Kill Your TV

Q and I were hanging out in bed night before last talking (our TV died so now all there is to do is talk. I am soooo loving it) and knitting (only I was knitting; Q refuses to learn but I think I'm wearing him down). Lupine recently had a bath so she and Lily and Leon (not shown in picture) were all up on the bed with us. At one point Q got up to get some cereal. He said that Lily was using "kitty psychology" on him as a way to get him to share his milk with her. She'd sniff near the bowl but then when he offered up the milk she would turn away. Finally after practically begging her, she lapped up some of the milk.

In knitting news...here is the completed sock that I will be teaching in a class at MLYS this January and February. This one turned out sooo great! It fits like a glove, um...only it's a sock! The Wyverns have found their new home with my Great Aunt Julia (great = grandma's sister--maybe people know that already and I'm the dumb one). She appeared to have genuinely liked them. I hope she really uses them and wasn't just being nice to save my feelings. Even though I thought they rocked hard I'm still such a new knitter that I think nothing I do is good enough. I hate feeling inferior. I way need to get over it already. I'm sure she loved them. (My new mantra: I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggon it people like me and my knitting.)

I have two scarves going, one is a drop stitch made with Bernat Boucle and Bernat Disco on the ends (I'm an acrylic whore what can I say), the other is just a garter st scarf out of Moda Dea Wild. The latter is super duper soft. I have also started work on a bag with some yarn I got from eBay. The yarn is a really bulky, scratchy boucle yarn. I didn't know what to do with it but Jen came up with the bag idea. I will felt it, it will be good.

And of course, tonight is New Year's Eve. I hope to have great pics. Will post any and all after the hangover wears off. Y'all have a Happy New Year and be safe and fashionable!

Economics of Time

Have you ever found yourself considering doing something and you wondered if it was worth the time or the effort? Last week my friend Jen and I were discussing New Year's Eve attire. We subsequently went to Michael's to check out the yarn and see what looked festive. The sale they had going was INSANE to the tune of several novelty yarns on sale for just over two bucks a skein. That is practically unheard of as far as I'm concerned. Anyways...we looked at yarn for what felt like a little while (it was really 2 hours but who's counting) and she picked out some Fancy Fur (sale price $4) and Disco (not on sale but very sparkley). I picked out some Wild (sale price $ 2.39, sweeet!)

If you happen to be wondering what the point of all this is...Jen thought that she'd rip apart a scarf she'd made way too long and use the yarn to go underneath the Fancy Fur and Disco for her New Year's Eve scarf. It is a novelty yarn of some sort that was a bear to frog. I was dreading the frogging even though I didn't have to do it. Here she is doing the frogging. Had it been me I would have bought new yarn.

Christmakwanzakah

This past Friday Q and I drove down to Sacramento to spend our first Christmakwanzakah together with my family. It would be the first time he would meet my father (gasp). Friday night we got there and talked with Grandma for a bit and then got ready to go out with my brother and his friends.

My brother is such a good guy; I cannot gush about the man enough. He was very friendly and polite. I don't know why I thought he wouldn't be though. I guess it is because it's actually me who isn't friendly and nice so I just figured he wasn't either; guilty by association. But, he isn't, so lucky me. Anyways, he does think he's quite the joker though so I had to black out his birdie.

Saturday was the family gathering at my Mom and Grandma's house. The whole gang was there. My Uncle J and his wife; Uncle M, Aunt G, and their kids; my Gram and her sister; my Mom, me, my brother and Q. A whole gaggle of folks. Anyways, we had lamb(YUMMY) and veggies and latkes(potatoe pancakes) and fruit custard tart thingy. It rocked. You can see my Mon showing off the fruity custardy tarty thingy, Q about to enjoy some squash, and the other family members at the table.

