Of Cats and Rabbits

Sunday, my sweetie's mother and stepfather rescued a poor little bunny from their barn cats. She lived in a cage and refused to eat anything.

Monday I opened her cage up and she ventured out. She hopped around a little in their sunroom, and I picked some greens from the garden and fed it to her, and she ate three platefuls of dandelions, clover, and timothy (luckily, Warren's family grows Timothy in their fields and gives it to the neighbors.)
She was so cute! After it was obvious she was eating, we decided it would be ok to send her back... only to find that she couldn't use her front leg! Poor Little Rabbit!

Sadly, Little Rabbit died yesterday... Warren's stepfather found her dead. She probably went into shock, or died from her injuries. It's sad, because she seemed to be recovering...

First Day of Summer!

Although summer doesn't start officially for a while, I'm back in my hometown with my family. My dad's house is kind of a wreck, but I think I'm going to clean it up in a while. It seems like everywhere I go gets clean... which is nice.

First, I went to Tanglewood to see Roxy. I took a little walk and found some nice lichens. I wanted to walk some more, but I realized how lonely it is walking alone- after taking walks with all my friends at RIT, being in the woods and being quiet is a little depressing.

I got some awesome pictures though! Check out this sweet foliose thallus, found on an oak (I think) by the teaching pond:
I also found some really nice cyphellae on a lichen just by the parking lot... I didn't put the picture in, though, because it didn't look very impressive small-size.

And, of course, some glamour shots of Roxxors! Isn't she a doll? I got her at a good time, she played around, I cut her nails, and gave her plenty of FerretVite. She was so happy :)

I also made some super sweet iced tea... it's a little weak, but it's very sweet and addictive! I used 5 bags of blueberry tea, 1/2 cup of sugar, and 2 quarts of boiling water. The tea seeped for 10 minutes, and the whole thing took about 2 hours to chill.

I'm having a picnic with my mom tomorrow, so I'll perfect the recipe :)

Keeping you Updated

I always feel a little guilty when I do something cool and don't blog about it. So here you go. A nice picture for you.

Right now, I'm working on knitting puppets for my boyfriend, who is a first-year film and animation student at RIT. He's going to use them in a stop-motion short!

Here's the blue bird, where my work is finished. I knit the body, and he will stuff it with armature wire so that it stays put, add the face and legs, and essential make it look nice.

I'm pretty proud of the composition, though it was mostly ad-libbed. The head is a separate piece so that it's movable, held in place by the gray cuff.

Perhaps I can show off my work by posting the animation when he finishes!

Oh, by the way, have no noticed the poor quality cell phone pictures? My camera charger disappeared. I plan on buying a new one this weekend.

The "Price" of Being Environmentally Friendly

So, as you can assume from looking at my profile, I'm a student in Environmental Management. I'm looking to go into consulting, and a potential minor of mine is accounting. Why? Numbers fascinate me, especially when they tell you things you ought to pay attention to.

Well, I recently lost my Sigg waterbottle, and have spent the first week of classes without it. Instead, I've been using all debit and buying plastic waterbottles, under the assumption "It's too expensive to buy a new Sigg, I'll wait until the end of the month until my mother comes up with it."

Well, before class today, I did some number work. I've purchased an average of 4 20oz bottles everyday (I drink mainly water.) I reuse them once, then recycle them. Each bottle of water costs $1.75 from a vending machine- that's the cheapest way to get them, since I'm on a college campus and can't go off to buy bulk or on sale at Wal*mart. If you buy bottle water from the cafeterias, you'll be charged about $2, with tax.

Let me explain the math. Four water bottles each day at $1.75 each is $4.50 each day off my student debit account, about the price of a strawberry parfait, my favorite dessert. So, every day, I'm giving up a strawberry parfait. I'm fine with that. But spending 4.50 every day adds up to $31.50 each week, just on water.

Here's some more perspective: I go school in New York, where the minimum wage is $7.15. I have to work 4.41 hours every week to pay for the water I'm drinking. Since I'm a full-time student living on-campus, I can only work 10 hours each week at my job. That means that 44% of my income from my job this week will go to buying water.

Water, people. Something that I could have just gotten for free out of a fountain. Something that the United Nations deems a right. A 16oz water bottle costs about $16.00, meaning it will pay for itself before the first week is over. If you actually use it, you'll end up saving yourself a pile of money in the long run, not to mention make your life a little greener.

Update

I feel pretty sick and depressed today. It's strange going from a noisy dorm to the sleepy-quiet house.

