'Twas A Happy Wednesday!

I got home from work... and I had two packages waiting for me. Delicious, wonderful yarn. I hope you weren't thinking it was clothing or something worthwhile. (OldNavy will be here by the end of the week, so ha!) I was so completely surprised that they arrived so quickly. I bought them Monday. *dances*
The first one was from luxe (www.luxe.etsy.com). Gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. I fell in love with the yarn on her site, but it's amazing in person. I am definately without a doubt buying again. I have no idea what I'm making... but the yarn is... wow. How do you leave feedback on etsy? Is there something I am missing? Here is a picture of the package she sent me! Two pretty postcards, candy (mmm candy), a cute little luxe pin (I think it's mostly covered by a flower, sorry!), and a purple handmade flower pin. It's great. I can wear it to work on my jacket. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.



The second was from yarnzilla (www.yarnzilla.com) . Mmmmm noro. Six skeins of Kureyon and one skein of Silk Garden. All of the Kureyons have some sort of orange in them. :) Two skeins each of #88, #128, and #131 (in no order because I'm lazy). The Silk Garden (the front pinkish skein) is #251. Normally I'm not a big pink person... but I really liked this. Plus, I wanted to try Silk Garden, but I didn't want too bright of a color scheme. I'll probably make a hat. I like yarnzilla. That's where I purchase all of my Noro. Incredible customer service and lightning fast shipping. Here's a picture of those goodies.



Now I have 3½ skeins of #88. I literally had to change the ordered quantity a few times and force myself to try other colorways. Hehehe. I'm going to save it. What if I want to make something and every place is sold out!? :D

I have to organize my yarn tonight. I have three HUGE ziplock bags, and some other bags. Oh man... This is going to be an adventure. Cross your fingers... I may have to call off work tomorrow. :D

On an exciting note... I am doing my first personal swap. :) She already knows she's getting the Noro mitts. I'm really really really really really really really excited. But I don't want to blow anything.... *zips lips*

Look What I Made!

Success! I am VERY pleased with the way my yarn turned out! It was so easy and so fun! Wow... look at all of my exclamation points. :) It only smelled like Kool-Aid for two days, and now it has a sort of fresh yarn smell. I know, I'm weird. The yarn is 100% superwash bare worsted weight wool from Knit Picks (http://knitpicks.com/Bare+-+Superwash+Worsted+Weight_YD5420148.html+Superwash+Worsted+Weight_YD5420148.html). I used three packets of orange and three packets of lemonade for the first skein. The yellow didn't turn out as bright as I wanted it... but I am still in love with the final result. I love how I missed some spots and there is white mixed in. I love how the colors leaked and mixed together in spots. It's gorgeous and I never want to make anything out of it.... I just want to stare at it... I think I'll call it Solar Flare. The boyfriend said it reminded him of fire, and it reminds me of sunlight variations...

For the blue/green skein (thanks for the suggestion!), I used 3 packets of berry blue, and three packets of lemon/lime. I let the boyfriend dye some of this one since he picked out the exact colors we would use. :) He liked it so much... that he made me buy 6 more skeins from Knit Picks. The blue/green went easier than the the orange/yellow... maybe because we had gotten the hang of it. Or because I only did half of it. :) There is far less white in this skein than the first, and I love it equally as much. The boyfriend says the blue looks like the sky and that I absolutely have to make him a pair of gloves with it. I couldn't think of a name for it... I've been calling it Planet Earth because of the way it looked when it was drying... I guess that works.






Here they are drying in the boyfriend's shower...
They look like hanging rainbow spaghetti...



Here they are in yarn ball form! Craptastic balls that I have to fix... the yarn got tangled (I have no idea how. Cat? Human? Beats me.) and this was the only way to untangle it without making another tangled mass... sigh. I love them. As far as I know they aren't striped... I decided to just randomly apply the colors, maybe next time. :)






Doesn't the orange one look awesome? I'm probably a LITTLE bias towards that one... I love orange. :) For next time... I know I at least want a little purple... Maybe purple and red? Any more suggestions?



PS: Look what I got in the mail yesterday! And there is more coming! It's mostly acrylic for the hats I'm making... The Patons is classic merino wool... I liked the colors. The Angel Hair in the top left is Joann Fabric Sensations yarn.. It's a wool/nylon/acrylic blend. It's really furry, I might make a neon green kitty hat.. maybe. :) (Yes, that's black Baby Soft at the top right... I got black and white to make the "We Call Them Pirates" hat from www.helloyarn.com). Yay for expanding your stash!

