Everything is New

I've been crazy busy since my last post. Looking for a new apartment, packing, moving to a new apartment, and then changing everything in the new apartment.

Dana and I looked at 7 apartments in one day. We really liked one of them, but someone had applied for it before us, so we were unable to get it. One of the last ones we looked at that day was basically what we were looking for, but it had gross carpet in the bedrooms and lots of strange paint colours. There was another unit in the same place that was opening up soon and we asked to look at it and see if it was better than the unit we had already seen. When we saw it we were impressed that it was hardwood throughout and that the wood was in good condition. The bedrooms we knew we would have to paint but we felt we could live with the rest of the apartment.

Note: For all pictures in this post. Click on them to see notes added on flickr.


On June 1st, we got our keys. The previous tenants had moved out the day before and no one had been in to clean or do repairs yet, but we said that was fine they could do that the first few days we were there. This was the first problem. I was expecting that the tenants moving out would leave the apartment how I would leave an apartment when moving out. WRONG! There were still hangers in the closet and stuff under the sink. Now that all the furniture had been moved we saw that there were problems with the walls in the living room and dining room.

The Red Dining Room


Brown Living Room and Taupey Hallway + Scary Timm


The maintenance guy stopped by after we had been there about an hour. He started going through and documenting all the problems the previous tenant had left. The refrigerator was filthy it had some strange coloured liquid in the bottom of it. Then he opened one of the drawers and there was evidence of roaches. Dana and I were freaked out to say the least.

The Blue Kitchen


The maintenance man was responsible for finding out what the previous tenants needed to be charged for. They get charged for the dirty oven, the dirty fridge, etc. They also get charged $15/ nail hole. The guy counted 106 nail holes throughout our apartment! That's $1,590 in charges for nail holes alone.

We knew we were going to be painting the bedrooms. So we started in on those the same day we got the keys.

One Wall of Dana's Room Before


One Wall of My Room Before


The Opposite Corner of My Room Before



And yes that last picture is colour accurate (on my computer at least).

Needless to say, we've been doing a lot of painting and a lot of cleaning. We scrubbed all the floors. And wiped down everything in the kitchen multiple times. The management company has sent the bug people out twice now to spray and we haven't seen any roaches since the first week. It's awesome to finally have a place that feels like home and somewhere that I'm not confined to one room. My parents are bringing me more furniture at the end of July during my dad's forced vacation (they have to shut down the plant he works at for 2 weeks because they aren't busy enough :-/). I'll have after pictures in the next few days I hope.

In other news, I have a new addition. It's a boy!!

Meet Voodoo. 14lbs of love and snuggling. He likes to nap, snuggle, carry on deep conversations about the state of the world (well at least his food dish) and occasionally chase lasers or other toys, but mostly just the napping.

I knit a tank top back in May that I still need to get pictures of. But the knitting has slowed down a bit since then. I also have put myself on a yarn diet to be able to afford my new kitty and all the expenses with that and also to be able to pay off my bed. So no new yarn for awhile (but honestly I have enough to keep knitting for a pretty long time without a problem).

A Belated Birthday Gift

All week, I kept telling myself I needed to blog. Yesterday afternoon, I started planning a blog post in my head. I was hoping to type it up last night after Knit Night. But then one of my friends called to tell me happy belated birthday and we talked for 2 hours so all my words were gone and I didn't feel like posting. So I told myself that I would do it this afternoon. Little did I know that I would have a lot more to talk about today.

UNMC (University of Nebraska Medical Center) called me this morning while I was sitting at work. They had a spot open in their PT class! I had kind of given up that they would ever call and I had accepted that I would end up moving to St. Louis in August to go to WASHU. Now I don't have to move, I don't have to quit my job, I don't have to pay $88,000!!!! Well I am still going to move, but in with one of my friends so we can be crazy knitting cat ladies! It's going to be awesome. We're going to look at places this weekend and try to move in by the 1st of June.

Last week, Timm and I went to the Omaha Zoo half for my birthday, half because we wanted to go to the zoo at some point. The zoo is pretty giant and awesome! I feel it is best explained in pictures.

Timm's Twin


Hungry Shark


Timm and Me on Safari


We went and saw Date Night and ate some yummy food and generally had a good time.

I worked the rest of the week and did a little knitting and quilting on my down time. I managed to get my quilt all into one piece and finish my Sylvi. Then my birthday was Monday, so I went to Iowa to hang out. Timm and I and his friend, Charles, all went to Sioux Falls, SD (3 states in the same day!) and went to Joey's Seafood Restaurant. I got crab legs and they were delicious. Then I had a wonderful cheesecake dessert thing that was like a cross between cheesecake and fried ice cream, all it needed was a few baked apple slices and it would have been heaven on a plate.