Anyway, the humidifier and tea are helping a bit, along with freezy-pops. I missed freezy-pops!

I'm also watching reruns of America's Most Wanted. I didn't even know that had that. It's actually pretty surreal, but I like it more than the normal AMW. Normally, America's Most Wanted makes me a little scared, I've been creeped out by it since I was a child. But this show always has a "happy ending." Well, a happy ending karmically.

Example:
TV: Update! Since the original airing of this show, the rapist was sent to prison where he was gang raped and is now serving life... in prison, as well as in the bed of a man named Bubba.
Me: :) I love happy endings!

BLARGMONSTER.

I finally got off my butt and got myself some polyfill to finish the panda! Isn't he adorable? I've also spent way too much money and yarn as well, but I've yet to think up anything awesome to make with it :( Oh well, I have yarn, so whatever!

I've also made another hat, but I want to photograph it on the person I made it for! It's out of Twinkle <3

In other news, I put off chemistry to make this tiling pattern. Sex much? I love it, I think I might put it on a sock or something some time in the future...

Here's the problem with me. I make all these designs, I think up cute things, but I get lazy and never actually knit them! I could probably write up the pattern without actually making them, but I just never get around to it. Mayhaps I could get some sort of person to knit things for me, and have their credit in the pattern. *COUGHSAUCE* Oh, my email is lynough@gmail.com by the way. Just thought I'd make that clear.

Anyway, it's my first Winter Quarter Week 9, officially. I'm not happy. I have too much to worry about.

Productive Start

So, I finished a little piece of a big afghan that may eventually warm someone. Potentially. It took a week to make, and is roughly 6 x 6, so, it would take about 50 weeks to make an afghan that... would be suitable for a child or wheelchair. According to certain sources. DAYAM.

So, I decided to not think about this depressing thought while making a bear for the Mother Bear project. I have to say, it's incredibly awesome; quite possibly the best bear in the history of bears. And he has no clothes. I don't know if that will keep him from the hands of young Africans or if his naturalist charms will be a selling point.
I want to finish him by the end of the week! Wah! There's so much finishing to him, too, because I want to make him just perfect.

In other news, it snowed today! In Rochester! I know... don't laugh at my naivete. Or my inability to use accents on my mac.

Loving the two hears at the bottom of the image: do you see them? :) That was after my 8 AM class, I saw that and thought that maybe today will be good. Below is a close-up of the snow molesting a certain knitter as she walked to class.

Even the Tiger was overcome! Really, I don't think these photos do justice to the fluffy snow. As I came back to my dorm, I looked down, and it looked like that fake snow made out of spun felt that my grandma used to use to put expensive replicas of a small town on during Christmas.

Happy New Year!

Eh, my new year has been full of drama so far, not that I'm complaining! I finished one project, but I can't talk about it yet, top secret.

I also had a cool new year's post with all my knitting projects from the past year, but I lack photoshop... Curses! Maybe next year...

Oh, and I re-arranged my room!


And the sweetie and I planted some narcissus bulbs. Hopefully they'll bloom for me. If they don't bloom in ten weeks (by the end of the quarter,) I can send a letter to someone in Holland and supposedly, they'll give me money. Either way, I win!

Most Wonderful Time of the Year

For Christmas, luck sent my family a kitten! His name is Jackson, and he's the cutest creature in the whole wide world.


And here he is drinking out of my water cup. He has his own water bowl! Why does he steal mine!? D:

Bragging Rights

So, Onigiri's been featured on Lime and Violet's Daily Chum :) I'm super excited, because that's one of the few blogs that I follow quasi-religiously.

Woo for me! That said, I've been sewing some gifties for... whoever. Really, it's sad how different they look from the sketches I made :(

Here's a really bad cell-phone-teaser-picture:

HUH!? What!?!!!!! z0mg!!

I got into the Honorable Mention Gallery for Knitty's Calendar! Really! Truly! I'm like, about to die...

I can't believe it :3 Why didn't anyone tell me!?

Well, here I am... <3

I'm a little bummed that I didn't get actually ON the Knitty site... and I thought honorable mentions got like, listed and linked to somewhere... but, oh well ... I'm still super proud!

... Painlessly Romantic Good Life

Okay, okay, I WANT TO KNIT. It's not even funny anymore. It may be funny to those of you who like to laugh at drug addicts, but to me, we've exited the realm of funny and we are now entering the realm of FREAKING OUT.

Here's a brief timeline of my life since I've stopped knitting.

