I'm a wreck

I didn't think it was going to be this hard to let my class go this year. I knew I would be sad but I was pretty inconsolable actually. I kept it together at school~ got a little teary with some of the cards and letters I received (I asked for no chocolate- just letters~ got both) and was a little blue after the last massive group hug but I was doing okay.

Then, that evening, at knitting group, people were talking about their plans for the upcoming days and weeks and I remember that I stopped knitting because I was going to joke about not knowing what I was going to do with my time and then it just took my breathe away because I realized I was not going to see my kids again like that ever. And I started to get really sad. I just put my knitting down and stared at my lap because I was just overcome with the realization. Lara next to me asked me what was wrong and when I went to tell her I just started to cry. The poor knitting group. One moment I'm joking away about goodness know what and next thing I'm weeping into my yarn. But yeah, I couldn't make my sadness go away and I had to leave. I just kept on all night with those silent tears you know? Like your doing something else and you realize you have tears on your cheeks.

I don't talk about my class a lot because of various things. But I mean, just a little, cause this year was special. My first class. I'm so proud of them. It was the best way to end the year~ the two kids I was worried about becoming bullies last year gave me incredibly heart-felt letters, when I opened my desk after recess and it was full of paper airplanes I didn't even get to guess who it was because they ran right into me and gave me a bear-hug, I had a 'no I'll miss you more!' competition with one of my dear dear students who came to us last year from the Phillipines, and from my little student who barely speaks English I received a pink post-it note covered in flowers and hearts.

Decorations from the year-end dance.

Distracting myself is going to be a big focus for getting through next week. Thankfully I have two canvases prepared and, um, some yarn. That's three skeins of STR in Bleeding Heart, three skeins of STR in Puck's Mischief, and just one skein of STR in Carbon Dioxide; otherwise known as two Whisper Cardigans and a pair of socks.

Spike also has big plans for the next week.

Mr.Tightypants

So as many of you know Mr. Tightpants and his parents came for a visit last week. After a tangled drive here they made it safe and sound.

Malcolm did a lot of things and went to a lot of places. He's so much fun. He totally remembered me and was at ease in the apartment. We also took him to a park downtown which at first he wasn't sold on.

This is his 'I'm-Slightly-Disgruntled-And-Am-Very-Unsure-About-You-Folk' look. We asked Jenn if there are people where she is from because Malcolm seemed very stunned at all the people wandering around.
But with some Aunty Julia love and some crackers he was coaxed out of his nervousness...
and started to have a fun time.
Baby feet! In sandals! In the grass!
When at home Spike did a lot of this~ staying out of Beeb's reach.
But down on ground level Malcolm was always the centre of attention.
Mom and Dad did get some downtime. I lent them my Buffy comics and they let me babysit Malcolm for an evening.
We got sushi (he didn't eat the tempura~ just gorged himself on the avocado roll, seaweed and all).
Oh how the boy loves his avocado.
and, of course when with Auntie Leone, his Lady Gaga

A Knitter Sewing Bag

Sewing. It's like cheating for knitters and just like cheating is very productive! I started out with this neato piece of fabric (so far I have accidentally typed yarn instead of fabric twice) that was a gift from my Mom (or more accurately~ my Mom paid for it and I haven't paid her back yet). I don't have any sewing patterns and I figured none would work here because of the nature of the fabric. And while I was raised by awesome seamstresses (my Grandmother had her own store) and I kinda know how to knit, I don't particularly care for measuring and pinning so I just decided to wing it.
I started by ripping out the part of the fabric that I figured would make a good face of a bag and then I measured it. It was exactly 18" by 17.5" which was fun. And then I did some more ripping all approximately 17.5 by 3.5 inches. I really didn't measure these proper like which we'll talk about more later.
Then I spent some time putting together the strips in a pleasing way and then I put colour coding pins in so that when I sewed them together I wouldn't forget which one went with which. I am just so clever like that.
After sewing all the strips I ironed down the edges and finally recognized I could no longer ignore that one piece I ripped a little hasty.
That'll do.
So this is the other side of the bag. I'm very happy with it. I didn't want the strips to match up but I didn't want it to look disjointed either.
Then I took a break because the sewing machine got Spike so riled up he jumped up on my chair and kinda went a little Spawn-kitty on me. I have some battle scratches from taking these photos. The things I'll do for my blog eh.
He ended up getting his claw stuck in the top of the chair so I had to tip the chair down so he could detach his claw~ afterwards he stalked away and I resumed sewing. Here's the bag sewn together....

