this past week: budgeting and stripes

September 10, 2012 by 10 Comments

Hello everyone!

It’s relaxing to be blogging right now after such a stressful week!  Let me tell you, I’ve had the worst kind of personal drama, my first week at my internship, a horrendous mistake in budgeting, trying to cook, and school.  I’ll skip over the personal drama and just mention that my internship is at a community mental health center, where I get to co-counsel people and help lead groups, etc. (it’s a very interesting place to intern, for sure).  My budgeting mistake left me with $200 less than I thought I’d have this month, which means groceries are going to be hard to come by towards the end of the month.  That definitely means no yarn this month, either.  My cooking skills are slowly but surely improving, with the help of my chef boyfriend, which is good, and school is, well, school.

Amidst all of this stuff going on, I have had a little time to crochet.  The Granny Ripple #1 is slowly coming along:

 

And again, while I’ve been crocheting, I’ve been listening to audiobooks.   Nothing I haven’t mentioned before, either.  The Dragonriders of Pern is just as good the… whichever go-round I’m on now.  It’s definitely after third.  Also, my boyfriend and I have been watching an anime called “One Piece,” which is a really long but really good TV series that we are marathon-ing online.

So that’s all my news for today.  Hopefully I’ll have more granny stripe progress soon.  Thanks for stopping by!

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new project: granny stripe

September 4, 2012 by 6 Comments

I know I have quite a few projects to work on right now, but for most of them I am out of yarn.  The realization just hit me that my lack of yarn money is probably the main contributor to my lull in crafting recently (although I’m sure my apathy has played it’s part).  Since I do not have any money for yarn right now, I decided to make something with what I’ve got.  I realized that I have quite a stash of Caron Simply Soft (not my favorite yarn, but cheap):

The colors are a bit off, but you get the idea.  So I thought I’d try my hand at something I’ve not done before: a granny stripe blanket, particularly the one made famous by Lucy of Attic24.  I know the pattern is simple, but that’s OK with me because it looks so good!  Since some of these colors are basically scraps, however, I decided to change colors whenever I run out of the working one instead of changing them at the ends of the rows, thinking that it would produce a rag-rug type effect and produce a bigger blanket in the end.

I have run into two problems so far, though.  The first is that my foundation chain was so long that, while my blanket will definitely cover a double bed and maybe a queen, I might run out of yarn before I get there, even though that box is full of skeins.  The whole point of this was to not have to go buy more yarn, but I’ve already worked on the blanket enough that I don’t want to rip it out and start over.  The second problem is that some bands of color are significantly wider than others, and while I thought this would add charm, so far it just looks bleh:

In any case I plan to continue, because who knows, it might turn out great after all, and I might have enough yarn!  We’ll just have to see.  Honestly I don’t care that much, I’m just glad to be hooking again after that long hiatus.  If it doesn’t turn out good, maybe by that time I’ll have money to buy some yarn that I really want for something even more exciting.

As always, thanks for stopping by!  I’m headed off to work on it and watch a movie.  (I’m caught up on homework, hurray!)

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last days of summer

August 21, 2012 by 1 Comment

I go back to school today, after a holiday of about 2.5 weeks (I have to do summer school in order to graduate quickly).  It feels like school should not be for a long while yet, and I am feeling quite rebellious about my forced return, as are many of my classmates.

I was lucky, however, that I got to have a little weekend away in Charleston with my mom.  Here are some photos from the trip, all taken on my iPhone 4S.

Old buildings on Kings Street in downtown Charleston really add interest and history to the experience.

Many buildings are well kept and used as apartments/lofts above the shopfronts.

On Kings Street we stopped at Jim N’ Nick’s Bar-B-Q for some delicious beef brisket sandwiches.

On our first morning, we went to the beach on Sullivan’s Island. It was very hot, but the water felt nice.

Some intense looking rainclouds came in, though, and drove us away in the early afternoon.

We went back to the market area downtown, where we visited Kaminsky’s Cafe and had some incredibly delicious multi-berry cobbler.

On the way back home the next day, we stopped at Middleton Place, an old plantation home, and took the garden tour.

There were many ponds, this one full of lilies, and all around on the live oaks and bald cypresses hung multitudes of Spanish moss.

Here’s another example of the Spanish moss. Very eerie looking, don’t you think?

We had a great time on our trip, even though there was some rain, and I feel much more relaxed now and maybe a tiny bit more willing to go back to school.  Maybe.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any yarny things to share with you today!  No new Ravelry faves, no progress on my current projects, no nuthin’.  I just wanted to share my Charleston experience because it is a very unique and special place, and so different from many other vacations.

Thanks for stopping by!  I’ll have something yarny next time, I promise!

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yarn journal

August 15, 2012 by 5 Comments

Firstly, I want to say a big thank you to Hannah Ackroyd, who introduced me to this.  Thanks Hannah!

The Kathryn Ivy blog/site  provides free PDF pages for your printable organization needs.  You can make a binder (with dividers, perhaps) to organize your knitting/crocheting projects, your yarn stash, your needle/hook stash, your yarn wish list, your queue, notes, sketch pages, and graph paper of different sizes!  How cool would it be to be so organized, to be able to show off your finished projects with ease, and to be able to express your own yarny creativity all in one place?  Check out this screenshot of the crochet project sheet:

It’s a little small but you can see there’s space for a photo, all your yarn specs, notes, and at the bottom you can tape/paste your yarn label and a little snippet of yarn!  I can just picture a lovely neat binder full of these completed sheets!  So are you interested in making your own project journal?  Then please go to the site with all those lovely pages:

click here.

I do apologize if this is something everybody already knows about — it was new to me and I just had to share!  Thanks again to Hannah for enlightening me.  Now I just need to go out and buy a hole puncher and a nice pretty binder and I’ll be ready to start getting organized!  I’m so excited — it’s like Ravelry in physical form!

As always, thanks for stopping by!  I’ll be on a short vacay in Charleston with my mom starting tomorrow so I might not update for a few days, but I’ve left such a condensed wad of posts that it makes me feel like it somehow all equals out. 🙂

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reviewing yarn

August 14, 2012 by 5 Comments

I’ve begun working on an alphabetical list of yarns I’ve tried or that have been recommended to me by trusted sources (some of which are you lovely commenters).  Here’s the page that has it all so far.  I’ll be adding to this page as I find and try new yarns.  I hope it’s helpful, and as always, thanks for stopping by!

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