busy Busy BUSY!

I feel like that’s the title of every post nowadays?  Life is crazy.  What else is there to say?

Well first news first… I PASSED MY PRAXIS II!  Well, I passed the first test, which was the Mathematical Content one.  This means that I’ll be able to start my student teaching without a problem next year.  Always good news.  Especially since that test costs like $80 plus their $50 registration fee.  Now I have one more to take and pass before I can get a liscense to teach.  The plan right now is to take the one in the middle of summer so that I have plenty of time to go back through all my old notes and study.

What’s going on with my knitting?  Same old, same old.

As you can see the sweater is coming along.  I’ve gotten all my neckline issues fixed, it’s been joined in the round and I’m only about an inch from slipping stitches off for the sleeves!  WOOHOO!

It really isn’t taking long to knit at all.  Just takes a long time when you screw up the pattern. :P  If I didn’t have homework stuff getting in my way all the time, this thing would have totally been done by now.  Oh well… guess homework should come first huh?

In other news I’ve got a picture to show you all of the prayer shawl that I started back last November.  Shocking that I started something and didn’t post about it huh?  I’m sure somewhere I had planned on talking about it, but then school probably got in the way which caused me to just neglect blogging.  hehe.

It’s red heart.  It’s garter stitch.  I love it.

Pattern is a cake walk.  I think it’s one I found searching ravelry for free shawl patterns, and the word “scrap” in the name just caught my attention and stuck.  It’s for charity, so I figured Red Heart is good and washable.  Also because it’s in garter there is really no worries about it curling.  Which is always good.  When I’m giving gifts I like to make them as easy to care for as possible, especially when you don’t know who the recipient will be.

This last picture I took awhile ago.  I was sitting in the living room spinning, and I like watching the birds out the window on the feeder while I spin.  This is the squirrel proof feeder we got our mother for Christmas.  As you can see it isn’t so squirrel proof.  Either that or the little things are getting SMART. 

As you can see the little thing is sitting on the branch of the tree.  He then reached out, grabbed the birdfeeder by the little foot stand thingies, and PULLED it towards him!

Yarn Diet Update!

YAY yarn diet!

So it’s been a whole month, and the only new yarn type thing that was added to the stash was my own handspun that came out of the fiber stash anyways. 

Here are the numbers as of February 1st.

22463 grams of yarn currently in the stash (+105 grams this year)

197.3 oz of stuff in my fiber stash.  (+0 oz this year)

So far.  So good.  Cause I know that 105 extra grams really came out of the fiber stash, but I’m probably not going to change my numbers there until I get that orange roving down to a reasonable level so I can actually weigh it.

ugh.

The Essential Stripe Sweater…. after I ripped about half of it out.  Yes, apparently I STILL can’t read the directions…. ::sigh::

Who wants to guess what I did this time?  Well… I increased the way I was supposed too!  Back on take one of the sweater I increased until there were 8 stiches on either side of marker A.  Cause that’s what the directions said.  Well when I screwed it up last time I noticed it didn’t say 8 on either side of marker A…. it said… 11?  I could have sworn it said 8, but wow just figured I was imagining things again and well I’ll increase to 11 like it says.

Last night at knitting group I hit that 11th stitch, joined the sweater and started knitting it IN THE ROUND!  WOO HOOOO!  I was pumped.  Came home, pulled the PDF version of the pattern up… and what did I see…. Increase until there are 8 stitches on either side of the marker A.  WTF.  NOOOOoooooooooooooo I KNOW it said 11!

Then I scrolled down a bit… and saw that the 11 was there… but it was under the part labeled “Sport Weight Version.”  Soooooo I ripped back.  But I will say it did look fabulous when I draped it around my shoulders before ripping.

This my friends is why I have absolutely zero blog content.  I can’t get anything finished. 

Although I did get a new knitting book!

Making Mathematics with Needlework.  I LOVE it.  It has a variety of needlework projects so there’s definitely at least one project for everbody.  The projects aren’t what I would call “stunning” as far as knitting projects go, but if you like math (and I mean scary, higher level, above calc kinda stuff) then totally check it out.  It’s definitely not a book for everybody.  But me… I’m in love.

Yay KNITTING!

School has been busy as usual. I did however get lots of knitting done at the basketball game last Saturday, but the knitting did stop once the girl behind me asked, “hey… is that Lebron James over there?”  huh.. guess so… does look like him.

