still alive…

March 4, 2013 by 9 Comments

Sorry it’s been so long.  I’ve been super-busy and pretty stressed.  As promised, however, I do have a knitting picture for you:

paulieonHere’s my paulie cardigan so far.  The edges are rolling a bit but you get the idea.  It definitely fits and will be perfect once the band with the buttons and buttonholes is added at the end!  Please excuse the dirty mirror and my wrinkled t-shirt.  You can tell I don’t have it all together at the moment.  You can also tell I still haven’t done much work on the cardigan.

My car is fixed, $700 later (shoutout of thanks to my parents for helping a lot).  Took a week, so I’m a bit behind in internship hours now.

This weekend I went to the South Carolina Counselors Association annual conference in Hilton Head.  I was hoping to network and find a job, but not a single resume was passed out.  At least I learned a bit about how to get licensed, and because of that knowledge I’m thinking about moving to Charlotte, North Carolina (which is about 30 minutes away from my town and has higher requirements for licensure, so I’d get more supervision).

While I do like knitting a lot and have been doing a lot of it as of late, I’m still devoted to crochet.  When I come home and want to do something easy, relaxing, and quick, crochet is definitely my fave.  I just haven’t had any good ideas for projects lately, and nothing has really jumped out at me.  Honestly I love the pattern for the ripple blanket, so much I would like to do a third one (first, second), but I don’t really need more blankets and the yarn really does cost too much to make one as a gift.  Not that I don’t like making gifts — I love it — but when it comes to spending large amounts of money, time, and effort on a project I feel like most recipients wouldn’t appreciate everything that went into such a gift.  People like my parents would, but they’ve got so many crocheted items already I’m not really sure they’d want more, haha.  *sigh*  I do love making blankets…

Well, that’s all for today.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

 

Filed Under: crochet, knitting Tagged With: , ,

yarn hiatus

February 17, 2013 by 9 Comments

Haven’t knit or crochet all week.  I guess I’m resting from my frantic knitting last week, I dunno.  I have been busy though, and I’ve got lots to share.

Firstly, if you are religious, please pray for my dad’s parents.  They’re my only living grandparents and they’re both in the hospital with various (serious) problems.  Dad’s actually on his way to Arkansas right now to see them.

And second, last night one of my car’s front tires got demolished when I slid on some ice and hit an embankment.  I have to get a new rim and new tire.  I’ll be contacting the junkyard tomorrow to see if they have a rim for about a fourth of the price of a dealership.   And, of course, ice means there was some wintry weather:

feb snow at jamiesThat’s the view from our buddy’s back porch.  Not a lot of snow, but enough to melt and make the roads icy, apparently.  So I’ve been sitting inside, where we haven’t turned our central heat on yet in an effort to save money, with my little space heater and my pretty mugs of cider and tea:

fiesta mugI’m collecting Fiesta brand tableware, like my mom does.  I only have 4 pieces and they aren’t as old and collectible as my mom’s, but they’re very pretty all the same!

In other news, I’ve been making a shimeji!  What is a shimeji, you ask?  Shimejis are cute little animations that walk around doing adorable things on your computer desktop.  I’m making one of Ron from “Harry Potter” because the only HP shimeji currently available is Snape, and there need to be more!  Here’s the program in action on my own desktop:

shime2And since they’re not doing exciting things at the moment, here’s some of what the can do:

shime4You can move them around and make new ones (they also self-replicate) and stuff.  They’ll be able to do more when I’m done.  And just so you don’t run away thinking I’m good at programming, I should tell you that I’m using the preexisting Snape program and just overwriting the image files.  Makes it seem way less cool, but let me tell you this is very time consuming and you have to be very precise!  I’m enjoying it though, and hopefully I’ll get to making other ones if this one works out.  So far so good!

Also you may have noticed that my foray into Photoshop work isn’t just with little shimejis — there’s a new banner for this site!  I know it’s pretty simple but I think it’s cute.

