Christmas part 1: McKenny Side

 I'm still not completely done with Christmas knitting (don't ask) but I got all the matching colour scheme knitting done and couldnt resist the photo-op. That's a shawl for mom, a shawl for momm, a sweater for Dad McKenny, and hats for Timm's brother, sister-in-law, sister, and future brother-in-law. I also knitted a hat for Timm's neice but that wasn't done yet when this pic was taken.

 

Here's a picture of me with Timm's neice, Cami on Christmas Eve.

 

Here's some of the knitted gifts being appreciated.

An all the McKenny "kids" on Christmas morning.

Snow Day!

It snowed a lot today the roads were awful! I slid all over the place trying to get Timm's ring to the people to re-size it. While doing homework today I also finished my first of the recent Christmas knitting. We lost power which emphasized that I shouldn't keep all my patterns on electronic devices cuz then I'm screwed when the power goes out. Instead I just wound the rest of my Christmas knitting yarn.

In which my yarn is bigger than your face

 This morning I had my musculo practical (this afternoon I found out I passed it!) Then I came home to nap. After my nap I headed to the yarn store to grab another skein for my mittens. I weighed it I used 28 grams/50 for the first mitten meaning I'll probably be a little short on this one. While I was there I decided I should really probably expand my christmas buying/knitting list. This lead to as the Yarn Harlot said today "a yarn accident." I won't show you all of what I got cuz it will give away my Christmas knitting plans. But I will show you the majority of my purchase $$wise is this 1450yd/1 pound skein of Moutain Colours Weaver's Wool. You'll have to wait and see what gets knitted up in the next 24 days!

Cat for scale 

Cell phone for scale

Knitting machine

I've been finishing projects left and right it seems. I guess that's what happens when you don't want to study lol. Tonight I present to you the Circus Socks. Pattern is Wedge by Cookie A. Yarn is On-line sock yarn?

 As you can see I'm doing a good job studying Law & Order ;-). Tomorrow we have our musculo practical and Friday is our neuro test. Next week we have 3 tests. I really need some motivation back. If anyone sees any please send it my way!

Day two: Check!

I don't know whether to be glad Tuesday's over with or not. I don't feel ready for the rest of this week right now, but on the other hand I'm definitely ready for it to be over with. Today was relatively uneventful: school then home and studying and eating. That's about it. I got together with my partner for Thursday's practical and went over our plan for that, so at least that's done. Neuro test is at 8 in the morning and I'm gonna be real honest that I'm not as prepared as I should be, but I'm just gonna take the hit on this one. I've done well on everything else so if tomorrow doesn't go great it'll be fine. (Meditation for the night C's make PTs) The only other remotely exciting thing for the day is that both sleeves are done on the sweater. Now all I have left is the trim for the pockets and to finish weaving in ends. Hopefully it'll be done in time for Timm to take pictures of it this weekend for me. Hope you all have a wonderful hump day tomorrow!

Also: Heard today the Duggar's annoucned they're 20 and Counting as my mother said "oh my goddd"

I might be in a blue rut . . .

Before I get into my knitting antics, last week Timm came down for massage lab and a wedding. While he was here we went for a little walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the lovely flowers.


On Friday we went out to dinner at Pitch, a local coal fire pizza place. We hadn't been there before but I'd heard good things. We got sweet and spicy rosemary wings as an appetizer and a pizza with ricotta cream, prosciutto, arugula, caramelized onions, and mozzarella. I snapped a picture of the wings but forgot to get one of the pizza. Timm was not overly impressed with the pizza he thought it seemed bland. I think this was contributed to by the intense flavour of the wings before the pizza. I thought the pizza was pretty yummy, but it ended up making both of our stomachs angry.


The wedding on Saturday was for Timm's cousin, Mark and his lovely girl, Rachel. They're in Austria on their honeymoon right now, but I'm hoping to grab some Indian food with them when they get back. Timm & I looked pretty snazzy if I do say so myself ;-). He looked especially good when I stuck his nametag/ table marker on his head (that's what he gets for messing with his phone instead of talking to me).



