In Which I Have a Lot of Knitting

Wow....

How did October get here already?

First off the college catch up:
Classes are fun (bet you don't here that from many people), they're pretty much the same as they've been.

I've had time to read a lot more than I thought I would so I've been reading a bit of Shakespeare. I don't think I'd read any of his comedies before and I really like them! Always learning something new.

With it being fall and a little colder up here than it is in Texas, I've had oppurtunities to wear stuff I've made, and I love it. Unfortunately it's also given me a bad case of startitis.

I'm currently working on five projects and I've ordered three more which are being shipped to me now. That's more projects on the needles than I've ever had before.

I'm still working on Joe my blanket, but it's gotten so big that it just lives on my bed now and can't travel anywhere.

I'm also working on an unnamed scarf that I started before college. It's a beautiful gray lace scarf and I love the feel of working with it.

I recently started a shawl in a pretty blue-green for a knit-a-long. I have to purposely drop stitches in it and I love it. It's named Anne.

I also ripped out a fingerless mitten I had made a year ago and am changing it into a lace neck scarf.

Then I wanted to learn how to do circular knitting with the magic-loop method so I ripped out Juliet, my pretty cotton yellow gloves with cables up the arm, and restarted them with magic-loop and it's working out much better.

See? I told you I've got startits! I started all those new projects within days of eachother.

Now I've ordered three kits. One is a kit of knitted ornaments that I'm going to decorate my room with for dead week and finals week. The second is a knitting bag that will teach me how to make linings and and use interfacing. And the thrid is a kit for a hat and gloves to teach me fair isle (knitting with two colors of yarn in one row), which was one of my goals at the begining of the year!

All this knitting will keep my hands busy and warm all winter.

Alright, tired of hearing about knitting?

In other news my classes at the Colvin Rec Center are going really well and I'm imporving greatly in both boxing and yoga. My boxing class has dropped from 20 people to about 8. It means we get to learn a lot more in each class because Jeremy, the teacher, only has a few of us to correct.

The other big part of my life here at OSU remains the Canterbury center with the Episcopalians. I love going to a church that has such a small congregation, because everyone knows each other; and I still love the two-three nights a week I spend at Canterbury, the people and conversation are great.

I also went on another tour of the library this week and found a fantastic study spot! It's on the fourth floor facing big arched windows so during the day it's really sunny and really beautiful. I also checked out a couple of books on e. e. cummings and I don't have to give them back till the end of January if I don't want to! How cool is that?

All of these things are keeping me very busy, and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow when I don't have any pressing responsibilities until the play in the evening.

"When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way."

In Which I Love School and Ice Days

So, last week I finally started school for my last high school semester. I'm taking three classes at Tarrant County College: English II, Philosophy, and Early American Lit and this semester should be fun. On my first day in class I was sitting there after knitting Kevin's tardis all through the Obama inauguration which we watched in Philosophy, and my teacher began to explain what we were going to be learning this semester. While he was talking I began to realize how much I like college.

I'm not necessarily talking about living in a dorm and meeting new people and all that fun stuff I'll do next year, I'm talking about the classes themselves. I plan on majoring in Psychology but I want to take so many other classes that have nothing to do with that while I'm there. I just have this sensation that there is so much knowledge out there and so much of it interests me that I want to take as many of those courses that I can while I'm at OSU.

I am in the honors college at OSU so I went on their website to see what honors classes they offered that I might be interested in. It was so cool! They had a logic course, an ethics course, some lit courses, and even a Jane Austen seminar. Doesn't that sound cool? When I first got the information about being in the honors college it said that my first two years(four semesters) I would have to take two honors courses a semester. Since I've finished most of my core classes already I was pretty sure I would have to contract a lot of those classes, but now I think I'd rather like to take these classes that will teach me something interesting as well as my regular psychology courses.

So I may be one of those few people who just likes learning for the sake of it, but I've got four years ahead of me to do all the in class learning I can - after that I'll just have to go on teaching myself things like I've done recently with poetry and even the more complicated knitting techniques I've learned recently. (such as knitting socks! I still love knitting socks!)

