A Magical Weekend

Yep, Magic: the Gathering weekend, that is. Tomorrow is the Lorwyn pre-release, so we're heading to Louisville to play in what could be our last Magic tournament for a while, unless we find Magic players in Korea, which would be cool. I haven't read up about Lorwyn at all, so I may try and do some reading on it today. It would be really cool if DF and I both finished in the prize money tomorrow (we've been getting close and we have both finished up there before).

Knitting-wise, I am done with the Spring dishcloths. I only got 6 done before running out of yarn, so I'll just make up six sets of four dishcloths instead of 7. I cast on for the first summer one, but that's all I got done on it last night before heading to bed.

I woke up this morning and it was half-way cool for once! That made me feel much better. We had another heat wave come through that ended up shooting temperatures close to 90 again, so that was miserable. Looks like it'll be a nice weekend, so it's the perfect time to stay inside and play cards :oP

Have a great weekend everyone!

Knit on...

Guess What?

Yup, more dishcloths! I finished three of the spring colored ones yesterday. I ran out of yarn on the last winter one, so so far I only have 6 winter cloths. If the same holds true for the spring and summer cloths, then I'll only make six. If the rest have enough yarn for 7, then I'll go buy another ball of yarn. We'll see what happens. Here they are with their sets forming.And here they are stacking up on my bookshelf along with all the other Christmas presents that are already done.I still have all the ends to weave in on them, but I figure that shouldn't take too long to do. I see the light at the end of the dishcloth tunnel, so hopefully by next week I'll be done with them all and I can move on to something more fun, like DF's present or the mystery stole that really needs to be finished. Only 11 more cloths to go (maybe 9 if I get to drop one from each color)!

Tomorrow will probably have more dishcloth nonsense in it. I know the blog is boring right now, but bear with me. I'll have some more stuff coming soon.


Knit on...

A Non-Dishcloth Post

OK, one small part dishcloth post anyways. I'm on the last of the winter dishcloths right now and I'll start the spring ones tonight once I finish the winter one. I'm half-way done with the dishcloths and I'm hoping to be completely done in two weeks. Why the rush? Well, I have one of those major life announcements for everyone. First, though, look what Kim gave me yesterday at lunch SnB:It's a gorgeous sock knitting bag. It's got some pockets on the inside and it's really beautiful. The gold on there actually is metallic, so it looks even better in person. Because I got the bag, I decided I needed some yarn to go with it:Lorna's Laces in the Devon colorway. I love this colorway. It's the same one that is being used for my dragon shawl which is non-existent right now. I had to completely rip it out and start again, and I haven't had the nerve to start it again yet. I'll save that project for the major life announcement.

Last night at SnB, Robyn showed off her new Fumanchu mustache that gets her half price drinks at Coffee Island here in town on Tuesdays (Fumanchusdays to them).The pattern for the knitted Fumanchu is on her blog as well.

OK, I won't put it off anymore. The major life announcement is:

DF has a job offer. We'll be moving there soon. Since I don't have a job offer there at the moment, I'll be waiting until I get one or get my credit cards paid off before heading there. The location? Naju, South Korea. Yep, it's not just a little move, it's a big move. We both have been applying for jobs overseas since this is a way to get paid to travel, plus you can save money a lot easier there than you can here. DF finally got the offer to teach middle school students in the public school system there and if everything goes through with the visa, he'll be taking it and heading over in just a few weeks. I'm applying with recruiters to get a job near Naju or in Naju if anything is open so that we can still see each other on the weekends or more, depending on where I can get a job. We're both really excited about it and I really hope that I can find something too.

I've always wanted to travel. We didn't have a lot of money growing up that we could spend on traveling to new places, so I played softball and traveled all over the state and through different states on the Eastern seaboard. I always enjoyed the traveling and seeing new stuff. I moved out to come up here and then my parents started traveling to Africa, Israel, and the Phillippines :oP I think I might have been an expensive kid to raise :oP I always looked forward to their emails from where they were traveling and now they will be able to get emails from me from where I'm traveling.

Anyways, there's the announcement. It's a major holiday over there right now, so I'm hoping a recruiter will get back to me by the end of the week so that I can get the ball rolling on getting something. More yarny stuff tomorrow :oP

Knit on...

