200 and a new book!

So I haven't blogged lately because school has been soooo stressful and I got sick so I didn't have anything nice to blog about & it's my 200th post so I wanted it to be slightly interesting. I figure today is a good day to blog because I decided it was going to be a good day, ergo, happy blogging. Well, first of all I slept in till 9, which was wonderful! I've been waking up around 6ish this week and that just kinda kills me. Then I read blogs and ate cold pizza and watched the Price Is Right and wrote poetry till 11, when the mailman came and brought me the Yarn Harlot's new book! Here's a shot of Blinky saving my spot from the kitties so I could come blog. We're reading it together. Now there is a lot of stuff to do this weekend. My killer week is over thank goodness. I had a sex presentation on Tuesday for my education class with the POO prof. It was a lot of fun, we stressed why teachers need to know sexual education even if they aren't teaching it and at the end of the class we had a group activity where one person is blindfolded and wearing oven mitts and has to get a condom onto a banana. It was hilarious! Cutie Patotie boy tried it and he ended up breaking the banana, it was so funny! And then this darling young lady in our class, so sweet and nice, got the condom on the banana in 30 seconds, it was hilarious, she was so amazed at herself. Three hours after that I had another presentation for my women's studies class on Andrea Dworkin and Josephine Butler which went well even though I was freaky nervous beforehand, I think because I really wasn't feeling well, as I wasn't getting much sleep at that point. Then on Wednesday my paper was due, and on Thursday I had a quiz in my POO class. Meh. So this weekend I need to work on my poetry, here's a shot of one of my artsy poems
It's taken a lot longer than I thought it would but hopefully it ends up the way I hoped. I am also still writing and editing a lot of my poetry. Our chatbook should be about 35 pages and I believe I have around that but there are a lot of poems I don't know if I want to put in so I'm still writing a lot, and I have to find all the poems I wrote randomly, like in my textbooks or on scraps of paper on my floor somewhere. And of course there is knitting, just not that much since I have barely been home. My sari silk shawl was coming along so quickly but I haven't worked on it for the past five days! Sigh. Here's some shots of it but it's really hard to show the detail right now cause it's all scrunched up on the needles.
I'm really pleased with it. I have made a minor/major booboo but meh. It's all good. You also can't really frog with this yarn cause it frays quite easily. I work on my sock in the wee bits of time I get on the bus or before classes start. I've gotten a lot of compliments on it, but I think it's due mostly to the beautiful yarn. I've started increasing for my calves (which by the way, are freaky huge. Okay, my ankles are 8 inches around and my calves are 16!!! That is when I'm flexing them but ohmylord! Deformed much?)The white bit is Spike by the way. He started posing around everything I was taking a picture of in an attempt to plead with the readers to send him fresh tuna. He's wasting away you see, skin and bones that one. I did take it picture to please him than he immediately settled down into his kitty bed. Oh the abuse. Oh yeah, and I'm also taking a weaving class but I have no pictures yet of the shawl I'm weaving. It's gorgeous! The only thing about being social and having a cold is by the time I get home I have no voice. Poor mom probably thinks that I'm five times worse than I say I am because when I talk to her in the evening I'm croaking like a frog. I think I am getting better though. This morning I had absolutely no voice which is really hard when the cats are being bad and all I can do is breathe out in their direction, but as the day progressed it returned and I'm feeling better. Oh yeah, and everytime you think it's spring in Northern BC, guess what? It bloody snows.

And here's the yarn I've got soaking in the crock pot! I've already dyed some but I'll wait till I've finished dying this one then I'll post the pictures. I've taken it from this article by this lovely hilarious lady and am having a lot of fun. I was on the phone with my friend Reanne when I was preparing the yarn and she accused me of being too crafty but in a good way. It was funny. You may have had to been there, but trust me, funny.
And of course, couldn't end the blog without some kitty pictures. I'm planning on going to 300 tonight if it isn't sold out again, so yeah, wheeeeeeeeeeeee! Back to my book!

oh so sleepy Chuck.

oh Regina Spektor

I'm not a late study person. I like sleep. I mean, having lowerish blood pressure that leads to fainting spells is a good reason to get my sleep, but regardless (oh..... irregardless, yes, excellent) I prefer sleep. I will miss it for fun things, like knitting shawls, playing nitendo, or the occasional drinking with my buddies (buuuuuuuuuddy) but missing it because your editing a paper because you spent THREE hours working on a group presentation that should have taken 40 minutes but it's not that the other people in your presentation did anything wrong it's that they did TOO much and you spent hours cropping their presentations in order to make it relatively but not really close to the time limit and yeah. the presentation is tomorrow, and you have another one but thank the heavens you worked on that last week, and the paper is due on Wednesday. Sigh. Anyhoo, I'm tired. I've been eating crap for the past three days because of the group studying (pizza, chips & salsa, timbits... sigh), it's a good thing I have good stuff when I am home (mmmm..... soup soup soup!). Right so I'm tired, sugar and grease intoxicated, editing my paper, and singing along to Regina Spektor (LOVE HER!) really loudly so Spike came over and slapped my leg than walked away. I mean, I shouldn't complain, my people I'm presenting with are SO funny, so wrong, and they are great, but I'm not overly happy with the presentation, and I just dislike group presentations overall. Meh. And yeah, so okay, back to the editing. I just had to blog about the singing. Oh.... the CD ended and now it's Nicole Kidman and Robbie Williams!!!! ARRRGGHHHH! okay, I fixed it.