After Dinner there was a gift exchange where people pick numbers and start at the gifts. My family has a $25 limit. I brought the Disco Scarf to the exchange and did the tacky thing. When it was my turn to pick a gift I traded mine with what someone else already had. I was a little embarassed of the scarf to be honest. I didn't have enough eylash to make the ends the same length. It's okay though, I don't think anyone but me wanted the scarf anyways. The gift cards were the thing.

One thing that makes me a little crazy about holiday times is that my cousins (mostly the younger one) do not ever, and when I say ever I mean NEVER lift a finger to clean or do shit. (I am probably going to be ostracized from that part of the family now that I have talked shit, but I guess I'm already over it.) I mean seriously, their mother picks up after them and caters to their every whim. I wonder when the last time the youngest one picked up any implement that's purpose is for cleaning. I remember this one time...

Back several summers ago, my brother, my two cousins, one of their friends, and myself went to the drive in movies. I asked the youngest cousin, we'll call her Yolanda, if she would please go and find out what radio station we needed to set the car stereo to in order to listen to the movie. She said,"I don't want to." To which I replied, "I didn't ask you if you wanted to, I asked you to go do it." Then Yolanda whined, "I don't want to." Now me,"That whiney voice may work on your mother, but I am not your mother. Now get up and go ask them." Yolanda was then silent so I say, "Get and and go ask them please or I will spray water on you, like I do to the dogs, until you get up and do what I asked you to do." Then I started flicking water at her. She finally got up and went to get the radio station info.

The end.

I guess this all sounds a little harsh but man oh man, do you know what is even harsher? I feel sorry for the man that marries her. And Q thinks I'm high maintenance.

Speaking of me, here I am opening my exchange gift (it was my Mom's gift and what is funny about it is I made Q get See's candy for his exchange gift instead of a gift card), it was tons of chocolate. I have nothing against chocolate but I am pretty sure I have had my fair share this season already. At the beginning of the month the chocolate was a little slow in coming, but by the middle, it was full bore. I'm done with chocolate for awhile. Maybe in February.

Finally, on Sunday, or Christmas day for all you Jesus lovers, I went over to my Dad's house. His wife was a great hostess. The guy who works with my dad was also their with his wife and daughter. Did I mention my brother was there to? Whe had goat with this fantastic salsa, rice, and some excellent frijoles (refried beans). My dad was super excited to show me his new house, although, I didn't get a tour, what do you think that means. I'll tell you what it means, it means he was hungover! I guess the night before he had drank a couple of bottles of wine or something. Now we all know where I get my party gene from.

And in case anyone was wondering, "Where are the dog pictures?" Here is one of Zion. With laser eyes no less. He's so sweet!

Holiday Madness

It is still my Birthday Month as I keep pointing out to anyone who will listen. I have a major photo extravaganza; we'll see if blogger actually lets me post them all.... Major Balloon and flower action going on. Q got me a VERY yummy cake torte-y thingy, a bottle of my favorite wine, the roses, and truffles from See's Candies. He's taken me out like a million times and I'm getting fatter from all the eating out. The pretty arrangement is from my Gram and my brother Carloz. Gram gave me a disgustingly exorbitant amount of cash for my birthday and Carloz, sweet little bro that he is, got me a Joanne's gift card (Hurray, more yarn). My Mom sent a bunch of cool stuff. It is a little hard to see in the picture (click it to make it bigger) but there is a knitting calendar on the island there. 1 pattern for each day of the year. All in all it's been a pretty good year. Of course I did have the usual "pre-birthday freak-out". But I'm not going to get myself down by talking about that, I mean, I've been through so much already(HA Ha ha, so melodramatic).

This pic is of Jen and myself, we went out on the Thursday of my birthday week which also happened to be her birthday week. Hers was on Friday. We went to Cherae Heights Indian Casino because Jen's mom (who also happens to be the owner of MLYS) told us we could get $30 cash from them for our birthdays. The catch, you have to gamble for like 5 minutes. Well, I really thought it was a trick because of the having to gamble business, but it wasn't. We gambled on penny machines for about 5 minutes and voila, 15000 casino points which were then redeemed for 30 smackers. I even got my $3 bucks back out of the machine I was playing.