Look, More Dishcloths

Yeah, my knitting blog has become rather boring these days. It's been dishcloths and more dishcloths it seems. Speaking of, I finished another 2 of them last night.I'm up to 4 now, so only 3 more to go for the winter cloths. I'm hoping that I can get that done either tonight or tomorrow. The more of these I get knocked out, the closer I am to finishing the Christmas knitting. Sure, I've got a few more things other than dishcloths to work on, but I figure if I can knock out seven sets of four-season dishcloths, then I can always give those in case I don't finish the other stuff.

Today is SnB Tuesday. I get to meet up with Kim and Sarah (or Robin, depending on who's at the store) at lunch and then the rest of the crew tonight at Jane's. Hopefully with all this dedicated knitting time, I'll be able to finish the rest of the winter cloths.

Tomorrow, I'll probably have more dishcloth pictures. Sorry :oP

Knit on...

Poker Stud Pattern For Sale

Oh, by the way, here's some shameless self-promotion now. About a year ago, I started working on an original design for a scarf for DF. We both like to play poker, so I was hoping to create something poker-related. I charted out the different suits and this was the finished result:The pattern was named Poker Stud and it's the first thing I made DF that he and I are both not ashamed for him to wear (that first sweater still makes me cringe). I finally have the pattern for sale on The Knitting Vault. The Knitting Vault is a great place to put up patterns. It's free for designers and you can charge whatever you want for the pattern. I'll be putting more patterns for sale on the site soon. I'll also be selling this pattern on my Etsy store, so you can look for it there too. The pattern costs 5 dollars. The Knitting Vault will give you a PDF download of the pattern and the Etsy store will give you a printed copy of the pattern. I'm still working on how to make it into a PDF myself (The Knitting Vault does that for you), so as soon as I can, I'll be having it for download on Etsy.Here's the direct link to the Knitting Vault pattern: Click Here

Hard Work

Let me just say, yard sales are a lot of hard work. You have to first figure out what you want to sell, get it packed in a box labeled yard sale, put it out early in the morning, then pack it back up to either put back in your home or send to Goodwill at the end of the day. We had a yard sale on Saturday, so I took off Friday to get some stuff ready for it. This was the look of it at the end of the day on Saturday. A lot of stuff sold, but we still had a ton left. We decided to try to sell some of the dinosaur stuff we had left from our store, and we sold quite a bit, but we still have a ton of stuff left. Someone else needs to open up a dinosaur-related store so that we can sell this stuff to them.

I didn't get a whole lot of knitting done this weekend since it was pretty steady at the yard sale, but I did get 2 more dishcloths knit. These are the winter ones.I think I like these much better than the fall ones. Of course I'm a big fan of blue and white as it is.

Hopefully I'll get a few more dishcloths done today. I'd like to be done with the winter ones by the end of this week. I should be able to get them done pretty quick. We'll see.

Knit on...

One Picture At Least

I am finally done with all the fall-colored dishcloths. Now I'm starting on the winter-colored ones. Four balls of kitchen cotton made seven cloths with 4.5 pattern repeats. I like my dishcloths to be rectangular, so I didn't do the 6 repeats the pattern called for.I think 7 is a good number. I can't think of many more people than 7 off the top of my head who I will be giving gifts to. My more distant family members do an ornament exchange, so I'll just provide an ornament for that. Perhaps I will needle felt a ball or something. We'll see how ambitious I get.

I'm heading to my friend Erica's tonight, so I should get some work done on more dishcloths and maybe the never-ending Jaywalker the Second.

I bought a new toy last night too. As a thank-you for my work at the meeting, I was given a 50 dollar mall gift card. I ran by there last night and finally bought a Nintendo DS lite. I already had a DS, but I've been wanting a DS light since they're brighter and significantly smaller than the original. Plus, they had a bundle offer going on with a crimson DS, case, and Brain-Age 2, so that's what I picked up. I played it some last night and I can't believe how much brighter the screen is. Plus, it has settings where you can change the brightness of the screen for different light settings. I'm very happy with my purchase. Plus, now DF will get the other DS and we can link up to play some DS games like MarioKart and such.

Knit on...

I Made It!

The evil meeting is over with now. I'm exhausted, sleepy, and would very much like to eat the four bricks of chocolate and four mini-bottles of Jim Beam that they gave me last night in thanks for my hard work. It's always nice when they give you things that you're trying to avoid like the plague when on weight watchers, but it's the thought that counts :oP

They did give me a 50 dollar mall gift card, so that's more like it :oP I think I'll be buying a new Nintendo DS Lite with that.