So it's Friday. Work is dead. DEAD. It's spring break for people in Ohio (and I guess all over...) so I have very little to do. Which leaves me a lot of time to think.

I've been thinking about swaps. I would LOVE to participate in one... but I can only knit limited items... hats, mitts, scarves... Nothing awesome for summer, really. I have yet to knit a toy (unless swappers want little mice, I can do that!). I can't sew, can't crochet, I can cook... do swappers like cookies? fudge? Maybe once I figure out how to dye this yarn... I can send yarn? I want to learn how to make soaps, too.

The reason for all of this swap thinking is because I signed up as a Friend of Craftster today. Now that I can "legally" participate in the swaps... would anybody want me? Am I crafty enough to be a worthy swap partner?

On a happy note... Here are the roses the boyfriend got me for my birthday (two weeks ago...). He does such a good job picking out flowers! I got blue roses once and crazy colored daisies for valentine's day.

Just for the heck of it (and because this is one of my favorite pictures I have taken for a while...) here are the blue roses. :)

Wish me luck! The yarn coloring commences this weekend... Even if it's not how I envisioned it at the end, there are no mistakes, only new possibilities, right?

I'm Alive!!!

I'm still here. :) The only time I could get online was at work, and I had no time to blog. But... the transplant was successful and my laptop is working! Yay! The organ donor was my sister's laptop (exactly the same model, but she needs a new motherboard, and so I stole her hard drive. Okay, I gave her $30 bucks.... but AFTER I already installed it. Bwuahahaha.) New pics will be coming for sure now that I can actually upload them when I want.

I finished my kitty hat. No ear flaps. I have decided, with much consideration, that I am not an ear flap kind of girl. The ears are cute, I didn't screw those up too badly....

I finished a plain black kitty hat; no ears, no ear flaps. Ah well, I guess it's not a kitty hat then... lol I'm going to ship it off to someone I haven't seen in a while. He has cerebral palsy and has lived in foster care all his life. His birthday is in April, and before he moved away, he'd watch me knit at work. :)

I have been making pattern charts for hats like crazy.

I'll post pics as I make them... The first one I finished was Space Invaders. It's awesome! I was going to give it away as a birthday present, but I decided not to. It's my first Fair Isle/Stranding FO and I want to keep it and cherish it in all of it's nerdy retro glory, damnit. And I don't even wear hats. Let me tell you... now I do. :) It's the basic kittyville hat pattern + colorwork.

Right now I am working on the Ginny Weasely hat: www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=77059.0
My sister bought me a lighter colored orange yarn for Christmas (orange is my favorite color) and I couldn't figure out what to use it for. I bought fun fur that matches, in case I want to make a fuzzy hat (which I might, I do intend on selling these eventually maybe... but I need opinions first). Plus, I just think that hat is adorable and I'm a huge Weasley fan. :) I already have the 7th book preordered. Teehee.

I also bought some yarn from KnitPicks. I've never bought from there before.... so far so good. :) I got two skeins of worsted weight undyed superwash. I really want to try dying my own yarn, and the boyfriend said he'd help! Yay! I decided to participate in "Expand Your Stash '07". I love yarn. I'm addicted. *hugs yarn* Here is the KnitPicks yarn I found waiting for me when I got home from work:

Did I mention I also got a burnt orange 100% Peruvian Wool yarn? It's called "Carrot" ...

I think I want to dye one skein orange and yellow kind of tye dye... and the other maybe that, or something else. I'm taking suggestions. :)

The doctor's appointment went... well? He gave me anti-inflammatory pills and told me to return in 30 days. If they don't help, we'll do testing. Well, they aren't helping. I bought new braces and an ergonomic bead snake thing to put in front of my keyboard. At least I can sleep better and they don't hurt as much.

