Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Plants


I don't really have a garden this year.  I was so excited to finally live in a place with a backyard so I tried to go outside one of the first days I lived in Arkansas and measure for a raised bed garden, but after 2 minutes I had been bitten by so many mosquitoes I literally had trouble breathing (which sucked).  So I took some Zyrtec (which totally works for making mosquito bites itch less, in case you are in a similar situation) and scrapped that idea.

However, in our (not at all spiteful) quest to take everything from our Iowa house (like cf lightbulbs from every socket, and the fancy lightswitches that Sean had installed), I took the planters that had a couple seeds in them and plopped them in the new backyard. When looking at them through the back window, they seem to still be alive.  In the foreground are a couple bell pepper plants, and in the back is a lettuce plant that I actually have no intention of eating.  I'm pretty sure by this point it would taste terrible.  But since it's pretty much all I am growing I love it just the same.

Except for the occasionally absurd wind (maybe you can see how the bigger pepper plant sort of has a zig-zag in it, from being blown over at one point), the southern rain storms and heat make it so I haven't had to water them or tend them in the slightest.  Which is great, since I don't go in the backyard. There are fireants out there, dude.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Emo

I miss my friends. And my music, which was on my computer that died.

Here is a kitten picture.
Snoozin' by the couch

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Um, I found a kitten


Only problem is, I'm in Little Rock for the weekend, and I can't really take him on the airplane.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

More pictures and a tank top.

So pretty!


So I think this is what a shawl is for...


Andrea is having me make a lacy tank top, and I love it so far!

Guess What?

I finished my shawl. It's huge. And awesome.

Here it is pre-blocking. Impressive stuff, no?


Maybe a bath will help?


336 pins later...


With the book again to show how amazing blocking is at making things bigger.


Look! Look how pretty! :D


That's a king size bed. This thing is huge.


I didn't finish by the end of the Olympics, but I am darn proud of myself anyway. I want some real in-the-wild-not-pinned-to-my-bed pictures, but I was too excited to post these pics and didn't want to unpin it too early, so there ya go.


So... does anyone know what you are supposed to do with a shawl after you finish making it? Anyone? Bueller?

Friday, March 12, 2010

Slippers, Puppy hat

For something that took like 2 hours to knit, these slippers are really taking forever to finish. They're like, half dry, so I sewed the strap on, and even made it functional because it tightens up the rather loose toe part. So yay. Now all I have to do is wait till they're all the way dry to puff paint the bottoms. I can't decide if I like them.


My karate instructor has been bugging me to make a hat for his dog for like, 2 years. So now that the dog has some puppies, I made a prototype for a puppy. It fits Calvin, ear-holes and all, so hopefully a puppy is the same size as a Calvin.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Arkansas slippers and some knitting surgery

I am making some French Press Slippers! When I went to visit Arkansas to see if it would be a good place to live (apparently I thought it would, and we decided to move there in a couple months), I went to a yarn store and found this yarn on sale and decided that these slippers would be a good pattern to use it on. Thus, they are my Arkansas slippers.

Here is them, pre-felting (with a helpful cat for size comparison).


Here they are after two go-rounds in the front load washing machine. UGH! They look awful! That lump on the back! I should have figured out how to sew them in order to not make that lump, and they were huge. I pouted all night, then decided to take drastic measures.


Chop chop chop! I went with the scissors. This step was terrifying. I cut the whole lump off. Slipper lumpectomy.


Then I sewed them up the back! I even got a bit cocky with my scissors and trimmed any weird lumpy parts around the edges, too. (The one on the left is still in pre-op, the right one is all stitched up.)


I decided to hand-felt them the rest of the way to seal up the new heel seam and try to shrink them a bit and get rid of the dreadful lumpiness. Then I went to search for some buttons. They're not done yet since they are still drying and I haven't sewed on the straps. I can't decide which way I like the button: with the little leaves or plain. What do you think?

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

I ran out of yarn :(

First, a couple days ago, all my stitches came off my needle. Luckily it was on a row I had added a lifeline to so it wasn't too hard to fix, but I definitely didn't breathe for like, a whole minute.


But look. I ran out of yarn. 3 rounds from the end. I'm gonna go cry now.


