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I am still alive. I was not in fact flown off by the hoards of mosquitos the other night. I did, however, flee from my home under cover of weekend and went back to my parent's house. I don't know if it was the cold of the weekend, the lack of food I left here, or divine providence, but when I returned there was not a single squeeter left. Knock on wood.

I have been religiously keeping up with my finishing of UFO's lately. This week I finished the Long Socks from Erika Knight's Classic Style. I started them over the summer because I'm trying to find patterns that I like that will work on my Ultimate Sweater Machine. These socks are worked back and forth on straight needles with only side shaping and are worsted weight wool so they qualify. All in all they were very fast to hand knit and pleasant looking. my only issue is that no matter how I try to seam them (they have a seam along the toe, on either side of the heel and all the way up the inside edge) the seam is less stretchy than the knitting. This is a little annoying at first, especially at the toe. I have been wearing them around the house a little bit and I think that it may just take a little getting used to. I still plan to machine knit them eventually.


Speaking of machine knitting, I am learning a lot in my Machine Knitwear Design class. The machines we use are far more sophisticated than my USM so it's taking a little getting used to. It is totally different from handknitting. The only problem is that now I may be getting too used to the more complicated machine so everytime I go to start something on the USM I just get fed up before the first row is knit. It's like going from broadband back to dial up. In this metaphor handknitting would be the card catalog at the library, a totally different media with a whole other ambiance and purpose etc. My first project was to knit a " stuffed critter" using the different types of increases and decreases. I named mine "Lumpy" for self-evident reasons.

In honor of all the stash busting and 9 month strict yarn diet (or yarn anorexia) I have been on I ordered from Knit Picks last week. I have never actually touched any knitpicks yarn so I was skeptical. It arrived this week and I must say I am very pleased. Everything is of very good quality (and the Alpaca Cloud is beyond good quality).

I plan to use the Merino Style to knit a fair Isle yoke cardigan,

the Wool of the Andes for a possible felted jacket,

the Shine for maybe some gloves,

and the Alpaca cloud for a small lace scarf. Very exciting.

I've also been working an obscene amount on my teaching certification. I will not discuss it much here beyond saying that (some of) my professors are either criminally unorganized morons or sadists. Either way... please kill me.

HELP ME!

HELP HELP I'M BEING EATEN ALIVE!!! This is a non-knitting crisis but a crisis none the less. It all stems from my lifelong feud with sliding doors. The other day my old shoddy sliding patio door fell off the track. This in itself is not so bad, the weather is quite tolerable and I will figure out how to fix it eventually. The problem is that now my apartment is crawling with mosquitos who have wriggled through what I thought was an insignificant crack in the door. The place is infested. I have been religiously taking out ALL garbage every few hours, not leaving ANY food unsealed and pouring out all standing drinks. I taped over the cracks in the door and actually VACCUMED THE BUGS OFF MY CEILING. I don't know what else to do but bug-bomb the place, which sounds like a really extreme, unpleasant, and unhealthy situation. Do any of you know any other ways to get mosquitos out of an apartment? PLEASE HELP!!!!

Le Camera.... She is back!

Well, I had a strike of MaGuyver genius this weekend. The problem that was keeping my camera out of operation was a swollen dead battery. As the battery was a flat sided box I could not figure out how to grip it and pull it out. I tried pliers, unbent paper clips... all sorts of things. But this weekend I tried, of all things, good old duct tape. With a lot of shimmying, sticking and unsticking I coaxed out the battery and found that yes, it wa just old and swollen. Popped in a new one and Here we are!
So to start off I want to share with you the entryway to my brand new home. I love coming home to this. These are mostly stash yarns that I can't for the life of me figure out what to knit into but still love dearly. So, I put them on display, now they are not a waste!

