Snowmaggedon

Classes have been cancelled for four days now, and I've been positively reveling in the additional knitting time. I've signed up for the I Love UFOs challenge in the One Day a Week for UFOs group in an attempt to cut down on the projects that I've had sitting idle for way too long.

I chose four projects to work on. I'm not going to go into detail about each one, that will be saved for when I have photos.

1. Circular Shrug- on the needles for way too long. Finished and seamed it up yesterday, wearing it today. Will try to take photos while frolicking in the snow.



2. Ripple Afghan- I didn't finish this, but I ran out of yarn. There's essentially no chance of me getting to Michael's anytime soon because of the snow, so I'm putting this on pause again. I did get 7 repeats done though!



3. Elefante- I'm not sure I even want to give a brief description. I just need to get off my butt and finish it.



4. February Lady Sweater (!!)- I cheated when I cast this on February first, but have been duly punished. I messed up somewhere horrifically and had to rip back a bazillon rows to start over.

Alright, now that that is out of the way. What I really want to talk about is my Bellwoods scarf.



I'm not entirely certain as to what I was thinking when I knit this. For one thing, it's by far too small. For another, I didn't use stitch markers.

...

Don't even ask how I managed to find the center stitch without stitch markers. This coupled with the monotony of the color has made me decide that I'm going to frog the project. I want to reknit it though, and preferably soon. I've fallen in love with triangular scarves. I want to find a monochromatic, dark blue yarn to knit this in, which should give it more interest. I will also not be an idiot and knit this quite a bit larger.

Fabulous pattern, easy enough, I was just a very Bad Knitter when I made this.

And now I'm going to start calling and bugging Monkey to come over. I'm hungry and I want an early dinner. Annie's Macaroni and Cheese + Pioneer Woman's Spinach Soup = A Happy Lizzy. Hopefully. I've never tried this recipe before. If not, we'll feast on mac 'n cheese

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!



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!

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.



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!

Frankenstein Mittens

Man. I really failed at keeping up with this. Well, I blame exams. My last exam is Friday at 8AM, and I need to study my butt off for it. Which will happen, since it's the only thing I have planned for tomorrow.

In the meantime, I decided that I'm going to start keeping my entries a lot shorter, that way it'll be easier to churn out. I decided to play with my camera for a second before I went to bed, and was a little disappointed with the results. Well, it serves me right for trying to take photos at 2AM. I'm going to have to actually start making an effort to take pictures during the day, in natural light. Or something. Clearly I know nothing about photography.



These are my Frankenstein's Herringbone Mittens. Let's just say thought they were awesome- and addicting. I've mentioned these before on a previous entry, so I don't have too much to say. I've been wearing these almost every day this week, they're that warm.



Of course, I couldn't manage to make these perfect. I messed up on the chart in the end so one of the mittens has this pattern at the tip. I can't say I mind- it gives it character. Plus I didn't notice until I had already finished the mitten and wove in the ends. In any case, it doesn't bother me.

And now, I think it's time I go to bed. What clued me in was the fact that I'm listening to "Hooked on a Feeling" by BJ Thomas. Further proof I'm hopelessly addicted to infomercials. I religiously wrote down all of the songs I love from a Timelife Country Music Selection (or something of that nature) infomercial a few weeks ago and I bought a few songs off that list. I have terrible taste :)

I think tomorrow I'm going to make a list of entries I want to make to this blog, and then slowly work through them, focusing on one project at a time. Hopefully that'll make writing and taking photos less overwhelming.

Tired, but with new goals!

Alright. It's official. I suck at posting. There have been so many days in which I've really wanted to, but I just didn't manage it. So from now on, one blog post per week, minimum. I think my day to post will probably wind up being on Sundays... We'll see.

Short post because I'm really tired.

I got to listen to Pioneer Woman speak at OU. She was fabulous. And her episode on Throwdown! with Bobby Flay was awesome too. She talked about a lot of general advice for blogs and I'm going to try to take them to heart.

Now, for knitting.



Not a lot of progress on my knitting. I've been slogging away on various projects...

• I've been slogging away on my Circular Shrug. I decided I was going to use up some Caron Simply Soft I had in my stash... Mostly leftovers from mini-donuts. I've almost completely used up that ball of yarn, and I'm about to frog an unusable cowl I made a while ago... Then I'll probably have to pick up more yarn anyways.
  