I mean, it's just writing after all

Ugh. Even when you like the prof, even when you like the subject matter, even when you have done all the readings and have a good outline- it is so difficult to write papers. I don't know why. It's stupid, whatever the reason is. It's probably 10% stupid computer screens, 20% annoying chicago style, and 70% laziness. I had all these minor computer glitches today as well. I can't seem to open my uni email, which is SO annoying. Oh yeah, and my mom left this morning. Sigh. I much prefer having her within hugging capacity. And Jenn is in New York eating iron chef food. I don't know why I blog when I'm this mopey. I think I will just knit* for a bit. I did do some more reading today for my paper and I did some poetry and some work on my presentation so it's not like the day is a total waste. I just don't know why it's so hard to sit down and actually write on my paper! In other news, the kitties would just prefer for me to release live mice into the house for them to batter around and eat instead of wet kitty food. Jenn and I weren't giving them wet kitty food before, but they think in lieu of this whole 'rat poison' incident, they'd prefer the mice.
And don't worry about me being all on my lonesome, I have quite a few friends coming over to play nitendo, drink tea, gossip, and eat caramel rice cakes(what paper?) and I also have very attentive neighbours on all sides. And of course, my two brave kitties are, as always, willing to defend my honour at any chance.

Don't you hate it when you eat foods that are too similar and you kinda get a weird tummy ache and then two hours later you can't tell if you are hungry or if your stomache just still hurts?

Oh yeah, and the night when I wore my sweater to the chocolate thing was soooo much fun. I taught so many slightly intoxicated women and sober women to knit! I had one woman remember the difference between the garter stitch and the stockinette stitch by applying the terms to lingiere. I got a free lipstick doohickey from Mary Kay (not her, but a representative of hers named Becky who one time knit a cabled sweater on a train in one week) and I got so many compliments on my sweater which held up very nicely but it took me about half an hour of tedious brushing and picking to get all the cat hair out of it so I wouldn't have an allergic reaction to it. It was just a great night.



*it's the Raj Silk shawl from fiddlesticks

Photos of..... knitting?

Who knew? So yes, a quick blog, mostly photos, of my most recent knittings. The Skully Yoke Sweater is done! Done I say! Here's my coy picture in it. See how coy I am? It's a bad photo but I'm so coy in it. The living room comes across as much more messy than it is. I was wearing my houserobe (the red thing on the couch) and all the foreground stuff is the stuff on the mantle of the fireplace. But back to the sweater... it's done!!!!Here's a slightly better shot of the skulls that line the yoke and the sleeves. And in previous posts I commented that I thought there was going to be about 200 stray ends to weave in just with the yoke, but I'm happy to say that I counted and there were only 170 ends in the yoke to weave in. There's Jenn in the background, being crafty.
The skulls continue all the way around. It's not suppose to be off the shoulder but I knit the skulls too big because I was worried about the intarsia pulling in the stitches and making it too small but as it turns out.... nope, that didn't happen (it happened in my swatch dammit). Regardless, the sweater still works.
Another shot of the yoke. Sigh. I'm wearing the sweater tonight at a fundraiser or something that I'm going to. The owner of the LYS, Darlene, asked me if I could help her woman the knitting table that she's setting up. We have this wonderful big bulky wool in cream and are teaching or getting people to knit squares that then may hopefully turn into a blanket. And the theme of the evening is CHOCOLATE!!! I'm planning on a sugar comatose by midnight. It was soooo nice of Darlene to ask me to come, I'm very very excited. And I get to wear my sweater! I'm hoping it will be cool in there for the chocolate not to melt because a sweater knit at a tiny gauge made out of wool? I'm not getting frostbite in this one, despite the fact that it's a veritable blizzard outside! ARGH I HATE THE WEATHER!!! But my boootiful sweater eases my worries.

And the new sock! Knit toe up! It's a hybrid of Wendy's toe up socks and this cuff down pattern from Knitty. And this sock yarn is like crack. It's just amazing. It's Lorna's Laces in Crazy Stripes, and I had the label three seconds ago but it's gone missing so I'll get back to you on it. My tattoo looks like a fiddlehead in this picture. Heh, snort.
Fuzzy progression.
Currently...
I'm going to have to figure out what to do with my giant calves. I was going to go up needle sizes but that will loosen the gauge and I'm knitting these with 2mm instead of my 1.75mm so I don't want to go up even more. I'm thinking instead of 6 stitches between the swirls I could make it 7 stitches, or I could divide some of the stitches, like right now they are knit 6 purl 3 knit 6 purl 3 but I'm thinking if I increase into the purls, one stitch a row until they are purl 6, and then split them, that would be cool but would require some math.