Now on to the knitting content ;-)
I was really interested in participating in Project Spectrum, but the colour for May is red and everything I've had on the needles in May is blue (which is the colour for July). Hopefully next month (Green) will go better. For now I will have to admire everyone's red project and become inspired to work on something not blue. If you recall in my last post I was unhappy with the way the Zauberball was knitting up into the Helix scarf. So instead, I decided to use the yarn for Faraway, So Close. I started it last Monday in class. And had it off the needles this Tuesday evening.
Unblocked:

On the blocking board, Voodoo for scale:

Today at lunch:


My friend and classmate, Sarah, was sitting at the table while I was having Meghan take the pictures. Sarah leapt up and tried to stick her head in the picture saying "I want to be on your blog!" I had Meghan finish taking pictures of the shawl and then went over to get a picture of Sarah Squared (sorry, my hair looks like it was attacking you).

the knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone

and all your intestines are connected and shoved in a tiny tiny little space.

Tonight my living anatomy partner came over to practice for our test on Monday. Because of the lack of movements to test and bones to feel in the abdomen and thorax, a lot of our living anatomy this unit was drawing out where everything is inside the body cavity. First we drew the "planes" of the abdomen that help you locate everything else.

Then we drew all the intestines and major organs of the peritoneal sac. Look I got my gallbladder back!



Then we washed off and drew the organs and vessels on the posterior body wall.


There was lots of funny comments and giggling that occurred (especially because Meghan is ticklish and doesn't like me finding her transtubercular plane). I also keep accusing Meghan of cheating because she can use my scars as landmarks for the different planes and organs but I have nothing to go on.

I got the ends on the hat for Operation Christmas Child wove in last night. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Good thing I gave it away today or I might have grown attached.




Thanksgiving is getting so close I can almost taste the turkey and pumpkin pie (and by that I mean freedom and blissful days of no school). Until then, more studying!

just another day

Today has lasted forever. Wednesday has been our long day at school all semester, but with it getting dark so late it seems that much longer. I got a fair amount of studying done during my break at school. And after school I ran errands on my way to knit night. We're doing Operation Christmas Child at school and I knit a hat for our kid (pictures tomorrow after the ends are woven in?), but I also volunteered to get toiletries for the box so I headed to Dollar Tree.

Eventually, I made it to Whole Foods for knit night. Meg showed me her awesome shirt. She found this shirt as an XXL at Goodwill but couldn't pass it up because of the colours. So what did she do? Sewed zippers in the back of it! Love it! It's surprising that Whole Foods doesn't explode with all the genius-ness of knit night people in the same spot. I finally wove in the ends on my socks so we could ring the cowbell and show them off. I stood on a chair with my foot on the table (Captain Morgan-esque). We took a picture, but it was blurry. Instead you'll have to live with these pics. I'm gonna make Timm take better ones next week when I'm up there.


Pattern: Arch-Shaped Stockings by Meg Swansen


I got it from the Vogue Knitting: Ultimate Sock Book.

Yarn: Caron Fashion Right Sport Weight (Brown and Peacock Blue)
I got it from my parents' neighbor lady, Wanda, who had been interested in knitting once and bought yarn, lots of yarn. She then decided she didn't want to knit and stuck it all in trash bags in her storage shed. She gave me a bunch of yarn a few years ago. Then she passed away and now her husband keeps finding more and taking it to my parents.

