too damn cold

So I've got my coffee, my sister's laptop, two kitties, and a view of the outside that makes me think.... I'll just stay here thanks. It's the still mute blue outside, everything looks frozen and sharp. Brrrrr. The picture isn't of this morning, but it's the same hue.

So my second out of three papers is due today. My first paper came back with an A and the comment that if I had proofread better and not made so many grammatical errors I could have gotten a better mark, which is funny because I am so happy with an A. All my grammatical errors were tense problems as well, not spelling or contractions or anything. This paper right now, I finished last night, is due at 2:30 today and I've got way too many words. I may be able to slash off a few hundred words while editing and try to get it down to 2200, since the limit was 2000, and I know most profs do the 10% rule; however, I refuse to edit the animals. My paper is on global warming so I was really, really, really depressed yesterday. I based most of my research on this book, I highly recommend it. Even if you don't have time to sit down and read the whole book, it is a book where you can just read one chapter or skip to chapters. Very good. Anyhoo, I did way too much research *sigh* and I answered all the critieria for the paper but I know I went overboard and the impact this is having on the animals. Don't care. People need to know about the Polar Bears! It breaks my heart.

Okay, I need to stop blogging and start editing.

22 weeks to go

till the last week of finals for the 2007 winter semester! Can you tell I'm excited to be done? Well, done one undergrad degree at least. Just two years for my second one but I believe my education years will be, probably harder, but better because I care about being an excellent teacher and currently... my passion for physical science and correctly writing papers in APA style aren't as high on my priority list as they could be.

Even though I have a billion things (well, two plus my sweater) to knit before Christmas and tonnes of schoolwork and my room is a complete disaster, I think I'm going to knit myself a toque tonight. I don't like any of our toques right now, some are too tree huggerish and others just aren't me, so I have this amazing wool slub from Fleece Artist that's all shades of deep purples greens and such that would make a wonderful toque... that is if I can knit it without turning it into a disaster. Toques are suppose to be easy but the two I knit for my Uncle Dave are such jokes. I really should knit him another with a pattern so he can wear one of them.

Spike blogged by the way. I told him he should blog more next month and he's dedicated himself to blogging four times next month (well, I also bribed him with Tuna). He really likes all the comments.

I don't have any photos to show right now. My sweater is coming along a little slower than before because I need to finish my two Xmas presents soon. I started a journal for my knitting and went a little crazy with the stamps but it's all good.

Crazy student knitting girl rant over.

mosey along

You ever have those pointless days? You know, those days where nothing outright bad happens, but every action seems to have no point? Where, instead of staying in bed, you should have just stayed home and done stuff there cause you would have gotten more done? Cause last weekend, I did so much with a three day weekend. I did laundry, I did the floors, I vacuumed, I wrote long emails to hordes of people, I talked on the phone, I rearranged my room, and I had a lot of quality slacking off time. Today... let see here.... today I walked to a meeting (45 minutes altogether) and the other person wasn't there (pointless), walked to the bus stop but I had just missed that bus so I decided to keep on walking instead of just standing there (another 30 minutes) got to school, than walked up four flights of stairs to pick up a homework assignment that was suppose to be outside my prof's door but it wasn't (pointless)... yeah. Should have stayed home and knit. Okay, and the finale to all this is I'm going to meet someone after school that I don't want to meet. Peachy fucking keen you know? I may have to be mean.

*warning* the usual undergrad anst rant ahead

So I had a major rant in the kitchen today, even though I was the only one there (the kitties were in the basement and the bears were in the living room), you know-those crazy person rants where you get angry and just get louder and louder then you realize that you are crazy and go back to washing dishes. So yeah, I'm bitter. I want to be a teacher now! Now now now! (chanel that TNG episode where Picard turns into his 12 year old self and throws a tantrum) It's like, why do I have to finish my bachelors? I am smart enough and passionate enough to be in education this moment! And I'm not saying I have what it takes to be a teacher right now, but I want to learn, I want to be learning how to be a teacher now. *pout* So yeah, there we go, I'm done now. Oh yes, and I know I have grammatical errors in my blog, I blog how I think, I won't teach people how to write how I think- obviously, cause that would be bad.