On Tuesday, Timm and I wandered around town and looked at all the good fishing spots. I got pictures of Sylvi in action and Timm being a dork.

Since I've been home I added the next border to my quilt. I'm really happy with how its turning out. This border really helped to balance it out because it was starting to have a lot of pastels.

Close-up of a corner


It will probably be a while before the it shows any progress the next border is all pieced and I'm not exactly motivated to work on it. I need to alter my bridesmaid's dress before I lose all my time.

There's not much on the knitting front, I'm in a lull between major projects and hoping to start a new one soon.

Wow

Apparently I fail at blogging when I work full-time :-(. I need to work on blogging weekly, instead of monthly.

I've been to knit night at whole foods several times since my last post and its awesome! I don't know very many people in Omaha (basically just my co-workers) so its nice to have contact with other people once a week. I've enjoyed seeing other people's projects and share mine. They even semi-forced me to sew together my Sylvi and this week they rang the cowbell so I could show it off (even though I insisted that I still had 3 more flowers to knit and sew down). Also this week at Knit Night one of the girls had gone crazy at the bead store because there was a sale and gave away some stitch markers (they are awesome and I have broke several of the rubber ones from my knit kit in the past few weeks so I needed some new ones). And I taught a woman how to do cables (I know that's not a major accomplishment) BUT the woman did not speak English! She had her son there to translate, but of course he doesn't understand anything about knitting, so mostly I spoke to the woman through our mutual language of knitting and hoped she understood how to apply what I taught her to more than just her swatch.

Other than Sylvi, everything I've been knitting lately I've had issues with and there's been a lot of frogging and reknitting going on around here. I thought I had finished my skew socks and then I saw this.

1. On the right sock, I'd missed a row in the pattern that added 20 stitches back in before the ribbing.
2. On the left sock, I either wrote done my modifications wrong or can't count because it ended up shorter than the right one.
3. The yarn is different dye lots!!!
I can't change #3 but I could change 1 & 2 and then I realized they were really tight on my feet and hard to get on and off, so I decided starting over might be a better plan.
This time they are working a lot better. (I knit one sock in 2.5 days of training for work - Thank you Vince for understanding I can knit, listen and learn all at the same time!) The second sock is to the heel and should have some progress tonight (Friday night is when I get knitting time at work).

The other project I'm working on is a Little Blue Dress based on this pattern, for Timm's soon to be niece. Timm's brother and sister-in-law are not big pink fans, but I found this yarn at Mangelsen's and thought it was perfect.


The pattern calls for "worsted wool," which I interpreted as worsted weight but then could not get gauge so I looked again and it's actually supposed to be fingering weight yarn so I had a really stiff start to a baby dress. So rip, rip, rip and do a bunch of math and reknit. I'm much happier with it this time and am almost done and almost out of yarn, so I'm headed to Mangelsen's to buy a second skein to be able to finish it, then she can have baby booties to match too!

As I mentioned earlier, I took Sylvi to Knit Night to be forced to seam it and have started working on the flowers (easy to knit, a pain to sew down). I also need to find the perfect buttons for it, but here's a sneak peak.

The yarn for the flowers although it looks similar to the baby dress yarn, was dyed with kool-aid in my dorm room a year ago, when I first started working on Sylvi and I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

On the sewing front, my block-a-month quilt has been put on the back burner. The only progress I've made on it was finding a fabric for backing it. I don't have any pictures, but maybe I'll get one before my next post. I got distracted by Easter and thinking about a dress that I started working on over a year ago that was put on the back burner when I had an 1870s dress and undergarments to focus on for class. I decided it would make an excellent Easter dress and got it out to work on. I'm delighted with how it turned out - it's polka-dotted satin and has pockets, so I don't know how I could not love it. The only picture I have isn't very good, so I'll have to wait and see if I can get a better one. Now I'm trying to get motivated to go back to my quilt but i haven't been in a sewing mood lately.

If you have read this far, thank you! My only other exciting news is that I was attacked by one of my guys at work last night. I'm fine, I had a red mark on my forearm that faded and might turn into a bruise and some of my hair was pulled out, but my hair is so thick you can't tell. I guess being the one staff that has taken more than a 6 week class of Sign Language is a double edged sword. My deaf guy finally has someone who understands him, but it also means I can tell him things that other staff can't (like we need to share the TV with your housemates). The staff from the other parts of our 4-plex, all told me they hoped this didn't make me leave the field, I assured them it wouldn't. The guy who attacked me is usually a teddy bear and this morning told me he was sorry over and over again. He gave me a hug and was just so sad when I told him that he hurt me.

