Loooooooong Weekend.

Well I definitely had a long weekend. We had district convention for Circle K this weekend. It was fun, and I did manage to get my scarf finished in time for the Knitting Olympics to be over. Go me! Anyways, I learned some new things at the convention, we went to lots of workshops, listened to many speeches, had a formal banquet, a dance and whatnot. Did not get much sleep, but I guess that was to be expected. I was up until 2 or 3 am every night. Then back up at 7 or 8 the following morning. It left me beat. Fortunately I didn't have any homework due Monday aside from my Discrete Patterns which I did during my break before class today.

Then during class my teacher changed his mind and decided he didn't want to collect it until Wednesday. Speaking of discrete, we got our quiz and test back. I didn't do great on both. I don't quite understand why I didn't do so well on the test. I have one answer right that he marked wrong, I'll bring it up on Wednesday, and he marked on wrong on my quiz that also should be right. Several people missed that one though and are very upset so he's somewhat willing to listen to us. It's hard sometimes to argue with him because I feel like he looks at us all as being a group of morons. We tell him he made a mistake, and instead of listening to us, and hearing us out he tells us we're wrong. We drag out our notes, show him the notes he gave us that prove we our right, and he argues his own notes. I can't tell if he realizes his mistake or not, because of the language barrier. Hopefully I won't have to take any more classes with him, so much of the material on his test we never discussed in class.

Anyways, back to knitting. After finishing my scarf I worked on the evil pink purse some more. I got about 5 rows completed before my hands were throbbing. That's when I switched over to my baby blanket from long, long ago. I weaved ends in for the better part of two hours, and I'm still not completely finished. I really hate that purse. My hands ache because of it, and it kills to type. I think I'm going to have to take a break from it until my knuckles feel better.

Quick Update.

Not much has been happening lately. Wednesday night I decided to put

off any and all homework and spent the evening knitting. I was planning on staying up till 1 am even, but by 11:30 my arms and hands were shot. i couldn't knit anymore if my life depended on it. It started out with the pink purse which I hate with a passion. Why am I knitting it you ask? Because it was requested, alas, I have no choice. The only problem is it really hurts to knit it, so it won't be worked on very much.

After I got sick of that (five minutes), I continued making progress on my Knitting Olympics scarf. It went great too. I'm almost done, just one repeat left to go. Then my hand gave out. Specifically whatever that little muscle is that I use for purling. So I switched to my orange scarf that I started last summer. Hurray for UFOs! I only did a row of that though until I gave up. I was miserable and rather than completely destroy my arms, I decided to save them for future years. Hopefully I have many years ahead of me, I'd like to be able to knit during them.

Well I'm trying to pack because I'll be at a convention in Cleveland this weekend. I have no desire to pack though, go figure. You know, I think I just hate packing. I think I'm going to take the Olympic scarf with me, and probably my preemie hats and booties. I don't know what kind of time I'll have to knit but it doesn't hurt to drag it along.

Staying.

After searching long hours for a new place to move my blog to I found one. So I started moving. I wasn't half way there when I discovered that I had already used up 10% of my bandwidth. I didn't have 7 entries, so I decided I'm going to stay here with blogger. I love pictures. It wouldn't be a knitting blog without pictures. So I'll stay here and upload 5 million pictures if i so please, because they don't give a crap.

Anyways, I always bother my boyfriend about wanting to knit him things. Well yesterday I sent him the link to a knitting blog because there was a stuffed animal thing I thought he would like. Now he wants it... and I think it was just last week when he told me he didn't want me to knit him anything... amazing how much we can change our minds. So he's going to get his toy, because I love him that much... lucky lucky lucky. I can see it now, he'll carry it everywhere while wearing the bunny hat he requested for Christmas... (laughing hysterically)

So my sister and I went shopping after lunch... at least it was shopping in our terms. She wanted to go to Best Buy, and I wanted to drive to a yarn shop in the middle of nowhere. She said she'd go with me as long as I took her to Best Buy. I did, then we drove. She had tried knitting once before, liked it, but quit because it's not the "cool" thing to do if you're 13. That and I think she just got bored with it. She didn't want to learn any new stitches, she didn't care about patterns. It just wasn't for her. Then she spent $10 at the yarn store. Walked in, fell in love with everything, and she's picked up knitting yet again.

