Geochaching & Late-Night Gaming

After a stressful week at work (and at home to some extent) I was really looking forward to a kickass weekend. Thus far, it's been off to an excellent start, too.

During the week I decided to try and find Boyfriend & I something to do. I vaguely remembered having a swap partner who was involved in Geocaching. I didn't know much about it then but I decided to look it up and thought we'd give it a try. Looked forward to it allll week, too. So yesterday, Boyfriend & two other friends and I piled into my car & drove to Hofstra Park in Prospect Park, NJ & set out to give this a shot. It took us awhile to find the first one, and we didn't find all the ones we set out to find, but we did find some and we had a blast! Got a good little workout too. The park was great, both urban & woodsy at the same time. It was kind of weird but good for our purposes. It was up on top of a hill overlooking Paterson & a strip mine... so they were nice views... of the sky anyway.

Afterwards we got lunch, parted ways for showers and naps, and reconvened at our place around eight for pesto & games. Gaming until 3 am does weird things to people. There was no drinking (for once) but we did end up making a cake.

Today I'm just catching up on stuff I didn't get to do during the week. Like taking pics of my FO's from the week, replying to emails I didn't feel like reading on my phone. Now I'm about ready for a nap though.

I did finish Candome hat. I tried to make the top a little interesting by adding a little cable twist into the decrease section, but it's not really noticable, I don't think. Oh well, no worries. The colors are nice, even if they're not my colors.

I finished the bag too, which I ADORE and I'm PUMPED to make another for myself! I was worried it wouldn't be the size I wanted, which was large enough to hold a beach towel. In lieu of a beach towel I tested it with my voluminous bathrobe and it totally fit! Super pumped! And I love this yarn! I don't think I'd ever use it for anything other than beachbags, but I am tempted to go stock up on some Cascade Sunseeker in different colors and make a few spares.

I also made another beret, which I finished towards the end of gaming last night, out of a sacred skein of Studio Donegal. I LOVE this stuff, I think it just knits up beautifully and it's nice & springy & soft... Ahh. I became enamored of it last year when I was in Ireland (where it's spun and pretty much exclusively distributed) and almost peed myself with joy when someone at last fall's North Jersey Fiber Arts Festival scored some to sell. It's just a simple beret with a little lacey leaf pattern in one place to add a little focus. Ugh. I wish I had a place to buy this locally, I'd use it all the time instead of hoarding it like Halloween candy.

This morning I CO'd a flat knit cowl. My co-worker loved the hat I made in Piedras for Mal Madness but she doesn't wear hats or want a cowl that she has to pull over her head. I snagged a skein of Twist in Piedras on sale & figured I'd make her something with buttons. I don't like flat knitting as much as in the round, but I'll get through it. =) But first I think I really want a nap. Not feeling hot today again, so at the very least I'd like to be horizontal with comfy blankets & pillows on my comfy comfy sleep number bed. Tea and nap, then more knitting. Sounds like a kickass finish to a weekend to me! =D

A Time For Rest

I hate that it's been so long. It makes me sad, actually. But these past few weeks have been rough, and I've either not had the time to sit down and devote or I've just been too weary, either physically or emotionally. There were two deaths, one that I had to leave the state for. There's been YMP busyness. Easter. Insomnia. Illness. Mal Madness. A LOT of stress at work (the summer is coming faster than you think, and it's hitting my office already).  It's just been exhausting, tiring to experience and too tiring to talk about at length. I spent a lot of time in my head, and I kept thinking to myself, "I should write about this!". I couldn't bring myself to put words to what I was feeling though, there was just too much.

Sleepy penguin!

Candome Hat

This past weekend, though, I finally got to take a vacation. Granted, it was just a long weekend with my hunnie, less than a three-hour drive to Mystic, CT, but it was the only vacation I've had since August of 2011 so I was SUPER PUMPED.  It was a sort of strange weekend, though it all worked out in the end. Just being ANYWHERE but our apartment alone with Boyfriend would have been great, but Mystic is kind of special for us, so it was nice to get back.  We went to Mohegan Sun, walked around the town & Olde Mystick Village (my fave!). We met two ADORABLE miniature Australian Shepherds, which I did not know existed but now I must have. Boyfriend & I have been wanting one but they need way more space than we have; apparently, the minis are calmer and need less space. SO CUTE my head almost exploded. We also went to the aquarium, which I love, & saw the penguins, which I love. I wanted to buy some original Penguin Art but settled for a print & mug instead.