So the rest of the game was spent talking to the two girls behind me, making stupid jokes, and comparing our cell phones. It was quite entertaining.  And hey, the girl next to me is in the prayer shawl ministry group that started last semester so we had fun talking yarn for a bit.  Over all fun times and much knitting… can’t beat that.

Obligatory picture of scarf progress after game.

That is all.

OH WAIT!  I do have something else to say.  I’m a huge Jane Austen fan… and I’m sure I’ve mentioned that somewhere on here before.  I’ve listed to all the books on tape cause I just can’t put down my yarn and fiber long enough to pick up a book and exercise my eyes.  But anyways, I’ve never seen any of the movies they made about the books except for the most recent P&P.  WELL!  PBS is doing the Masterpiece Series thing on the Jane Austen movies right now.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!?!?!  It means that practically EVERY Sunday until some time in April there’s a different Jane Austen movie on!  Persuasion was on last night and I went running to the TV about 2 minutes before it was going to start.  Didn’t take any knitting cause I was planning on grabbing a quick snack.  I figured I’d run back at the first commercial break and grab my wheel or the sweater… well… there were ZERO commercials.  So there was no yarn with my Jane Austen.  Ohhh well… I’ll be better prepared for next week.  The lovely thing about this is now I know what Jane Austen movies I need to add to my wish list.

Oh.. in other exciting news… I took my Praxis II test last Saturday morning.  YAY MATH!  Overall I don’t think it went *too* horrible.  I know my score isn’t going to be perfect, but upon doing some research into the scoring of that test yesterday made me feel MUCH better about it.  Turns out my particular test has a point range of 100-200 and I only need a 139.  Doesn’t seem bad when the minimum is 100 and the max is 200.  The real trick is not going crazy until I get my scores in a month.

Spinning!

Yea, so I’ve still been plugging away at the sweater.  Can’t say very much is getting done since school has started back in full force.  Although there hasn’t been tons of homework, there has been tons of reading which I guess is homework too.  All that work means not so much of the fiber fun.  Yesterday though I did sit at the wheel and push another bobbin of that orange lincoln/mohair blend off of it so that I could get started on some work spinning that showed up in the mail yesterday.  (The work spinning is probably the reason you haven’t seen much knitting since last March.)

Picture of BOTH skeins of the orange stuff that got completed this month.  The one of the right I finished back around the 1st of the month and the other was finished yesterday.  I’m still debating about what I want to do with these.  Part of me wants to throw them in my etsy shop and just get them out of the stash now, but another part of me wants to keep them until November for the guild booth at a local craft/art sale.  I wasn’t able to participate in the guild sale last year because I just didn’t have anything that I felt was quality enough to really sell, and this year I REALLY want to participate.  So I think they’ll be in the stash for a few months while I collect up some handspun.  Worse comes to worse if it doesn’t sell at the guild table I’ll throw it into etsy and open the yarn up to the masses of the internet.

Also in the exiting mail of yesterday I got my KNITPICKS ORDER!

I know… I was really excited. 
Apparently I live under a rock and didn’t know that Knitpicks sold bigger chords than the ones that came with the options set.  So I was sitting around COMPLAINING about two weeks ago about this fact that they *only* had up to the 38 inch and someone pointed out the fact that they went up to a 60 inch. 

First I thought she had NO idea what I was talking about, but upon everyone else in the chat room agreeing with her and me going to over to the KnitPicks site I discovered that they did in fact have MORE sizes!  I can’t tell you how excited I was.  So of course I got one set of each of the larger sizes and was then shocked to realize that each pack contained two chord thingies!  (Note:  If I would have actually READ the site I would have known that each contained two, but apparently I cannot read when I’m not in school.)

Sweater Update. :P

You may remember this picture from my post back on December 24th where I gushed about my sweater and how great it was coming along and how I my only real fear was that it wouldn’t fit.  Looking back I found at least one spelling error so it’s definitely a typical post. 

Well a few days later I put that sweater onto a piece of scrap yarn, threw it around my shoulders and fell IN LOVE.  I kept on knitting and was just two inches away from the arm holes!  Exciting, exciting!  So as I was sitting there working I was repeating the directions over and over in my head.  This is something I tend to do quite often so I don’t forget anything important…  Then it hit me.  “Increase every 8 rows until you have 11 stitches on both ends… yada yada yada…”  8 rows… 8 rows… wait…  8 rows?  Huh… I bet they’re counting the RS and the WS rows…. Wait.. why am I only counting the right side rows?!?!?  Oh @$#*@&!