So I haven't posted for awhile, it's been a very busy week. I started both my volunteering jobs this week. I mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters organization, which is just once a week I go into a school and meet with a 'mentoree' for an hour, we do crafts and fun projects, I've done this before and it's gobs of fun. I took care of the infamous Cohen this week for his parents. We had lots of good times, which involved eating goldfish crackers on the couch while watching TV, running and chasing, and spitting chewed food out of our mouths onto our laps (that last part was more Cohen than me). We had a wonderful time. I also had a tonne of assignments and quizzes this week so it was busy school wise as well. Oh yeah, and it snowed.

And it hasn't stopped. It just keep on snowing. Jenn was away all week so there was a lot of walking in this so I also got my exercise. I only lost my boot twice (then I started wearing two pairs of socks) and I never fell! I have been stellar with my knitting in the past few weeks. I have finished six projects! Now I am down to three projects on the needles, one that is dangerously close to becoming a stalemate (the fuzzy blue sparkly scarf from the last photo blog entry). So these next few photos are of my boootiful lace scarf that I started in March, it's the trellis scarf from the Spring 2006 Interweave and my first lace project. It's knit in a lovely egyptian cotton that was too slippery for bamboo needles so it was kinda stressful to knit sometimes. So, the Bears are posing for me for the first photo with it, thanks Bears, and I have a question... the first photo of the edge is the cast on edge, and the second edge is the bind off edge. I kinda like the bind off edge better. If I knit this again I'll do both ends like that I think. What do you think?
So yeah, cast on edge...
And the bind off edge.

So guess what? See all this yarn? Aren't they all so pretty? Don't the colours go together so very well? There are an additional six skeins of the brown that aren't in this photo (do not ask me how much I paid for the yarn... not that it was over priced, just that I bought a lot), so yes, it's 100% wool from Romania, and it's like soft kitten love fur. So yes, lots and lots of yarn. Hhmmm... I wonder... Oh, what are these? Lovely little swatches. The skulls are my design. Don't you just love them? Why, what could I be doing?

And look at this mess! Needles of every size, a massive chart of skulls (did that myself thank you very much), a calculator, a gauge, pencil crayons.... I'm knitting a sweater! It's roughly based on this pattern from Interweave but I've switched the gauge (hence the calculator) and the design (hence the skulls) and the yarn but beside that, yeah! I've always wanted to knit this sweater, I wasn't planning on changing it so much but when I saw the yarn at Darlenes and I only wanted some of the colours and then I thought, heh... skulls.
So here is my sleeve! That's my toe by the way, that picture looks freaky to me. I started this last Saturday after visiting Darlene and phoning her a few times. It was stressful.


Here is my progress at about Thursday, the pink and the beige skulls blend together with the photo but they are distinctive in person.


And as of last night! A whole sleeve done! I know for some people that a sleeve in a week isn't much, but this is a whole lot of intarsia (I wanted to do fair isle but I would be carrying too much thick strands in the work) which involves a whole lot of weaving in ends. So yeah, 3mm needles, following a chart pattern, and weaving in... are you sitting down?... weaving in 82 ends. 82!!! I'm so proud of myself. I have this messed up idea while I knit that this is a profound and unattainable goal that nobody else could ever achieve or comphrehend the amount of work this is... then I go online and read blogs and realize, while this is a big thing, and lots of work... I'm not quite the only one who knits sweaters. Maybe. In other none-knitting news, I moved my room around again and put up some decorations I bought at a craft fair a few weeks ago. They are beautiful fused glass stars. I love stars. I couldn't find my fishing line but I couldn't wait so I just used white thread. What do you think?

Okay, have a good day. (those are ladybugs by the way)

I Can Rule The World!!!!!

So you see the time for this blog? Eh? That's right people, it's 6:09am and I'm totally hyper! Oh yeah, and when I got onto MSN the headline was a picture of Tom Cruise with the words 'He's just not sexy anymore', mwahahahahaha! Made my morning! Now, since I would normally be sleeping right now, this is totally 'free' time. I'm not going to knit cause I don't necessarily trust my senses right now I could mess up some stuff, and that goes the same for drawing, so I'm going to play sims! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee! And then, at 8, I get ready for my day, and even though I will have had played games for nearly two hours, I'll still be starting my day earlier than normal! Freaky. Okay, my coffee is ready so away I go!