• I'm also working on my Besotted scarf. I started it to use up some hot pink simply soft (notice a trend?) in my stash. I wound up frogging the very first thing I ever knit (a garter stitch scarf) and using that yarn. It was still too short. I bought a new skein, realized it was a differnet color, and decided it wasn't noticible. Who cares. Anyways, this is taking FOREVER, but is deliciously autopilot knitting. I've been bringing the scarf to all of my classes to knit on. I pretty much knocked out a huge chunk by listening to Little Women on Craftlit.
  
  ...Speaking of which.
  
  I loved the Adult!Jo on Little Women. I want to read more love stories written like that was. It made me want to sigh over similar stories. It also made me watch Bridget Jones' Diary. I'm not entirely certain what the connection is, but there it is.
  
  Ahem.
  
  



• Finally, I knocked out some Cupcake Mittletts. Can I say CUTE? Since taking this photo I have woven in the ends and made it look nicer. You can see the lace better... I don't know why it looks so frumpy in that photo. Probably because it was 3AM when I took it, but that's beside the point.
  
  The pattern was so lovely, and so easy to understand. She had both charts AND it written out, which I really appreciated. My mom even said she wanted a pair- I was absolutely shocked!
  
  



• And finally, (not because it's the last thing I've been working on but instead because I am way too tired to write this...) I've been tinking away at the Viking Purse. Yeah. Taking FOREVER. Beautiful, but FOREVER. I don't think I'll finish it before next year. Sigh.
  
  

Andddd on one last note, this is the very odd car (?) Monkey and I saw driving around. I don't even know.



I fully intend to take more photos tomorrow and make another post. I've got loads more to say, just no energy. Until then!

My Current Obsession

I think it's official. I suck at taking photos and/or getting photos taken.

I keep telling myself that I need to wait until I have photos to actually post. And then I manage to not ever take photos. It's a conundrum to say the least. However, I am breaking out of that circle! I'm posting despite the fact that I haven't taken any photos in, oh, about a month.

Anyways.

Right now, I am absolutely obsessed with Pioneer Woman. OBSESSED. Someone linked to her website on a thread on Ravelry and I've been stalking all of the cooking posts religiously for the past two or three weeks, but mostly, this weekend. I think my "Food" folder in my bookmarks has grown exponentially. I've really got to start weeding through it and, oh, actually cooking the things in there.

But that's a topic for another day (actually, another paragraph). Right now I am busy singing the praises as all that is Pioneer Woman. I am in love. IN LOVE. I don't care that she focuses her cooking abilities to a primarily carnivorous family, I am in love with all of her recipes. I want to cook and bake and live in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma on a cattle ranch. I want to be this Pioneer Woman.

Okay, well, I'd just be content with her cooking abilities at this point. The whole ranch thing and middle of Oklahoma thing is a bit too far from my goals in life. Said goals including living in a nice house in the middle of a suburb no more than a 30 minute drive from my parents' house. Because I am nothing, if not a wannabe suburban housewife.

Some of my favorite posts of hers has been her Sherried Tomato Soup, which has sparked an interest in cooking with alcohol, her Yogurt Cream and Berries, which WILL be made within a week, mark my words, and finally, her Soul Sweet Taters. I have never had sweet potatoes, but my mouth is watering at the photographs. This also will be made as soon as possible. Monkey will be drowning in vegetarian Thanksgiving-ish foods before next Thursday, mark my words.

As if her sinfully delicious website wasn't enough, I'm thrilled to say she will be visiting the the University of Oklahoma next Wednesday. And I'm telling me, so help me god, I will be there salivating over her cooking abilities. She's supposedly speaking to journalism students regarding their careers and how she forged her own, but I know the truth. She is there to strike pure admiration into our hearts. And I will be there. I don't care that I'm an accounting major and really have no academic need to be present at this lecture, but I'm going to be there.

On another cooking note, I have at least tried a new recipe. The Woolie Ewe, Monkey's LYS, posted a recipe for a spread the other day. The spread looked nothing if not delicious. So naturally, I went out and bought some club crackers and whipped it up yesterday while Monkey was working for ROTC (and then watching the football game, which he failed to tell me he intended to do until the very last minute so all of my plans of cuddling and watching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo were dashed). I tasted it, and promptly decided it was disgusting and brought it over to Monke's apartment because the boy is a human garbage disposal.

Today, I cracked open the lid to try it again. After all, the recipe does advise that it tastes better after being refrigerated for a day.