Here are my cats on a box (as predicted) to cheer me up.

I'm still knitting this thing.

Yeah, so here's how far I was last week at the end of the Olympics:


Here's what it looked like at some point...


I've only got 5 rows left. I think I'm going to finish today. Squee!!

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Days 10-16

Ok. One day left. I'm about 50% done. This oughta be interesting. :) I'd fix the formatting of these pictures, but I'd really rather be knitting.








Monday, February 22, 2010

So... I made a quilt :)

Yeah. I started making a quilt way back in the day. I just finished it. Like, right now. I needed to get the thing off my kitchen table since it's been there for weeks and I need to cleeeeeeean. Ok, it's not as done as I hoped I would make it... I didn't quilt inside the t-shirt parts, so they will probably fall apart with much use and I do eventually want to make them pretty with quilting, but for now, it's done done done.



This was motivated by the fact that my sewing machine seemed to miraculously be working again, as I discovered when I decided I needed to make a case for a new (to me!) bou for karate (ok, kobudo). It's sort of become my thing to make all my weapons have pretty cases. Any ideas for a tonfa case?


It's so pretty! I used the leftover fabric for a pincushion.

Day 8, 9, 10

I got quite a bit done this weekend, yay! I wasn't feeling well enough to go to karate on Saturday, so I stayed home and knit for pretty much the entire day. That was pretty good for catching up. On Sunday I went skiing (which was wicked awesome) for most of the day, but still managed to get a lot of knitting done when I got home. I'm finally on row 81! (Where I should have been last Tuesday, but ohhs wells.)

It's so pretty :)

Friday, February 19, 2010

Day 6, Day 7

So here's two more days of knitting. Or not knitting, it looks like. I was all excited when I saw the big sections without any lacey holes because I thought it would be easy, but it turns out that instead of just knitting, it's ribbed. But not just ribbed, Ktbl ribs. So it's taking forever. Oh well. I'm only like, 8 days behind. =P


Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Day 4, Day 5

My intarnetz were totally clogged all day yesterday, so I feel like I got a lot of knitting done, but looking at the pictures it doesn't really seem to be going very fast:

Day 4:


Day 5:


So I made a spreadsheet of how much I need to get done every day (if I knit the same amount every day) to be on track to finish by the 28th.

I did this by figuring that since there are 154 rounds to be knit and the area of a circle is πr^2, the area of the finished beast will be π(154)^2. Then I figured that every day I should knit 1/17th of the area of the circle, so the number of rounds to be finished with on a given day is the square root of the day number over 17, times 154^2. Yeah.


Date Round to finish
12-Feb 37
13-Feb 53
14-Feb 65
15-Feb 75
16-Feb 84
17-Feb 91
18-Feb 99
19-Feb 106
20-Feb 112
21-Feb 118
22-Feb 124
23-Feb 129
24-Feb 135
25-Feb 140
26-Feb 145
27-Feb 149
28-Feb 154


It's currently Feb 16. I am currently on round 52. Damn. Maybe I should spend less time writing spreadsheets and blog entries and more time knitting.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Day 3

Oh yes, another picture that's almost identical to yesterday! Woot! (In my defense, I had to go shopping for new socks for Valentine's Day. Who has time for knitting when it's new-socks-on-Valentine's Day-day???)

At least now I can start to see how cool the pattern is looking. Also note my rather obsessive use of lifelines... Hopefully when I totally screw it up (and you know I will at some point) these things will come in handy.

Not looking forward to the 1200ish stitches that await me in the last rows of this thing.


Sunday, February 14, 2010

Ravelympics Day 2

It's getting bigger! I love the beginning of a giant circle, because it actually gets bigger when I work on it! We'll see next week how I feel about each row being 500 or so stitches. So pretty!

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Epic Circle of Doom and Lace

It's the Ravelympics! I love watching the Olympics and I love knitting, so I figured I may as well take the amazingtastic yarn that Andrea gave me (because she is the coolest) and make an Epic Circle of Doom and Lace. Also known as a Rona Lace Shawl (non-rav link).

And, as a great bonus, I think I might blog about it. Because why not?

So here you go, ECoD&L Day 1:



Impressive stuff, eh?