With that lovely segway into knitting I do want to mention one of my favorite days in the past few weeks was on Tuesday when school was cancelled due to non-existant ice. I stayed in my pjs all day and knitted on my pretty purple slippers that are so far without a name. As much as I love school, it was nice to have one more lazy day before I really get busy, now when I look at my new slippers I can remember that those lazy days do come every now and then.

In other news, I breifly mentioned Kevin's tardis earlier. I made up a pattern for his birthday and finished it in just about a week and I must say I'm very proud of it. I even learned how to duplicate knit and embroider words in order to be able to do it. I'm probably going to make one for myself with the leftover yarn soon.

Speaking of yarn I have ordered the first color for my blanket I plan on finishing before college. It will be dark purple, pale yellow, and blue black. Hopefully soon I'lll be able to save enough money to buy the yellow and black and I can actually start knitting it.

Well that's all for now. I really should get to sleep, I have one more busy day this week.

"Finally facing my Waterloo"

In Which I Knit Socks

So here I am again.

My last post to this blog was in November and a lot has happened then. So much has happened that I actually did not pay attention to any of my emails, ravelry, or any blogs that I follow for almost the whole month of December. Now that I've caught up with everything and gotten through the crazy that has been these past two months I felt it was time for an update.

Apart from my grandmother getting the stomach flu on Thanksgiving day and passing it on to my dad who then passed it on to me (this was the begining of the crazy), then finally starting to work three days a week, and all the other stuff that goes along with Christmas including spending 7 hours at church on Christmas eve. I have actually gotten a lot of knitting done. I have had my first ever Christmas knitting, been knitting to get rid of my stash, and am now working on my knitting new years resolutions.

Chirstmas knitting always has a good story with it. I've heard of many from other knitters which include such fun things as sleep depravation and finishing hats to go in stocings in the wee hours of Christmas morning. My story is this - I was only making Christmas gifts for two people, my Mom and my Brother. For my brother I choose to make a Jayne hat and a set of juggling balls. For mom I was making a wrap she picked out. I started both of these projects very early on so I was sure that I would have plenty of time. Due to this feeling of not needing to rush I worked on my Christmas projects sporadically and worked on other projects in between.

The week before Christmas I suddenly realized how little time I had left and how little yarn I had left for mom's wrap. I ordered more online, hoped it would show up soon, and set to work on finishing Kevin's gifts. A long doctors visit that was mostly waiting gave me time to finish the Jayne hat and start sewing up one of the juggling balls. A few nights later I was up at midnight watching Legaly Blond and finally filling the juggling balls, they went under the tree the next day.

During that time my yarn that I had ordered showed up I opened it on the Tuesday a week before Christmas and suddenly realized it was the wrong yarn. I had accidentally ordered the yarn I had used for the Jayne hat. I frantically ordered more and it didn't show up until the Saturday before Christmas. I frantically worked to finish the last sleeve and was up until 1 a.m. on the 23rd sewing it up it was wrapped on Christmas Eve.

For Christmas I was given among other nifty tools a yarn meter, so I immediately went to work measuring all my yarn and planning projects for it. I now have great plans for using up almost all of my yarn before I go to college in order to make it easier to travel and store (it's much easier to store nothing than a whole lot of something).

Then the new year came and I made some resolutions. I read the Knitting Daily and one might notice the banner on the side of my blog saying that I was a Fearless Knitter for 2008. I believe I lived up to that name too, I made my first sweater and it fits, and I tackled my first Christmas knitting as well as other things. Now I also have a banner proclaiming myself to be a Fearless Knitter in 2009 and I began to wonder how I would live up to that name. I came up with three ideas. I decided that in the course of this year I would conquer my fears of socks, lace, and colorwork.

I began eagerly last week with socks. I can now proudly say I have knitted a sock and am knitting it's mate and have plans for more!! The rest of the resolutions will hopefully come to fruition in the course of this year.

That's all I have for now, I'm off to finish my second sock!

In Which I Learn Something About Our Postal SystemMail

So about a week and a half ago I ordered more yarn (like I need more yarn, I know). Then I put off writing a new blog post until the yarn had got here so I could talk about how pretty it was and what I was doing with it.

