Sock One, Blog Too?

There it is! As I mentioned, I found the sock a little loose, so I unraveled about 6-8 rounds from the toe (until 5 rounds below last yo's) then kitchenered across 16 sts. It makes for a flat-looking toe, but it's much more cosy. I've got almost 2 inches done on the second sock. I love the picot cuff! Actually, I'm so charmed by the whole cuff-and-stitch-pattern combination, I'm thinking of making a shrug based on it. Just a little two sleeves attached across the shoulder blades-type shrug. Probably in a larger needle size, too.

Sorry for the sub-par picture. I was low on batteries and just snapped off a bunch. This was the best of the lot. =)If you click for the large size though, it shows off the stitch pattern nicely. Later I'll try to get one that shows off the modified toe.

Today was supposed to be laundry day (long overdue!) but for starters I can't find my laundry card, and then the phone repair guy was here for two hours! The good news is, my phone and internet work! Bad news... I'm running dangerously low on clean clothes.

Oh yeah, and the felting package from Whimzy Pinzy is in the mail! I'll post a pic as soon as it gets here. The Red Panda Purse is on the shelf, but not forgotten. =)

That's all! =)

I'm Back!

After a painfully short vacation in Ottawa, I'm back in Montreal and, accordingly, at work!

Highlights of my trip were as follows...

Genesis Concert! Not sure if this qualifies as a highlight though. My brother and I, who were raised on Phil Collins, tagged along with our parents, the Genesis fans. Not big enough fans, I guess, since neither of them recognized half the songs! :s Nevertheless, the music was good (if a little indulgent of the musicians, ie. looong instrumental interludes) and the vocals were excellent. The highlight of the show for me was a 10-minute drum-off between Collins and the second drummer(?).

On Monday I had a doctor's appointment which included two (!!) vaccinations and a pap, which was not an awesome way to start the day, but, according to my doctor, "Life sucks and then you die." =) I also discovered that I measure a mere 5'6.5"! If anyone asks though, I stand by my 5'8". I'm not squeamish about needles, but for the rest of the day the muscles in my left arm were too sore to knit! Later that afternoon I finished the first Lombard Street Sock in a dark burgundy colour. I had my mom try it on for size while I had her foot handy. The sock only took a week!! That's a serious improvement on the Monkeys, which took a year on and off. When I got home, though, I tried it on and found it loose (and my foot is bigger than hers), so I might shorten it a bit.

Also of note, I picked up the sewing machine, but haven't unpacked it. I have two books on the go, namely Millenium Hall by Sarah Scott, an 18th century novel about a female utopia, and La Guerre, Yes Sir! by Quebequois writer Roch Carrier. It's for L's Canadian postwar fiction class, but, seeing that it was small (~150 pages) and I recognized the writer, I picked it up and am thoroughly enjoying it!

I'm home home tomorrow (I've been at L's), so I'll try to post some pictures.

Bye for now!

Flashpost

Just a quickety post before my boss gets in this morning...

Cast on a Lombard Street Sock! It's not nearly as unstretchy as I was prepared for, nevertheless, I gauged for 7.5sts/in instead of 8/in, to be safe. The cables in the round are a little tricky, but then, lots of things get a little tricky on dpns. I'm already half-way through the heel flap! This due in large part to L going out two nights in a row.

I bought a felting needle and pad, and, using some Quiviut fibre I picked up in Alberta last year and some cat hair (!) I've been collecting... I made two funny little badges. Pictures... later!

Going home to Ottawa for a few days and a Genesis concert with mom and dad. Read: SEWING MACHINE. I packed in a hurry this morning since I woke up late, but managed to grab the green octagon purse and dinosaur lining to sew while I'm home.

Busy in the toy store because of bad weather, but after 1.5 hrs of many passers-through, no sales. I feel like a heated bus shelter?

I've been reading from the O Henry Prize collection 2003. It's nice to be reading again!

Okay okay gotta go! Bye for now!

Picture Day!

You thought I was just leading you on!

Not only do I have pictures of old fo's and current on-the-go's, I have a brand new not-finished-five-minutes-ago finished object! Voici... Monkey!


In order of appearance, you are looking at: 1. Monkey on my foot, on the table-in-progress (one day, I will finish sanding and staining that table!), 2. me posing with the Mountie (a Playmobil figure just over 5 feet tall), and 3. kitten Nona showing off her sockies!

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Next up... Red Panda Purse! Here you see the schematics (okay, it's a drawing in Crayola markers on scrap paper, but "schematic" sounds niftier) beside the purse base.


It's a basic round, flat purse along the same pattern as my last three purses. The orange base gets wet-felted, as do the knitted triangular ears, while the face and details will be needle-felted on. This will be my first time needle-felting! (Of course, I'll practice first!^^) Miss WhimzyPinzy is preparing me some black and white roving for the needle-felting, and some worsted yarn to match the white. <3 Whimsy! I'm super-excited about this project. Now I just have to keep myself distracted until the roving comes in...