Well that’s all for now.  Sorry that I haven’t been knitting/crocheting this week.  Hopefully I’ll get back to it.  To be honest my arms are a little sore right now from all the wing chun martial arts practicing, haha.

Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you back soon!

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: other hobbies Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

5 days, 5 stripes

February 10, 2013 by 6 Comments

I’ve been working on the paulie cardigan and I’ve gotten 5 stripes finished:

paulie5stripesThe edges are a bit curly but you get the drift.  I’m really liking it so far and it’s fitting fine, too, so I can’t wait to get it done!

pauliestripescloseI must say that the purling rows are really slowing me down, but that’s OK.  It’s looking so pretty!

That’s really all I’ve got to show today, and nothing too thrilling has been going on in my life this week.  Chris and I are still doing wing chun with our friend and I’m already noticing a difference in my flexibility and maybe even weight loss.  (Is is too soon to really tell?  I dunno, I may be imagining that.)  It’s fun, in any case, and it really is making my mood better in general.  My old therapist was telling the truth when she said exercise makes you feel better!

Thanks for stopping by, hope you stop by again soon!

 

 

Filed Under: knitting Tagged With: , , , , ,

progress and a book

February 5, 2013 by 5 Comments

Check out my office at my internship:

right of the door

right of the door

left of the door

left of the door

It’s the catch-all room for old kids toys and games, as well as old office equipment and documents nobody needs anymore.  For some reason, none of this can be thrown away.  There are two more desks in the corner from which I was taking the pictures, covered in more junk.  This office is at the end of the hall, so nobody really calls me to come and do anything anymore since I’m so far away (last semester my office was in the middle of the building).  This means I can just chill and do whatever in my spare time:

pauliegarterThat’s what I had done at my internship (I’ve since added a few more rows but it’s still garter stitch).  It’s the beginnings of this cardigan.  I’m about to switch to stockinette, divide the body and sleeves, and start the stripe pattern, so it’ll be interesting from here on out.  Check out my carefully marked pattern:

pauliepatternDo you mark up your printed patterns like this?  Sometimes I even write straight into books (if they’re my books).

And speaking of books, look what I got:

bookI found it used on Amazon, and it was recommended on The Sweaty Knitter‘s blog some days ago.  I’d love to be able to just make something without having a complicated written pattern, and this book tells you how.  The percentage system is easy enough, but the sweater blueprints provided definitely assume that you have some skills (like how to make an underarm gusset).  It does tell you how to steek, however, which is something I’d been wondering about.  Overall a very useful book with tons of information on how to design your own sweater and what yarns to use, and it has lots of colorwork charts from all over the world.  Pretty neat!

So that’s all for today.  Sorry I’ve been focusing on knitting more or less exclusively — I’m definitely in a crochet slump.  I have yarn but I just do not know what I want to crochet!  I’ve found some cute patterns on Ravelry, but nothing that jumps out and says “HANNAH, MAKE ME NOW!!!”  Or if it does say that, I don’t have enough yarn.  I love me some big projects…

Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

 

Filed Under: knitting Tagged With: , , , , , ,

paulie: begin!

February 2, 2013 by 6 Comments

Thanks everyone for all of your feedback and advice!  I cast on the Paulie cardigan with the 3.50 mm needles and it’s looking pretty good so far:

pauliecastonMy increases are a little wonky but with blocking hopefully they’ll look a little neater.  I’m just so pumped to have finally started that I had to share, even though there’s not much to look at yet, haha.  You can see, though, that I’ve printed off my pattern and am carefully circling the stitch numbers for the medium size, and I’m checking off rows as I go.  The sweater looked a little big to me, but when I held it up around my shoulders and positioned it correctly, it looked right.  I can’t wait to get far enough where I’ll know for sure if I have to rip it out and start over or not…

That’s all I’ve got for today, I just had to share!  Thanks for stopping by!

 

Filed Under: knitting Tagged With: , , , ,
«Previous Page
Next Page»