Have you ever just looked at yourself and realized you are not who you want to be? I did. So I started Weight Watchers and I am weeding out my friends. I have very few close friends and tons of acquaintances. I love the lyrics from the Foo Fighters' song Monkey Wrench... "All this time to make amends, what do you do when all your enemies are friends? Now and then I'll try to bend, under pressure wind up snapping in the end...". I feel like I'm going to snap. Always always always know that there are good friends, and there are disposable friends. Half of it is my fault, I don't let people get close to me. I've been hurt by dishonest, unloyal friends too many times, and it's definitely left it's mark on me. Posting this in a blog is hard. Maybe it's easier because there's a limited chance of ever meeting face to face and knowing anything more than what's posted here or there. I want to change, I really do... I want to see the good in people, and not the ways that they are capable of hurting me. It's hard. Maybe I am paranoid, maybe I'm overreacting... At least I'm not in denial anymore and I'm trying to overcome this crap. I've just decided that I'm going to put all of my energy into Weight Watchers instead of feeling bad about people who talk behind backs and make rude comments because they can't say what they are really feeling. I can do this. Carrots taste like chocolate cake, right? :D

PS: Here are random pics of my Kureyon mitts (my own pattern) and Calorimetry (from Knitty) and a scarf that I made a while ago (garter stitch). It's super freaking soft... like, ridiculously soft. :D

Edit: I added the blogs that I read. I may not comment on them, but I try to read them every day, especially when work is slow. If yours isn't on the list, that means I don't have the link. :)

Meh.

I'm so lazy. I haven't really had anything to talk about...

I have a doctor's appointment on Friday to see about this Carpal Tunnel thing. Knitting with CT is a tedious and sometimes painful process. It could be worse, and I figure, if I'm doing it to myself I have no right to whine about it. So I try not to. Knit for 15 minutes, take a 5-10 minute break. Slow but steady. :)

I still only have about 30 rows of the blanket finished. I almost took it apart because I didn't like the color work. Not the color, the way I did it. I have never done color work (save for a mouse with a stripe) so I had to ask the professionals on www.craftster.org :) Intarsia seems the best option for some part, and stranding for others. Oh well. I'll decide as I go. There is lettering, I think I'm going to try duplicate stitch on those. It would be different if it was in rows, but the blanket is knit from bottom to top vertically, and the lettering also goes vertically. Does that make sense? Oh well. It seems like a waste of time. I'd rather knit solid colors. :) I are lazy.

I started making the Kittyville hat from SNB. I cast on in January and put it aside to finish my Kureyon mitts (which I have finished and will be posting soon!) I did the seed stitch area about a round per night before I went to bed and decided that it's March. I am going to miss hat season. I am almost completely finished with the hat portion and then it's the ears! I don't know if I'm going to put ear flaps on, probably. I like to make a pattern all the way through once, and then modify it the second time around. I'm still a slight newbie to some knitting things (like... this is my first hat knit in the round... not on a loom.) and I want to get a feel before I charge headfirst into a pattern and end up taking the whole thing apart. I am going to the boyfriend's tonight. I forgot my dpns for the hat. Maybe I'll save the knitting for home and just play WoW TCG.

That game is addictive. World of Warcrack, in a convenient trading card game! I have so many cards... some are worth a little... Depending on where you look, my scratch off loot card is worth $100-$170. I have an alliance warlock deck and a horde druid deck... working on an alliance warrior. Most of my weapons are awesome... Maybe tonight I'll just make that deck. :)

I have to get my laptop fixed. Okay... I've had to get it fixed since about September, but I thought I could fix it. It really aggravates me when I can't fix a computer related problem. I know enough about them, I should fix them. I think my hard drive took a dump. That's something I have yet to do myself, so I'll let the professionals handle it. It's a relatively cheap fix... at most; $200. Probably not even that much. As soon as I get my laptop fixed I'll be able to post pictures more frequently. :)

Oh oh oh Saturday is my birthday. :) I'm getting old... 22. *sigh* It's usually snowing on my birthday, but it's supposed to be 46 degrees or warmer all weekend.... We'll see. I don't like snow, and I'm sure it doesn't like me. I'd have birthday parties when I was a little one, and nobody would show up because it was a blizzard outside. Kindergarten and my 21st were the only years it didn't snow. I remember this, because I got my goldfish Moby when I was in KG. He lived till the ripe old age of 8.

Hopefully I get things taken care of and get my lazy butt to the puter repair store... Oh, if anyone knows where I can find Nintendo, or Nintendo related pattern charts... Pleeeeeease let me know. Thanks! :D