Pictures Are Coming

I got home late last night, so I didn't get a chance to download the pictures I took from this weekend, so tomorrow will be a hugely picture-laden post, just to forewarn you all. I went to Seoul this weekend, saw some palaces, some protests, some friends, and some knitters. It was a good trip and I had a fun time, all while reminding myself that I am actually in a different country now.

It's easy to get into a routine when teaching and forget that you're half way across the world from the rest of your friends and family. I had gotten into that routine in the past month or so and going to Seoul to play tourist was just what I needed to remind me that I'm still traveling, even if I am having to work to do it.

Anyways, I should have a finished sock to show you tomorrow too.

Knit on...

And to Continue the Sock Knitting...

Look, another sock!

Aren't you surprised? No? How come? Could it be that my whole blog has turned into one giant parade of socks since I moved to Korea? Sure there have been random iPod cozies and change purses, but for the most part it has become all socks all the time.

I really will try to change that this weekend. Just have to decide what to knit. I'm going to the Seoul SnB on Sunday afternoon to meet up with some other expat knitters. It should be fun. I'll have pictures on Monday...and maybe there will be something other than a sock!

Knit on...

Socks, Socks, and More Socks

Yep, I'm starting to convince myself that the only thing I knit anymore is socks. I need a change. I'll keep working on the socks while at work, but I need to make myself either work on Donegal or pick up one of the other projects I brought with me (broad street mittens out of handspun, Clessidra...oh yeah, that's another sock, just bigger!)

Anyways, here's the finished Monkeys:

A more glamorous shot here:

If I remember, I'll try to take better pictures of the finished product. It was morning and I was about half asleep when I took these.

I also started a new sock yesterday and here it is in all its WIP glory:

First, the yarn is Knit Picks Parade. While I normally sing praises of everything Knit Picks relatd, and I will continue to sing praises, I hate this yarn. The yarn has been discontinued I think anyways, and I see why. I'm not a fan of the striping colorway. I don't really like the feel of it as it's knitting up. But seeing that this is the cheapest yarn in my stash and that the socks are not for me, but rather for my coteacher, I'll suffer through them with the glimmer of hope of another pair of Lorna's Laces socks coming up soon.

After reading Wendy Knits post about how she hates striping yarn, I started to think about my own preferences in sock yarns. I'm not too particular about what type of yarn I use, although I will kill people if it helps me get to Lorna's Laces faster (er, not really, but trampling might be involved). Aside from Lorna's, I can take or leave just about any sock yarn. Some people like Socks that Rock, and some people like Opal, but as for me, just give me skeins of Lorna's and I'm happy.

Color-wise, I have noticed a lot of purple in my stash. I never considered purple a favorite color of mine, but there sure is a lot of it there. I'm a huge blue fan anyways and will never turn down a pretty skein that has some sort of shade of blue. Hell, I'll never turn down a free skein of yarn anyways.

I have been most surprised by the nice feel of the Knit Picks Essential sock yarn. I picked up a clearance color to make the Clessidra pattern out of and couldn't get over how good the yarn felt and how well it works up. See, told you I would sing Knit Picks praises again! :oP

As far as striping goes, I can take it or leave it. I like pooling sometimes, and there are certain kinds of stripes I like. This Parade is not one of them. I do like my Opal socks, and even some of the OnLine sock patterns. Although now I can't see a striping yarn without thinking about making them into Jaywalkers....

And now you know far too much about my preferences in sock yarns :oP

Knit on...

Whoops

Yeah, sorry for not blogging yesterday. It totally was not in my head to blog. Then when you see this picture you know why:I think this is the official worst blog picture I have ever taken. So, I have finished the sock and will have pictures of the finished pair tomorrow. I promise that they will be better than this. I also wanted to show a funny picture that DF took while in Seoul:

Good to know police everywhere flock to Dunkin Donuts :oP

Knit on...

Misty Mountains and Purple Monkeys

This weekend on the way to Gwangju to stock up on food and other things, DF and I saw a pretty sight. It was one of the mountains and this mist was just swirling around it. It was rather eerie and pretty all at the same time. The picture really doesn't capture it very well:So we spent about 6-7 hours in the big city, had dinner, then came back to Naju. Here is the status of the current monkey sock. I'm already past this point this morning since I am now on repeat 5, about to go on to 6:

I'll probably have a heel by the end of the day.

Knit on...

TGIF...cough cough

Well, it's Friday and I'm sitting at home instead of at school. I decided to use a sick day since I've been coughing pretty good. I feel OK now that I've slept some at least.

