Fours

Beentsy tagged me a few days ago and since I'm brain-dead right now it feels like the right time since I'm certainly not going to come up with anything on my own.

Four places I go regularly: My school, Sollys, Kadoya, and Julia's place. And at three of those four places I get the best food ever. The other one I get those sugary generic packaged cupcakes on a weekly basis with the weird 'confetti' on top and have about an inch of icing.

Four favorite smells: Coffee, coffee, vanilla, coffee. Not, mind you, vanilla flavored coffee. Possibly a vanilla latte, but not flavored coffee.

Four people I think will respond: Oh heavens I don't know. You, you, you, or maybe you. Yes that's right, you.

Four TV shows I watch: Castle, Project Runway, Glee, and Iron Chef America. I know that by just typing in 'sur...' (surfthechannel) and the first three pop up right away. Speaking of stc, I got redirected to a site I did not want to be redirected to last week while on there. Eeek! EEEEK!

And now, four random photos.

1. The massive different in my handspun weight...
(whole blog entry about the cardigan soon).

2. I have cable! Which is proving to be really productive really. And you know what's on right? The weather channel! Wooo!
3. Spinning some new stuff... and spinning it rather well. Huh.
4. New phone! My old phone was getting too faint. It's purple but I bought a pink cover. Cause I'm like that. Slide out qwerty keyboard and touch screen. I have no idea how to work it.

I made peanut butter chocolate chip raspberry cookies

I'm really tired so I shouldn't be posting. When I read my blog I can always tell when I'm tired and still blogging. The posts are total spaz entries~ usually about really boring topics that I'm really excited about (I need to remember that just because I think it was the best baked tofu dish ever it will make the best blog entry ever). I was about to go to bed but I had already posted these photos so I'll try to make it a short blog entry and try to stay away from the spaz. We'll see how that goes.

Firstly, remember my shawl that I was having issues with? The Icarus shawl with the cursed yarn overs? I cast off after trying to tink three stitches. I was figuring out what yarn to use for an edging when Smart Darcy said 'just weave ribbon through the top here and wear it like at the front'.

She is so smart. I'm smizing here. Can you tell?

Darcy was here because not only is she smart, she's also extremely generous and kind. She offered to drive Spike and I to the vet after recommending them. Spike hasn't been to a vet for awhile~ one of the obstacles being that I couldn't find anyone who could recommend a good vet. All I heard was 'insensitive assholes' and 'exhorborant fees for things you didn't need'. Darcy assured me her vet was awesome so I called and we booked a time.
This is Spike's pose of 'why-no-I'm-not-trying-to-eat-your-food-I-just-like-to-sit-at-different-heights'.
See how his belly there hangs over his feet? Yeah, they put him on weight reduction food.

The vet visit was really good. I highly recommend them: Granville Island Vet Hospital. Wonderful staff and no price gorging at all. They were awesome. Spike, well, Spike had issues. They involved bringing in a technician with gloves, who then left to get even bigger gloves, a towel, me, the vet, and did result to rather guerilla tactics to get his last vaccination. The technician and the vet were on the floor as the technician had Spike wrapped in a towel and pinned to the floor as he got his shot. They were very gentle but it was what it took. He was so upset he tried to attack me when I went to pick him up after the first shot and he usually doesn't do that. After that we couldn't even get the door to his kennel locked when he was in it because every time you went to twist the handle to lock it he'd try to attack your hand. I also think he summoned Satan with his last guttural yowl so, you know, look busy. The vet interpreted the yowl as 'he's going to eat my face off'.

Apparently he is also 'rather a strong cat'.
The cruel face of a Spawnkitty.

He's totally fine now. The moment I opened his door he came out and started rubbing against my legs asking for treats. And the wet cat food? Oh he loves it so.

The misplyed yarn did turn out! I was pleasantly surprised. Thanks Louisa for letting me know what I had done. It's pretty tight yarn now but it's lying flat! Woo!
This yarn is a yoke to a short sleeved cardigan. So far so good. I did a twisted rib around the neck. I'm using two skeins of the yarn to help hide the massive weight differences. It's all pretty moot but I don't care.
In some areas it's slightly stripey,
and in some it's not. I'm still enamored with this yarn. I think I will be for quite a while.
Rambling spazlike story about me and mine? Check. And now... to sleep.

Berries

My new yarn is not nearly as dark as berries but it stills reminds me of blackberries and blueberries and the colours they stain your hands. Or Mal's face. I'm really into berries right now~ specifically blueberries (I'm sneaking them into smoothies), and I was really, really, really into this yarn.
I finished spinning the singles on Wednesday night with my new drop spindle. That drop spindle, let me tell you, was totally worth the sale line-up just to get in TBF, and absolutely worth the line-up to get to the till, even if it was the only thing I bought. One of the yarnies had to go to the back to get the drop spindles because they weren't out since they weren't on sale. My precious drop spindle was the only thing I bought! It's funny because I can't figure out if I'm proud that I didn't buy anything else or if the fact that I went into a store full of sales and came out with something that wasn't on sale kinda defeats the pride...

anyhoo, love the spindle. We spent a lot of time together and started plying on Thursday, finished this morning. Plying is when you take the singles and spin those together to get a sturdier yarn and to help disperse the energy of the singles (if that is your objective~ I one day want to knit with the singles). The plying was difficult as I had spun the yarn pretty poorly at some parts, really well at other parts, and I also spun them in different directions which made plying tricky. I also had spun these singles on two different drop spindles, a low whirl turkish spindle (r.i.p 2009-2009) and my new top whirl regular spindle. This is interesting yarn.