Hopefully I'll actually post again soon, until then Happy Knitting!

Catch up/Ketchup/Catsup

For some reason thinking of how much I needed to catch up the blog made me think of Ketchup and that in American Sign Language the sign for Ketchup is the sign for cat and then pointing up. Random, I know, but I thought I'd share. So in advance I'm going to apoligize for the long blog post with lots of pictures because I kept planning posts in my head but not successfully getting them up.

First off, meet Jane:

As mentioned in my last post I acquired her when my grandmother, Janalee (or Jane for short) passed away this fall. I wasn't able to take the serger back to school with me so I was unable to test her out till now and she is wonderful!!

My curtains are all finished and hung. Now my room glows pink for most of the day. One of my housemates even said you can see pink from under the door.

Ravelympics went well. I finished Mrs. Darcy on Saturday afternoon right before the Olympics were over. It only took 3 of the 4 skeins I bought so I have 220 yds. left to do something else with. The pattern was not particularly challenging for me to knit for the Olympics, but with the new job I was unsure of how much time I would be able to work on it. The woman who was knitting my dress for Ravelympics was not as successful, she currently has the project listed as hibernating :-(.

I had 2 knitting issues at the end of the Olympics proving that knitting on little sleep isn't helpful. While I was trying to finish Mrs. Darcy I sewed on the buttons in the wrong spots. (The colour in the above picture is more accurate).

My second mishap was more of a denial issue. I started knitting the Skew socks when Mrs. Darcy only needed the ends woven in. I only had one colour of sock yarn wound into a ball already and I needed to head to work so I decided it would have to work. Well it didn't. The skew socks are wonderful because they show off the colours so well and this yarn just didn't do the pattern justice. I knew that long before I got this far on the sock but I just kept knitting.

I've since restarted the socks, after roping Timm into helping me wind some of my other sock yarn and this yarn is looking A LOT better. I'm excited about it, I'm on the heel of the first sock already (Friday nights at work are slow). I should have pictures of the sock and hopefully a finished Francis Revisited soon!

Last weekend I was in the mood to cook and made a few tasting things in time for Timm to be here for a few days. One of which was a recipe for Black Bean Soup with Jalapeno Salsa that I found in Real Simple Magazine.

The soup was good.

The salsa was delicious.

And together they were awesome!

Lately, the thing that's been keeping me busy the most (other than work) has been sewing. It's a nice change since I haven't sewn much for myself since last May. I took a Period Patterning class last spring and made an 1870's corset, petticoat and three piece outfit on a deadline. This burnt me out on sewing for the summer and then I worked in the costume shop again once school started so all my sewing time was for shows.

Wednesday, I started working on my quilt again. The quilt was a block-a-month promotion at a quilt store in Indiana two years ago. Granny bought me the block each month and mailed them to me. She offered to buy me all the fabric to finish the top of the quilt if I would actually make the whole thing. I told her I would and at Christmas 2008 she sent me all of the fabric. I had sewn 3 of the blocks shortly after receiving them, but never gotten back to it. Because I haven't been sewing a whole lot lately I thought the quilt blocks would be a good way to ease back into things with some instant gratification. Here are a few of the blocks.

Between Wednesday and the start of the Oscars tonight, I finished all 12 of the blocks. The next step is to make them into Big Star blocks. I cut the fabric for these and sewed the first one tonight during the Oscars.

I never saw the sample that I'm sewing, so each new fabric added is exciting to me. I don't have any backing for the quilt and I've looked around a little bit to get a few ideas. All of the fabrics are Victorianesque so I'm trying to find something that will go style and colour-wise.

Next time more pictures and a short blurb about knit night at Whole Foods last week!

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:




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:


That's spice cake with lemon frosting and a secret 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:

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.

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!

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."

Time for the Moving Dance

I'm moving! No, I still haven't heard from PT schools, but I'm tired of sitting at my parents' where I don't have anything to do and not making any money. I'm going to move to Omaha and take the awesome job I have lined up that will use my degree. And live in a house with 4 or 5 other people my age that I don't know. (Yeah it concerns me a little too, but we'll see how it goes) I'm trying to get stuff lined up so I can move at the end of next week, so I'll be doing a lot of unpacking, sorting and repacking. Because of the way the house works all I have to take with me is the stuff for my individual room, everything else is provided, but I'm only going to take what will fit in my car so I have to sort through the stash and decide what goes and what stays.