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This one I finished last month. It's an orange, not a beret! The Red Panda Purse will have the exact same base (same wool, too. For some reason the colours look wildly different than in the panda-sketch picture). I listed it on Etsy last night as "Orange you glad!" =P


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Yay! I got through that whole post without swearing! Not that I'm prone to swearing without provocation, buuuuut my computer is virus-riddled and closes all internet windows about every two minutes. If it weren't for Blogger's auto-save and Firefox's "restore session" option, this post never would have happened. Thanks guys! XD

That's all I have the patience for today. Bye! -Erin

Save a Polar Bear!

"Global warming" is a phrase so overused and media-appropriated, it seems to have lost meaning, significance, and any ring of truth. Most people, myself included, are more affected my concrete examples than by general warnings. And nothing could be more affecting than the thought of polar bears going extinct.


In the past ten years, polar bear death rates have been skyrocketing. Polar bears are drowning in record numbers. What does this have to do with global warming? Every year, polar bears migrate, just like birds. Except rather than flying, they have to swim between destinations. Sadly, global warming is decreasing the size of ice masses, and increasing the distance between them. Polar bears now have to swim between 30 and 40 km to their destinations. Increasing numbers of bears simply don't have the strength, and drown.

Every time you have a choice between an eco-friendly option and a convenient option, think of it this way. Every time you buy fluorescent rather than incandescent bulbs, every time you walk or bike or take the bus rather than drive, every time you bring your own mug instead of taking a paper or Styrofoam cup, you're saving a polar bear!

Without drastic changes in the way we live and consume, the polar bear could be extinct by the end of the century. That just makes me want to cry!

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Okay, I had to get that off my chest! I have some crafting updates, too.

I have different plans for the new orange purse. I've finished one half and am started on the second of the big orange circles that make up the base of the purse. But now I've decided that my purse will be a red panda instead of an orange!


The chinese red panda looks like a combination raccoon, panda, kitten and bear! Check out some videos on youtube.com to see that it also has a sweet-as-pie disposition. Like many cute little animals, the red panda is endangered! My plan is to make some red panda-themed knits and sell them, donating part of the profits to the World Wildlife Organization. =)


What a cutie!

My boss-lady loaned me a portable sewing machine, but without the manual or much experience with sewing machines, it just led to a lot of cursing last night. Looks like I'm waiting until I go home after all. I'll just have to keep myself busy knitting cute things in the meantime.

Aaaaaand, the monkeys are almost done! Sock Two just needs a toe and some Kitchener-stitchin'! And then pictures, I swear!

=^-^=

From Work!

Greetings from the toy store. I haven't heard back from the Fibre Arts advisor (who has been oh-so-helpful these past weeks... >.<), so next step is contacting the department chair. Really, people, all I'm asking is a few minutes with an advisor, or anyone who can answer a few easy, yes/no/maybe questions for me. Sigh!

I got ahold of the aforementioned camera, cleaned off my worktable, laid all my Lingerie Style-in -progress out in the afternoon sunlight.... and discovered the batteries to be dead. So they're charging. In the meantime I found an old Minolta film camera that I hope to learn to use, but that's another affair entirely.

My Basic Bra is complete save seaming, which should come together quickly once I pick up my sewing machine from my parents' place the weekend after next (or the one after... at the moment my going-home plans interfere with my bosses' toy-show plans, but we shall see). Instead of the garter border around the back bands and along the cup tops, I opted for a crochet picot edge. In the variegated orange I'm afraid it came out a little clownish (?), but we'll see once its on. If after all I can't live with clown-lingerie, it should be easy enough to change even after seaming.

I've loved what a quick and satisfying knit this has been! After I finished the last of the crochet last night, I was in such a mood to keep working on something, anything! I was at L's, however, and had no other projects with me, so we watched the better part (pun!) of Evil Dead II. We had watched ED the night before, but on the whole, they both disappointed a bit. I was hoping for the over-the-top, method acting, stop-motion-and-claymation humour of Army of Darkness.

My Yoga class is full! *sob* I've been regularly checking the site all summer for the fall schedule to be posted, and when I went to the gym just a few days after it was posted, the session I had my eye on (Mondays and Wednesdays) was full. So I put myself down for the Sunday afternoon class, and we'll see how that works out.

Tonight I've brought along some wool to make a second orange bag, this one with different leafy handles (by necessity, since I've run out of the green wool, but also to maintain the firsts' OOAK status). This one will have a much bigger opening, by way of a zipper I found that almost exactly matches the shade of orange. This first bag was made with a quite small opening, so that it could go without a closure, but still prevent the contents from falling out. Unfortunately, it's a tight fit for my whole hand, so I often find myself just dumping the whole thing out to get at what I need. I've gone and lost two of my 6mm dpns, so I'm starting this one on two dpns and a circular. Wish me luck.