Boy oh boy were they right.

The darn this is pure crack. I think I gained about ten pounds from it alone. Well, either it or the fact that Monkey and I have been very, very bad and eaten out almost every meal this weekend.

(I am cutting him off tomorrow. Seriously. It is pretty darn ridiculous. I am also going to go to the grocery store and buying veggies for salads because I have yet to crack open the bottle of peanut dressing my mom bought me ages ago. That's beside the point.)

Wow. I really am a fan of the parenthesis today.

Anyways, other than my overwhelming obsession with food, I've been pretty idle this weekend. I haven't done too terribly much knitting. I've been tinkering on a the Besotted Scarf, which is currently cannibalizing the first scarf I ever knit, and the Viking Purse. Neither are going too terribly quickly.

Well, I'm off to remedy that. I'm going to kick Monkey off the Star Wars video game and put in the Girl with The Dragon Tattoo and knit and hopefully not eat any more of the darn spread.

Actually, you know what, I do have one photo I can share.
This is his serious face. I don't even know.

Updates, Pt. 2.

And I'm continuing with the knitting updates. I've knit quite a bit since my camera battery died. I still don't have photos for most of it, but I do have a few from Monkey and my photo shoot. I think this weekend I'll drag him back to the south oval to take some more pictures.

Right now I'm stalling on writing a few papers for my classes. I have had my school mojo this week. I think it's because last week was incredibly stressful and my weekend wasn't long enough to properly unwind from it. I'm still in the weekend mode. Unfortunately, my classes are not appreciative of this fact.



Anyways. Onto the knitting! First up is a Hello Kitty hat I made for my friend Wonju. I held two strands of a Peaches & Cream yarn together and knit like the wind. It actually wound up being pretty short.



This is the Marian cowl. Very easy, very quick to knit. Oh my gosh I adore it. However, I twisted the cowl twice. I still love it though, but I'm not sure if I want to reknit it. Probably not.

Finally, here's just a photo of something that should happen by far more often :)



As for what I'm knitting now...

• I finished the Cosy Neck Warmer. I might switch out the buttons and only use one



• I started the daisy stitch portion of the Wild Vest.



• I'm almost done with the first Frankenstein Mitten, but I'm trying to limit how much I knit on it so I get other projects done too



• I knit a few repeats on my ripple blanket. I think I'm going to dedicate one day a week to it.



• I'm an inch away from separating for the armholes of the Razor Cami (eek!)

That's all I've been doing n the past few days... Now I need to go write about how to use social media to better your pr position. Yuck.

A few updates and photos

My camera is finally working! Except the charger is not the right charger. But it charged my camera (momentarily). This morning Monkey and I had a mini photo shoot in which I learned that he knows even less about taking photos than I do. The only way I could get him to listen to me (aka, to the words "stop taking photos of my face and take photos of the KNITTING" because he would take a photo of my face and crop out the scarf I'd be wearing...) so he will be researching photography skills for future reference.

Anyways, here's a few of the photos we took. This isn't even half of what I've been knitting since my camera has been MIA. We didn't even get through taking photos of everything (mostly because I was being a grumpasaurus). We'll have to return again.

First off, there was the market bag I knit in a fury a few weeks ago when the Monkey was camping with ROTC. It was such an easy, quick project. I finished it during a TV marathon. It doesn't hold as much as I thought it would, and I have to be careful as to what I put into it, but it still makes me happy. Especially since it used up a considerable chunk of the cone of peaches & cream yarn I've had forever. I still have a huge cone of the yarn left though...



Next up is the Irish Hiking Scarf. I know, I know, I've talked about this before, but I never posted a completed photo of it. I wanted to make it ridiculously long, but I wound up tiring of the project and binding off in a rage. I then made fringe which I absolutely love on the scarf, and was surprisingly easy to make.



Finally, for today at least, I took a photo of my entrelac scarf. I'm not happy with any of the photos, they don't do the brightness of the scarf justice. I LOVE THIS SCARF. It's colorful, it's fun, it's adorable. I can't even believe how easy it was after I looked it up on the Internet. I'm surprised there are so many classes on how to knit entrelac- it was so self explanatory after doing this scarf. And I loved the practice in picking up stitches, which I've always had problems with. I'm sure it'll be helpful when I finally come up with the courage (and yarn) for a cardigan.



Yay!



