Sunday, February 21, 2010

Busy, busy

Sorry for the lack of updates! The new job is keeping me busy. My boss basically told me that she expects her employees to go home exhausted or they aren't doing everything they can while they're at work. And due to confidentiality, I can't talk much about work. I work in a part of a 4-plex that has 3 developmentally handicapped adults. One of my clients is deaf, so I'm getting to use my sign language and I'm the only staff that actually knows more than a few random signs, so I think he really appreciates finally having someone to talk to.

I started Mrs. Darcy in the Cascade 220 from Chicago last Friday for Ravelympics. The body is finished and I'm more than half way with the first sleeve. I'm hoping to get some work done on it tonight. My boss has suggested that I don't knit at work, because my clients could end up using the needles as a weapon against me. I've done a little bit, but I'm being careful and mostly using my wooden needles. Francis Revisited is on hold until the Olympics are over, but I'm pretty excited for it. I think I might make the Skew socks after I get all these sweaters wrapped up. They look like they will be great for the sock yarn I have that likes to do semi-diagonal stripes (which I usually don't appreciate). The Bobby's close tomorrow and my dress pattern, Clover, surpassed 1000 favourites this morning! I don't even care if it wins, it just makes me so happy being nominated and getting this kind of feedback. CplPurl is knitting Clover for Ravelympics and I really hope she gets it done, I'm so excited to see how it looks on someone else!

Since Timm and I both had Wednesday off we celebrated V-day a little late. He made me dinner:
V-Day Dinner 2
V-Day Dinner 3
V-Day Dinner
V-Day Dinner Finished
That's pork marinated in a lemon garlic wonderfulness, with pineapple, kiwi, and mandarin oranges on top. And a side of potatoes, green pepper, and onions.
I made desert:
Cake Batter
Cake
That's spice cake with lemon frosting and a secret ingredient
Surprise Ingredient
And then we went to see a production of Into the Woods, which was pretty good (it was final dress rehearsal so there was still a little tweaking that needed done, but the costumes were great! (not just because we know the costume designer ;-))) This is us looking all cute and snazzy:


















I tried to find fabric for curtains at Jo-ann's this weekend, because they were having a big sale and my giant windows are demanding too much fabric. I found fabric that I liked and fit all of my requirements for good curtains (dark so they don't let in all this light, but preferably without black or brown, and semi-coordinating to all the stuff in my room already). The problem was they didn't have the 10 yards that I needed to make all my curtains, I even had them look at other stores where I could have made someone get it for me and mail it to me, no luck! So I got enough for two curtains and coordinating fabric to make the rest of the curtains with. I started them on Friday and have the two pretty ones up already. I'm hoping to work on the pink ones tonight. Here's Prudence hard at work:
Curtains
I also got to use my new serger (acquired from Granny passing away) for the first time on the curtains and am kinda in love with it, she works so much better than my old one and isn't rusty (yeah, let's not talk about it). I'll get a picture of her with the pink curtains.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Moved In and Almost Settled

Since my last post, I:
  • loaded my car to the point that I couldn't see out any of the back windows.
  • drove 6 out of 7 hours in the rain
  • saw my best friend in Kansas City
  • went to PechaKucha night in KC
  • drove 2 out of 3.5 hours in the snow
  • unloaded my car through a foot of snow
  • implemented some organization in my room
  • drove 1.5 hours to see Timm
  • heard the words "I love you" come out of Timm's mouth for the first time :-D
  • watched the Colts lose the Super Bowl
  • picked out a bed (no more air mattress in a few days!)
  • drove 1.5 back
  • was fingerprinted
  • filled out paperwork and got my schedule
And tomorrow, I start my job!!

As mentioned above in Kansas City, I went to PechaKecha night. If you haven't heard of it don't feel bad. It's an event where designers do presentations with 20 slides and only 20 seconds per slide. You can find more information here. One of the presentations was on knitting. The woman, Emily a.k.a TaffyYarn on Ravelry, talked mostly about how knitting isn't just for 80 year olds anymore and showed pictures of guerrilla knitting. She had also knit bunny hats for rubber chickens (I told Timm to never let me do this). She mentioned at the end of her presentation that she had told her kids they could only get a tattoo if it was a knitting tattoo. During the beer break I told my friend I was going to go up and talk to the woman and show her my knitting tattoo. She looked at me and said, "You hate making phone calls, but you're going to go up and talk to some random lady in a bar?!" I said, "She's a knitter, all knitters are my friends!" I went up and talked to Emily, she gave me her Ravelry information, petted my Central Park Hoodie and looked at my tattoo. Both Emily and her friend liked my tattoo and decided that they could never let Emily's daughters see one like that or they would actually want a knitting tattoo lol.

My room is mostly organized. I didn't get any before pictures because it had snowed so much and i just wanted to get everything unloaded from my car and I'm waiting to take after pictures until I get a real bed (that also means I'll have some place to hide my yarn and shoes and you won't have to see them in the pictures). My mom's still supposed to be sending me 4 boxes in the mail (I have no idea where they're going though). I found out that there's a little Indian restaurant a few blocks away and I'm super excited to try it.

In knitterly news (if you're still reading ;-)), the Central Park Hoodie is exceeding all expectations (and they were pretty high). I started Francis Revisited this weekend with my purple Ultra Alpaca and although it's a really boring knit, it's going super fast which makes it better. Ravelympics starts Friday, I think I'm knitting Mrs. Darcy and then maybe a pair of socks for it. We'll see how much time I have once I start working full-time.

Happy Knitting!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Sorting, Organizing, and Packing

I've been sorting through everything from fabric to books to clothes deciding what is going with me and what is staying here for now. I've also been calling one of my new roommates and pestering her with questions that she probably thinks are pointless, but that I think very valid (such as, is there an electric mixer in the house?). I think she'll see the validity the first time I make cookies and set them out for everyone's consumption. I'm planning on only loading my car and having two or three boxes shipped to me, so I have to be very thoughtful in what I'm taking. As long as the weather plays nice I'll be moving in on Friday. I'll try to take pictures of my room before I unpack anything as a before and after, but I make no promises.

The Central Park Hoodie is finished, all ends woven in, washed and blocked. For those who know me well, the last three are an accomplishment. I've decided weaving in ends as I finish each piece (as I did with this sweater) makes things a lot less painful. I'm absolutely in love with the finished sweater, it fits perfectly! I'm glad I did the waist shaping. The blocking got it to be a little longer on top of me knitting it longer than the pattern called for. I couldn't have made it any bigger all I had left was two ping pong sized balls of yarn.

I was planning on not starting anything else until after I moved but I got antsy a couple of nights ago and realized that Valentine's Day is fast approaching, so I cast on a hat for Timm. I finished it last night and wove in the ends this morning. I'm happy with how it turned out and have been wearing it all day and it's too big which is good cuz Timm has a huge head :-p. I used this pattern (Ravelry link, so you can't look Timm :-p) and yarn left over from my Clover dress, soft and machine washable.

I'll leave you with a quote from St. Francis of Assisi that I found in the Yarn Harlot's At Knit's End:
"He who works with his hands is a laborer, he who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman, he who works with his hands, his head and his heart is an artist."