Saturday, August 16, 2008

A Bag has begun...

So, I am officially done with 12 weeks of interning. 12 weeks of doing very little and making surprisingly a lot of money. Which makes my Katie still has to make car payments while in school fund quite a bit larger. This is the exact opposite of your typical internship. Which is why I loved my job this summer. I mean, I got flowers and tee-shirts when I left. How awesome is that?

And, I was totally crafty this week. I made some wall hangings out of Styrofoam and scrap book paper. 4 squares that look beauteous together, and all for about $7 and an hours worth of cutting and gluing. I will post a pic when I get them hung in my dorm next week. I also bought two 11x14 frames for $5 a pop and when I got home immediately found out why they were that much, as I snapped the glass in one. But, I really only wanted them so I could have a clean line around my MET prints, it doesn't really matter. Especially since before that I had just hung them haphazardly on the wall. Now they are a tiny bit protected at least.

To round out my purchases, two skeins of Lily Cotton in Rosewood for a nest bag.


Isn't this the most GORGEOUS colorway?

It was going to be a project bag, so maybe a gym bag. But I knit it on smaller than recommended needles and didn't check gauge, so its looking more and more like a handbag. Which is also very useful. In fact, I am almost done with skein one, and I think I am going to stop it there and use the start of the second skein for the handles. I don't know, I guess I will have to try it out and see what it can hold.


Here it is, althuogh its longer since I took the picture. The diagonal stripes were totally on accident and are very cool.

Finally, the Vine Lace hat has been blocked... it's still not very big. An FO to come, but for now, a blocking picture.


Yes, I did use a shoebox to block my hat.

One last item of business. Scout's Swag, which I only just discovered, is having a contest for anyone who posts about the Red Scarf Project. This project is fantastic, having provided 15,000 scarves to foster students headed off to college. So, I'm doing my part, spreading the word. I am going to try to contribute. I have half a scarf completed that I was going to frog because it is boring me, but I am thinking now that I might keep at it and see if I can't finish it before October. It's not actually a pattern, just garter stitch in doubled Lion Brand Homespun... unfortunately, its black/grey, not red, but they said they will take it anyway. We'll see. It is currently only 13" long, so that's a long way to go. But it's really pretty. SO anyway, if anyone else is interested, here are the guidelines and feel free to send any scarves or monetary donations to:

Orphan Foundation of America
The Red Scarf Project
21351 Gentry Drive
Sterling, VA 20166

Ciao! <3>

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Everything and Anything

Count, Count, Count, repeat. That's what I've been doing for the past two days at work. I love my internship, really, but I feel like I'm back to being, ohhh, 8, when for nearly forever I was into embroidery, but could not read a pattern without marking it. Now, I'm marking building tiles with multi-colored highlighters, then counting how many I marked. One side of this building has almost a 1000 big tiles, and 9000 small tiles. That's a heck of a lot of counting. 3 1/2 more days.

Second, Ravelry. I got my account on Monday morning! Hooray! Welcome, new addiction. Besides being obsessed with knitters blogs, now I have a bajillion patterns to ooh and ahh and plan over. 1 day, and I already have 12 things in my queue. This is bad. I go back to school in 10 days...

Third, School. More accurately, school shopping. Which I thought I had finished. Two craft stores, Staples, and Wendy's in one afternoon says differently. Note, being an architecture major is dangerous. It involves me being in close proximity while school shopping to craft items. Look what i bought when I was trying to buy a sketchbook, 2 colored pencils, an Xacto and a triangle.


Some soft, TLC baby in these cute colors.



This fantasticly smooth yarn that my mom made me buy because it was on sale and she touched it. And thought it was amazing.



Bonus! Jars for some of our shells. By some, I mean a tiny portion. My sister and I filled five and we still have a ton left. Did I mention my sister has a HUGE vase that she filled sometime last year? Yea, we have a lot of shells. But, mother was creative and found some candle holders to act as lids, since we didn't want any dust getting in. So, now they are my NOT candle holders since candles are COMPLETELY PROHIBITED at school *giggle giggle hide the candles from the RA*

And I have to go back tonight. AC Moore has photo boxes wicked cheap and I use them for everything, from my hardcover book dust covers to bills and paperwork to *hopefully* some finished knitting projects to keep them safe. Note - attempt to keep room clean and organized for at least PART of the semester. Plus I am going to buy some Lily Sugar n' Cream for a market bag. I want one for yarn and if I like them, maybe I will make some more so we save 5 cents a bag on our food shopping. Hey, 20 or 30 cents each week adds up to... 3.00 or 4.00... that buys like, I dno, something!

