Making amends and catching up.

Well blog, it has been quite a while. I mostly got caught up in the frenzy of moving home again and celebrating my 21st birthday, and then Christmas with my family, but it's no excuse and I apologize for my lack of blogging. Lack of blogging, however, does not mean that there has been a lack of knitting. Since there would be too much to shove into one blog post, I'll just give you the cliff notes version.

Since you last heard from me:

We left Timor. Said goodbye to Angela, our wonderful mana/housekeeper/fixer of broken things and then jumped on a plane to Bali. I'd post pictures of that, but I didn't take any.

From there we jumped to Singapore. Now that I have pictures of.

On our first day there we rode the Singapore Flyer; the world's largest Ferris Wheel.

 I knit while admiring the view, and Carrick ventured bravely forward, even though he wasn't thrilled by the prospect of being so high off the ground.

Later we went to the Singapore Zoo and saw phenomenal things.

It started raining (and by that I mean dumping all the water in the atmosphere onto our heads), but we got ponchos and stuck it out.

After that we rode a train 9 hours to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We saw the sights and made a Canadian friend called Tom (he's the blonde one)!

We didn't stay in Malaysia long though, because the next stop on our trip had all of us excited (even Tom, he came along with us!) Bangkok, Thailand!

We went to the Great King's palace and got caught in another storm (no ponchos this time).

We watched the River Goddess festival from a bridge.

We saw some beautiful things in Bangkok. And then the boys had to be boys by eating scorpions.

Then we ended the trip abroad with a 15 hour (yes, fifteen hour) train ride North West to Chiang Mai, Thailand where we:

Rode in rickshaws,

posed like supermodels with out comically tiny coffee,

and all the other low-key, touristy things.

And after our adventure was over, we came home to celebrate birthdays and Christmas with our loved ones. I'd get into all the knitting I did while I was away and for Christmas 2012, but that would make this less of a post and more of a novel. I'll catch you up soon, I promise.

Alexis for the win!

So a few weeks ago the package from home with all of my yarn in it finally made its way to Timor. Since then I have been a knitting fiend. In about a week and a half I knit a sweater. A cute little spring cardi with three-quarter length sleeves. Now I'm starting on the next one and have almost finished the back panel. I'm not going to tell you what the latter one is, just in case I don't finish it and then I'll forever be hounded with questions like: "What about that one sweater you said you were knitting that one time?" So instead it will be a surprise. As for the one that I already made? Well here you go.

This is Miette.

 I used Kashmira Sensations 100% Wool in Color #57. Not the best name for a color, I admit, but the yarn worked up nicely. The only little thing was that I had to be careful while blocking not to agitate it too much because this stuff is super felt-able. That's something I'll have to keep an eye on whenever I'm washing this sucker.

Please ignore the messy ponytail and the bare feet. I woke up about five minutes before these were taken and I was running late for a Skype chat with my mom. Pay attention only to the sweater.

This was an attempt to capture the eyelet pattern that highlights the neck, sleeves, and bottom edging.

Connor told me to "do the model hip-sticky-outie thingy" and I did my best to comply without laughing in his face.

So that's my latest conquest. Stay tuned for the next installment of "Neat crap Alexis has knitted with limited resources".

P.S. Many thanks to Connor for sucking it up when I threw the camera at him this morning and said: "I've got three minutes before my Skype date, take pictures of me in the sweater, hurry, hurry! The lighting is best in the hallway, come on, hurry up. No, no, not yet, I have to button it!" You are the best my love. Thank you for putting up with me and helping spread my crazy to others.

 

Not feeling very wordy today.

So I'm just going to show you some pictures.

I've been busy. And yes, that was a Hufflepuff sock.

Tragedy

Sometimes things happen that you just can’t control. It’s no one’s fault, there is no one to blame, and there is no place to justifiably direct your rage. It’s just life, and bad things can happen to the best of people. Anyone who has lived more than a handful of years on this planet and isn’t totally self absorbed knows this. But how do you deal with it? How do you handle the tragedy? How can you move past it and grieve when there is no one to blame?

Some people blame anyone they can. They get angry and try to tear down the world for not being angry with them. Some people curl up and cry until everything is out and then there’s no hurt left. Some people have a drink, have a smoke, pop a pill until they’re numb enough not to care.

Do you know what I do? I knit. When the world is deconstructing itself around me, I construct an object of love. Because that’s what knitting is, love. It must be if you can spend sixteen hours winding string around sticks until you have socks. When I’m so upset that my hands are shaking, and I feel like I want to scream at the sky until it falls down on me, I pick up my needles and I make something beautiful. Even when all I want to do is lie on the couch and watch as the moving sun changes the shadows around me. I do it because knitting makes my grief more manageable.

I’ve done it ever since I started knitting. When my high school boyfriend cheated on me, I made a scarf. When I didn’t get accepted to a four-year University straight out of high school, I made a pair of socks. When all but three of my friends forgot my 20^th birthday, I made a kick-ass winter hat with ear flaps.

And now tragedy is rearing its ugly head again. The beast hasn’t bitten yet, but it’s in the process of deciding if it’s going to. I find that the threat of loss is almost as bad as loss itself. You know that something really bad could happen, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. It’s like I’m sitting on a hillside, watching as a wildfire creeps from the forest, closer and closer to the city. I know that I can only watch in horror and pray that it’s either put out, or that everyone makes it out alive.

