Not good at all.

I am getting sick. I can feel it in my achy bones and throbbing tonsils. Not a normal kind of sick either. Strep-throat has been going around campus and last week there was a dude in my French class who wore one of those medical masks to class and only took it off to cough into a napkin. This guy (naturally) sits right next to me.
Now you can ask anyone who really knows me, Boyfriend, my family, when I get sick I turn into a giant child. I cannot stand having an achy body so I will do anything to keep from feeling it. Sleep 14 hours, lie on the kitchen floor, hot baths, cold baths, what have you. Last time I was sick I hopped around my parent's house, bouncing from room to room amid whispers of: "What in the world is she doing?" And for like forty minutes! After I was too tired to continue hopping, I bounced my way over to Boyfriend and insisted that he hold me and shake me ever so slightly whilst whispering "shake shake shake shake shake..." to take my mind off of my miserable existence (in Connor's eternal credit he did that for like ten minutes before my mom threatened to make me drink thera-flu if I didn't buck up). I am not a rational adult when I feel icky.
Which is why I'm in the computer lab now about fifteen seconds away from throwing a pencil at the back of a woman's head who is insistent that she has to be on the phone, in the library, having an argument with her child, her Fran Drescher-esque voice blaring at a billion decibels! I of course would never throw anything at another human being (unless it was soft, at family, and they were in a state where they could return fire), but sick Alexis forgives no indiscretion.
As for knitting? I'm making another couch scarf because I really like the pattern and it goes really quickly. I've gotten one Christmas 2012 present done (the first couch scarf) so I'm feeling good. Except that I'm feeling bad... It's a complicated life. Anyway, I hope you're all doing better than me right now. I will definitely try to have pictures in the next post of what I've been working on. Until then!

Excuses excuses.

I know that I super promised pictures of the January vest today but I may or may not have lost said vest. I was just wearing it the other day, but I cannot seem to locate it. I will get you pictures though.
In other news, I finished the scarf from under the couch! It's currently being blocked but once it's done I will try and get pictures to the blog. It's a really pretty deep purple and I'm telling you, it's softer than butter. I'd love to keep it but alas, it has been set aside for Christmas 2012. I enjoyed the pattern so much though that I think I'm going to make another and put it up for sale on Etsy. Yes I do have an Etsy account and a shop and everything, but have not posted anything for sale yet. The Timor shawl was supposed to be my first sale, but alas, things with the T.S. have not gone exactly as I intended them to go. It's going to take a bit more time.
Since I got the couch scarf done, I feel absolutely no guilt in telling you that I also cast on a drop stitch scarf this morning. I'm not exactly loving it though so I might frog it and try something different. Maybe I'll use the yarn for the second couch scarf? We'll see how I'll feel when I get home. Who knows, maybe I'll feel like doing something completely different.

Just a little post...

... Because I have a ridiculous amount of things to do today. The Timor shawl is knitting up super quickly, the January sweater is done but because I woke up late today I didn't get any pictures of it, Christmas 2012 is kind of on hold for the moment because I'm so uninspired with all the gifts I'm knitting, and I have a serious case of startupitus.
I want to cast on a million fun, interesting projects but don't want to finish any of them. I love pouring over my yarn and finding the perfect pattern to go with it. I love starting something with just string and sticks and then having the beginning of what could be something beautiful. It's just the whole middle part I have a problem with. In knitting, one will find a certain phenomena known as a knitting black hole. It's when you knit 50 rows on a project, measure it, and find that it's no longer than before. So you knit 50 more rows, measure it, and see you've only added half an inch. It's enough to drive a Knitter round the bend I tell you.
Anyway, I haven't completed any projects in weeks and that's really starting to get me down. The January sweater doesn't really count because it was supposed to be a full sleeved sweater but I hate doing sleeves so much that I kind of copped out and made it a little vest with cap sleeves. I even lost my Latvian Mitten! Maybe I wasn't meant to be a knitter after all...
Who am I kidding? I'd be completely unmanageable if I didn't have my wool. I'll have the pictures of the January vest to you tomorrow, super promise.

Exciting news!

Connor, my wonderful boyfriend, received an amazing job offer with the Lorosa'e English Language Institute in Dili, East Timor. For those of you who are anything like me, and wouldn't know how to hold a map right-side up:

That is East Timor, or Timor Leste as it's more commonly known. It's a beautiful island in Indonesia with a tropical climate and beautiful beaches. It seems like just my kind of place (Boyfriend has very thoughtfully asked me to go with him).
This has been in the works for a while but because we weren't sure it would happen, we didn't want to tell the world. We wanted to keep it under wraps until Connor signed a contract and we were for sure going, but Connor's brother Carrick (who is currently working in Timor and convinced him to try for the job) was so excited that he told the entirety of Facebook.
So the cat's out of the bag and I'm going to knit a Timor shawl to celebrate! Don't get on me about starting yet another project, for the January sweater is finished! Photos soon to follow.