I did visit two yarn shops, I'm proud to say, and I think I did pretty well with my self-restraint. The first was Mystic River Yarns, which was a lovely shop, really. They had a great discount wall, and I picked up a few skeins of different yarns by Ellyn Connor's Yarn Sonnets. The other was really an alpaca farm (though we didn't get to see much of the alpacas themselves, which was fine). Our hotel was 10 minutes from Burgis Brook Alpacas in Canterbury, CT. It was kind of tough to find and when we got there we were a little creeped out . You pull up to a house on a quiet country road surrounded by hedges & high fences with only a few other cars, a padlocked barn to the right, and not a soul in sight. It was a little eerie, but the proprietess heard us and came to open the shop. Once inside it was quite pleasant, although it was mostly mainstream yarns, lots of Malabrigo, Noro, & Araucania, which was kind of a bummer. I was able to score a skein of Aysen and one of Coliumo in Berry (which I actually really needed  for a project I have in mind - I'd swapped for one, but the person stiffed me & thought I was SOL) as well as 2 skeins of their farm blend and one of a corriedale/mohair blend from another local farm. I was well pleased with my purchases, all told.

I got a bit of knitting done, including a bunch of work on the bag I'm making for a swap.  I'd decided to crochet the bag originally, and unfortunately most of what I did was work on this bag. I got to the point where I'd start the cuff of the bag...  and it was WAY too small. I wasn't jazzed about the way that it was coming out anyway (reminding me how much I dislike crocheting) so when we got home for the weekend I frogged it all and started a knit bag. I'm almost done with the body of it, and I really like the way it's coming out. 

I also did a wee bit of work on my Candome hat.  I bought a skein of Rios in Candome during Mal March (naughty me!!) because it was on sale and I'm trying to use it up so I don't feel guilty about having bought it lol. I always love people's pictures of FO's in Candome but I never like the way it looks in the skein... To be honest, I don't know how I feel about this hat that I'm making  either. Something simple, just a plain stockinette slouchy hat, I'll probably put a button or something on it. The only bit of fanciness is that I added some mini cables to the ribbing on the brim. I meant to be able to knit this in the car, though I wound up driving on the way up and passing out on the way home. Now I'll try and punch it out once I finish my bag, though it's hard to work on it because I get bored really fast with the stockinette. Slow & steady though.

I'm hoping things will quiet down for awhile. Probably not for long, but two weeks of routine would be nice.  I'm a creature of habit, I like routine.  I'm all for shaking it up once in awhile, but I've had enough shaking now. No more shaking.  Time now to rest. 

Stripey Hat Mania!

Been sick on and off for the past two weeks. It has not been my favorite. Mostly just cold stuff, but a couple of fevers, a migraine... super fun. Rehearsals for the musical I'm going to be in have started, too. It also seems like a couple of big life changes are headed my way come summer... It's been a hectic couple of weeks.

It HAS meant that I've had some quality knitting time though. =D I've reorganized my yarn in an effort to try and use up a chunk of it, (The big life changes headed my way may also include another move, and when that is the situation, less is always more!) notably that from my trip to Scotland last year and the North Jersey Fiber Fest from this past fall. I've been doing well so far! I used up two scarf quantities that I bought, but not for scarves. I just couldn't come up with any patterns I liked, so there's the Norse series...

A nice chunky cowl, an adult-sized hat, and a child-sized hat, all from 4 skeins of Wendy Norse Chunky, a lovely single-ply wool/acrylic blend, that I bought at the Wooley Brew in Pittenweem, the most adorable little town ever in the heart of Scotland. It was pleasant to work with, for the most part, though it was one of the most loosely spun single-plys I've ever worked with and splityness was an issue for me. I probably wouldn't buy it again, but I love the end result. 

I also just finished (this morning!) a set of five hats I've been calling the "Scottish Stripey Hats". I bought 5 skeins of Rico Kids Classic Aran to make a stripey scarf, but again, I couldn't come up with a pattern I both liked and felt like doing. 

So instead of a scarf... five hats! I'm super pleased with them. The first three (white, blue, & brown) are regular adult-sized. The fourth (pink) is child-sized and the last (purple) is larger adult-sized. And I have enough left over to make a kindle cozy! I'm going to CO that once I'm done writing, before the start of Mal Madness tomorrow. These two sets have also given me the chance to start some basic colorwork. Really really basic, but it made me happy anyway. =)

Excited about Mal March Madness. I've got plenty of Mal laying around, so my recent reorganization of yarn and plan about which to use may have to wait. I tend to hoard the Mal because I love it so much, so this should give me impetus to actually USE it. This does mean I'll have to get my swift back from my father asap though. 

