OH. MY. GOD.

Oh my god.  Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.

OH MY GOD!

What?!  Oh my god.

Oh. My. God.                          Ohmygod.

Do you see it?!

Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god look look look LOOOK look!

Oh my god.  There's a hole.  There's a hole in my lace!!!!!

Oh my god.  What do I do?  What do I DOOOOOOO?!

How?  Why?    ... HOW?!

WHY!

How? .... Why?HOW?!

::gulp::  help me.

Home Sweet Home

Oh my goodness is it good to be home.  I don't know what it is, but there's something about Minnesota that is very comforting.  As soon as I cross the border and see the "Welcome to Minnesota" sign, there is an instant feeling of relaxation and excitement.  As beautiful as this view is,

after five hours it gets a bit monotonous.  I was glad to see the skyscrapers of the Twin Cities once again.

My little sister and my dog both gave me a very warm greeting, and then my sister came running up to me with a package that was waiting for me.  One of my other sisters, the one I always mention here, sent me a very generous box full of wonderful things to keep me occupied during the summer.  She sent me THREE 4 0z., um, bunches of merino top from J.Knits.

(Nebraska)

(Boston)

(Denver)

The box also include eight skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca in the Tanzanite Mix colorway.

I can't wait to make a sweater out of this one.  I've wanted one ever since I fixed up the sweater that my sister made for my younger brother (which he seems to never wear).  You can see where I even added length to the bottom because he thought it was too short at first, but he still doesn't wear it.  I may still steal it.  Don't tell.

There was also some fun Japanese candy in the box.  Yes, my sister goes a bit overboard and apparently loves to spoil me when she sends me packages.  I haven't tried these yet, but my little sister assures me that the mushroom ones are delicious.

I've also been doing a bit of spinning using the hand-dyed BFL that Anne sent me.

It's so fun to spin and I love the luster that this fiber has.  I'm really excited to see how it looks in the end.  I'm going to make this one a 3-ply yarn.

Also, sadly, the shawl is still not finished.  I'm going to have to zip through the border pretty quickly and mail it to my LYS (which, ironically, is now 5 hours away) as soon as I get it done.  Wish me luck! (1/2 the border to go...)

And Then It Was Summer

Ah, the school year is finally over!  I don't think I have ever looked forward to a break more than I did this term and now that it's finally here I couldn't be happier.

It hasn't hit me yet that for the next three months, I won't have deadlines to meet, I won't have my entire day full of a rigid schedule to follow, and I won't have to pull an all-nighter once a week.  What a wonderful feeling.

I do still have one deadline, which is to finish the lace shawl for my LYS before I go home.  I head out in two days and I estimate that I have about 18-20 hours of knitting left before the shawl is finished, but I think I'll be able to get it done.  I have no qualms spending my entire Thursday knitting  and watching movies or listening to podcasts.  Ooh, I could even sit outside and knit - I don't think I've ever done that (mainly because I always get distracted by birds.)

I may not be able to get blocked pictures of the shawl until this fall though as my LYSO (LYS Owner) wants to run the shawl through the washer a few times to soften up the fabric before blocking, so I'm going to give it to her as a big wad of unblocked lace.  :(  It'll be so cool to see it displayed in the shop though!

And finally, I got a picture of my favorite iris today!  It has been raining a lot lately and it certainly took a toll on the flowers.  Most of them look pretty battered, but a few of them are still in good condition.  Here is the little patch of flowers in which my favorite resides:

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is my favorite iris:

I don't know if it's blue or purple, but either way, it's purty.  :)

A List

It seems that every day lately there has been something I have wanted to blog about, but haven't had to time.  You see, I just finished my last week of classes for the year and am now preparing for finals and such.  My procrastination, as always, gave me a rather harsh beating this week as I did everything in my power to get everything done in time (the 15-page paper, sadly, didn't make it to the finish line.  I now have until Wednesday evening to get partial credit).

Anyway, here's a list of things I felt the need to share with my readers, but didn't have the time.