So I waited. And waited. And waited.

Every day I would wait anxiously for the mail to get here and then be very sad when it didn't contain any yarn. A week after the yarn had been shipped I went on the website I had ordered from and finally figured out how to track my yarn. I then found out that my yarn had been in Dallas. Then a couple of days later it somehow ended up in North Carolina. Our postal system at work.

So my yarn finally came in yesterday over a week after it had shipped from Ohio. I had ordered a gorgeous emerald colored bulky yarn for a shawl. Why did I need this yarn? I'm doing a Knit-a-long Read-a-long with a group of knitters who like Jane Austen novels. Right now we are reading Sense and Sensibility and the shawl fits into the category of something romantic and beautiful that Marianne would knit. I am also continuing on my sweater for something that Elinor would knit.

My sweater, Nebulous, is going rather well. I have all of the back done and am about a quarter done with the front. It will be beautiful. I am taking both Nebulous and Marianne(my shawl) with me to D.C. whether or not I will actually find any good knitting time. I finished D.C. last Sunday and have been giving it a trial run all week. It is a very good bag, possibly one of my favorites of the ones I have knit. It will not hold a huge knitting project, but it will hold enough. The frogging and starting over paid off in the end.

In other news, my cousins from Birmingham were here this past week and I taught Alex, the one closest to my age, how to knit. I don't know if she'll keep it up or not but she did seem to enjoy it. And I love to spread knitting wherever I can so I was very happy.

Now I'm off to have lunch with my friends and pack for tomorrow.

In Which I Get Yarn

It's been a big week as far as knitting goes.

After anxiously waiting for yarn on Thursday and Friday, sitting watching the mailbox until the mail came, I settled in to do the same thing on Saturday morning. During the week the mail comes to our house around 10:30 so I wasn't planning on waiting too long. I had just started a really good book and was willing to wait.

10:30 came and went as did 11:30 and 12:30 by around 1:00pm I decided to take a break from my vigil and eat lunch. After lunch the mail still wasn't here.

I had a birthday party to go to that night, and deciding that I should leave the house before I went stir crazy I went to Target to buy a gift and my mom came with me. On our way home we ended up behind a mail truck and I thought it would be rather funny if that particular mail truck was headed to our home and had my yarn on it. We continued following it and sure enough it did stop in front of our mailbox. We sat in the car behind it and I watched to see if there was a large padded envelope with our mail.

There wasn't.

Rather sad, because I knew I would have to wait until Monday at that point I went home and finished up some flowers I was knitting for the party that night. Later, about an hour before I was going to leave, the doorbell rang. I went downstairs wondering who it might be and to my surprise it was the mailman back again with an envelope full of yarn for me! I probably could have hugged him at that point, but he was already going back to his mail truck.

I was even more surprised when I opened the package and saw that it was my sweater yarn which had shipped a day later than my purse yarn, but I was ecstatic. I quickly cast on for a swatch (yes, I was very good and actually swatched for my sweater) and was happy to quickly get gauge. I had decided that I had good gauge at just a couple of inches in, but I wanted to finish the whole swatch and wash and block it so that i could see how it would do.

Of course by this time it was time to go to my party, where I didn't get a single chance to knit. After the party a couple of people and I went to IHOP because we know one of the waiters working the graveyard shift there and I got about another inch done while we were there. I got home around 1am and finished up the swatch, washed, and blocked it so it would be ready by the time I went to church the next morning.

At church I cast on and began the whole sweater. It was so exciting. In the past week I've gotten almost the whole sweater back done which I noticed is much faster than I used to knit.

Of course after a week of being very single minded about my knitting I've become a bit distracted. I am trying to finish up my bag D.C., which I also finally got more yarn for, I want to knit a change purse because I got this handy card holder which is replacing my wallet, and I was commissioned to make another bookweight that I want to have done by Friday when I see the lady who wants to buy it again.

Oh well, all is going great in the world of my knitting and I'm even finding time to clean my room (mostly knitting induced mess, I didn't know I had this much yarn!)

Check later to see how the sweater(Nebulous) and D.C. are going - I promise pictures next time!

"Tell the folks at home what you're doing, Roger."