After all that we went to Blue Lake Casino to karaoke. We had a way good time. Jen got up to sing, I sang (of course I sang, karaoke was my idea), we danced, and had happy birthdays (and many tequilas).

I finished the SF 49er colored clogs for Q. He loves them and can hardly wait for them to dry. I have started a new sock. I'm doing it toe up and magic loop. No lace pattern on this one since it is for a sock class I'm going to be teaching over at MLYS. I was going to have the class do Marnie's Wyverns, but Janice(the owner) said to keep it simple, so I will. So there. I didn't do alot of short rows for the toe (8 on a side) to make more space for my Fred Flinstone toes. I'm likeing the results so far. What else have I been up to....Additionally, I have been working on a scarf. What can I say about it. It is made with Bernat Disco (I got it for free in the mail, act now, and you too can have this yarn that will probably arrive in a color you don't like. The offer is only good until the end of the year.) and Lion Brand Woolease thick and quick (I think). It is almost finished, I ran out of yarn. Wouldn't you know it, my "free" Bernat Disco yarn, in a color I didn't even like, would end up costing almost $20 to work up. Have I said yet that I cannot believe I'm using novelty yarn. There, I said it.

Here is a picture of Kia (Maltese) and Bella (Pug-huahua, yep, you got it, Pug and Chihuahua) at MLYS. They are soooo cute.

Here are my three. Lupine has her head on the bed doing the "why can't I get on the bed, woe is me" face. Lily is giving me major sideways stink-eye. And finally, Leon has on his laser eyes.

Done.

(I think there is a spelling error in this post but I can't find the damn thing. Grrr.)

December

I don't know if I've said it yet...December is my birthday MONTH! My Dad, kind and generous man that he is, gave me money and I have purchased yarn, needles, knitting books/magazines
and other fun stuff. Whee!


I bought the Paton's yarn to make the Fiber Trends Felted clogs. You can see my progress thus far. The red/gold ones are for Q. He wanted SF 49er's colors. Mine will be oddly paired with three colors. I also bought that yummy labrador from Crystal Palace and the Iceland are the colors on the right. I'm also going to purchase some rabbit pelts to weave into the finished scarves.

These yarns are from Joannes and Michael's, oh, and the orange yarns are from a local yarn store, Fabric Temptations. I wouldn't normally buy orange but the Rowan and the other Orange were both on sale. How could I resist.
And of course, here are the finished Wyvern's. They are soooo pretty and fit sooo great! I highly recommend this pattern from Marnie MacLean's website. Check it out. I knit them magic loop style and am happy with the finished product. Instead of doing the rib up the back of the leg portion I did the pattern as you can see on the sock that is on the computer keyboard.

School is almost out. Did I mention my birthday is day after tomorrow?

Completion

Todays topics are: School, Wyverns, Homemade Memories, stuff(if I can think of anything). This picture of Q and I is from last weekend. I've been pretty busy so I didn't get a chance to upload anything from last weekend. I have crafting pics from last weekend too.

Colleen was very excited about her sock effort. She did it all on her own and it is looking quite cute! Janice was doing pergomano(no idea how this is spelled) which is a technique that uses this special paper and you poke it and prod it until it becomes a masterpiece. The card she was working on was for a friend's 50th wedding anniversary. Peace is a new knitter. I think she brought her daughter into Handmade Memories(HMM) to learn to knit and now when they are both at the shop, her daughter doesn't knit but she does. This is a picture of where I was on the Wyverns as of last weekend.