My brain is fried and I have no knit a stitch since Wednesday or Thursday of last week. I'm too lazy to see what day was the last one I posted on. I think I would like to knit some tonight if I can put Final Fantasy down for a few minutes. For some reason, smashing wolves sounds much more appealing to me than anything else. And no, that's not Jim Beam talking.

Anyways, hopefully, fingers crossed, I'll have knitting content on here tomorrow. If nothing else, I'll put up pictures of the random free swag that I picked up at the meeting. I now have an entire kitchen's worth of random oil company mugs and enough Haliburton pens to last me the rest of my life.

Knit on...

Let The Fun Begin

I'm back at the office now after my day off yesterday. The funeral and visitation was very nice, but very sad and I was in bed by 7:30 last night because my eyes were tired from the crying and other emotions of the day. After going to the funeral, here are a few random musings:

1. When I die, please do not play sad country or rock songs that will make everyone cry, especially that one song from Vince Gill. I would prefer Barenaked Ladies, Wizard Rock, or other songs that may make people chuckle.

2. When I die, please do not have my visitation for 5 hours. I don't feel that's fair for the people left behind. Personally, I'm probably not going to care anymore.

3. When I die, I would like to be turned into one of those diamonds that they can make from people's ashes. If I wind up in one of my great-grandkid's garage sales, I'll know who to haunt.

OK, enough about the death musings. Funerals generally make me think about morbid things, but at the same time, it would probably help whoever is left to do what I would want. To totally change subjects now, I didn't knit a single stitch yesterday. Matter of fact, my knitting bag is still in the back of my car and I forgot to bring it into work this morning. I may have to run out there on morning break if nothing else. I need to finish that last washcloth, and since I won't have much time to knit this weekend, it might need to be today.

Today begins the meeting from hell. I have to get the talks organized today and tie up the rest of the loose ends. Tomorrow I'll be working one of the workshops here and then Sunday I'll be working just about all day. Joy. Monday and Tuesday I probably won't have internet access. If I do, I'll post something yarny, but if not, then the next post will be on Wednesday.

Have a great weekend and don't work if you can swing it!

Knit on...

WIP it Out Wednesday

To keep myself on track in posting pictures of my WIPs, I'm going to start having WIP it out Wednesdays where all I do is show pictures of my current works in progress. So, without any further blathering, here's some pictures.Yep, more dishcloths. On the bright side, this will be the last of the fall-colored ones. I'm about sick of seeing brown and orange together :oPJaywalker Sock the Second is coming along. It's about 4 inches now, but I haven't worked on it in a week. The yarn is Lorna's Bee Stripe. I'm liking the striping effect on the sock.Yeah, my thumb blocked part of the flash, but here's the mystery stole. I'm done with clue 3. I may work on it some at lunch today if I feel like knitting.The beginning of DF's Christmas knit. Definitely much better than that first sweater I made him. Better yarn, better pattern, all is well :oP

They were able to schedule the funeral and visitation for my cousin really quickly. So, I'm going to the visitation tonight and then the funeral tomorrow. I won't be at work tomorrow, so no blog post, but I should have some stuff for Friday.

Knit on...

It's Going To Be A Long Week

Yep, it's going to be a very long week. Last night, my cousin killed herself in her parents' house. She was just 40, so she wasn't even old at all. It's a rather long story that I won't go into on here, but keep her parents and daughter in your prayers. It's going to be really hard on all of them.

Needless to say, I don't have any pictures today. I forgot to get them off the camera this morning since I was running late. I'll try to have some tomorrow if I can remember to get them off of there.

Knit on...

T-Minus 3 Days Until Hell Breaks Loose

Ok, so there are 3 days left before the big meeting comes in to work. I'm going to be pulling a ton of overtime resulting in a few comp days more than likely, and I'm going to be stressed. I'll be going to SnBs on Tuesday so that I can get in some good stress relief before the last minute details drive me insane.

I promised pictures on Friday, but I lied apparently since I do not have any pictures today. I blame absent-mindedness right now. I'll try to have some knitting picture updates tomorrow if I can swing it. I did get another 3 dishcloths knit in the fall colors, worked some on DF's project, and even finished clue 3 of the mystery stole. I'm on to clue 4 and maybe I can be done with that by the end of this week. Or maybe not :oP We'll see how much time I get to knit this week.

I was even so scattered this morning that I forgot to bring my sock with me. I changed purses this weekend and the Jaywalker never made it into the new bag. It's a sad day :oP

Hope everyone had a good weekend. I'll still try to post every day this week, but you may just get a random picture here and there and a random rant. I'll try to keep things mostly knitting related :oP

Knit on...