I went to make DF an ipod case out of the leftover Noro that I had from the squares, but when I looked down, I saw I had enough to make an iPod shuffle case, but not an 80gb video iPod. So, I decided to make it into a change purse instead since I was in need of one:

I didn't have a button for this, so I saw a well-positioned hole in one of the shells I picked up while in Wando a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to go ahead and use that. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Now I'm making him an iPod case out of the leftovers from the first skein of Lorna's Laces from the Purple Iris Monkeys. DF said he liked the colors when they were in the skein, so hopefully he'll like the finished iPod case.

I also have done one repeat on the second Monkey sock. I'll probably work some more on that today once I finish the iPod case for DF.

Hope everyone has a good weekend. Any well-wishes for a speedy end to this cough are welcome!

Knit on...

Hey, Hey, It's a Monkey...

Yeah, everytime I see these socks, that song gets stuck in my head. I can think of worse things to have stuck in my head though, so I'll deal with it. I did finish the first monkey sock yesterday while knitting at work. I wish I had brought the rest of the yarn with me so that I could have started the second one. I didn't knit any today and I don't know if I'll knit much tonight either. I have a tickle in my throat and I'm trying to head off a cold at the pass by stocking up my body with vitamin C and taking it easy. While knitting is easy, sleep is easier, so I'll probably go with the latter unless I feel miraculously better. Anyways, here's the finished monkey:And here's a slightly less crappy close up of the patterning:

I did say slightly less bad...

Yeah, I'll work on my picture quality for knitting stuff one of these days.

Just not today.

Knit on...

PS: Six classes in one day sucks arse. Thankfully I used the sick excuse and ended up just showing Peter Pan to the classes instead :oP

The Monkey and the Square

This definitely sounds like a new children's book title to me. Anyways, I did knit some yesterday, despite not doing anything the day before. I finished the fifth repeat on the monkey yesterday, and while I sit here at work with no classes until seventh period, I have turned the heel of it as well as finished the sixth pattern repeat. I could have a lot of this sock finished by the end of the day. Here's where it was as of this morning:I'll try to get better pictures of this tonight and post them tomorrow. I usually don't think about the pictures until it's time to go to work.

I also knit a second mitered square. I don't have enough Noro to make a third, but at least I managed to get two squares done. I now have a full block and a fourth done on the blanket. It'll now go into hibernation unless I run into Noro over here. Here's the curled up square:

The square really is about that dark. There is some teal in there that didn't show up in the picture though.

I'll keep on knitting today while the Kindle charges. One bad thing about an electronic book, it does need to be charged, and if you're in the middle of a book when the battery runs down, you really want to curse loudly.

Knit on...

Not a Darned Thing

I was going to knit last night, but it didn't happen. I did knit two more repeats on the monkey sock while at school, but it didn't grow enough to warrant a new picture. I'll have some tomorrow probably.

Knit on...

WWKIP Day

So Saturday was World Wide Knit in Public Day. I celebrated first by knitting some in front of South Gate in Naju:

This is one of the four main gates (one for each direction) in Naju. If it looks familiar, it's because I took a ton of pictures of it in December and put them up on the blog :oP

For dinner, we went out for pizza and beer with our friend Ashley:

We ate a couple of pizzas at Little Fox. I also learned that while Korean Stout can't compare to Guiness, for around 4 dollars for a 2 liter, you can't beat the price! I'll try not to think about why it's so cheap :oP

So to show you what I was actually knitting this weekend, I'll give you some pictures. First, I started a new pair of monkey socks out of the Purple Iris colorway of Lorna's Laces. So glad I brought over a bunch of skeins of my favorite yarn:

I also knit a mitered square out of Noro. I brought one ball with me since all I had was one. I'll probably ship the finished squares home since they are for the Noro scrap blanket I started. Blankets are not very travel friendly, but the squares are easy to take along to work on and then send back.

Sorry the picture is blurry. It was morning, what else can I say?

I also made a makshift nostepinne out of a toilet paper tube this weekend and wound my very first hand-wound center pull ball:

I was quiet pleased with how it turned out considering it was my first attempt. I miss my ball winder though.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and did partake in some knitting in public.

Knit on...

A Couple of Finished Objects

Today is Saturday, June 14 here, so that means that it is World Wide Knit in Public Day. I'll be working on some public knitting this evening when DF and I head out for dinner and a drink with some of our friends here. But since I don't have any public knitting pictures just yet, I thought I would go ahead and post a couple of finished objects from this week.

First up, the finished iPod cozy made out of the leftover sparkling sock yarn that Kim gave me:

I've gotten a few comments about this so far and I really like it. It works well and should keep the new iPod from getting all scratched up in my backpack as I walk to and from school.

I also finished the socks for DF:

Shy feet.

Happy feet.

DF sock love.

That's it for today. Hopefully I'll have some public knitting pictures here soon!

Knit on...