School is almost over and I cannot even begin to tell you how happy that makes me. This week I had two finals(actually midterms but it is really a final since I don't have any tests during finals week in those classes), a presentation and a research paper due. At the beginning of the semester when I found out I would only have one final exam during finals week, I should have known something was fishy. What ends up happening is, instead of the old fashioned way school used to run where the week or two before finals you had presentations and papers due, then during finals week you'd be tested; now what happens is all the tests and papers and presentations are all due at the same time and it stinks. Though I must say that after I turned in my research paper yesterday I felt pretty good about myself. I got an 85% on my statistics final and a 90 point something % on my soils lab final. Hoo Ray. One more project and a final next week. Done.

Speaking of done, the Wyverns are done! Woooohoooo. So excited. It is a really great pattern and the socks are lovely. To anyone who is going to take on a project that you have to look at for more that 1 - 2 days, taupe is soooo boring. I'm glad the socks are finished and in the future when I make socks I will only pick colors that make me happy. Ugh, I have tried to upload pics to this post like ten times and it won't work. I'll post the Wyverns in a future post.

Cables From Green Gables

Here it is, the "Cables From Green Gables" beanie (I'm not sure what I'd call it if I had knit it out of a different color). I finished it several days ago but as is my style I got tired of the pattern, was running out of yarn, and tried to finish it early. When Q tried it on it fit like yamukah (that's right, I'm trying to convert everyone I know to Judaism by making them wear yamukahs disguised as a beanie). I had to take out all my decreases, buy another skein of yarn, and knit on more rows. Anyways, I just love it when you bind off and it makes a pretty spiral on top. This was even cooler since it was cable knit hat, the cables make the spiral look like a flower. You can sort of see the flower on my model's head. Unfortunately Lily has sort of a small head so the hat doesn't fit right. Check it out though, it's a "cat in the hat".


Materials
1 skein Lion Brand Jiffy
1 size 8, 40 in circular needle (you could use 1 16 in circular and double pointed needles for the decreases, I just like magic loop because it greatly reduces the number of supplies I have to buy for a project. Magic Loop tutorial here.)
1 stitch marker
1 cable needle

Guage: Um, I really hate this part. I just know that on size 8 needles about 80 stiches for a small head and 88 stitches for a large head works for me with this yarn. I knit quite tightly. Maybe one of these days I'll start doing guage, yeah right.

If you make the small or the large hat it is worked in 8 sections either way. I put the extra stitch in the purled sections.

CO 88 st (80 for small)
Row 1-7: k2 p2 rib.
Row 8: p2, *k6, p5(p4 for small hat)*; repeat between ** 6 times; k6, p3(p2 for small).
Repeat Row 8, 4 more times.
Row 13: p2, Sl 3 sts to cn, hold in front, k3, k3 from cn (slip3 st to cable needle and keep in front of work, knit the next 3 st from the left needle, knit stitches from cable needle). Follow pattern the rest of the way around. When you see purl stitches, purl them, where you see knit stitches, cross your cables.

Repeat Row's 8 - 13 until hat is desired length, the one I did for Q is about 8 inches when I start the decreases.

As I said before, the hat is split into 8 sections. I decreased backwards, sort of. I p2tog. But then you end up a...oh crap, I guess I'll just type it out.

1st Decrease row: P2tog. From now on we will consider the first set of 6k st as the beginning of the row. So, *k6, p3(p2 for small), ptog.* Repeat between ** around. When you get to the end and you see one purl st on your left needle, put the working yarn behind your work and slip this stitch to the right needles as if to purl.

2nd decrease row: *k6, p2(p1 for small), p2tog.* Repeat around.

Lets see, on this row we p2tog'ed with the 9th and 10th st(8th and 9th for small). On the next row you will p2tog on the 8th and 9th (7th and 8th), then on the following row p2tog on the 7th and 8th(6th and 7th), and so forth and so on. Once you have decreased through the pattern then simply p2tog around until there are 4 st left. Take a darning needle and thread it through remaining loops. Weave in ends.

Et Voila! Gables From Green Gables is done.

And in honor of Sarah, here is my laser eye doggie! She looks more spooked than she does spooky, even with her laser eyes.