Now, onto my stashbusting projects...
I ran out of yarn on this hat last winter and it was just barely grazing my ears. I had lots of people try it on to see who it would fit comfortably...and no cinderella. So, I pulled it out, added a contrasting seed stitch brim and Ta-Dah, a functioning hat. Into the X-mas pile with it!
Next up was another yarn shortage casualty. I had knit the body and head of this Bobbi Bear when I realized that I didn't have enough pink yarn left to make the arms. So... I found some of the same yarn in yellow in my stash and trimmed off as much pink yarn tails as possible. I knit the first 2 inches of each arm with yellow and used the pink tails to knit the tips or hands. Then I added the yellow sweater body. But Alas, no pink left for ears. Still trying to figure out what to do about that. When I figure out the ears I will also pick a something cool to put on the sweater.
Then I actually got started on (Dun Dun Duuhh....) X-mas Knitting!!! yes, it's September, yes, it's coming, yes, we need to think about it. This is a mohawk hat for my brother. Pretty self explanitory. I still need to add more green hair and then give it a haircut so the mohawk stands up better.
AND NOW.... The prayer shawl/scarf tandem project.
I'm using Dream In Color "Smooshy" sock yarn in Cloud Jungle for Grandpa's scarf. I'm still playing around with designs. I think I may switch over to a gator/muffler deal to get more warmth for the yardage.
This is a closeup shot of Grandma's shawl. It is all Koigu mitred squares, which by the way are much too addicting. I could make mitred squares forever. It looks like stained glass to me and I love it. I think I'm going to get a fancy silver shawl pin to go with it.
This is a wider shot of the same shawl. As you can tell, it's pretty small for a shawl but it is warm and comfy. I added the short row collar to make it stay up around the neck under grandma's coat. It makes more sense when you see it on a person. I will take a picture of her wearing it when I give it to her.

Anyways, see... I do still live in a visual world. Now I'm going back to homework, yet again. Try not to miss me!

Back to School

Ok, so I have officially begun school and let me tell you... the game has changed. I am in my final semester as a college student (next semester I will be student teaching full time so it doesn't really count) and my professors are really throwing it at us from all angles. I have only been to 2 classes so far and I am already overwhelmed. Normally I am a fairly confident student and also normally the first week or so is just fluff. "Get to know you activities", "What did you do all summer", small essays and fairly painless reading assignments. Not So this year. A project that would have been a final last semester is suddenly a "due second class" assignment. I'm freaking out a little (lot).
But it's ok! Tomorrow I actually have a class with the famous Sharon Shoji (published frequently in Interweave Knits). She is teaching my Machine Knitwear Design class and I am so stoked!!!! I really need to get my camera working to show you all the fun stuff we will be doing in there.
Well, can't post much more...back to the homework hamster wheel.

Stash Busting Weekend

Ok, so I'm all moved in to my new apartment. I'm so happy!! I have moved 6 times in the last 3 years and now I am where I plan to stay for AT LEAST the next 3 years, perhaps longer. As soon as I got my mother out of here my friend Katy and I decided to tackle a few home repairs. One of which was the closet light fixture that fell out of my ceiling. Well, after much fuse-box fumbling and such we connected what seemed like all the wires... except that elusive grounding wire.... Well, turns out that's kind of important. The was a Very. Big. Spark. Then all the power in my apartment blew. Fun. So yeah, turns out a BFA does not qualify us to be electricians.
Anyways, once everything was mostly unpacked and put away properly and I was all alone for a while I decided to spread all my stash and WIPS out in my living room and really take a good hard look at it. I put together good portion of my acrylics from when I was first starting out into a bag to donate. organized the rest by fiber type and such. Then I got to work finishing stuff. I mostly finished a Bobbi Bear with a common problem... I had knit the entire head and body and then run out of yarn. Not nearly enough to finish the arms. So... I stuffed it and knit most of each arm with a contrasting color, finished the tips of the arms off in the MC and then used the CC to knit a little sweater body for it... now its a pink bear wearing a little yellow sweater. this would have been perfect but I used up the very tail ends of the pink yarn on the "hands"... not enough for ears. So, she looks like a naked mole rat. I refuse to buy a whole nother ball of pink yarn just for the ears, so I'll have to think of something else...
After I hit the wall on the bear I moved on to a project I've been meaning to do for a long time. I am making a black ribbed earflap hat for my brother and then adding a neon rug-hooked mohawk. I am about halfway done with that too. Doing pretty well for just 24 hours.
The prayer shawl for grandma is all knitted up so now I'm just darning in ends forever and ever. I think I will also be adding a ribbed collar to it so it can be worn comfortably under a coat as it is pretty small for a shawl. I am still playing around with the design for the corresponding grandpa scarf. My camera is still out of commission so I'm afraid I can't show you any pictures... Maybe soon?