I'm on a Finishing Streak

I don't know why I am, but for some reason I'm on a finishing streak right now. Every project that is currently on the needles needs to be finished. First I finished the fitted tank from hell, now I finished the single crochet baby blanket, and I have my eyes set on finishing the mystery stole. I'm on clue 3 of the stole and I'm going to make the modified version. I know a lot of people like the swan wing on the stole, but I don't and I don't think the intended recipient would like it either. So, I'm making a symmetrical version of it with no wing.

My intentions right now are to make two pieces and then graft them together in the middle to form the symmetrical stole. I think this will probably be the easiest way since A) I can use another hank of lace yarn instead of trying to splice it together and B) grafting is just so easy compared to flipping the pattern around and having it look correct.

I'll have pictures tomorrow of the baby blanket if I make it in to work. I've got my annual physical, so it's time to have blood drawn and be told what's wrong with me now... :oP It's early in the morning, so I may or may not be in to work depending on how long it takes. If you don't get pictures tomorrow, you'll get them on Monday for sure.

Knit on...

A Visit to Hawaii, a New Project, and a Wedding Dress

Yesterday when I got home from work, I saw a package sitting on my bed. I knew almost immediately that it must be from my Vacation Swap pal since she said she mailed it on Friday. I put down my things and ripped into the box and found all kinds of goodies! She really spoiled me on this one!First things first, there were some edible goodies. Pure sugar cane (I had never had this before and it rocks!), Guava cookies (also good, I had to sample everything!), and chocolate covered macadamia nuts (I didn't think the nuts themselves could get any better until I tasted chocolate covered macadamias!).Hawaiian potholder and matching coasters. These are really pretty and I know I'll be using these. The kitchen potholder has about had it, so this will make a lovely replacement for it.A Hawaiian calendar, big tote bag, vinyl stickers, and some ginger guava lip balm. The calendar reminds me of why I want to visit there and the tote bag was able to hold all my projects last night when I drug a bunch to SnB at Jane's.Of course there was yarn! This is a hand-dyed sock yarn called Bearfeet in the evergreen colorway. It's got lovely blues, purples, and greens in it and of course my camera picks them up about as easily as it is to get the roof on our building fixed by the university. It's really lovely and I can't wait to start working with it once I get the latest pair of Jaywalkers off the needles.

Yesterday when I went to ReBelle, I was on a mission. I needed to find yarn for DF's Christmas present. I hunted and hunted for a good pattern that wasn't outrageously colored or anything that would remind me of the first sweater I made him (shivers still run down my spine and the knowledge that I made that. It's amazing our relationship survived :oP ). So, I can't post what pattern I'll be using since he reads my blog, but I can show you the yarn.That's nine hanks of Cascade 220 in a gray-blue colorway. It's already better than the last sweater I made him since it's made out of good yarn. Here's a close-up of the yarn.I worked on the new project some last night at SnB as well as the never ending baby blanket. Since I still had everything packed in the big Hawaiian tote, I just brought them all to work with me today so that I can work some more on them. I'm hoping by tonight that I can be done with the baby blanket. We'll see how ambitious I am tonight when it comes to the single crocheting.

Last night, Jessi also brought me her wedding dress to try on. After some tugging and pulling, it was on and I loved it! It looks great and it fit like a glove. Even if I lose some more weight, it'll just look better, so I'm happy to already have that taken care of. I would show pictures, but again, DF reads my blog, so if you want to see a picture of me in it, just email me and I'll send it to you.

Knit on...

World's Most Unflattering Sweater

Yep, that's what I think of the fitted tank. In case you needed more than just my word...It looks semi-normal, but when I put my arms down, it starts to look rather ugly.This is just not a design for bigger chicks. I knew from the beginning that the color wouldn't be too good with my hair color, but I also knew that the tank design wasn't great for someone like me. It's just too short for me and the fit is a little off. On the bright side, it's now an FO and I started some Christmas presents this weekend too.
This will be the year of the 4-seasons dishcloths. These two are to represent fall. I've got several other colors for the rest of the seasons and I'll be giving people a set of four. I figure I can knit these quickly and everyone can use them.

The rest of the weekend was spent watching movies, going to a dog show, and eating way too much food at cookouts. I'm still feeling full this morning and I wish that feeling would go away. Oh well. Better get my butt back on WW so I don't undo everything that I've done so far.

Knit on...