Back Online

Yep, I'm back online now at the school. Got the blogger issue all taken care of. I would have blogged last night, but I was pretty tired, so I didn't get around to it. I'll have pictures tomorrow of a finished pair of socks and a finished iPod case that I've been working on. Donegal hasn't really grown very much this week, but it might grow some tonight if I get ambitious enough.

Knit on...

Best Laid Blogging Plans

Well, I had planned to blog this morning when I had no classes, but when I tried to open up blogger, it had been blocked. So far, blogger is blocked and so is Dragonlance.com. Go figure. Anyways, I thought I would show a couple of my better pictures from this weekend and then show the current state of Donegal.

This is the crab I was talking about. I think everyone was taking his picture. I was pretty happy with how this one turned out.

This was a pretty water lilly with a couple of bees hanging around it. Gotta love zoom lenses.

Donegal has grown by just a few rows. It'll probably grow some more tomorrow.

And just in case you couldn't believe that I could be leading a class of kids...

Don't know how much I'm leading them, but I'm trying to teach them to talk with a Kentucky accent anyways :oP

Knit on...

Wando

This weekend, we made a trip to Wando to visit the beach and also visit some historic sites, like a pottery museum and a movie set (Ok, so not too historical on that one). I had even knit this weekend and took pictures. I thought they had been uploaded to flickr, but it appears that they didn't make it in there, along with a couple of good pictures of other things. I'll have to add those tonight.

I did see mountains though:

They were very pretty. I also saw a beach:

The Koreans went on and on about how this was such a wonderful beach and how big it was at 4 km. It was hard not to say anything since I was born and raised in Florida where the whole coastline is pretty much white sand beaches. Anyways, it was pretty. I was pinched by a crab too, so I'll have a picture of him when I get it uploaded to flickr.

I also saw wildlife:

That bird was really fast. People probably were concerned at me and DF since we were taking so many pictures. That and the bird decided to make its nest right by the toilets. Anyways, we probably looked like toilet stalkers to most people until they saw the bird.

It was a fun weekend. I'll have knitting pictures tomorrow one way or another. Had planned to have them today.

Knit on...

Look, a Finished Sock

Sorry it's not the best picture, but it was morning and rather than have another picture-less post today, I decided to go ahead and use the dark photo. I just got done with two classes. Only three more to go today. Thursdays are my busiest days. Good news is that they are all 3rd year students, so I am able to have better classes with them since their English is better.

I'm hooked on reading the His Dark Materials trilogy right now. I'm done with the Golden Compass (yeah, they changed a ton in the movie) and I'm now on the Subtle Knife. The books are OK, but I'm more interested in reading them for all the controversy they caused. They do have some pretty anti-religious themes in them, but it's nothing that I haven't encountered before in books. I heard that the tones will get even more harsh as the books progress, so we'll see. If nothing else, I'll have the trilogy read before the Subtle Knife movie comes out. I'll have a full review of the Golden Compass on my kindle blog soon.

Knit on...

Once Again, I Failed

Yep, I failed to knit a stitch last night, so no new pictures today. Hopefully I will get some knitting done today and can take some pictures tonight. I only have one class today, so it's a nice, easy day. Hopefully I can get one sock done and maybe get started on a second one. Plus, I need to work on Donegal some more and get that moving again.

On the bright side, I am learning to read Korean Hangul script. I can now sound out quite a bit, even though I don't know what I am actually sounding out. Hopefully I'll learn some new vocabulary here soon and will improve on what I know.

Knit on...

Not Much Knitting

I didn't do much knitting yesterday. I was pretty tired at the end of the school day, so instead of crashing with some knitting, I just crashed and watched TV. I also worked out yesterday at the free outdoor gym near our apartments. It's pretty good for being free, so can't complain there. I managed to do an elliptical machine, gazelle-type machine, rowing, sit-ups, and some curls before it started to rain. I'm definitely feeling it today.

Hopefully I'll get some more knitting in today and will have some pictures for you tomorrow.

Knit on...

Some Knitting, Some Studying

I did get some knitting done this weekend. Here is the current sock in progress:Sorry the picture is so dark. I took it this morning before coming in to work, so I blame that :oP I also pulled out Donegal again and worked some on that. I'm almost 1/2 way done with the first pattern repeat. I decided that I needed to have a home project and a travel project. Since Donegal isn't portable with all the colors involved, I decided that this would be the home project until I either get sick of it or it's done. Here's the knitting so far:

Again, sorry for the dark picture. I'll try to get better pictures tonight so that I can post them tomorrow.

DF and I also bought some learn Korean books. They're really basic and start off with the alphabet. If I can learn to read first, I think that will help later on with the spoken aspects of the language.

Knit on...