Oct. 20th, Day 0
My arm hurts strangely. I decide maybe if I put down my knitting and go to bed, perhaps it will feel better in the morning.

Oct 21st, Day 1
Morning- I decide to go to the health center before class; the visit takes me from 8AM to 11AM. The nurse tells me to come back at 2:30. My arm feels like it may fall off if I clench anything tightly. At 3, I see a doctor. She laughs at me, says my arm is very badly sprained, gives me a worksheet, asks if I need help quitting smoking, and sends me on my way. I cry.
At 6PM I call Dr. Mom. She informs me that I need to put ice on my wrist, and not use it until it stops hurting. When asked for a timeline, she gives me "Friday."

Oct 22nd, Day 2- Oct 25th, Day 5
I buy a brace, ice packs, and use about $10 in ibuprofen. I stop taking notes in class and master one-handed typing. I use my new one-handed-typing skills to browse ravelry. Ravelry queue increases 75%, then drops, then increases again. The sweetie tells me that when I can knit again, he'll take me yarn shopping. I see this as a beautiful self-sacrifice, or at a pitiful sign that I will never knit again, I cannot decide which.

Oct 26th, Day 6
Dr. Mom makes a telephone diagnosis. I probably won't be allowed to knit until Winter break, Nov. 14th. This timeline depresses me, but I spend half the day online anyway, looking up patterns.

Oct 27th, Day 7- Nov 1st, Day 12
The week passes quickly. I begin to doodle again in small steps, mostly things to knit. By Day 10, there are enough items in my Ravelry queue to last the rest of my life. I try to convince my significant other if he will learn to knit so that I can at least live through him, if I am never going to knit again. He doesn't take this well.

Nov 8th, Day 20
The strangest thing happens. I'm waiting outside the restrooms for the boyfriend to come out, and I find myself moving my hands as if I'm knitting. Sweetie stares at me as if I've gone insane.

Nov 11th, Day 23
Ravelry queue is, for the most part, deleted.

Nov 14th, Day 26
Dr. Mom dictates that the Winter break will be spent "relaxing," and by relaxing I suspect she means "NOT KNITTING." This causes me considerable stress. I begin to make a yarn will.

Nov 15th, Day 27
I go to the yarn shop and drop a few dollars, pretending that I might knit something with what I buy, even though it's blantantly obvious that one skien of sock yarn would make a very bad sweater, and that super bulky cotton-eyelash blend will make someone very uncomfortable socks.

Home... SWEET! HOME!

My break officially began today, when I got home from school.

And... my hand still feels like it's been slammed in a car door.

It's like you're telling me I can't BREATHE.

So, this past week has been incredibly frustrating for me. My right wrist has been pretty much immobile, I've been forced to eat tons of food while taking about 1800 mg of ibuprofen a day, and on top of that, I can't knit, write, draw, or even really carry things. These experiences have helped me learn a lot about myself, including:

• I am a tactile learner; I learn best when I take notes and outline readings.
• I can only eat so much food in a day before I feel miserable.
• I knit when I'm stressed out.

So, what do these things tell you? I'm sick to my stomach, my grades are dropping, and I'm really irritable... at anything,

I feel like a huge chunk of my life has been taken away. I can't knit; I can't draw out ideas for knit things; I can't write a depressing poem about how I feel; heck, it hurts to write up homework assignments. Knitting is just the tip of the iceberg: basic functions like brushing my hair or eating something that requires a knife and fork are painful to do, and I don't really want to stoop to the level of forcing people around me to help me take care of myself. It's not like I'm dying of cancer...

Moral of story: pity me. And, if you don't see a really happy post sometime next month with the subject matter along the lines of "Yay, look, I'm knitting!" Assume that I've committed suicide from being utterly and totally useless.

Spur O' the Moment Knitting

All right! So, I usually spend quite some time thinking out projects. There's usually I doodle I have in my head for a few months. Then, I spend about a week or so shopping around for yarn that will work. After that, swatching, and casting on, and tearing off the cast on because I don't like how it looks, and on and on.

If I had to label myself, I'd say I was a perfectionist knitter. Slow, steady, and meticulous. The past twenty-four hours, however, have seen a drastic change in this routine.

I'm making a hat. From a pattern. Online. Guess when I bought the yarn? Yesterday at around 1. Guess when I cast on for the project? Yesterday at around 6. (I probably would've cast on earlier, but I was at the Strong Museum of Play... don't snicker. I'm a big person! ) Oh which leads me to... PHOTO PLUG!!!1:







Anyway, back on topic. Guess how far I am on the hat? About 2/3! What's come over me? Maybe it's the fact that I'm not really challenging myself with this pattern. The needles are big and the yarn is bulky.