I'm so tired. Honestly, my knitting is about all that's keeping me sane right now. This is a weird time, I guess. Boyfriend is busy busy busy with work & it's making him very unhappy. There's no real holidays for awhile, so no diet ditch days to look forward to. We planned a little vacation for the beginning of April, but it seems like a million years away. I was SUPER excited about it for a few days but it's hard to maintain that level of enthusiasm with so long to go. I'm just kind of coasting along right now... The doldrums shall pass, as they always do, just gotta keep rollin' along in the meantime. =)

Pittenweem!

Songs & Snowpocalypse

This past week as a little nutty. I had my little medical drama nonsense on Tuesday, and was a sad little mess for the rest of the day. You would think on a day where I was scheduled to have a procedure and knew I would want to go straight on home and climb into bed, I would make sure I had my apartment keys.

But alas.

This was also the same day that I went to the Dunkin Donuts drivethrough for coffee, ordered the coffee, paid for the coffee, and drove away without the coffee. I should have had the wherewithall to check the rest of my essential belongings after that, but it was not to be. So I got home after my procedure, stressed, weepy from the stress, and in a rather large amount of discomfort to discover that I was locked out. This happens frequently enough that I keep a spare set of keys in my glove compartment. Except that we lent those to a friend so he could feed Bosco when we were away for a weekend. Awesome. So I sat in my car in the cold, sniveling and feeling sorry for myself, alternating between a rousing game of solitare and Ravelry, until Boyfriend came home from school. He got me upstairs, ordered me Mexican food, and tucked me in on the couch with the remote and some yarn.

The rest of the week just kind of took its cue from there. I was mostly sad, sick, and weepy. I knit some. I played a bunch of Sims. The highlight of the week I went to my favorite LYS on my lunch hour Wednesday to console myself. I was poking through their giant pile of Mal Worsted and lo, there in the back, was a skein of Mal Twist in Purple Mystery. One of my favorite bases in one of my favorite colors, and I had just finished a long discussion with the proprietess about how irritiated she was Malabrigo and would no longer be carrying their yarns once her current stock sold out. She hadn't had any Twist in a year, and she was shocked to see what I'd found. Since it was probably the only one of its kind, she gave it to me for half off! I promptly went home, wound it up into a center pull, and hurriedly finished a hat I was very disgruntled with so I could cast on a cowl for moi. Said cowl is blocked & just about dry, and I'm ridiculously excited to wear it. SO SOFT. Crazy.

The disgruntling hat started out as a Winter Garden hat. It ended up looking similar, but I got really enraged at the pattern and stopped using it after a few rows. Maybe it's just because I was in a bad mood when I started it, but I caught the gist of the pattern from looking at pictures and finished it my own way. This is not the first time this has happened with a pattern I downloaded off the interwebs, and I'm sure it won't be the last either (though it happens significantly less since I started working these things through myself & designing my own patterns), but I find it particularly irksome when a pattern has been paid for. But this plays into a very long rant about "proprietary" patterns and the internet. One day maybe I'll share the whole thing here, but now is not the time.

Anyway, the cowl was a good project to work on during the so-called "Snowpocalypse". Which wasn't really that terrible. I mean, yeah, it was a whole bunch of snow. But down in Jersey, it could have been a lot worse. It was 8-12", just as predicted. And I suppose it's easier for me to be blase about it because, living in a second story apartment, I didn't really have to shovel any of it. But looking back on snowstorms gone by (think last October, or ANY of the snowstorms from the winter before that) it really wasn't terrible. People are just gunshy because of Sandy, I get that. I really do. And it's true, there's no harm in being prepared. But there's no need to be so dramatic about it. Let us not abuse the term "Snowpocalypse" (or "Snowmageddon", if that's your preferred flavor) is all I'm saying.