May 30, 2009:  I ran into a knitter in the wild!  This is the first time it has ever happened to me and it was kind of cool.  I was attending my friend's senior piano recital and in walks a woman wearing none other than the Fountain Pen Shawl.  Normally my shyness would cause me to pretend I didn't notice, but eventually I went up to her and asked, "Excuse me, is that the Fountain Pen Shawl you're wearing?"  She looked at me as if I had knocked the wind out of her - you know, both speechless and appalled, but then she recovered and asked me how I knew?  When I told her I was a knitter too, her reply was, "Would you like a hug?"  Now, normally I have a no-touch policy, but I thought it would be rude to decline, so this mysterious knitter and I shared a hug amidst the crackers, cheese, and grapes of the reception and I went on my merry way.

May 31, 2009:  I ate a bug today.  No, it wasn't an accident.  You see, I'm one of those freaky animal-loving, talks-to-bugs-more-than-he-talks-to-humans type people.  I always watch where I'm walking so I don't step on ants and I still don't kill mosquitos even if they're biting me (and, I would like to point out that, yes, I am a hypocrite because I am nowhere close to being a vegetarian).  Well, after dinner I was walking outside with my ice cream cone because it was a nice day, and a little river bug got stuck in my melty ice cream!  Any normal person would probably just flick it off or find some way to get rid of it, but as there was no saving this poor little bug and I didn't want it's life to go to waste because of my dumb ice cream cone - I ate it.  Does that make me weird?

June 1, 2009:  Woohoo, it's June!  Today, on my way to class, was the first time this year that it has smelled like summer.  It was wonderful, and no, I can't explain it.

June 2, 2009:  My favorite Iris in the world is about to bloom!  It's in a little patch of flowers outside the library and it didn't bloom last year at all, which made me really sad.  I didn't expect it to bloom this year either - I just assumed it was gone forever, but no!  It's here!  I can't wait!

June 3, 2009: Apparently there's a new spinning video coming out featuring Eunny Jang as "student" and Maggie Casey as "teacher".  I'm really excited and can't wait until I have money again to buy this video.  My lack of a summer job is going to take quite a toll on me, especially as I'm already anticipating having to forego seeing Harry Potter 6 because of it.  :( x100.

June 4, 2009:  My iris bloomed.  No, that's an understatement.  Not only did the iris plant that I am in love with bloom, but there are at least three others just like it in the area.  I'm so happy!  I forgot my camera though...

June 5, 2009:  I brought a bumble bee to class today.  I was on my way up the stairs of "Main Hall", which is highly trafficked between classes, and this poor little guy was standing there just waiting to be stepped on my at least 100 different people, so I quickly picked him up before anyone could hurt him and was then herded into the building before I had time to let him go (he wasn't in a hurry to let go of me either).  I I had to simply hold on to him throughout my entire class.  He was very friendly and spent most of his time in my sweatshirt sleeve.  Does this make me weird?  -  Also, I brought my camera to the irises.  It's out of batteries.

June 5th was quite busy.  I also had an orchestra concert that night and then at 11:30pm I departed on a 5-hour drive back to the Twin Cities so I could go to my best friend's wedding on Saturday morning.  Now I'm back on campus (I had to attend another concert here tonight) and have a final tomorrow.  Hopefully I will have a finished shawl to show you guys by Friday (because I think it would be not very nice to leave for 3 months without giving my LYS the shawl they asked for back in August.)

More to come (maybe with pictures of irises.  I hope they haven't shriveled up already...)

Warning: I Am Going To Complain

Before I get to the complaining, I thought I would give a quick update on my real life (as opposed to my equally as real, yet somehow not real, fiber life.)

I gave a recital on Saturday with my flute-playing friend.  I thought it went really well.  It was my Junior Recital (in order to graduate with a Bachelor of Music in performance, we have to pass our freshman jury - essentially a short recital with additional technical requirements in front of a panel of faculty - we have to pass our sophomore qualifying exam, and then give a half-hour junior recital and an hour-long senior recital.)  I'm well on my way to getting this degree, which is pretty sweet.  I'll try to somehow post a sound link to my recital recording in case anyone is interested in counting how many mistakes I made.  :P  I don't actually have the recording yet though, so that'll have to wait.

