My Halls Are Decked!

Although I still haven't unpacked all my things, we decorated for Christmas last weekend and I'm so excited.  We got our own live tree, ornaments, etc etc etc.  We even have the glade plugins in a Christmas theme! I haven't done any crafty stuff, really, but I still thought I'd share. 

First up was the tree, of course.  Boyfriend wanted a teeny tiny one in a pot, but I managed to convince him to get a bigger one in a tree stand.  It's still small - exactly my height, but small.  Here's a size comparison:

We went to Walmart, Target, the Dollar Store, and Home Depot to get all the lights, tinsel, and glitz.  I really wanted mistletoe and a nativity, and found a nativity at Home Depot.  I got bells to hang up in the doorway...

... Little bulbs for my lavendar plant...

We searched and searched for mistletoe, but couldn't find any at any of the places we went.  Luckily, my mom sent a care package of Christmas ornaments, candy canes, and... MISTLETOE! It looked like someone has spray painted it green, and half of it crumbled apart when we tired to take it out of the box, but gosh darn it we put it up! It makes me think of Charlie Brown.

I also made a little display on one of the shelveswith old jars of pasta sauce, candy canes, and extra tiny bulbs that we couldn't fit on the tree.  Oh, and pretzel M&M's. 

Here's our tree in all it's glory! The presents underneath are for Boyfriend, his birthday is today.

And one from last night:

How are your Christmas/Holiday preparations going? 

DAL Winter 2012 Mood Board

The next round of DAL has started, and although I don't have much time, I think I'm going to participate in this one! There are two themes - Steampunk, and Elements.  I made the steampunk mood board, and really, I like it better than the other.  So that will probably be my focus.

I'm excited to see what everyone thinks up for this round! :)  You can click the image for a larger view.

Almost There

My grad school days are almost over! I've finished every paper, taken every test, and will be moving out of my on campus apartment this weekend! All that's left is my graduate project, the final boss before I defeat my degree.

I wish I could say that I felt enthusiastic about it.  When I first started my project, I was excited and optimistic, but my research area is very young and there are dead ends everywhere.  I don't have the time to do the primary research that I needed for my original project; then came revision two and three and four and now I've lost count on how many times my proposal's been rewritten.  Six months just isn't enough time, that's the lesson that I've been learning.

So I've been knitting at my scarf during classes and while reading papers and when I need to sit and breathe.  I've used up half my yarn, and the scarf is 30 inches long - so it will end up being about five feet.  I hope that's long enough for boyfriend! I'm not incredibly excited about how the pattern came out - I kind of wanted the stitches to look different. I think next time I'll use a smoother yarn and larger needles.

I also put some scales on a hedgie.  My roommate asked for one at the beginning of the quarter and I think that she forgot - I hope that I get to surprise her! Hooks and Needles is having a winter sale again (though I won't be around to see it :( ) but since I paid my dues for a year I still get to participate!  During the last sale I was kind of a hedgehog sweatshop, and after the initial nightmares about needing to make more hedgehogs, I actually started to like it. 

If you had told me four years ago that I would make the same pattern over and over again, I would have laughed.  But there's something about these hedgies - they're just too cute. And each one is a little different.  This one makes me think of gingerbread houses, with the sienna scales and white thread.

It's the little things!

Half an FO

Okay, okay, it's not technically an FO, but I felt so proud that I had to share my single sock.

Here it is, the middle of Socktoberfest, and I've got one sock that's taken me 7 weeks to knit.  Lame, right? Whatever.  I know the trials and tribulations this sock has seen.  The night classes in the college of business as I curse myself for putting off all my electives until the last term of school.  Protip: most majors don't offer all of the fun electives in one term, so space them out or else you'll be stuck in the College of Business, where the terms are made up and the professor is always right.

Anyway, angst aside, the sock fits slightly better than my last pair! At least, it's not sagging around my ankles, and the afterthought heel looks great, even though it's a bit tight... I have so many heel issues.  One day, I'll find the perfect heel.  I have faith.  Next time, I'm going to pick up a couple more stitches along the edges of the heel.  I only picked up two this time, and hopefully two more on each side will give me the ease that I need.

I think I'm going to do an afterthought heel from now on whenever I have variegated yarn like this.  I just think it looks so much better! I wish I had done that for my Kaffe Fasset socks.  Maybe one day I'll come across some Kaffe Fasset yarn again and get another chance. :P  I'm not going to try and look for some, though... I have too much yarn! (I know, this isn't a real thing, but I'm going to complain about it anyway and say I'm going to not buy any more but... just you wait.)

It's the middle of the night, but I've had coffee to get me through my aforementioned business class. So I'm a little hyper.  I hope this post doesn't come across as mentally deranged.