And finally, the stash picture. Remember how I told you that my sister has untold amounts of Red Heart Super Saver yarn? Well, Here's the picture. Apparently I am not allowed to take the pink and purple almost full skeins to school. And, I found 4 more 1/4 skeins after I took this.


Look at all this! I think she has every color known to man.

I can see me making lots and lots of hats with this mess. Lots and lots of hats.

Finally, Vine Lace hat was supposed to be done last night. However, that was before my friends decided that we should try and watch the meteor shower. Approx. 2 hours after this decision was made, it proceeded to rain. And Lightning. And Thunder. Continually. So, no meteor shower, but a nice evening watching youtube madness and the daily show. Plus yummies. So, hopefully I will finish that tonight, and maybe start that bag. Really. How else am I going to find my projects up at school?

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Hell of a Day


SO let's talk about my awesome day...

First, Cirque Dreams. AMAZING. Let me tell you, I had 8 years of very unsuccessful gymanstics lessons, and I can attest that the things these guys and gals do is RIDICULOUS... plus this thing vaguely had a plot, a fantastic singer that made it very Broadway-esque, and a very attractive adventurer who spent half the show without a shirt on. Who can ask for more? Plus, even though my mom bought seats 4 rows from the back of the balcony, we ended up moving up like 6 or 7 more rows and had a perfect view. Plus afterwards, Bubba Gump. Yum!

Second, OLYMPICS. Let me explain how much I love them. A LOT. I am not exactly a sports loving gal. I have been known to watch world series games (or all of them when your roommates team ends up sweeping them) and Super Bowls (hooray for beating New England!). I've also been known to attend the occasional high school football game and college basketball game in the name of music (aka - I'm with the band). But, do I seek out sports on TV? I might leave on some ice skating or gymnastics if I find them on at 3 pm on Sunday, but I'm definately not the type to follow players and revolve my life around a sports schedule. That being said, I am addicted to the Olympics. The team play, the ADD like coverage of every sport known to man, the super annoying lack of coverage provided by NBC. I can't stop. Basketball, soccer, gymnastics, swimming, beach volleyball, badminton, repeat. Americans, non-Americans, who cares! I even watched equestrian today. I am in love.

Ok, knitting. I have 13 rows of my Vine Lace Hat.


Isn't it pretty with the pink trim?

It's quite difficult to use the wrong yarn on tiny, tiny needles. But the knitting in the round on the DPNs hasn't been too bad. Yay for no all purl rows.

Finally, a FO.

Introducing the Ripple Eyelet Baby Hat


Can you tell I have a thing for colored borders?

Pattern: Ripple Eyelet Baby Hat
Yarn: Red Heart medium worsted for the white and yellow. PS - Seriously, I will take a picture and show you in how many different colors my sister has this yarn. It is ridiculous. Of coarse, she only used to make braids. And I only used a very, very little.
Needle Size: My size 10 straights for the white part, my size 7 circulars for the yellow (not knit in the round)
Time Period: July 31st to Aug 2nd (6 hours)
For: Donation. Size newborn-3 months
Mods: Color, and number of rows before decrease. I added the yellow as an accent color for the first work through of the pattern. I cast on for the newborn size, 73 stitches, but ended the pattern after the yellow section and two work-throughs in white, a little less than the requisite length since it was looking big. Followed with typical decrease pattern.
Notes: Awesome Hat, especially since it is not knit in the round. Next plan, adapt it to knit in the round. Shouldn't be hard, just reverse the purl rows to knit rows and eliminate the seam allowance. However, the seam is subtle enough that I could totally knit this flat again. :-)

Plus, I finished the front of the Mini Bear. But it might become the back. We'll see.

Friday, August 8, 2008

A bit of FRIDAY!

So I spent my lunch hour knitting the Mini Bear... woohoo, six rows. I am a ridiculously slow knitter. To be fair, it was the complicated part with the sleeves and the cast offs and what not, but still, I need to do better.

Goals for tonight: Knit up the head of Mini bear so I can have the front completely done AND have my 7 circulars back. Then I want to attempt to cast on a hat (Vine Lace I think, I kind of like complicated patterns to follow) on some dpns so I can take it to the city with me tomorrow. Mother got tickets for Cirque Dreams and even though we are probably in the last row like we have been for the last 2 plays we've seen (The Drowsy Chaperone w/ Mr. Bob Saget, and Young Frankenstein, sadly without Ms. Mullally), it still should be INCREDIBLE. But, since it involves an hour and half train ride in and back out to island, I definitely want something I can knit without having to bring two skeins. But this will be my first attempt at DPNs so we will see. PS, I'm doing this all while watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, which NBC has forced me to wait 12 hours for. Really NBC? Couldn't you figure out a way to put a bazillion ads on a live stream so I could watch it at work this morning? So sad.