It just feel so strange... I'm so used to size 1's and 2's, this size 8 hat seems like it's knitting itself!

Hopefully it'll be done by Tuesday :)

Crazy College Crazy

So, between classes going at 200 mph, drama out the llama, and a sea of sunken expectations, I have not been blogging ever so much lately. Hopefully that will change, when the industry picks up a little (I haven't found very many good patterns lately...)

Anyway, I've been knittin' up a storm, and I've got some awesome projects underway. I'm still waiting for 11/11, when I can order more sock for my Dude pattern but I've also got several other patts in the works, most of them socks. The one I'm working on now is AMAZING; I love it so much. I've also got a Hat from a magazine for a certain someone, that I wanted finished like 3 WEEKS ago, but alas that never happened... for depressing reasons, it was separated from me. Hopefully we'll be reunited this weekend, though.

My sweater is coming along at a decent pace... but I hate it. Really. I'm past the honeymoon period, and into that awkward year before an inevitable divorce where we sleep in separate rooms. I FORCE myself to work on this sweater, only because I don't want to work on it anymore, I just want to be done. It's bulky, and I want it off the needles. I'm not even sure if I'll actually end up wearing it at this rate... I might jsut give it away. BLEH!

Plus, I've started to think that the bobbles look like genitalia... *twitch* Maybe I just have a dirty mind...

Take it apart to put it together right.

I've not had a good week. Knitting wise, my Dude socks are in need of yarn, and my needles got bent. Life wise, I'm back at home due to another death in the family.

My uncle and godfather died on Wednesday, to the surprise of almost every being in the universe. It's so depressing, because he was the nicest person I knew- no lie. He and my aunt were high school sweethearts, almost at their 30th anniversary. He was going to turn 49 on October 5th. My aunt and cousin are so heartbroken, it's horrible to be in the same city, and even my other uncle, who is always very quiet and guarded has been crying since I talked to him on the phone Wednesday night.

My grandfather is also sick in the hospital with a staph infection in his leg.

I feel like my whole life is in crumbles. On top of it all, my family wants me to go to the funeral, which I won't be able to attend because of an exam. If I miss the exam, my teacher won't allow me to make it up, and I'll lose 30% of my grade (meaning it will be almost impossible to pass the course, unless I have a perfect score on the rest of my tests.) I tried to tell my family I couldn't make it, but I feel like I'm abandoning them. My uncle was so kind to me my whole life, and now I'm skipping his funeral because of someone I met two weeks ago.

Hopefully, I'll be able to drive back up to Rochester and take the test early. I don't think so though... I feel like I'll fail the test because I'm so upset, no matter if I take it tomorrow (after driving and crying for two hours) or Monday at 10 AM, just as my brother's helping to carry the casket out of the rain and down the aisle.

Orienting Myself

So... I'm officially in college.  And I officially don't like it as much as I would like sitting at home and having internet.  No pictures, either, since I left my camera cord at home. 

More good news, and a little bad.

One of my designs is going to be published! Metapostmodern knitting sent me a message. I didn't win their sock contest challenge, I ran up!

I thought I'd publish some more sock designs. I don't have my favorite design, it's not on the computer anymore D:

Here's the design that's going to be published next spring, "Dude"

Crappy picture, sorry about that.

Here are my other babies. Please don't copy my designs, but if you'd like me to knit them for you, I will! The only thing keeping the socks on the paper is lack of yarn, really :<


The bad news is, I'm leaving Thursday for college! Waaaah, I'm kind of scared. Unknittably scared. That's pretty scared, for those of you who knit when you're nervous.

Renewed Inspiration

Summertime is a pretty lazy time for me, as far as crafting goes. I've been starting and stopping designs as well as individual projects, and the whole thing's been a drag. Work has consumed the vast majority of my waking hours, along with preparing for college. But a wrong turn onto a parkway renewed my knitting spirit.

I ended up stopping at the Wegmans in my town for coffee milk and sushi, and wandered into the magazine section. There, I browsed the knitting mags in an attempt to consume a fraction of the three hours of spare time I have between dropping my mom off at work and driving myself to work.

Vogue knitting usually isn't my thing, which is why I was a little surprised when I dropped it into my blue basket. Maybe my tastes have matured, or maybe they've become more hip... whatever the case, I brought it home. Now, I plan to use the rest of those three hours knitting.