Spike was calmed by the bag and laid down for a nap.
Luckily I was onto the handles at that point. I took all the scraps and ripped them into approximately 1.5" strips and then sewed the wrong sides together, and folded them right side out afterwards with help of a massive safety pin. You would have thought I would have learned my lesson and measured the strips but no. After I ironed them I discovered what I had made.

The most un-even winding pathway strips ever. Hilarious.
I folded them into each other but I'm not happy with the look of them so I'm going to buy some ribbon and sew it onto the joins to make it look less... home-school.

When I did the hem I didn't want to pin so when I was ironing the inside seam I just folded over a chuck of fabric and pressed it. When I went to sew it I just lined up the crease with the 15 mark on the sewing machine and let her fly. I sewed the handles on with the square method which is really hard to rip out when you sew the handles on the wrong side but eventually I got it.
And here we are! A finished bag. I may line it with that stuff that makes it more sturdy- more because of the fraying ends than anything else. I lurves it.
And here's the koi fish I made in a latte last week. I made the poor woman wait for her drink while I ran to my purse to get my camera. I can't actually make foam art but I was attempting to make a tree when I was doing this. Isn't that just freaking wild?

Do as Piggy Does...

I was very inspired and envious of Ms. Yarnpiggy's post yesterday so I decided to play copy cat. Unfortunately my sleeping-in is 9am but I did play on the computer and drink coffee till 12, then I napped (awesome), then I played on the computer some more and read. Wheeeee! I did really need the sleep as I've had a lot of late nights for the past two weeks and very early morning due to report cards and meetings at school. Yesterday I was so tired my tummy was upset all day so I just drank tea last night (till about 9pm- then I ate cake).

Something random than onto knitting!

Say what you will (or what I will) but do check out the stash my student teacher got me! Those are a set of 64 crayons, a tonne of coloured pencils, my own stapler and scissors, a set of scentsational felts, and he learned how to knit and tried to knit me a scarf but that was as far as he got. So sweet! And it was heartfelt too even besides the knitting because I have none of these supplies or what I did have the students have slightly... destroyed. I've put them in a box for a new classroom~ hopefully someday soon :) I was very touched by this gift.

And onto knitting. I did plan for June to be my no-new-projects-only-work-on-the-10-you-have-going month but holy crap it's already the 20th! WTF? So July is going to be the month of finished projects. I did start and finish this really nice short fat scarf this month. It's knit out of two skeins of Fleece Artist slub ala noro Flood scarf. The colour changes are very subtle as both yarns had pink in them but one was pink and green and the other was an array of colours. I'm glad because I had no idea what to do with the yarns as they didn't have much yardage.
Now I just need to get a button for it. Hm.

The Beast is coming along slowly. I feel so sorry for the beast. We were doing so well but then I put him down to work on TheShawlThatShallNotBeNamed and have had a hard time getting back to work with the Beast. He's over halfway done and I'm excited to finish him as I'll be going to my friend's place in Cresent Beach to felt him with her awesome old beater of a washing machine so I don't need to spend probably 15$ and god knows how much time and energy with the pay machines in my apartment.

I'm so going to use this fair isle motif again somewhere.

I really want to finish my Hey Teach. I 'm nearly done the bottom of the front halves so in my mind I'm 3/5ths done. Thankfully I remembered while doing the front halves that I modified the pattern and added two inches onto the length. I made myself very upset the other day thinking about how I would have felt if I had finished the two fronts only to realized I had knit them shorter than the back. When I'm stressed out I do things like that to myself. Very productive.
And also the yarn is beautiful~ not the grey mud shown in the photo.