In knitterly news, I'm working on the ribbing around the front of the Central Park Hoodie and have picked out buttons. I'm hoping to have it finished tonight so I can wash and block tomorrow and be able to focus on packing. I can knit when I get there!

*sigh*

I got my letters from the PT schools yesterday. I'm on the waiting list at all three of the schools I applied to. Which means I get to wait more. They don't tell you what your rank is and they can notify you any time from now until their program starts (which is August for one and June for the other two). I don't know what to do now. I probably need a job to pay my bills, but I don't know how long I'll be here. I'd love to move to Omaha and start the job I have lined up there (which is a really good job using my degree and something I think I'd really enjoy), but I feel like doing that would curse my chances of getting called off the waiting list. And while I don't really like being here with nothing to do the rent is free. So as of right now I think I might go back up north and hang out with my boyfriend and friends for a couple of weeks and not have to think about PT school.

In knitterly news, I went on a mission today to find a fishing line counter. I'd seen all these set ups online that have a fishing line counter mounted on a wooden device to measure the length of yarn for ~$50. Well as shown by my nice sock blockers, my dad is somewhat of a carpenter, so I went in search of the fishing line counter to use. I couldn't find the Shakespeare brand ones that the ones advertised as yarn meters use, but I did a Rapala brand one at Academy Sports. I tried it to find out how much of this mystery white yarn I have and the conclusion . . . around 1250 yds!

Still working on Central Park Hoodie, but been distracted by playing the Sims.

Still Waiting

I haven't heard from PT school yet :-/ I was supposed to get an email whether or not I got in on Wednesday, but still nothing. I might call on Monday cause this is driving me nuts. In the mean time more domestic goddessness. The good news is I have lots of pictures today!

First, the tote bag I made of the weekend.



































The front and back as I mentioned earlier are made out of album covers in a pocket of vinyl to protect them. I did cut the album covers in half so that the full weight and thickness is decreased. The inside pockets were made just the right size for my cell phone and my Knit Kit! The lime green fabric is leftovers from the curtains I had in my dorm room and the lining is recycled from what I used to cover my extra bed/makeshift sofa freshman year, so the only thing I had to buy was the vinyl (which is a pain to sew with!).

Over the weekend, while running errands with a friend I found a book called The Best Bake Sale Ever Cookbook it was $2 and I love baking so I figured I couldn't go wrong. Since then I've made two things out of it. My mom needed to take a cake to work so I convinced her to make the Tomato Soup Cake with Lemon Frosting. Yes the cake actually had tomato soup in it! It didn't taste like tomato soup tho (cuz I'm not a fan of tomatoes) it was more of a spice cake and the frosting was excellent! Then yesterday I made the Crinkle Top Cookies. You have to refrigerate the dough then roll it into a ball with your hands and roll it in sugar before baking. I got a few pictures of the process because my hands looked gross and I wanted to document it.

They turned out pretty well. They're cakey and chocolaty and the sugar adds a nice texture and sweetness.

My dad made the sock blockers as promised. I used them right away to take pictures of all my handknit socks to post on Ravelry. I used the template from Little Sesame Knits and made adjustments to make it longer (size 9 feet) and made the leg section a little wider to accommodate my largish calves.



After taking pictures of my socks. I enlisted mom's help in taking pictures of my hats. And today I took pictures of my scarves. Everything I've ever knit that's still in my possession is now listed on Ravelry! Now I just have to keep updating it as I go. My neighbor brought over more yarn yesterday I tossed most of it, but kept the 3500 yds. of grey fingering weight (oh so many possibilities!). To make room for it in my stuffed closest I got all the yarn out and went through it. I tossed a lot of the acrylic that I don't have a purpose for and organized the rest of it a little better. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to photograph the yarn to put in my stash on Ravelry or just let it be.

I'm 1/3 of the way done with my second sleeve for the Central Park Hoodie and plan on working on it the rest of the night. Then maybe finishing other projects before starting a new one. Clearly, I have too much time on my hands!

Photos!

I spent all afternoon taking pictures of all my knitted sweaters and cardigans on my dressform (I think she needs a name) and have since been posting them on ravelry. I thought I'd drop in here and post the pictures of my Owls.

I'm having a hard time remembering when I knit some of the sweaters I photographed. I can't imagine what will happen when I try to do it tomorrow with scarves and hats. :-o

I want to photograph all the knitted socks too, but didn't have a good way to do so. This made me look into making sock blockers out of a plastic placemat. My mom thought that they would be too flimsy, so now my dad is making me some out of plexiglass!! I'm super excited about it.