Yup… instead of increasing every 8 rows, I had been increasing every 16.  Oops.  I was 1.5 skeins into the sweater and 2 inches from my arms!  There was much frogging.  Thankfully I was at the BF’s so all I had to do was wind the yarn back into a ball while he destroyed my sweater for me.  He enjoys that very much and it saves me the pain of having to do it myself.  This was the 3rd project in a row that I had to destroy.  Oh.. was I angry.  And for a few minutes I gave up hope on ever getting this sweater done this winter.  Keep in mind it’s already January, and was a whopping 60 some degrees today so there isn’t much hope anyways… but STILL!  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargggggggggghhhhhh…  It definitely wasn’t a happy moment.

Well, I cast that sweater back on the same night that the frogging happened and it took me awhile but I’m finally back into the swing of things.  I started classes today and I did find some time during my breaks to pull it out and knit a few rows.

Hopefully I’ll get some sort of knitting project finished this month that way my New Year’s Goals will be right on track.  But really as long as no new yarn comes in, it doesn’t really matter if there isn’t much that leaves the stash.  The important thing is that I’m knitting.  The other New Year’s Goals are still going strong as well.  I have yet to spend a SCARY amount of money, and so far the weight loss is happening although it’s happening gradually.  But gradually is good when it comes to big tasks like that.  And heck, if I’m lucky and this weight loss is successful, I won’t be able to wear the sweater next year anyways.  I better get knitting.

January 1st!

Happy 2008 everybody!

Now to start on those resolutions.

The most interesting one to blog about is the yarn stash reduction!  Currently in the stash I have 22,217 grams, or about 49 pounds, of yarn.  That includes all my handspun, all my sock yarn and my mounds of acrylic.  As far as the fiber stash goes, it currently contains 197.3 oz or 12.3 pounds.  That’s a scary amount of yarn things.

So take note in those numbers!  I’ll be back with updates on them as I finish thing and move yarn out of the stash.  :)  I already have tons of project ideas in mind, now I’ll just have to find the time to complete them.

ETA:  I noticed while adding some new handspun to my spreadsheet today that apparently I had one skein that was at the bottom of my list!  Where the yardages and weight weren’t being counted.  So I updated my numbers. 

ETA2:  While looking over the spreadsheet today I found that I had more yarn down than I truely had in my stash!  So I fixed my typo. 

Happy New Years EVE!!

Happy New Years EVE everybody!

So in honor of the new year let’s reflect on the resolutions I made last year:

1. Get yarn down to two bins by September (That was a goal I set last September. I don’t think it’s going to happen but I’m going to try the best I can. As long as the stash goes down a little, I’ll consider it an accomplishment.)   This whole Knit from the stash 2007 should really help with that though. HAHAHA!  In fact my stash has probably increased.  I tried.  I did the whole “knit from your stash 2007″ thing and you know what, sock yarn and roving were exceptions… exceptions that I LOVED.  That’s probably why the whole yarn diet thing didn’t work. 

2. Participate in the KALs that I sign up for. Or at least as much as I can seeing as how college tends to get in the way of my fun. Stupid school work.  I started off good, did it once or twice, then started spinning like crazy and watched my knitting time disappear.

3. Start Christmas presents early (maybe summer), and don’t make things where I have to worry about peoples sizes. (aka. DON’T TRY TO KNIT EVERYONE SOCKS. Scarves are good, possibly some stuff knit out of handspun.)  Did the vegan fox scarf for my sister’s birthday.  Other than that there was no x-mas knitting.4.  Knit with my handspun.  It will not melt if I try to work with it….. I should not be so afraid of it… really.  Hehe… didn’t do that either.  I was planning on knitting with some of it, but it just never happened.Yup… I didn’t really do any of them like I had planed on.So now to make some goals for 2008!

• I will use up more yarn than I bring in.  I’m measuring this by weight since a lot of my acrylic doesn’t have yardages listed.  I’ve made a very detailed spreadsheet of all the stuff in my stash including the acrylic!  I even got rid of 3 of those plastic grocery bags full of acrylic.  I’m not going to say that I won’t buy yarn, because I’m sure I will, I just don’t want to have MORE next January than I do now.
• I’m going to eat healthier and get more active this year.  Not so much a “I will loose weight” goal but a “I’m going to get healthy” goal.
• I’m going to save money.  I don’t make tons with work and I have a scary amount of yarn.  So really knitting up the stuff I already have means less money spent on yarn.