Two more weeks left of school (and a week of finals) and then I'm home for the summer!  I don't actually have a job lined up for the summer, but I hope to spend a good chunk of my day practicing so that I'm prepared for my grad school auditions, then I can spend my evenings knitting!

Ok, on to my complaining.  I normally stick rather strictly to talking about my fiber-related life on this blog, because that's what people are here to read, but I'm allowing myself to drift from that a bit today (I promise there is a bit of fiber at the end of the post.)

I'm really a bit frustrated today.  I feel like I have been stuck living through a series of unfortunate events (although those of you who have read the series by Lemony Snicket, don't worry, my parents weren't killed in a mysterious fire that then led me to endure numerous life-threatening situations.)  Back in April my check card number was stolen and someone spent all of the money in my checking account which, ironically, was all of my money period.  Thankfully I caught it the day it happened and I contacted Paypal (through which my card had been used) and they suspended the person's account, then I called my bank and cancelled my card and filed a fraud statement and went through that whole process.  Of course they sent the affidavit to the wrong address, I didn't get it in time and therefore they claimed they didn't have enough information to settle the claim and it didn't end in my favor.  Alright, so I was pissed.

Well, today I got a call from the bank.  Apparently someone has gotten hold of my credit card number (which is different from the check card I had just gotten replaced) and charged quite a bit of money to it.  The card is now cancelled and I will have a new one coming in the mail shortly, most likely to the wrong address again.  This time I didn't have to deal with potentially losing my fraud claim because they flat-out denied the charge and contacted me immediately (instead of the other way around), but still, how annoying is that?  Why can't people just be nice and leave my bank accounts alone?

Ok, I'm done ranting.  Here's some fiber:

You've seen that.  It's the alpaca/angora blend that Anne so generously sent me.  Well, over the past week I spun it all up into a 2-ply fingering-weight yarn.  I didn't take pictures of it on the spindle - whoops!

I also forgot to take pictures of the plying process.  I tried out the "Andean plying" technique, which is essentially plying from both ends of the same single, folding it in half to create a 2-ply yarn.  This process involves a rather painful process of wrapping the single around your hand in a strange way to create a "bracelet" from which you can ply.  It's only painful because I wrapped it way too tightly and it was cutting off the circulation to my middle finger and was bending it in an uncomfortable direction... I'm sure it can be done in a perfectly comfortable manner.

Anyway, instead of plying directly from the bracelet, I wrapped the two ends of the single together around a tennis ball from which I would then add twist to ply my yarn.

Sorry, still no pictures.  I think I added too much plying twist, but I don't think it's too much of a problem.

I wanted to take advantage of the softness of the alpaca and angora fibers, so I decided to try my luck with making a brushed yarn inspired by this post.  Don't tell anyone, but I didn't actually have a brush per se, so I used a toothbrush.  (Don't worry, it was new.)

Et voila, 2 oz. of spindle-spun brushed yarn:

I plan to use it to line a pair of mittens that I have yet to make.  It's going to be so extremely soft, I can wait.

Also, I'm really sorry if people feel like I am giving them the cold shoulder by not replying to comments on my blog posts - sometimes I just have no contact info and no way to get a hold of you.  Sorry!

Hodgepodge

I haven't really been blogging lately because I haven't had much time to knit this term.  I sort of always feel like blogging is only worth doing when I have an FO to show because how boring is it to look at pictures of unfinished projects?  But then I realized that I love seeing pictures of other people's unfinished projects and then I look forward to seeing the progress they make and so on and since it may be a while before I have another FO to show, I figured I might as well do a jumbled post full of things I am currently working on.

Over the weekend I took all the scraps I had of Noro Kureyon lying around from the Lizard Ridge squares I'm making and I spit joined them all together to make a truly random ball of yarn, and then I knit one more Lizard Ridge square.

Here it is, in all it's unpredictable glory:

Don't worry, I won't be offended if you think it's ugly.