So while I’m waiting on the outcome, I knit a scarf for someone I love. It’s almost winter back in Oregon, and I intend to be home by Christmas. With every stitch, every row, I am one step closer to sanity, one step closer to getting my emotions reeled back in. It won’t help me to be sad now, I can only be positive and wait for the beast to either bite or go back to sleep.

My grief is productive. My grief becomes love. That’s about as good as I could hope for. 

Remember the good ol' days?

I was puttering around the house today feeling kind of blue, missing my family, when I perked myself up with the thought of: "Well don't worry, you'll be home in time for Christmas!" which got me all happy for the next thirty seconds until my brain caught up and I went: "Oh no. Christmas. Oh crap, I haven't knit anything for Christmas!" Remember that whole Christmas 2012 thing? Well I sure didn't. I haven't made one gorram thing for my fantastic list of Christmas buddies, and that is a bad, bad thing.
For those of you who don't know, Knitters are notoriously terrible planners. If you read this blog then you'll know that I've been thinking about this years Christmas since January. Now it's September and I haven't gotten one single thing done. Normally that wouldn't be too much of a problem, I would just swing by my LYS (Local Yarn Store for those not in the know) and pick up some fun yarn. But I can't do that. Know why? Because the nearest yarn store is over 600 miles away. Yeah, I googled it.
My mom did send me a care package a few months ago (it only arrived last week) and it had some tasty bits of yarn in it, but I need a lot more. She sent another one that hasn't quite made its way here yet, and that one is supposed to be mostly yarn. I might still be able to Jerry-rig some semblance of a knitting Christmas together. Wish me luck lovelies.

P.S. Another shining example of how bad I am at remembering stuff? September 5th was me and Connor's two year anniversary. Guess who forgot? Well... We both did actually. Good thing neither one of us assigns any ridiculous importance to anniversaries. It's cool, it's a good mile-marker, we still adore each other, but if one of us forgets, that's okay too. We're going on a date to celebrate this Sunday. I wonder if he'll let me bring my Christmas knitting?

I feel like little Miss Muppet meets Jack Sparrow.

I know I haven't done an honest to goodness knitting blog in a while, but...

I'm back in black baby.

This is my tough "back in black" face. I should probably work on it.

This right here is the Neon Ski Bonnet by Lacey Volk and it can be found here:

 http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/neon-ski-bonnet

This is the fun, funky little project I mentioned in my last blog but wanted to keep secret.

I don't ski and mine isn't neon, but it was a hoot and a half to make. You just take some fun cabling, a simple rib stitch with some twists, a giant pompom, and voila!

 The picture doesn't do it justice, there's a bunch of cabling going on around the base. I even knit this one to pattern without taking any liberties (which, if you know me and my knitting tendencies, is rare). Well, I did take one tiny liberty in that I didn't do the hat band in the round, but that's only because I didn't have enough yarn to do so. On this tiny island, where sheep don't really exist, you have to save yarn where ever you can. So instead of doing a double band, I just did a one layer thing on straight needles.

All in all, I'd say it turned out pretty well. Perfect for a crisp Fall day in Oregon. You know the only problem with that? We're not in Oregon anymore Toto. This type of adorable bonnet doesn't have a place here. A place where it's 85 degrees out and you think: "Ooh, it's getting a little chilly". A place where if the cerulean waves get more than half a metre high, then it's a "crazy storm". This place was not meant for wool bonnets. Into my suitcase it goes. Believe you me, this sucker will be out of my luggage and atop my head the second we land in Portland come November. I'm counting the days.

Are you there Blog? It's me, Alexis!

Hello everyone! I know, I know, It's been too long. In my defense, I was in Bali. In your defense, I got back a week ago and am just a terrible blogger. But, I'm here now and that's what counts. Bali was awesome, thanks for asking. We had a bunch of super fun time adventures like surfing, and walking through the sacred monkey forest, and biking down a volcano, and zip-lining through trees, and seeing The Dark Knight Rises in theaters. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so we have very limited documentation of all this excitement. We have some pictures that the surf school took of Connor (none of me, because the guys at Big Kahuna Surf School are less than honest about what their "photo package" covers) and then a few photos of us with our friends Adam and Jan that we met on the bike ride, but I don't think Adam has sent those to us yet. We also have a few of us zip-lining but those are in print form and there is not a scanner to be found in Dili.
So what have I been knitting lately? A whole lot of everything. I can't keep my mind focused on a single project. I keep starting new things and then frogging them when I get bored. It's a bad existence for a knitter, not finishing any projects, but we all have our rough patches. Right now I'm working on something that I just might stick with because it's so funky and fun, but we'll see. I don't want to tell you and get your hopes up, just to dash them with another scrapped project.
Something that's seriously cramping my knitting? The lack of yarn. It simply doesn't exist here. I've found a substitute for lace-weight or cobweb, but if I want to make something chunky or worsted, I'm SOL. My mom sent me a few care packages filled with yarn and treats and the newest Nancy Drew PC game (I'm a huge ND nerd, don't judge, they're awesome games), but they haven't arrived yet. Carrick thinks they've either been lost, or more likely stolen. It's not a pretty thing to suspect, but when a package comes into a third-world country with a big sticker that says: "FROM AMERICA" it's more likely than not that it won't reach its final destination. Won't they be disappointed when they come to find that it's mostly just string? I hold out some hope that it's just sitting at the post office, waiting on some kind soul to make it out to this end of town.
Anyway, that's all I've got for now, sorry it's not more intriguing, or with fancy pictures, but that's just the way it goes sometimes. Hope you all are doing well!