fishie’s aquarium

It’s been a long time, I know. I’ve been working on stuff for swaps instead of these and I can’t really post pictures of the swap items otherwise I’d spoil all the fun. Anyway, I picked the boring plain white sock back up yesterday because I was going to see a movie (1408, oh man it was good!) and finished it today. Hooray.

My first time with kitchener stitch: Success

Boring *yawn*

Too big for me. That’s a good thing.

Now to do the other one. :/

I want to make real things dammit.

After a pretty long wait, I FINALLY GOT MY INVITATION TO RAVELRY. In case you didn’t know about it, Ravelry is pure awesome. I’ve fiddled around with it a little for the last few minutes, and it looks like it’s going to be really useful for keeping track of things.

And now I need to go run errands. But finally! A new distraction to keep me occupied on my last few weeks working graveyards!

http://www.ravelry.com/people/fishie

Taken especially for you-know-who. This one is huge. The cap is as big as the palm of my hand.

Yesterday morning Chris finished putting together his new router table and was able to start helping me put together a niddy noddy for me to undo sweaters onto.

The Niddy Noddy in all its glory.
One wrap around the entire thing is approximately 5 ft. of yarn.

As soon as it was done, Chris handed it to me and said, “Go unravel a sweater!” So I did.

My first unraveled sweater was perfect. Big chunky yarn in an OBVIOUSLY bottom-up pattern. All I had to do was unravel the stitching holding it all together and off I went.

The sweater was in four pieces: two sleeves and an identical front and back.

One of the ex-sleeves

Reminds me of tentacles

A sweater’s worth of yarn. I’m estimating about 900 yards of 100% cotton wonderfulness

I have no intention of knitting anything with it soon. I’ll probably do the obligatory OUT YOU KINKY BITS! soak, twist it up, and then throw it in a bin until inspiration strikes. But OH man it feels great! All that yarn for $10?! That was my splurge of the thrifting trip. I felt bad paying that much for a used sweater, but I found the original “inspected by” sticker on the tag so it’s probably brand new anyway. And that’s a LOT of yarn for $10! It took me less than 30 minutes unraveling the whole thing, I believe.

This morning I taught myself how to knit backwards and do a provisional cast-on onto a circular needle.

The boring socks and my recent not-to-good mood have killed my motivation to do anything. This is bad with two swaps and a thing for a contest I need to be actively working on right now.

Yesterday was the lowest tide of the year. Of COURSE I went to the beach. As a result, I got to see lots of things that are normally ONLY underwater without having to dive in the 40 degree water again.

The moon snails had been getting busy. Lots of eggs all over the place.

Have you been getting busy Mr. Moon Snail?

Lots of starfish were to be found hanging around.

As well as deflated anemones. They look a lot better in their natural underwater habitat.

I get crabs every time I go to the beach. Oops.

Did I mention the anemones look a lot better underwater?

They do. These ones are sad. Ew.

Cucumbers! I had to tickle them a little.

Oops! I’m sorry Mr. Cucumber I didn’t mean to scare you! Put your guts back in your body plz!

The highlight of the beach trip?

:D

I actually went with the hopes of finding a nudibranch, and there one was!

itty bitty nudie

A chiton with fashion sense!

It was a good trip, but would have been much better if every public school in the state wasn’t having field trips there. Elementary school age kids shouldn’t be allowed into fragile areas like the beach at SUPER low tide without better supervision. I’m sure several hundred beautiful sea creatures are now ex-sea creatures due to the little fucks. One of them tried to run off with the moon snail I took pictures of. WTF???? I hope that kid either learns better or comes back in his next life as algae.

See my problem? My size 5 in men’s feet are fitting these socks perfectly… His size 11/12/whatever huge size he is probably won’t. I got gauge when I swatched dammit!!!

DRESSES MADE OUT OF TIES

if that’s not thinking outside of the box, I don’t know what is. My plans definitely didn’t include anything like that.

I normally only knit one thing at a time. I’m so bad at keeping interest in things that if I have options, I’ll completely neglect one thing. In other words, I have no concept of moderation. I started those socks for Chris on Tuesday and I’m not very far yet (HELLO 00 SIZE NEEDLES AND GIANT MONSTER FEET??!?!?!):

But there’s a craft challenge on Craftster I REALLY REALLY want to do and think I’ve got a really good chance at if I can get what I have in my head out and into yarn. Problem is, it’s due on the 24th (BAH I knit a blanket in 12 days!) BUT… my idea is probably way too complicated for my current skill level. Here’s the idea (psst: no stealing!)

Yay rough charts! I can DO this!!!

I want to knit it in the round because if I do anything with seaming, there’s the chance I don’t get the colors to match up. BUT intarsia in the round? Possible, but not easy OR fast. And taking into consideration that I’ve never 1) Done intarsia 2) Made a knitting chart or 3) Written a pattern before… I don’t know if I’m being overly optimistic for a project I’d need to have DONE in *counts* 16 days. Granted, my final is next Thursday and I have a week off before my next class starts, but I’m still working 40+ hours a week with lots of overtime forecasted. I know I can do it. I just don’t know if I can do it that quickly. I’m really good with math, geometry, etc., and I’m thinking I might have to sew a mock-up in order to figure out the chart for the color changes, but I KNOW I can do it.