Ah... my socks. I was whizzing away with a neato five-stitch slip pattern and loving the bizarro colour happenings when I got to the heel...

and various sorts of unhappiness occured. I tried to be okay with that huge colour disruption but I cannot. I nearly frogged them but I just let them sit for awhile and have decided to make them fingerless mitts and will frog to the heel.
The Skirt-A-Long of 2009! A brand new awesome friend of mine and I decided to do a knit-a-long with the Sidewinder. She picked out a gorgeous blue and cast on for medium, I picked out a vibrant red and cast on for large. Getting gauge was crazy hard~ I had to go up a needle size! I never go up needle sizes. I kinda noticed mine was really really long and Erica noticed hers was kinda short...
(anyone else like posing next to tall leggy blondes? Me too.)

So we decided to switch! It may take some fudging to make them work around the waist but we're both pretty happy with the idea. It was hilarious at knit night as we slowly came to the realization and decided to make it a swap as well as a knit-a-long. Thanks Hilary for taking the photos :)
And I'm off. I am thinking I may go get some kraft diner for dinner so that means I will have to get changed out of my pjs. Ugh. Waaaaay too hard.

And no I'm not going to get Sims3. I will one day but for right now Sims2 is still doing it for me and I'll just live vicariously through this guy's awesome blog (thanks Kipper!)

Hope you are having a fab lazy Saturday too!

30 by 30 update

I have a lot of updating to do so I'm going to try to blog tomorrow as well. I've got nephew photos and knitting rants for you~ exciting! But today as I am freakishly tired (slept the sleep of the dead from 5-8 this afternoon) and kinda cranky I just wanted to update you on my 30 by 30 list.

#7: Get another tattoo~ tattoo is designed and I've just got to get around to bugging my tattoo artist for a visit :) You'll love it!

#10: Get really good at the violin~ I've started playing again and am going to hopefully ploy one of my friends into giving me regular lessons over the summer in exchange for food and knitting lessons.

#15:Learn how to be awesome at chess and play a game with those really serious russians downtown~ I just beat my computer at easy level! I'm on my way!

#17:Use my 5' by 7' canvas for a painting~ have penciled in my painting and have a smaller canvas to practice on, have also bought the paints!

#22: Participate in a charity marathon even if I just briskly stroll the whole thing~ and I didn't even stroll! It was a very small 5K run and I figure my friend and I ran about 4.5K altogether. It was awesome and when I crossed the finish line I swore I would never do it again. Whee!

#30:Design and sew a dress that is spectacular~ I've got the sewing machine and I've got a basic dress template to start with. Let the experimenting begin! (This summer sometime when I have time)

So that's all that's new with me regarding the 30 by 30. 1/30 so far but hey- it's a start. Thanks for listening!

The Past 24 Hours of Awesome

Time: 7:34 pm Friday June 12
Location: Saroj and Jessicas' House
Events: Laughing till I hurt, drinking, eating pizza, talking, playing the most random board games, falling asleep on their couch at 1am.
And despite Saroj's fierceness we did end up losing Scene It.

Time: 11:00am June 13th, 2009
Location: Jerico Beach
Events: Talking, making friends, eating thai, drinking coffee, taking photos, more talking, laughing, and possibly a little knitting
and possibly not applying enough sunscreen to my shoulders and back (my face is fine though so that's at least better than not).
Now I'm going to go eat tacos. Kisses!

um... yeah

I had such plans for my blog today. I was going to blog about my knitting, my fridge, the run I'm doing tomorrow, how it's a good thing so many people I love were born in May or else I would have written off the entire month and refused to ever do it again, and so on and so forth. And I even have a new camera!!!! And such drama to share!!!!

But it is 11 oclock and I have officially resigned as being an adult so I'm going to go curl up in bed with my jesus night light on and listen to the classical CBC channel.

Good night says Spike.