What did I buy? Six balls of cheap-o sock yarn (bernat), and more cheap-0 acrylic. I'll post pictures when I actually start working with it.

My olympic scarf is over 3/4 of the way done. Yay for that. No pictures, it's still nothing exciting to look at.

debating

I'm debating about whether or not I want to move my blog. I've just created this one but I hate the fact that posting pictures can be so complicated.

So I did some looking around. I think I'm going to move it to tripod. I've used angelfire before, and now tripod has a specific "blog builder" thing meaning I don't have to do much, if any, work. That and I'll have more freedom, and I love that aspect.

I'm going to post here until I get everything moved over. It probably won't happen for awhile. I'll leave you guys a link though when I do finally move.

Basketball games

Went to the basketball game tonight, with knitting of course. I taught my friend Amanda how to knit on Thursday between classes, so she brought hers along. Jen drug her scarf along that she was crocheting because we were. Fun times. Another girl in pep band now wants to learn as well. I told her if she bought the stuff I would teach her.

So here's what I worked on. This had had been started sometime over the summer. I used to volunteer at a Children's Hospital so they gave me a pattern for knitted/crocheted hats and
booties for the preemies. So I ran out and bought this lovely green/yellow/blue baby red heart stuff. I got four sets of hats and booties total. This is the end of that yarn. I finished up the had at the game, added the pom pom because they're so much fun.

Here's a picture of the hat with the booties, so cute. Now I'm going to throw it into a box until I can get some more made up. It's a half hour drive to the hospital and I'm not driving up there unless I have several to donate. Either that or I'll send them up with my sister. She goes up there to see her specialist ever few months.


And here's a new set started! Almost done with one of the booties. It's in a really pretty pink yarn with a white strand run through. It's another cheap acrylic, but that's what I love. I think this is bernat though. Almost all my baby yarn is bernat. I've got tons of it too that are left over from afgahns and other larger projects. It's the perfect charity project, doesn't take much time, and it's really cheap. I took six ounces of yarn, possibly less, and got four sets of hats and booties. For a little over 3 dollars.

The basketball teams did well too. Both men and women won, both have home court advantage for playoffs. The men were champions of their league. Hopefull they'll be national champs this year too. It would be a fun road trip.

1/2 way

Meet Oreo, the yarn-eating-cat... He just looks evil in this picture doesn't he?












First half is completed...












Here's a lovely close up of the end... I think it's so pretty. It was the whole reason I decided on this pattern.













Work has began on the second half.


I have nothing much to say. I came to the conclusion at pep band on Tuesday that I wasn't taking this scarf with me ever again to work on. After the post-it blows of the chart 30 times you're ready to scream... nothing more fun than chasing your pattern around. I think I'll take either my orange scarf, or my charity project. I'll see what kind of mood I'm in. I'd like to get the orange one off the needles, and I think it's almost done. It would definitely be brainless enough for a basketball game.

I'm thrilled it's Friday, I have Monday and Tuesday off for Presidents Day, which makes this weekend even better. Unfortunately I have homework, which I think I'm going to do on Sunday. I also have a Calculus II test (in the real world i'm in Calculus III), which I'm doomed to fail, but I have hope! If I do nothing but study I should be okay.

Double Argh!

So I was once again admiring my beautiful scarf today, and found another mistake. Another one of those yarn was on the wrong side when I slipped the stitch. This one can also be seen in the pictures from Sunday, barely. I'm up to what? Three now. I feel like a failure... OH well, pretend you don't know just how many times I've screwed up.