My Yoda

Hello everyone! Wanted to keep you updated on how everything is going. I must say it’s going pretty well. The Latvian mitten is going pretty quickly. Take a look.

It looks a little chunky to me, but that’s just because I haven’t blocked it yet once it’s off the needles and blocked I’m sure it will look just fine. This mitten is one of my first multi-colored projects that uses more than two colors, and I must admit, that it’s really hard! There are all kinds of strings going across the back that I'll have to take care of, and it can be really frustrating trying to untangle all my balls of yarn. Plus I haven't been paying enough attention to the pattern and twice now I thought I've been done with the navy and snipped it off, just to find I need it a few rows later (yes mom, I know I need to work on my attention to detail).

So just yesterday I had my friend Shelbie over for an "eat pizza and you play video games while I knit mittens" kind of night. Now Shelbie is not a knitter, but she sits and listens to me rant about wool and patterns and does so without telling me to shut the heck up (one of the many reasons I love her). Yesterday Shelbie said something to me about knitting (and I suppose it applies to other things in life) that blew my mind. She was just packing up to leave, and after watching her play Skyrim (great game BTW, five stars) for a few hours, I had a hankering to play it myself. I said to her: "Man, I'm torn. I really want to continue knitting the mittens but I also really want to play Skyrim." Shelbie looked at me and said: "Might as well work on the mittens while you actually want to. Soon enough you'll be dying to get away from them but for now you should knit while you don't hate them. Skyrim will wait for you."

It makes so much sense! I even churned out about ten more rows that night. Shelbie, you are the Yoda to my Luke and I thank you.

An update!

Happy belated Valentines Day to all of you out there! I hope it found you well and delivered unto you a box of chocolate. Just wanted to give you an update on things over here. Remember that scarf from under the couch I mentioned last time? Well it's coming along swimmingly. Instead of knitting the whole thing end to end, I'm knitting to halves and then grafting it together in the middle. It's a lace pattern and I'm a bit weird about perfection so I can't stand the thought of it being wrapped about someone's neck, with one end laying the way it's supposed to and the other being upside down. So I took a page out of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Knitting Rules (great book by the way, has a million little helpful hints) and I'm knitting from start to middle on both of them and then grafting both middles together. It will be the first time I've ever done this, so wish me luck!
On an exciting note, my Latvian Mittens book came in the mail yesterday!

It's so pretty that I can barely stand it. I was flipping through it for about ten minutes before I had to grab my smallest DPN's and headed for the yarn store. I got all the colors I needed from the "Mill ends" bin, and I cast on that evening. Unfortunately I couldn't spend as much time as I wanted to on mittens of Latvian design, because Boyfriend and I had grown-up stuff to do like show up for our Sign Language conversation circle, and go grocery shopping. I did manage to get a few rows done between putting away groceries, making dinner, and then falling into bed. Want to see?
I know, not very impressive right now. But they will be! I'm also quite proud of myself for working with four colors at a time and stopping every few rows to unwind each ball from each other instead of waiting until they're hopelessly tangled and then throwing the whole thing at the wall (it has happened before and I promise you that it's not a pretty sight).
So that's what I'm up to, I hope this blog finds you well and I may or may not disappear into my mittens for the next few days. I'm sure I'll come up for air in the semi-near future.

It's Monday. Blah.

Not much to say really. Spent a nice weekend in Beaverton/Hillsboro visiting the family. Connor's mum taught him how to crochet so now he wants access to my stash. That's all fine and dandy so long as he doesn't touch anything I've got a plan for. He made a joke about the silk lace-weight and a lovely twitch developed over my eye. He's already vacuumed over the skein once (yup rolled right over it, although I did manage to salvage most of it), though it was my own fault, I was trying to clean up quickly so I hid it under the couch. Guess where Boyfriend decided to vacuum that day?
Anyway, for my class knitting today I pulled an old scarf project out from under the couch of hidden yarn (yes I still hide stuff there) and so I'm having fun with that. Other projects have been a bit ignored this weekend, as I am a fickle knitter and feel that the yarn is always softer on the other project. I need to finish up some projects before I cast anything on with that I bought this weekend. It's beautiful and I want to knit all the things with it but I will not allow myself to do so until I've finished at least one project for someone else. Let's see how long that lasts...