Treat Yourself

Yesterday, amid a ridiculously stressful situation my Dad told me that I needed to "take a few deep breaths and treat yourself."

Well, today I stopped at the organic market down the street from my school and bought this stuff:

It seriously WAS a treat.  If you've never had fromage blanc, I highly recommend it.  I tried it at a farmer's market about a month ago and all I knew it as was "sweet goat cheese that you eat with dessert." It's so delicious!

Then, I started thinking about all the other treats that I give myself.  It seems like everyday I do a little thing to "treat" myself - not something big or expensive, but just something that I'd like to do.

1.) When I bought groceries last week, I bought a bouquet of flowers for $6.  Yep, those flowers are a week old! I have a ton of special tricks to stretch cut flowers :P

2.) A bit of expensive chocolate that has witty writing on the label... Isn't it true though!?

3.) I also like to describe the sunrise to myself as I walk to work.  When I travel to work I leave the house before sunrise, and watch the sunrise as I drive east to work.  My favorite was Tuesday, where the dark clouds slowly moved north, revealing the orange and red sky.  It was like watching the curtains get pulled aside at the start of a ballet.

4.) Reading blogs on my phone in the in-between times during my day.  Walking to class, in the elevator, whatever.  By the way... blogs that only display previews in their RSS feeds are obnoxious.  Why do people do that? It means that I essentially can't read your blog.  I was good enough friends with someone or liked the blog enough I would click through, right? Apparently not. I just skip right over it and never read it.

5.) Of course, there's also knitting time. I don't know what I would do if I couldn't knit and watch my favorite TV shows.

What do you do to treat yourself, Internet? I want ideas!

An Update

It's midterm week here at school, and I actually have midterm exams! Two in one day, actually, on Monday.  On top of this I still have work and my grad project and my second job and a mountain of tiny things that I can't believe I'm still doing like going to the gym and washing my clothes and showering.  Yes, it's so bad I'm wondering things like "It's Saturday, I bet if I put my hair back in a ponytail no one will notice that I didn't shower today and then I could use that time to fill out that job application."

So now that I've got that "I'm a grad student pity me" rant/excuse for not being more active out of the way, I can show you my knitting stuff! Most of my knitting has been in class, meaning the only thing I can really work on is my plain old stockinette socks - which I've made progress on, but now I'm at an impasse!

The only thing I have left to do on it is cast off and work the afterthought heel - and both require actually looking at what you're doing.  So, instead of sitting down at knitting club and doing that, I sat down at knitting club and cast on for a new project! A scarf for Dan. 

It's going to be in a herringbone pattern made from knits and purls.  I managed to not actually knit herringbone three different times during the two-hour meeting because my head just isn't on straight. So, I added making a chart to my to-do list today.  Maybe then I will have 4 patterns that are pretty much publishable instead of three...  

Help my Knitting Club Raise Money!

Hey guys!

I haven't knit anything worthwhile, but my college knitting club, Hooks and Needles, is taking part in a contest through my school for funds.  They're planning on using these funds to buy things like yarn, hooks, and needles to teach students how to knit. 

If you have a sec today, click here and "Like" our photo on the Clubs Facebook page and share with people! It helps bring knitting to people that otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to do so!

They're also just a great bunch of people. I'm still convinced that I would have no friends (outside of the Internet) if it weren't for them! So, please help them out :)

Click "Like" on this photo to help earn money to teach others to knit and crochet.

Beachy Stress Socks

I told myself that I was going to use my new square needles for my next socks, and I did... but I had a major problem.  It wasn't the yarn, which was this gorgeous varigated with colors that made me think of the warm summer beaches that I've left behind - it was the needles! They're too small, and the resulting fabric is just tight and not very fun for socks.

So, I recast on with some addi turbos that I got from a friend that wanted to unload some knitting stuff before she moved, and things have been going well.  It's just plain stockinette - perfect for class.  Though, I only have 8 hours of class each week, and lately I haven't had time to go to knitting club.

The sock is still becoming nice and long though - I'm going to do an afterthought heel so I don't have to worry about budgeting free time to turn the heel.  If I do that, the sock will sit on my desk until the end of the quarter!

In a way, it's ok that most of my friends have left and that Hooks and Needles is full of strangers.  I'm so busy and grumpy that I feel like my head's going to fall off at any given moment.  Thankfully, eveyone else in my apartment is in their last year of school, too, and is working their tails off just as much as me - I think I'd be ridiculously annoyed if that wasn't the case.  I just can't wait to be done with school and move on to the next part of my life!

Darn?

I'm not sure if this is darning, but I'll share this with you anyway.  Ever since I finished my colorful Kaffe Fasset socks, I've been wearing them a lot.  Sadly, though, I took them out of the sock bath a few weeks ago to find a tiny hole in one of them!