Now for pictures of the scary yarn and fiber stash!  Pictures that will hopefully keep me from buying more this year.

Acrylic! AHH!  Funny thing is some of the stuff in that picture I actually decided to get rid of after taking the picture.  So the fun fur is gone, the pinkish/purple yarn ball is also gone and the blue one by it also left. 

Here is the acrylic baby yarn stash.  Mr. Oreo decided he was going to jump into the photo and since he wasn’t blocking anything I let him stay.  Really it’s not tons.  The stuff that looks really old on the right side is stuff that belonged to my great aunt who died before I was born and that stuff I’m always keeping.

One picture of the natural fibers yarn stash.  AKA non-acrylic. 

2nd picture of non-acrylic yarn. 

Last picture of non-acrylic yarn.  As you can see I couldn’t fit it all in one picture.  Yea… the last picture is mostly handspun… handspun that I haven’t knit with yet. 

Now for the fiber stash!  This one did not need 3 pictures… it only needed 2. 

Picture number 1.

Picture number 2.  Now I’m going to go take all these lovely pictures of mine and make a background for my computer that way I can see my stash at ALL HOURS OF THE DAY! 

Some knitting.

I’ve been doing some knitting lately, as you can see in the picture above.  I did cast on my sweater, and I’ve gotten pretty far.  I’m already done with the first skein of yarn and I’m about 4 inches away from being done with the raglan increases. 

So far I’m liking this sweater.  My gauge is still on which is good.  Hopefully it’s going to be the right size and will look good when done.  I do plan on trying it on as I go.. but I really feel like I need to get to the arm holes so that I have something to cram on my body.  I will say though that I am a bit nervous about it.  I’m hoping it’s going to be a good size, but since it’s all bunched up on my circular knitting needle it’s hard to gauge how big it really is.  Oh well.. I’ll have a little faith.  I’ve done so much ripping lately I really hope this isn’t going to have to be frogged as well.

Oh… and I did survive this past semester.  All the grades were good and now I just have two more semesters of classes and one semester of student teaching.  Scary how quick time’s flying but it’s a good thing.  It’ll be nice to get out of school, get a real job and get one with the rest of my life.

It’s been awhile… but I have an FO!

Okay… So I did survive finals week, then I spent lots of time doing absolutely nothing.

The Sunday night before finals I was working away on the Welt Fantastic socks while studying and I decided to see if I could put it on… nope. Couldn’t get it over my heel. Oops.

I KNEW one inch into this sock that it was going to be close…. two inches in, I knew there was NO way… but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. I measured my foot, swatched, followed the pattern. So when I got home that night I frogged it and started another pair of socks. I can’t study for finals without something to do. So I cast on the Widdershins pattern from knitty. I’m doing two socks on two circs and these WILL FIT!

I also recently started a scarf for one of the girls I tutor. Nice, semi-easy pattern on size 6 needles.

I had my last final on Thursday morning and so when I got up on Friday the first thing I did was go to Yarnia and buy yarn to make a sweater. Yea… okay… so it wasn’t exactly allowed cause of my yarn diet; however, I had two gift cards from Yarnia for my birthday so I figured instead of buying two pairs of sock yarn… I’ll spend a little of my own money and get enough yarn for a sweater! So I did. The pattern I picked is Essential Stripe and called for something like 1500 yards so I figured 7 skeins of Cascade 220 is 1550 yards, I’ll get an extra skein to me safe. So I got a bunch of yarn, and I have the feeling I’m going to have 1-2 skeins left over, but that’s okay. I can always find something else to make out of it when I’m done. It’s pretty yarn, and I’m glad I bought enough seeing as how the rest of that color sold out the next day after I bought my yarn.

Oh! And now for the FO! I finally finished my sister’s Birthday gift today. I was supposed to have it done back in October, but you know how school ruins your life.

It’s the Vegan Scarf pattern from knitty. I used TLC Heathers, Patons Allure and Patons ChaCha for the yarns. I basically just followed the pattern. It wasn’t too bad, but I wouldn’t recommend it for a first time project. Definitely lots of sewing things involved. All the extra little details are over on my ravelry account for those of you who are interested.