I'm totally enamored with it.

Now, the only thing, is I have a totally insane skein. I think I plyed it with SUPER twist or I plyed it the opposite way it was suppose to go. I don't know. All I know is plying it was fine, winding it onto the niddy noddy was fine, but the moment I took it off the niddy noddy this happened...
It freaked the frak out! Like... wtf?!?!?! So anyhoo, I put them all in lukewarm water and hoped that would calm it down. All the yarn looked like goopy goopy pretty brains. Mmmm... brains.


BRAINS!!!!

Alas it was no good for my insane skein. It came out just as insane and it tangled a little in the water so I very slowly and delicatically wound it into a ball (I hate touching wet wool, I always think it was snap)...
and with an elaborate system that involved packaging tape loooped it tightly around a chair. I'll unwind it in a few days and see if it helped. I'm kinda doubtful. This yarn is intense. If it is still insane I'll figure something out to do with it. It is totally fun but I need as much yardage as I can get out this stuff!
Here is the rest hanging out. As you can see for the first two skeins I forgot I owned a niddy noddy and wound them around my elbow. Things got easier after that.
The roving by the way is from Hummingbird Fibre Arts and I got it at Gibsons. It's blue face leiceter blended with 20% tussah silk.

And on to the new stuff!

Mishmash

Do any of you have a favorite bagel? Mine is mishmash from Solly's. So insanely good. I wish I had gotten one today instead of banana bread from a different place for lunch. The banana bread wasn't very good. Banana bread should always be good.

Firstly! I bought a drop spindle! Thank goodness. I did a lot of spinning today when I got home and really don't have all the much more to go. I was going to navajo or chain ply the singles but I didn't realize it created a 3ply which I think would make the yarn too chunky. I'm just going to do the regular two ply. The spindle is Hounds Design and it's a great purple!
Oh, and if you are Ravelry you may already know this drama. Last night I sat down and googled seahorse images and started doodling. My second doodle was this guy...
which posed a problem. I was pretty sure I liked him but there were some concerns. Mostly the head not working with the rest of the body and also I didn't expect to be done so soon. I was so anxious to start another project just like my jellyfish that I became concerned that this wasn't what I wanted but that I was so excited I couldn't see that. I was thinking about posting the picture to facebook but decided to go with Ravelry instead because I could reference Jellyfish Guy. I always have doubts about forums and really don't trust them but I posted in a group full of people I know in real life. Everyone seemed to like him and Ms. Ting made the wisest comment which was that this won't be made with a felt, it'll turn out without harsh edges, and she was totally right!

This is the graph paper I traced it onto....
and how it turned out when I converted it into something knittable!
He's fun too! I decided to do him intarsia (back and forth) instead of fair isle (in the round) because of the long sections between the colour section. So far the intarsia hasn't bothered me at all.
And look! The yellow is showing up! I was hoping the yellow would show up in Jellyfish Guy so now I'm very happy it's here. Next is this awesome cerulean blue! So EXCITING!!!

Oh Saturday

I'm actively avoiding the big yarn store sale today so besides sleeping in I created a list of things that really need to be done around the apartment. The one item on the list that has stars next to it and many, many exclamation points is 'do something about the paper'. Turns out my usual hoarding habits coupled with a week of finding things from before Christmas and filling out three different forms that require their own lot of paperwork means my apartment is awash in paper. There were more photos but there were really bad photos so I'm only showing three. I still need to figure out how to work my camera.
The right beside me stacks (notice the paper still in the printer tray)...
the 'to-be-filed' paper...
and the most recent stack on my kitchen table.

Luckily I'll be doing it along with some awesome music. (see blog below)

'Dark as the Black' by Serena Ryder on Q TV

Awesome Music

Jellyfish!!!!

This and That

(
so firstly, well aware that I totally forgot to get a family photo over xmas to cross off one of my 30 by 30, I have finally applied to get my passport. I was stuck after realizing I had no idea where my birth certificate was but knowing it was somewhere 'safe' in my apartment. Turned out safe meant stuck inside a mass conglomerate of cards and photos I have pinned to a corkboard in my kitchen. The only reason I found it was because I couldn't fit all my xmas and birthday cards on there so I decided to take down the old ones. Anyhoo.

On the knitting front~ got an issue to show you and then some fun stuff. Firstly, totally messed up my shawl.
Honestly, I had stopped feeling it awhile ago. I don't know why. I was so excited by the pattern but I just... fell out of love. Sigh. But mohair is impossible to frog so I just decided to make it smaller and cut out a lot of the rows and jumped right to next charts. The other night I picked it up to work on it some more but I don't know what happened~ there are a lot of yarnovers before and after purls and knits so I don't know if I fell asleep at the wheel or what because...
It's hard to tell but it's pretty fugly. Some of the yarnovers are monster yarnovers while others are not even holes. I also realized I had been purling all stitches on the wrong side row like the first chart said but didn't notice that the next charts had knit stitches on the wrong side too. Argh. I may try the pattern again with something other than mohair but for right now~ blarg. I can't frog it. I don't want to finish it. But it's pink! Sigh.