I didn't know what to do, and was in the course of packing, so I put scotch tape over the hole and threw the socks in with my projects.  Thankfully, the hole didn't get any bigger because when I checked it out today, it was only two stitches.

Somehow, the yarn had split and thankfully I caught the hole before it was gigantic.

So, I used my shiny new needles to catch the stitches and keep them from dropping further.

Then, I went into my old sock yarn stash and found the remnant of this project.  I picked off a section that matched the section that broke, and worked my way across the row a bit to anchor the yarn. After that, I kitchnered the loose stitches together and did some more duplicate stitch to anchor the yarn on the other side.

I think that I saved my socks! I've never darned before, but the pictures that I've seen, the socks look kind of gross looking.  Soon, I won't even be able to tell that I mended them!

Finally - Finished My Dragonfly Socks!

They only took me all summer!

Project: Dragonfly Socks from Cavyshops

Yarn: Eskimimi Knits Broccoli Sockoli

I'm happy with how they turned out, though the heel is a little weirdly placed - it slides off my foot.  Oh well, you win some you lose some - I'm still going to wear them.  Can anyone tell me what I did wrong? I think that I just made the heel flap too long. I guess it's just taking a while for me to make socks that fit me well.  Now is the time for that - the only projects I really have time to do are stress socks. 

I still don't see the dragonflies! Maybe because I k tbl on some stitches instead of just plain k them?  I thought it made the pattern look better when it stretched out.

Last Leg of School!

It seems crazy, but I haven't posted in almost two months! That's mostly because I got an awesome new internship in addition to my other job, and because I'm almost done with grad school! I moved into my room on Sunday. So, by Thanksgiving, I will have entered the real world.  I'm kind of excited, because this time I won't be travelling around, sleeping on people's couches - I will have my own apartment, and a car, maybe a cat... etc. etc.

Another reason (besides being ridiculously busy) that I haven't blogged is that I haven't really knit over break. I chugged away on my dragonfly socks, maybe getting a row in here or there, but I didn't make any real progress.  I finished my giant red sweater and it looks hideous, which is disenheartening.  I have a bunch of designs that are ready to be published, they just need one or two little things. (Or, erm, testing.)

BUT, I am starting to knit again.  I knit all through my business class on Monday night (while I was missing a Hooks and Needles meeting...) and I am - EEK - finally on the toe of my second Dragonfly sock! I've also been making hedgehogs. Lots of hedgehogs.  I'm not sure why, maybe it's a sign of my growing mental instability.

Mainecation Photos

So, last night I finally got around to sorting through my favorite pictures from last week.  I thought I'd share them with you guys!

I really like this self portrait for some reason, though, I have a small place in my heart for photos of me taking photos.

The best sunrise:

The best sunset:

Fourth of July Fireworks:

Adorable puppy named Elliot:

Oh, and halfway through the vacation I found out that my camera actually has a setting that imitates tilt shift, so I kind of went crazy with that!

Really, the number of tilt-shifty photos is enough to make someone suspicious that I only SAID I went to Maine, when really I spent a week in my basement making scale models of Portland landscapes. The area is just beautiful, and I would have a lot more photos but most of them were old houses. Definitely on my list of "places I want to live" (which isn't very long, really.)

Extended Vacation Sock Knitting

Whelp, it seems that due to a general SNAFU, I'm stuck in New England for the week, mulling about my boyfriend's apartment.  It's okay, though, because there's an Internet connection that I can use to work on my grad project, which is beginning to consume every waking moment of my life.

But, I have a little something to show for it!

Yep, I finished my first sock in the Dragonfly Socks KAL! I grafted the toe and cast on for the second sock while I ate lunch and mulled over my current troubles.  Someone once told me that it's good luck to cast on for the second sock in the same sitting that you finish the first it - anyone else hear of that?

On an unrelated note, the carpet in this apartment is oddly fascinating...

... I need to take more microbreaks. I'm hoping to finish the second sock this week, but knitting while reading journal articles is a lot harder than I expected.

Checking in from New England

Wow, Maine is absolutely amazing! I'm staying on a small island off Portland with my boyfriend's grandmother.  I seriously want to live in Portland some day, and the view from the island is beautiful.

And, the house I'm staying at is also beautiful.  The bathroom that I use at night should be on Pinterest.

I've done some knitting, mostly on the ride up - which was hot and muggy (the car had no AC) and I'm almost done with the leg of my dragonfly socks... but I hit another snag.

The yarn turned my sweaty fingers slightly green!

Okay, looking at the picture, it's really hard to see.  Maybe the heat and sun caused me to hallucinate.

Anyway, the internet in the hotel we're staying at now is really crummy, I'll post a big picdump later this week!