;-)

Same old

Well there's nothing new with my scarf. It's still coming along... I'm getting closer and closer to half of it being done. ::cheers::

I took it to the basketball game last night. I've found it very difficult to work on that at the game so it will no longer be joining me in my pep band adventures. See, my place is being held by a post-it note, bright orange ones to be exact. Well the pep band sits under a fan, which blows a constant cold breeze on us throughout the game. It's pretty bad. I can deal with the cold, my knitting distracts me, but I can't stand my post-it notes falling off my chart, or my paper flying off my lap. I'm taking my other scarf to pep band. It's a nice one done in a garter stitch that will be nice and mindless allowing for easy game watching. The cold air is really annoying though. By the end of the games (men and women's) I couldn't feel my feet or hands (and this is inside a building). We've come to the conclusion that it is much warmer outside than it actually is inside.

ARRRRRRRH!

So... guess what my cat did... (note the title to this entry)

So I was working on the scarf last night while watching Grey's Anatomy. Somewhere during that time he started fishing through my back of yarn. Little did I know he managed to chew through the yarn I was working with. This meaning I'd have to start a new piece of string in, and weave all the ends in as well. Thank you Oreo. No wonder he was hiding across the room looking guilty. He hasn't chewed my yarn in ages. He'll chew through it if I leave it laying around the house, but he usually doesn't go searching for it. Covering it with a towel usually works well enough. (he's not the brightest crayon in the box) It must have been the temptation of the yarn moving while I was working with it. Still really ticked me off. I also have the horrible feeling that I'm going to run out of yarn. I bought around 550 yards, and the pattern only called for 370 some (not quite sure), but I'm a little over fourth of the way done, and I feel like my first skein of yarn is almost gone. Who knows. I'll figure it out eventually. knowing me my gauge is probably off, it usually is.

Knitting Olympics-Day 2

If you want to be really technical, everything that I have done so far on my scarf was knitting on day 2 of the Olympics. That said, here are some pictures:






This is the scarf in it's entirety. Somewhat hard to see, but it shows you the length, and the true colors.










This one is closer (obviously), and it shows my lovely leaves.

Here is another closer one, in case you should not like the previous closer one. don't expect many closer ones from now on. This is probably it.


I have made mistakes though, one is visible in the bottom picture, and the top if you look closely at the right side. I had the yarn in front instead of in back while slipping a stitch, and it made my beautiful edge not so beautiful. This led to me contemplating on frogging the whole entire thing. Friends convinced me no one would notice. I also made a mistake on the bottom right hand leaf, in fact it's right at the top of the leaf where the annoying mistake number one is still taunting me. I misinterpreted some directions and should have done something else. This mistake didn't bother me till I was on my second repeat and read the directions a second time. I looked back and decided no one would notice. Besides, the bottom of the scarf will be sewn to the second half. The means that the mistakes will fall in the middle of the scarf, and when wearing it will be hidden by my hair. This itself is an incentive to keep my hair long. Hide mistakes.

Mistakes drive me nuts. I'm very much a perfectionist, especially when it comes to knitting. I'll usually do anything and everything in my power to fix mistakes. My first scarf I made, perfect. Shocked me. When I did make a small mistake... I took several rows out just to fix it.

I am making good progress on my scarf though. It looks like I will finish in time. I've never had a scarf come along so fast. I think part of the reason it's doing so well, is that I feel like I must work my butt off on it. My progress is good news seeing as how I have four exams next week. Yay for college! Two on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, and another on Friday. I need to study like crazy, plus I have homework to get done. Fortunately we killed so much time in Calc on Friday, that we didn't get to go over a new section, meaning we didn't get homework. So all I have is discrete homework and studying. I'm really good at the whole study while knitting thing too, so it shouldn't be too bad. I think I'm going to have to restrain from doing that though. A good break from studying, is knitting, or maybe it should be the other way around. A good break from knitting, is studying.