In other news, girls night was fun... we saw The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2... my darling friend Meghan and her mom tagged along too, so it was quite an adventure. Plus the cutest Movie I've seen since Wall-E... I mean, who doesn't love Greece... and Greek Men... ooohh la la

<3> Ciao!

PS - I am working on getting better pics... my camera's screen hasn't felt like working for the last 3 months, so I've been shooting blind... like, I dno, I was stuck in the 90s with a 35 mm... but I'm set up my Flickr account and I'm learning (outside photos!). So, we'll see...

Thursday, August 7, 2008

The Bear that Started it All

My very first FO.

Introducing the Bear that Started it All


I picked up a little book to go with the gift since I had to go to the bookstore anyway to pick up Breaking Dawn.

Pattern: Benji Bear
Yarn: Red Heart for the white, green, and yellow; unknown for the pink. PS - I am starting out with my sisters yarn stash (she's 14 and had a yarn obsession FOREVER, but she gladly gave me some for my first couple projects). No idea how much since I started with leftovers.
Needle Size: My size 10 straight needles
Time Period: July 21st to July 31st
For: Riley Smith (My darling step cousins baby, due in November).


The front of this adorable bear... he was way bigger than I expected!

Mods: Only in the color, I gave him a sweater. Started six rows past the join. Stripes are 4 rows thick and I started with the sleeve color so it would line up well, which it did. Although, the five strands up at the top were a little difficult to manage.



The back of the sweater... the hardest part.

Verdict: Sweet Deal... for my first real project outside a scarf, and I hope I can re-work this pattern to be at a smaller scale. Also, the head was a little taller than wide and that threw of my perception of it, so I think I need to modify that on my next go around.


<3>

So some goals

So, in order to not to completely lose track of goal, I am going to list some goals. A lot of this stems from thinking about my Junior Year service project. We are required to do a community service project as part of the honors program at my university. So, I came up with this idea. Now, I have to convince my roommates to do it with me, as it has to be a group project. But, even if they out vote me and we go with something else, this is what I would like to do.

To donate to a neonatal unit in Rhode Island:

hats
booties/socks
mini teddy bears (either for the babies or for anxious big brothers and sisters)

I want to put together a box of them sometime in January, because I think that sounds like a reasonable goal. Actually, I would like them to be done by the first day of spring classes, January 28th. (Side note, can you believe I have 6 1/2 weeks off for winter break this year? It's pretty much ridiculous considering we are starting classes really early this fall and really late in the spring. Hopefully the boss will take back this lovely intern or I will be extremely bored and extremely poor) I am not going to specify how many of each, although I am hoping for at least 5 or 6.

What I have already:

1 hat

OTN:

1 mini teddy bear (a shrunk down pattern I am working on based loosely on the pattern I used for the full size shower gift).

I plan on posting some pictures, however, I can't really do that at work without my camera with me, so hopefully I will get a chance tonight. Well, maybe. The Sisterhood 2 is on the agenda for tonight so that may severely limit my blogging/knitting time.


Other goals:

Learn a variety of knitting techniques. Numero Uno on this list? Knitting in the round on DPNs. I'd really like to be able to make socks. And seamless hats. Yea. That's definately my next project.

Finish one or two things for myself. Like a bag for my knitting ;-).

Save up to buy some relaly nice yarn for a shrug for me... I have a white one that has basically fallen apart over the past year and it was a pain in the arse to find in the first place. So, I am going to make one. Maybe to wear to my sisters Sister's Sweet 16. Next summer.

Meet other knitters. Because, really, I like to talk to people. I mean, it's been about a week since I discovered knitters had blogs and I have been obsessively reading for that week (well, except when I was reading Breaking Dawn. ObviouslyEdward trumps everything.)

So, now that I have produced a ridiculously long post, I should probably go back to work.

<3 Katie

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

An Introduction

Welcome to the ramblings of a novice knitter. This whole thing started when I was invited to my step-cousins baby shower... as a poor college student, I decided, why not use my sisters never ending stash of yarn to make something. A few hours on the internet and I found a pattern for the cutest teddy bear. Took me two weeks, but the thing is beautiful. I gifted it on Saturday, and decided that, well, I really like knitting. So I am thinking about knitting for charity. Not sure which one, probably a hospital, as the things I am currently intent on making include stuffed animals and baby hats. So, we will see how it goes!

PS - this blog is to make sure I keep up on things... I hate starting projects and then slacking off...