Needles: Size 3 DPNs

I really enjoyed the first sock. It knit up really fast for socks because it was sport weight yarn and size 3 needles. The shaping makes it interesting, but the colour pattern is simple enough to memorize and be able to see where you're going. I was, however, frustrated by the vagueness of the pattern. I realize that I make up my own patterns semi-frequently and modify patterns even more frequently, but sometimes I just want to be told what to do. Especially with colourwork, because I'm a little less confident than I am with other techniques. There weren't a lot of details on what you should do with the colourwork when you got to different areas of the sock (such as the heel) and the toe shaping instructions were awful. I found myself looking at other people's project pages and pictures on Ravelry often to have an idea what it should look like. The first toe I got was ugly and square (see pics from earlier posts). I didn't like it and I didn't think it would fit in shoes well. I decided to do my typical toe decreases and see how it looked. I decreased every other row for half the toe and then every row for the second half. It turned out nicely, there was a little weirdness because of previous shaping, but I think I'm the only one that will notice it and it made a nice rounded toe. I ripped back to make the first one match and feel much better about them now. They really do have an arch-shape that makes them fit snugly. The only other issue I have is with the side of the heel flaps where I picked up stitches is very loose and a little holey. I picked them up the same way I always do, so I think it might just be the looser gauge?

I have a very exciting project up next in my queue, but I'm not buying yarn until I'm done with my test on Tuesday. You should be excited though, I am!

it just keeps getting colder

Actually that's not entirely true, it's been relatively warm considering its the start of November. But today was particularly windy and I've been feeling that winter is slowly creeping up on us. This feeling has been manifested in me wanting to cook and bake and knit and snuggle under blankets with kitties (or you know just about anything but homework).

My hat was actually dry this morning (well I should say afternoon, as I didn't have class until 1). I didn't expect it to stretch quite as much as it did and I probably could have made the medium length. Someone commented a couple post down about what pattern it was, so I've included the details below the pictures.

Pattern: Brambles Beret (Knitty, Deep Fall 10, Ravelry)

Yarn: Cascade 220 (forget the name of the colour-way, but it's leftovers from my Mrs. Darcy Cardigan and it basically used up all my leftovers less than a skein)

Needles: Brittany DPNs 4s and 6s

This pattern was the first one in a while that I looked at and said "Oh my gosh, I want this. I want to knit this right now!" There are plenty of patterns that I appreciate and add to the list of things to knit eventually, but I literally cast on for this hat within days of seeing the pattern and set aside my other WIPs. I knit the medium size around and the long length (mostly because I like slouchy and have a lot of hair). As I mentioned above though, it stretched a lot to block it and I probably could have gone with the medium length. The band size was almost perfect, I still pinned it into my hair but mostly because it was so windy today. It was a pretty simple pattern. I love the mix of textures and how it looks like a flower on the back. I have a feeling this hat will get made many more times and possibly for Christmas gifts. I think I might make Eleanor to go with it, as I have a wool sport weight in almost the exact same colour in my stash. I'd also like to thank one of my lab partners, Becca, for taking the pics after lab today.

Speaking of lab, we saw the testicles today and took the skin and fat off the abdomen. We got to see our cadaver's abs and all the fascia that creates the look of six-pack abs in fit people. Part of our group continued dissecting the thorax and by the end of lab we could see all sorts of cool stuff including the trachea, which I think looks like the kinky straws that you get as a kid, because of the cartilage rings around it.

Then I went to the grocery store and came home and started to cook.

Any guesses?

Yep! Chili!!!! Growing up it seemed like this was always the time of year for chili (as I'm sure it is for a lot of people). I've also been a little homesick lately, partially because I haven't been home since May and partially because I won't be able to go home for Thanksgiving this year and I've never missed Thanksgiving with my family (although I'm sure it will be tons of fun with Timm's family this year). So I made chili exactly the way my mom makes it:


Yes, there's macaroni noodles in there. Timm says that it may be good with macaroni, but it's not chili anymore and I have to disagree. But either way it's delicious and even though I'd already had dinner hours ago, I still had to dip myself up a bowl and chow down.



It definitely hit the spot. I made ~4.5 quarts, so I'm really hoping Timm consumes a lot while he's here this weekend or I'll end up eating chili till Thanksgiving. Now I gotta get some homework done, so I won't be doing it the entire time Timm is here (just most of it).

If you haven't dropped by Timm's blog today, you should. I'll warn you that it's pretty depressing, but definitely worth the read.