Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Christmas Babies Part 2



Awwwww. Just in time for the snow, too! Perfect!

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Christmas Babies!


Apparently I am all about starting new projects this week. I discovered some red MicroSpun and some ridiculously fluffy white Yarn Bee and so I am going to make Christmas hats for the preemies! And I've started early enough that I might actually be able to donate something. Now I just need to buy cardstock to print tags. This is my way of confessing that the reason I haven't actually donated anything to the Preemie Project lately is that I don't have any cardstock for tags. I should really do something about that. I suck.

But you should feel how soft this hat is.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Lizard Ridge

I got so excited about finally finishing those darn mittens that I let myself start another project I've been thinking of for awhile. Lizard Ridge from Knitty is supposed to be knit with Noro Kureyon, but this yarn was part of a kit to knit a different afghan that I inherited from my Grandma. My uncle has the blanket made from the original pattern so I wanted to do something different with it. I figured Lizard Ridge would be a great way to make interesting stripes.


This pattern is much more fun to knit than I anticipated, and it is going faster, too. It helps that I have figured out how to knit backward recently, and I am getting almost as quick knitting backward as I am purling forward. This makes the short rows go pretty fast. The color changes are just often enough to be interesting but not often enough to make annoying ends. I have even woven in every end I have made so far, so if I keep this up (and actually ever finish after this initial excitement wears off soon) I will not have much finishing to do!

I am also knitting it in strips instead of squares. I'm not sure exactly how much yarn I will have to make it, so I might have to do some math at some point, but for now I am just knitting (= The yarn is only 25% wool, so I am a bit worried that the bumps won't block out, but I actually kind of like them. Especially since the yarn is a bit less exciting than the Kureyon, it adds some interest to it.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Take that, Winter! Mittens

Woohoo!!! My hands will never be cold again!


I decided to make these last winter when I was standing in the below 0ºF windchill waiting for the bus. It was too cold for gloves, but mittens didn't let me use my fingers to get my bus pass out of my wallet. Mittens with fingerless gloves or whatever they are called inside would probably have been ok, but then my poor fingertips would be exposed to the cold. So I looked through my stash and realized that I had some sock yarn that pretty much exactly matched my wool yarn so I decided to pair them together to make these!
I used the sock yarn to knit some gloves with no cuff and I used the wool yarn to knit some giant mittens with no cuff that I later felted to make them fit nice and snug. Then I put the glove on inside the mitten picked up stitches through both parts around the cuff and knit down for awhile! Ta da!



I'd put up more pictures and details and stuff, but the internet is being all weird, so that will probably wait till tomorrow.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Sneak Peek

Here is a tiny look at part of the project I am working on. Doesn't it look great?

No, not so much, you say? Just you wait till tomorrow! I am almost done, and I couldn't be more excited!! Especially if it remains as darn windy as it's been lately. Eeee! I can't wait to be finished!

Friday, November 9, 2007

Nose!



I got my nose pierced! A couple friends and I were at the coffee house getting interviewed for the newspaper about the Preemie Project and I was like, "let's go get pierced!" and one of my friends was like "yeah!" So after the interview we went over and got some brand new holes! Like I posted in facebook: "I was recently thinking to myself: "You know, I haven't had any major puncture wounds within an inch of my brain lately." Also, "Man, what could I do with this $40 in my pocket?" So I found a guy who would punch a hole in my nose. And now I have a nose piercing. The end."

The picture is lame. Don't you like how staticy my hair is? It's really bad when I am brushing the cat because you can literally hear him crackle. I am afraid I will touch him one day and he will spark and catch on fire or something. We turned the humidifier way up, but I am not convinced it is helping!

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Carbs and Pants

I'm not sure why I felt like posting these particular pictures today, but I think when I took these pictures in June I was still a bit weirded out by the whole "new me" thing. Maybe I have finally spent enough time being how I am now to be comfortable enough to share it. Anyway, when I first moved here (Iowa, far away from home, as is pretty obvious by the previous post...) I didn't know many people so instead I ate a lot of cookies and watched a lot of tv and gained a bit of weight, like 10 or 15 lbs.

That's when I bought these pants, which are a size 12. At that point I weighed something like 162 lbs.


Then I decided maybe I didn't feel like being like that anymore, so I stopped eating so many cookies. Then my friends told me about the South Beach Diet and I started following that. For two weeks I didn't eat a single itty bitty carb, not even fruit. I learned about ordering double vegetables at restaurants instead of pasta or potatoes. I started eating more eggs than I'd ever eaten in my life. I learned that things that are good on bread can often also be good on slices of bell peppers (probably tuna and hummus more than peanut butter and jelly... ew!) I started going to the gym to watch tv instead of going home to watch tv. After about 4 or 5 months of this, I lost about 35 lbs.

That's when I bought these pants, which are a size 2. Now I weight something like 127 lbs, but I've stopped weighing myself so obsessively since my weight hasn't changed in several months.


Now I have learned to be more careful with what I eat. When I know I will be going to a party or somewhere where there will be a lot of candy and carb-y beer and pizza (or if it's Halloween, for example) I will try to eat carefully the rest of the day, so that I can enjoy the good stuff without feeling bad about it. I also go to karate 3 times a week, which is such a good workout that I think I could even start eating non-flaxseed pasta (gasp!) and be ok.

Anyway, I just wanted to share. Woo!