a ton of cash on our little celebrations. Every month, we go out for dinner on anniversary, and then usually spend the rest of the night snuggled up, watching a movie or TV. Last year, for our one year anniversary, I gave him a bunch of knitted hearts and a bag full of chocolate, made in a handmade newspaper bag. He gave me the funniest card ever and bought a movie for us to watch togeter (The Joneses, which only made me obsess over the song "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads but that's beside the point). For our first Valentine's Day together, I made him a book with cute photos of us and drawings and a little story about the two little octopuses. If I must say so, it was rather fabulous. He in return gave me a bag of candy (princess related) and a cheap-o reing from the Hallmark store that turned my finger green for a I-Promise-I-Won't-Get-Blown-Up ring, which was way too big for my ring finger and I had to wear it on my index finger and it is currently somewhere in my car because it fell off the other day in there and I forgot to put it back on when I stopped.

Anyways, the point is, I like being able to include doing something I really love in my gifts for him. I'm terrible at keeping things secret though, so we'll see how long this one lasts :) I wound up making the book for our anniversary while he was sitting in my bed pretending not to watch.

In other news, I just want to plug the KIPing it Real podcast. It's fabulous and I'm absolutely addicted.

And now that this post has a great deal of word vomit, I'm going to go back to knitting the grumpasaurus. More later!