Knitting Olympics

I have started my scarf for the knitting Olympics. My boyfriend and I did the whole Valentines Day thing last night, so I wasn't able to start at the first possible second. I did start sometime after midnight though when I got home from the movie. He really is the best for putting up with my hobby.

Anyways, i had a big long entry that has vanished, so I'm keeping this short due to lazyness to type the whole thing again. That takes time and I have a scarf to make. Which I'll be working on all day.

Now for a picture.


It's not real easy to see because I used such a dark yarn. It's one of those things you can't take a picture of. If you look real closely though, you can see a leaf on the right side.

I really love this pattern, and it's relatively easy to follow as long as you can remember which row you're on.

Oh, and I have officially sewn all the little diamonds together for my baby blanket. If that isn't thrilling I don't know what is. All that's left is to sew in all the ends and add a border. The end is in sight.

ALMOST!

I'm almost done sewing the whole blanket together which is really exciting. I just want to get it done and out of the way. Unfortunately it doesn't look like it's getting done before the Olympics. Oh well, I tried. I'm still not sure what time they start tomorrow. If anyone actually reads this and knows, leave a comment or something.

I finished my swatch for my project last night, after I frogged the first one that was too small. Note: my gauge is never too small, usually I'm a couple sizes to big. So I grabbed a bigger pair of needles and made my new swatch. Perfect width, and it's short by 2 stitches in the length. I'm not going to do anything about it though. It's a scarf, I'm short, so I'm stopping when it gets long enough anyways. That brought me to my next worry. I wonder if the scarf's gonna curl. I have a feeling it will, it's a lacy pattern, so I'm hoping maybe it won't. I'm not sure, and I don't have much, well any, experience with lace before. I could block it, sure, but it's acrylic, and from what I hear, and what I've experienced, it doesn't block. Been there, done that. So, cross my fingers, worse comes to worse, I'll make another one with real yarn. Hell, maybe I'll knit it out of the stuff I started spinning last summer that's still on my wheel. haha.. yea right.

I don't know. I'm hoping.

Don't know what I'm going to do with my school work though. I've got three exams scheduled for next week, two on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. First ones this semester for these classes. That and I'm just to busy to get all my homework done let alone find time to knit.

I'm off to lock myself in my room... hopefully I'll get things accomplished before dancing with the stars comes on tonight.

Oops...

I spent last night watching the superbowl. I'm not a huge football fan, but it's just one of those things you're supposed to do ya know? Well I went to watch it at my boyfriends house. They loooooooove sports, especially his dad. To make things more interesting, they're from Pittsburgh. We were in his room watching it, his mom and sister were in the living room downstairs, and his dad was alternating between his bedroom upstairs and the living room. It was funny sitting in his room listening to everybody scream.

Which brings me to the topid of my post. I worked on the baby blanket while watching the big game. I finished another row of blue and green squares, and got excited. Thinking to myself, one row of blue and green left, and three rows of pink and yellow. Then I stopped myself. How? If the rows alternate, there's no way I can have one blue/green row, and three pink/yellow rows left. Alas, I was wrong. When I updated yesterday I really had 3 rows of blue/green and 3 rows of yellow/pink. Problem solved. Unfortunately that means I wasn't as far along as I thought I was. Big disappointment. Oh well. I'll live. I'm still extremely pumped about the knitting olympics, and I've just gone into a KAL kick. I want to sign up for all of them, unfortunately I don't have the time to put into them. Oh well. I'll figure something out.

Saturday

Well my Saturday was pretty eventful. My sister had solo/ensamble contest. She had a class A piece and she got a I, so she was really happy. She's only a freshman in Highschool, so that's pretty good. She lucked out because the judge let her pick any starting note for her chromatic. She did really good on her solo though. She was really nervous. She was shaking so hard I thought she was going to pass out.

While at the solo/ensamble contest (before and after), I did get a chance to knit some. A whole two rows of my green scarf. Pathetic I know. On the way home we stopped and picked up the flowers for Winter formal. Both my sister and I were going which was somewhat exciting. We both went to homecoming to though. Actually it wasn't very exciting. Here's a picture, don't we look lovely.