On a more depressing note, I can't find my favorite sunglasses. They are currently MIA and I suspect they are merely hiding somewhere around Monkey's room or car. I haven't put too much of an effort in finding them, I have to admit. I've been too busy slogging through my knitting. Speaking of which, what I'm slogging through now:

• Cosy Neck warmer- I've finished it except for weaving in the ends and sewing on buttons.



• Frankenstein's Herringbone Mittens which I have thus named because mine are dark grey and neon green and fabulous. I love them! And it's not a slog to knit them, but I'm trying to be good and finish my older UFOs before I attack these wholeheartedly. Can you tell it's killing me?



• Razor CamiNo, THIS is what's killing me. I've had so many problems with this stupid project and I'm never going to finish them. Definitely frustrating. And slow! And it makes my hands hurt after a few rows. Ugh. It's been living in my backpack so I've been making slow progress.



• Elefante I've knit a whole whopping foot of this elephant. It's been put on the back burner until I finish a few more things.



• Besotted Scarf I've cast on twice for this project. Now that my size 8 needles are finally free, I'm going to rip it out and start over again on the 8s so I can use the sevens for another project. (Ahem Wild Vest ahem)



• FINALLY, Ripple Throw I'm so ashamed I haven't finished this yet... Or worked on it in months. Ugh. I need to so badly. I think tomorrow I'm going to devote myself entirely to it while watching Halloween movies with Monkey and eating things I probably shouldn't. Like cookies. And sopapilla cheesecake. Yum.

And now I'm going to listen to a few more podcasts and knit furiously until Monkey gets home from doing his ROTC "volunteer" work.

A very loney weekend

I'm trying to slog my way through a rather lonely weekend. Monkey is busy spending the weekend being tortured playing in the woods with ROTC and I'm left all alone. I've been trying to not be too mopey, but that's been hard. My roommate has had friends over all weekend and it's just really made me miss all of the people who aren't here with me right now.

What I HAVE been doing that isn't completely pathetic is knitting and watching TV. I just finished all three seasons of Kingdom on hulu. Fabulous. It does throw me through a loop because I feel like I'm missing episodes... There seems to be such a great time jump between episodes. While I've been watching that, I've also been knitting! I finished two little jack-o-lanterns for my mom and a Chinook for Monkey's sister.

Halloween has always been a huge deal in my family. My dad's birthday IS on Halloween, and mine is the day before. I think he's taken it to heart and we have a ridiculous amount of decorations. They come out around the first weekend in October and drive us batty until November 1st. We have the standard giant lit up pumpkins decorating the lawn, as well as a slew of giant inflatables and a garage full of life size (if not larger) ghouls that scare the living daylights out me. I studiously avoid our garage while they are up because I'm not going to lie. They are terrifying! I know it's silly. They're plastic. They're also creepy as all anything.

Some parts of my family quirk are pretty entertaining. We have two blue and gold macaws that love to scream and drive us and each other crazy. One thing we've found is that one of them, Koo Koo, is terrified of a certain mummy decoration. My mother gleefully kept the mummy standing in our kitchen corner until Christmas.



So yes. There comes the pumpkins! They're smaller than I expected... I knit one with size 5 dpns and the other with size 8. I'll definitely have to make a few more before I go home, but I'm really growing tired of toys right now...

Which leads me to my other completed project on this pathetic weekend. A Chinook! Monkey's sister works as an aerospace engineer for the navy. She was the one kind enough to invite Monkey and I out on a vacation to her house, and to the family beach house and she was just plain wonderful. When Monkey gets back from his little adventure, we're going to pick up a birthday card and send them both off in the mail.



As for now... I'm going to go back to moping and watching something on hulu. My stomach is bothering me as well, so I'll probably just take it easy. The photos were taken using my webcam, by the way. No news yet on my camera charger :/

A mini update

Wow. It's been a longggg time since I lasted posted. I feel terrible.

A lot of the problem is that I can't for the life of me find my camera charger. Consequentially, there is no camera.

Another part of the problem is that I'm back at school, which means I'm spending every spare moment away from Monkey knitting because, well, it is very hard to knit when I'm around him. At least to the extent I'd like. So there is lots of frantic knitting and doing of the homework.

This weekend we're driving home separately. So when I get home, I'm going to another great search for my camera charger, and then I'm going to post. Hopefully, with the camera charger in hand, otherwise I will be buying one off ebay. How frustrating.

And now, I'll go back to the frantic knitting!