I get the feeling I’m getting myself into trouble.

Completely unrelated, DID YOU KNOW that my first ever FO was made completely without a pattern? I didn’t even realize that was at all weird until two days ago. It’s my knitting bag, but when I first made it, I used it to carry around books. It fits a big fat hardcover book in it PERFECTLY! When I started knitting hardcore in the past few months, I’ve used it to carry around my yarn, tools, and WIPs. Considering I had no idea how to seam, weave in ends, or block, I think it turned out pretty good and sturdy.

I knit it with normal worsted weight Red Heart on size 2 needles. The sides and the strap are knit on bigger needles with two strands of yarn held together. I whip-stitched the pieces all together. I currently have a safety pin keeping one of the straps attached.

I know, I finished the second one on SUNDAY, but give me a break, Sunday is my Monday and my computer’s broken. I really miss having my own computer. Uploading pictures just became infinitely more difficult, and now I don’t even have my own place to store them. I’m only going on about this stuff because I don’t like the way the posts look when the pictures are next to my icon. Screws up the formatting, ya know.

Item: Matching baby blankets for Kate’s sister who is full of babies.
Pattern: Diamond and Smocked Cover posted on Craftster
Needles: Size 6 24″ circ Addi Turbo
Yarn: Bernat Softee Baby, two skeins each of mint and pale blue
Time to Complete: 3.5 weeks for the mint one, 12 DAYS for the blue one.
Unusual Knitting Location(s): The Spot, through the movies Next and Pirates 3 in the theater, in chem class/lab, and a bunch more weird places that I’m sure I forgot about.
New Skillz: Smocked rows, interpreting weird old vintage abbreviations (this pattern has you do wrn’s and won’s–both just fancy ways to say a yo), FINALLY finding a good way to hold my yarn
Notes: I discovered while doing the miles and miles and miles of seed stitch that it goes much faster if you bring the yarn to the side you want next BEFORE you actually do the previous stitch, if that makes any sense. At one point, I was going so fast I had to stop to think about what I was doing. Also, part of the reason I finished the second one so fast was I was sick of this pattern, which is essentially 2×2 ribbing and seed stitch with the occasional yarn over and a bit of smocking.

It’s bad enough the post office decided to not forward any of my mail from when I moved in April so nothing ever comes for me, but my SPLJ4 package is still MIA too. I’m 99.99% certain I gave the right address and everything.

:(

Update 6/7/07:
I haven’t gotten it because it never got sent. A new person got assigned to me though, so I should hopefully get a package soon. I’m just worried I won’t get the $50 minimum now since it’s more than a month into the swap.

This swap really could be going a lot better. I don’t really feel like the person I’m sending to appreciates what I’m sending her, and that hurts more than not getting anything since I’m trying really hard and putting a lot of thought into it.

No picture yet, but imagine:

Today marks Week 2 of the second blanket, but I FINISHED IT TWO DAYS AGO. I knit an entire baby blanket in 12 days.

I SAID this one should go a lot faster. The first one, 3.5 weeks. Second one, 12 days. HA! I’m kinda working on swatching for the socks I’m making Chris, but I haven’t really started on a new project. A little frustrating for me since I’ve been working on something for most of the year. I think I might dabble a little in project polyamory though. I’ve been promising Chris socks for a while, but I’ve got an aweome idea for the first major project I’ll design on my own for the new knitting project challenge at Craftster, and it’s something I’d want to make anyway.

I got paid yesterday. What does this mean? All those urges to go out and buy sweaters to unravel became a reality over the course of two days. Not only did I get some nice yarn to recycle, dye, felt, etc., I also picked up some SWEET fabric. Observe.

I stopped by the Goodwill by my house. It’s nice living in the yuppy neighborhood sometimes. The store was small so I only picked up two sweaters, an XL mostly wool in somewhere around sockweight yarn for $3, and a small hooded bulky linen one for $4.

I’d never been to this thrift store before so I had a look around, and found THESE babies:

6.66 yards of fuzzy pink upholstery fabric for $7(I’m serious about the measurement too)

4.5 yards of that pretty color-changey purple fabric for $4

I also caught a glimpse of some nice looking nylon yarn ($1.50) that ended up being way way way less soft that I’d thought. I can still make something out of it though.

Chris and I both had dentist appointments today, but they were five hours apart so we used that as an excuse to run a bunch of errands. We stopped by a lumber store so Chris could take a gander at wood to start making his drums out of, and I got a dowel to make a niddy noddy to unwind my yarn onto. Then we stopped by the thrift store I used to work at and knew all the tricks and where all the good stuff was. Chris helped me look through sweaters too. I came home with:

37 ties ($6)

Giant pink cone of mystery yarn, laceweight ($2)

The exact same bulky linen hoody I found yesterday (can’t hurt to have more of the same yarn!; $3.50)

A splurge. Pink and green linen sweater ($10)

A red and orangish wool hoody ($2.50)

An 80% Alpaca, 20% nylon sweater in my favorite color ever ($5)

The hard part now is going to be NOT unraveling them until I’ve finished the second baby blanket and have the niddy noddy all made up. But oh man I want to do it NOW. I’m excited.