Aww.. how cute. Did I mention I really hate formals.

Anyways, we ordered pizza for dinner. In all the dances I've ever gone too, I've never once gone out before. We always get take out. This was the first time we've actually ordered pizza though. My mom actually went a little overboard with the pizza, because we figured the Superbowl was Sunday, so leftovers are a good thing.

My dress is brown, although it doesn't look brown in the picture, and it has a pale pink trim along the bottom, and a little bit of pink ruffle that sticks out. It's pretty. The picture I have that shows the whole dress I'm not crazy about, so you'll have to use your imaginations.

So we went to the dance, with little sister and her date in tow. We didn't have to bring them home, and we left around 8:30 when the boredom finally got to us. We were ready to leave before 8 (the dance started at 7), but we ended up trying to enjoy ourselves to 8:30. It just isn't the same as the other dances. Almost everyone I know has graduated. The only people that I know are kids who I was in band with. And my boyfriends a senior. He knows some people, but we were pretty much by ourselves the whole evening. Our usual group of friends has broken up so many times because of people graduating and couples breaking up. Things just weren't the same. So we came back to my house, changed clothes, and watched corpse bride twice. It was really good, obviously because we watched it twice. I really like it though. It's a good movie. I watched it four times total yesterday. I watched it while trying to do my Calculus homework. One time I even watched it in French just because it's fun to change things up a bit. Keep in mind I don't know French. I know some German that I can recall from highschool, and last semester, but because most movies don't have German dubbing, I had to settle for French. What can I say, i'm easily amused.

As far as today (sunday) goes, I woke up this morning sick (whoo!), so I wasn't able to go help out at school today for a Valentines thing they were having. I was looking forward to going too. So I sat in my room, finished my Calc homework, and did my other homework. I still have reading to do for tomorrow, but my sister finally stepped away from the computer so I figured now was the time to update.

My baby blanket is coming along very well. I only have two rows of the green and blue, and three rows of the pink and yellow to do. I'd post a picture, but you've seen more than enough pictures of that blanket. It's really coming along, and finishing it before the Olympics seems really likely now. Speaking of the Olympics, I started my gague swatch! yay! I love the colors of the yarn...so pretty. I can't wait till Friday. The beauty of it is, if I really like the final project, I can make millions more with all the cheap acryllic hiding under my bed in what I call my "stash"... Hopefully it turns out nice. I don't know why it wouldn't.

Blankets and More! (not really)

I love blankets, I really really do. This was the first thing I ever crocheted, if you don't count the ripple I mutilated as a child. It's supposed to have tassles on the end, but because my cat Oreo loves to eat anything and everything, I thought leaving the tassles off would be a good idea. It's a great blanket, but my feet stick out between the lovely ends. It's also hard to use the blanket when there's always a cat on it. The thing is loaded down with cat hair. I really want to knit a blanket, I just don't know if I'm ever going to get around to it. I have some free patterns that I swiped from books I borrowed from the library, so I guess technically I didn't steal them. Maybe I'll try one of them. I have so many things I want to do and so little time in which to actually do them.

Which brings me to the reasons I like Wednesdays and Thursdays. I have no homework due on Thursdays, and because we didn't get any homework in Calculus II today, that means I have no homework due Friday either. I'm going to have time to knit! Well... I'll have more time to work on sewing the baby blanket actually. I think I'm actually getting closer to the end.



Yup, I just counted. I have 91 diamonds/triangles sewn together. The total number in my possesion is 222. That puts me at 40% of the sewing completed. Over a third of the way done! Yay! I feel so inspired. I had a lot of time to work on it today (when I was driving my sister all over creation), and I'm going to go lock myself in my room to work on it. I have an hour till my boyfriend gets off of work, and because it's his birthday, I'm going over to his house. What fun.