In happier knitting news....

My mom got me some awesome yarn that I'm turning into mittens for someone else because they're kinda small.
I got some awesome sock yarn from my teaching partner. It's a faux fair isle from Opal in a Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (?) colourway. It's so much fun! Fun fun fun.

The Jellyfish is done!!!! I just need to steek it (cut it) and then figure out what exactly I want to do with it. I'm almost thinking a pillow set and doing an octopus and a sea horse or something. I just don't think it'll work as anything else. Ideas? Opinions? Thoughts?
Okay, and both of my sisters (hi hi) are going to read 50 books this year and I've decided to take the challenge with them. I have a book-book that I've been keeping since 2004 and have decided to bore you with the facts from it. The slow years are called 'soul-sucking university'. I use to read all the time but it's taken me forever to get back into reading. I actually had a mini crisis where I felt really bad about the fact that I wasn't reading and felt very poor about myself. Luckily I had friends there to tell me otherwise and now I'm very happy to say I'm finally back there~ reading and loving books.

2004: 27 books (starting in May)
Five stars: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, A Little Piece of Sky by Nicole Bailey-Williams, A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto, The Sweet Hereafter by Russel Banks, A Pair of Scissors by Sharon Thesen, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon

2005: 12 books
Five stars: Sunshine by Robin McKinley

2006: 10 books
Five Stars: The Red Tent by Anita Diament, Knitting Rules by Stephanie Pearl McPhee, V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

2007: 12 books
Five stars: The Girls by Lori Lansen, The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman, The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsbury

2008: 7 books
Five Stars: The Wheel of Surya by Jamila Gavin, Maniac McGee by Jerry Spinelle, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger,

2009: 21 books
Five stars: The Number One Ladies Dectective Agency by Alexander McCall, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugs, Push by Sapphire, Book Theif by Markus Zusak, Persepholis by Marijane Satrapi, The Guernsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Pie Society by Schaffer and Burrows, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexei

This is averaging out to only 15 books a year but I think I can still do the 50. Anyone else with us?

Wheeee!

So far so good. I'm on row 31. I don't know if I should block it first and then steek it or steek it then block it. And um, since I've been informed by more than one person, I will explain these random knitting terms. Steeking is when you cut the yarn and in this instance you are cutting because it's easier to knit fair isle in the round even when you want a flat surface at the end. You just knit it then snip! In this case, I'm also going to sew some lines down the row I'm planning on cutting because it's a large gauge. :)


And may I just say~ 2010 was redeemed quite nicely by Ms. Quimby. Excellent coffee, a forbidden cheese croissant, and wonderful company? Why yes please!

so far it's been just peachy

the thing about starting 2010 with an insane hangover (to be fair when I woke up this morning at my friends and came home I was actually still drunk~ it was when I woke up for the second time in the afternoon that I was hungover)... anyhoo, the thing about starting 2010 with a mind numbing hangover is that 2010 can only get better from here (one hopes).

Now, the day was worth it because my friend put together an awesome impromtu new year's eve party. There was drunken twister, the best telephone/song lyrics game ever, awesome people to talk to and catch up with, and quite a lot of fun fun dancing. There was even a boa. A purple boa. The fact that despite brushing my teeth four times today everything still tastes like rum is irrelevant.

In unrelated news I'm not drinking for the rest of the month. Blaaaarg.

I wanted today to still be productive so I started putting together my sock club kit. I got the Yarn Harlot's Never Not Knitting one a day calendar and she suggested the idea. I thought it was a great idea and have started putting them all together. I'm still not done but I have all the yarn and the patterns ready. I'm thinking of making cute little packages for each one and maybe throwing in something neat and putting them away so I can't see the months to come (yes, I know I will still know what's in them). I went through my queue and printed off a lot of patterns I've been wanting to try and sorted them all. Fun!

I also wanted to start a new project today. Remember my jellyfish obsession. Still going. While on the plane I started doodling because I was annoyed with my Zelda game and drew an awesome jellyfish.

I had also received some neat noro from my Mom and, as Kipper can attest to, have been wanting to do some fair-isle work for awhile now. It was tricky but I printed off some knitting graph paper and held it and my jellyfish over a lampshade to trace it. It was tricky because the jellyfish was drawn on the back of my boarding pass.
Once I finished that I went through and tried to make the lines work with the graph paper which I thought was going to be the hardest part.
But it turned out that transferring the jellyfish onto larger graph paper was going to take the longest and be very annoying. It worked out in the end though. This isn't knitting graph paper so he's a little squished.
I'm hoping he'll turn out despite losing some of the detail and such. So there we go. Still a pretty productive day, fibre wise. 2010 could redeem itself yet.

Blaaaaarg.