I then decided that I would knit a Turn a Square hat to use up the remaining yarn, which wasn't enough to make another square.  I have a ton of Cascade Eco. Wool sitting around from plans to make a matching hat/scarf/mitten set that never happened and thought the two would pair well together.  I don't have enough Kureyon to do the 2x2 stripes, so I'm doing a 2x1 stripe.  I'm also not bothering with seamless joins because I just put the seam in the back and, well, it's just a hat.

I'm also still chugging along on the lace shawl.  I've now completed 29 of the 40 body rounds and then I can do the border.  Yes, I know, slow progress, but at least it's headed in the right direction.

I also started this Montego Bay Scarf (rav link) a while back as a project that I can work on if I have a spare minute before going to class or going to bed, whatever the case may be.  I'm using SWTC Bamboo that my sister gave to me a while ago.  You may recall this yarn from it's failed incarnation as a Clapotis, but I think this time it may actually make it to the finish line.

The yarn itself has a really interesting construction.  From what I can tell from both looking and pulling it apart, it seems like this yarn is one long, small i-cord.  It's super soft, really drapey, and it actually feels cold to the touch!  I don't know if I'm going to keep this scarf or give it away, but I can guarantee it'll be loved by someone.

...and that's what's going on in my world.  How about you?

I Won!

Ok, I didn't actually win anything, I was just nominated for a One Lovely Blog Award by my sister, ClumsyKnitter.  Thanks sis!

As school has consumed my life lately, I don't really have any knitting to show you, but I didn't want to wait too long before I passed this award along to some other wonderful blogs.  I am supposed to choose five blogs that I love, and bestow this nice award unto them.  There are so many that I love to read, it's difficult to choose five and I promise that just because I haven't given you this award doesn't mean that I don't love reading your blog.  Seriously, why would I read it if I don't enjoy it?  I am most definitely not a masochist...

Well, now that I've filled my mind with thoughts of reading knitting blogs as a form of torture, here are five of my favorite blogs that have never proven to be torturous to read.  They are in no order, except maybe alphabetical:

1.  Criminy Jickets - I don't remember how I was first introduced to this blog.  I'm assuming it was through ravelry, and I was curious what other male knit-bloggers were writing about.  If it weren't for Dave being so patient with me and answering all my beginner questions about spinning, my spindle would still be used strictly for decoration and my fiber would be used for stuffing.  His spinning is all so beautiful.  Thanks Dave!

2.  How The West Was Spun - Anne's blog is one that I only started reading quite recently (well, a few months ago at least) and as I've said before, I love reading about what she's doing with her life.  She was kind enough to recently send me some lovely spinning fiber (see previous post) and I am constantly inspired and motivated by both her spinning and her knitting.  There seems to always be something exciting happening down there in New Mexico.

3.  Mamafitz - I've been following Mamafitz's blog for a while now, and I thoroughly enjoy it.  I'm not sure what it is about her blog that draws me in.  I think it's her love of being a mother and her total devotion to her children that just makes me happy when I read her posts.  I can tell that she's having the time of her life with her kids.

4.  Marginalia of a Habitual Addict - Reading Knitwick's blog is totally a look into a completely different realm of life than the one in which I live.  As someone who tends to simply "go with the flow," I find it extremely fascinating to read a blog written by someone who likes planning, and structure, and has a place for everything.  He is currently recounting his recent visit to Japan in a very neat, orderly, extensively detailed (as he undoubtedly kept a journal while he was there) manner and I love every minute of it.  I feel as if reading his blog makes my life more structured.  Is that possible?

5.  The Happy College Knitter - This blogger hails from Wisconsin and, like me, is currently in college.  We've even met a few times at my LYS because, get this, it's one of her LYSs too!  She was one of the people that really encouraged me to start my own knitting blog.  I love her pictures and think she is tremendously creative and fun.

6.  WhitKnits - This is one of the first knitting blogs I started reading.  In fact, I have been reading her blog for over a year and a half now.  I discovered Whitney's blog during a time when I was suffering from a great deal of insomnia, and when I found it, I loved it so much that I went back to the very beginning and read every single post - it proved to be a great comfort and companion through those long nights.  She is also a very talented knitter, wonderful writer, and to top it all off, she plays the violin!

Ok, so I chose six blogs, big whoop.  I'm just spreading the love.  Adieu!