And now I have a bit of actual work to do... (balancing the error-riddled cash, to start), so until next time!

I just joined the Knitting Lingerie Style-along this morning, with a Type Pad guest account. The post page is almost identical to blogger, as you can see below...

Nice - back in the day, blogger made you host images on your own space. This sure beats linking to my own, ancient geocities account.

My boyfriend (we'll call him L!) opines that even if my old digital isn't broken, it sucks too hard to bother using. Instead, he suggests I use his for my crafty pictures. He's suggested this in the past, but I still haven't seen heads or tails of the camera in question. ^^ Granted, his is way better, and not all glitchy; I was using it for my Etsy pictures a few months ago. My three Etsy items went and expired, no sales to date. If I do get ahold of a camera, I'll be posting the orange purse.

Non sequiteur: Yesterday I had three nuns come in to ask me for the Scrabble dictionary. Sadly, I had to send them elsewhere, but it kind of tickled me.

My (short-term) hopes and plans currently include:
-a trip to the Dressmaker shop for interfacing etc for the Basic Bra
-a sewing machine to magically appear in my apartment
-find an apartment! preferably before my parents stop helping me with rent
-to get some kind of helpful response from the Fibre Arts department!

I'm also working myself around to inviting the nice girl at Dressmaker out for coffee or something. I like her and I like to talk to her, so... I want to be her friend! But is asking another girl to coffee weird? Does it imply, like, a pre-date ritual? I wouldn't invite her to my apartment (not even after L and I cleaned the whole place - and it looks great!), because I don't like hanging out there when I can avoid it. Oh my. Making new friends has always been a source of awkwardness and confusion for me. If you don't already know someone, how do you get to know them? How do you bridge the gap between stranger (or even acquaintance) and friend? Of course, maintaining friendships is equally problematic for me, so that indicates... who knows!

On a quasi-related note, I should (will?) go by the knitting store and see if they know of a needlecraft group I can join. Between yoga and knitting, I'm bound to find a friendly someone!

Today I started making a coin-purse/card-holder out of a pale green leather belt. Other than making my fingertips a little numb, it seems to be turning out nicely. Now I need to pick up a zipper, too. Then I'll give it a mini carabiner clip on a bit of green lace (I have both of those... somewhere), so I can clip it to the strap of my big unwieldy bag. Every bit of organization is a deep, calming breath for me lately. I've been taking quite a few literal ones, too.

K, that's it. Bye for now!

My first blog entry/blog since high school! I feel persistently demoralized and unproductive, so I turn to the blog as an outlet, and semblance of interaction with other sentient beings! Angsty? Oh yeah.

Plus, I've been charmed by a number of knitting blogs I've found. Now I can post images of my WIPs and occasional FOs to fellow knitters, since my boyfriend's "yeah, that looks nice" only go so far.

On the knitting front, I've got a pair of Monkeys on the go. I'm about halfway through the second foot. I don't know how some people can pump out a pair of those in a month (or less!). These babies are at least 3 months (on and frequently off) in the making. I just started the Basic Bra from Knitting Lingerie Style, in variegated orange cotton. Once I figure out whether my old digital camera is broken or just out of batteries, I'll post some pictures. I used to be quite the shutterbug, but now I have trouble finding recent (within 5 years) pictures of myself.

The orange cotton... This will be my third attempted project with it, so here's crossing my fingers that it won't become another (*whisper*) "ufo". The first was a pretty lace wrap from Stitch n Bitch Nation, that was plugging along awesomely, until I found out I had made a huge mistake about a week's worth of knitting back, and promptly abandonned the project. Next came a pretty wrap from Knitty, but pretty doesn't necessarily make for an interesting knit, and I'm easily bored. So now the bra. Fortunately, I've already finished both cups and bands, so it's mostly finishing from here out. That entails two bra straps, buying and fusing interfacing, and *sigh* buying a sewing machine, since it doesn't look like mine is getting to me from Ottawa. Or maybe borrowing my boss lady's? *crosses fingers*

Speaking of which, I'm blogging at work, and the boss-man will be arriving soon, so this post comes to an end. Lucky for you!

Oh but ps! I also recently finished a lovely orange purse with green leaves of my own design. On a purse kick, I also made a green octagon felted bag, which desperately needs serging (again with the lack of sewing machine) and lining. I bought some cute t-rex patterned fabric for that express purpose. I also made a super cute yellow purse in the same style as the orange, but can't settle on handles. I really want wood ones, but can't find anything that charms me. So it waits.

Ok ok, first post and I already exhibit my tendency to bloat! Over and out.