I am back!

Well, about three hours of work and I got my customizations done. I even organized things a bit better, so as friends have said, perhaps it was for the best. Still can't figure out how to get those poor sheepy on the right side of the page so they match the left though!

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SON OF A BITCH. Blogger Somehow deleted 3/4ths of my template. With all of my customizations. And the sheep with needles. And all of my favorite place buttons. And all of the links to my favorite patterns. After having a total nervous breakdown and writing a angry/desprate e-mail to the help desk, then realizing they couldn't give a shit, I resigned myself to starting from scratch. So now I have to go in and one by one add back in three months of perfecting my blog to my exact customizations. This really sucks. However, now I will be saving a copy of my template to a word document periodically so this does not EVER HAPPEN AGAIN. I know, I know I should have been doing that all along. So it will be a long night at the computer.

Maryella Done!

Maryella Bracelet is finished! As everyone said, it did not take that long once I... a) got used to the tiny needles, b) got a good system going for sliding the beads efficiently using one hand, and c) got the hang of the pattern and into the rhythm. I really like it, origionally not psyched on the striping yarn but now I think it's cool! I'll probabally make another, maybe black with black iridescent beads?

I can't even knit

Eric and I have been "sick" for the past two days. I say "sick" because while we're well enough to go to school, do stuff around the house, and generally putter, neither of us has the energy/attention span to actually get anything accomplished. Just doing my blog update has taken off and on all day. I can't even knit more than a row at a time. But, I feel well enough that I can't just lapse into couch-coma. At least thurs and fri are teacher inservice days so I can stay home with no guilt. Unfortunatly I have other things (like a paper) to do, but can't rally the attention span to do them. This sucks.
One the bright side, my LYS wants to buy my needle bags, we just have to decide on price (aka I need to figure out how much I need to make on them). That's exciting though!
I also went to Goodwill to try to find some recyclable sweaters. Of course I didn't find any sweaters but came home with three new t-shirts (one's a Dr. Seuss shirt!!!). I'm not sure why I want to recycle a sweater and then dye it cause I have no idea what to make out of the yarn, but I
1. want to try frogging a sweater
2. want to try dying yarn
3. am sure that once I have a sweaters worth of pretty yarn, could use it for something...
I figure it's $5 spent for a multi-day adventure of fun. We'll see. I think the Zip Cardagan in my wishful thinking list in the right bar would be a good candidate.

Oh Dear...

Approximatly 1.7 seconds after this photo was taken, Fluffy sank his teeth into the retched ball monster. A flurry of pastel fuzzies and stringies finally cleared to reveal about $22 worth of yarn tangled in a ghastly heap. This also left the photographer (obviously not the knitter) with some explaining to do. ...yea honey, I'm really, really sorry the cat exploded all of your yarn, I was trying to take a picture to put in the internet...
Yea, sure. He's screwed.

Marylla, itsie bitsie

As long as I was taking pics, I figures I'd toss my progress on Maryella into the mix. What's done so far didn't take too long (a couple hours) but I'm getting faster now that I'm more used to the needles. And fortunatly I have a very small wrist!

Introducing...

These are the three needle bags I made. They are actually pretty quick as long as I don't run into any unexpected issues (like accidentally buying fabric that has some lycra in in). I'll probabally bring them down to the shop wednesday or thursday, hopefully they like them! I'm not sure how much I need them to be to be profitable for me, but there can't be more than $5 worth of materials in them. I guess I'll see what they say at the shop...

Yes, I can sew on a button

I had my sewing machine class yesterday with my new Viking Huskvarna that Eric got me for christmas. I will admit to feeling a bit snobby-in-a-good-way as the other ladies only had Whites...but hey, I figure I put in my time on the ole singer, I deserve a kick-ass machine now!!!
The class was not very advanced, but I learned things like:
* I can only use Viking bobbins, not my cheepo Walmart ones
* Buying cheep thread is okay sometimes, and BADBAD other times
* I can both make a button hole AND sew on the button with the machine
* There is no machine that will serge nicely, unless it is a serger
* I have fancy feet to do all sorts of things more advanced than sewing in a straight line
* I can sew things like silk and tulle (ya know, for my ballerina skirt) without having my machine eat the fabric...feed dogs are adjustable!

So all in all it wasvery interesting. While I was there I got the rest of the fabric for my knitting needle holders. I'm making up three to bring in to my knitting store, as they said they sometimes buy that type of thing to sell in the shop. I'm pretty excited about the colors I got, I'll definitly post the finished products cause they're purtty! So now I suppose I should do that. Can't knit now, Maryella bracelet is making me a bit knutty and I need more coffee first, Eric's sweater band I'm gonna work on later today, and I'm still waiting for my new ADDIS needles to arrive so I can start on the new design project I'm working in. Oh yea and I have some school reading to do in there somewhere...

Fingerless Gloves Done!

So I finished my second pair of fingerless gloves! They were super fun and easy to make, though I needed to be a bit flexible due to the skein colorways not matching up. Okay, flexible is not the correct term, let's say particular...
But they match well just like the first pair and are super comfy! Took less than one skein of silk garden, but I actually used the second half of two skeins so they would match better. Super Yummy...thank you Knitwit!!, my favorite LYS, for the great free pattern!

Tooooooooooooo many beads

I introduce the Maryella bracelet. This is the pic from the pattern, my colors will be different. And I have begun it...I threaded 1,409 beads. Size 11 seed beads. On yarn (and I use the word loosely) the size of my dental floss. These beads will be wrangled (or knit) via needles the size of turkey-trussing skewers. I do believe that I will go insane. On the bright side: if I survive, I'll have a kick-ass bracelet to wear!!! So yeay!

I am also in process of a new design project, more on that later...but it is a hat.

A Whole New Level of Luxury

Well, I have entered an entire new level of knitting extacy...due to the quantity of reading Eric has to do, I am occationally at home, sharing a quiet living room with him as he slogs through bio texts. This is boring for me. Our living room is not big, and it's like being at the library. So I spend a lot of time knitting. And now...with the addition of MY NEW LAPTOP (thank you uncle sam for giving us good tax returns) I can sit and watch a movie with headphones and knit away the night while darling husband gets smarter! And we're in the same room! And we're not killing each other!!! This, for two grad students, is a very good thing. So I not only finished Eric's sleeves for the navy sweater, I finished a pair of the fabulous fingerless gloves ( a secret gift), and am half way done with my own gloves!! It is a good week in my world. Hurrah.

A Pair of Gloves...kind of

So in the past time, I actually finished two of the fingerless gloves. Of course as Becky warned, each glove came out different because the color range runs through the skein x1, one was one color and one was the other. The second ball of the same colorway will be interesting and hopefully color-coordinated. This is another AMAZING set of gloves...