And some sock porn socks before I go. Enjoy.

Revelations of a Tuesday

• running on an incline is waaaaaaaaay harder than running level. If you are running on an incline, then you can only run for about five minutes before wanting to die and you think you are a total slacker because you use to be able to run for fifteen minutes, but then you decide to run level and you can run for ten minutes without wanting to die.
• Leone needs to read instructions. Really. I mean, really. Because when there are a group of options for assignments, and there are 2 you have to do, and you think there are five assignments, so you have done 3 of the non-option ones, and then you go back to do the 2 you have to do, then you read the instructions and realize you only have 4 assignments total, you kinda just screwed yourself over.
• when you need to hand in transcripts, request them months before they are due. Months.
• don't think a banana will hold you over till you get home. It's 12 and I am starving!
• in class, when someone (I mean, this wouldn't be the prof could it? how could a prof possibily infer something like this?) says that the date rape drug problem is due to stupid women who think they can drink, don't let said person get away with that. Be loud, be opinated, put your foot down. It always rocks when someone can't respond to your comment because you are soooo much smarter than them. It helps counteract the stupidity you feel when you realize you have misread instructions for your other class.
• chocolate soy milk is the best drink ever.
• grammer is irrelevant.

that is all.

carry on.

Happy International Women's Day

Shouldn't every woman be allowed to sleep in on this day and get free foot massages? Cause, I'd kill for one right now. Seriously though folks, calm down in the back, I'm just going to take a minute and reflect on what this day means to me. I am so insanely fortunate to be surrounded by all the wonderful women in my life. My Mom, who, I mean, is so amazing, I really don't know who I'd be without her because she has helped me realize so much of myself and my abilities. My Grandmothers, Shirley and Hazel, who have these amazing dry wits and calculating humour that makes me want to grow up so I can be like them. My sisters, Julia and Jennifer, who are the yin and yang in my life and who I need more than anybody else in my life. My Aunt Shirley, who makes everyone happy and is the ultimate artist. My cousins, Lisa, Jessica, and Susan, who are those women that no matter the distance or the time I know I can always rely on. My friends who I've carried with me for so long, Jodi, Sheena, Kayla, & Adrienne, all amazing women who I am so proud of and it makes me estastic to be around. And well, me too, cause I rock. And I'd like to thank the academy... oh wait, that's for my leading role as Angelina Jolie's lover in the forthcoming 'Angie Loves Leone'. God I really hope I didn't forget anyone. Thanks to all the amazing women bloggers, and the amazing women Bears for all the cuddles! Love love!

so who here knew Andrea Dworkin?

I'm writing my history paper on Josephine Butler and Andrea Dworkin. I'll keep you informed.

In other news, I finished my socks! It's 100% merino from Fleece Artist that I bought at the Art of Yarn in Kelowna. I made them ankle socks but now I have a tonne leftover. I was so paranoid that I would run out of yarn because I had such a small needle size and really small gauge. I realized when I upload this next picture that it's a little gappy at the join but oh well. They look cute with my silver shoes, but detailing I'm still in my pink penguin pajamas the overall look was quite sexy.
And some may have noticed that Skully has been put onto my finished label. The knitting part is over, I just need to sew it and weave in the ends. Luckily when I was knitting the sleeves I weaved in the ends as I went because I didn't for the yoke. Blinky was kind enough to pose in the picture with it because he was a big help when I was finished the yoke. The next picture is Skully's brains. Approximately 200 ends just hanging out, being all annoying and evil. I'm going to try to wear this to a knitting booth I'm helping at on March 16th, so when I sit down with it I try to do at least 10%, or 20 ends, and then that's only ten sittings which could be managable. I also need to block it again after I sew in the ends. It's already been blocked once because I wanted to make sure that the bottom would stop curling and thankfully it did. I've done 12% so far.
Just wait till you see the new socks I'm casting on for. Adrienne, if I was going to knit my wedding dress (smart ass), I would knit it out of this sock yarn. It's booootiful.

SUGAR!!!!

I got a free coke! Wheeee heeheehee. So anyhoo, I just thought I should let everyone know that I applied to UBC!!! And soon I will also be applying to UBC-lite and UNBC but it's my first application sent out with all the 't's dotted and the 'i's crossed! (at least I sincerely hope- the mail lady kinda had to pry to application out of my hand because I was contemplating breaking the seal and doing another double check). I feel like such a grown up! Somebody get me a rye on the rocks!

In other news, sometimes, workshopping poetry makes me want to drink battery acid.

I'm at school so no photos :(