Yesterday (Sunday), was nerve wracking in its own right. I bit the bullet and did something I both swore I'd never do again and have been wanting to do for months. I went and auditioned for my old community theatre company's spring show. I haven't participated in a show of theirs since... 2005? My entire family had been involved for years, since the late 90's, in a multitude of capacities, but we all kind of dropped out eventually. For me, the drama and feelings of insufficiency just became too much. I took voice and dance lessons nonstop, worked my butt off to please the directors, bowed and scraped and did my time, and still I was always passed over for parts. It hurt a lot, especially because the only explanation I could come up with was that I was heavier than the girls who did get parts. It wounded me. Add in all of the other interpersonal drama and I'd just had enough. So I left. And then I went to college. And I came back from college. And now it's been years. I've grown, I have a different point of view and a the skill set to deal with these people as an adult, to stick up for myself. I've improved and honed my singing skills significantly since then. And I have significantly more confidence.

(The success at my weight loss plan helps too.)

So I thought about it. A lot. Agonized, really. I didn't tell anyone before I did it, too. It was a hard choice. It's hard to go back to these people after having been away for so long, these people who really hurt me, hurt my self esteem, as a kid, but who were also fundamental in shaping me in a lot of ways and who were responsible for a lot of my best memories from that time period. It was really hard. And I thought I was going to have a 
stroke when I got there. But I did it. I'm pretty proud of muself. And I think I'll do this show. If nothing else, it'll give me something to do other than play the Sims all day long, right?

Beastie: It's Just That

I've been having a rough week. Between the unpleasantness of my little procedure on Tuesday and the impending transabdominal ultrasound and probable outcome of said scan looming on the horizon that is this coming Monday (not to mention the alleged "Snowpocalypse" headed our way), I've not been terribly happy.

I did want to get in my little review of a yarn I tried last week though. I wanted to wait until it finished blocking before putting my final thoughts into the universe, and now that it has been unpinned I think it's time. I was really excited to try Cephalopod Yarn's Beastie. I made two Christmas gifts out of skeins of Traveller and I loved the color of one (Stranger's Home, AK) so much that I wanted to get a skein for myself. I had a little extra money so I went and bought myself a skein. It was then that I saw Beastie for the first time and I was super excited. Aran is one of my absolute favorite weights to work with and I was really stoked to see them use a heavier base. I selected a skein in Chupacabra, a lovely red-violet shade. When it arrived, I was all set. I had a stitch pattern picked out from a dictionary, I set up my swift, and then I opened the package. 

I was surprised at first touch how it felt. It wasn't really soft at all. It was about at the edge of acceptable textures for something you'd wear against your neck. So when I looked at the fiber content (which I hadn't really paid attention to until this moment) I was totally shocked. Beastie is a blend of merino, silk, and alpaca. One of my favorite blends of all time. I love it, absolutely love it. It's the best of 3 worlds, the perfect balance between soft, warm, and cool, perfect for next-to-skin items. But upon touching Beastie, I'd never have guessed what its fiber content was. Really, it felt to me only marginally softer than Cascade 220 or Knit Picks Wool of the Andes. Hold on, I thought, this can't be. It must just bloom up when it's washed.

So I knit it up. It was fine. Nothing to write home about, not really. I punched out the cowl within two days, washed it, and lightly blocked it. I left it alone, and came back a few days later. The texture was no different.

Now, it's true, Traveller is not the softest superwash merino ever. It's saving grace is the multitude of beautiful colors it comes in and the fact that it's washable. These are still true for Beastie, but I still somehow feel cheated. When you tell me it's alpaca/merino/silk, I expect greatness.

It was nice enough to work with, though honestly I don't think I'll ever buy myself another skein. 140 yards of aran for $20? For my money, I'd just buy 2 skeins of Malabrigo Rios or a skein of madelinetosh vintage. Beastie was disappointing at best, and my recommendation is to pass.

The Worst of Me

Ah, Superbowl Sunday. As usual, I ignored it in its entirety. Not 100% intentional, I simply forgot about it and made other plans. When asked how I could forget, didn't Boyfriend remind me? I simply explained that my boyfriend likes math and dice games; I'm lucky he knows the Superbowl is a football game.

I spent the weekend with guilty pleasures: The Sims 3 & the Bachelor. And knitting, of course, though I wouldn't consider that a guilty pleasure. I started & finished a cowl with some of Cephalopod Yarn's Beastie. It's beautiful, although I have to say I wasn't overly impressed with the yarn itself. I adore merino/alpaca/silk blents, but honestly if I hadn't read the label I wouldn't have realized that's what it was. It doesn't even feel like merino to me. I'm hoping that it'll bloom & soften a bit with washing, so I'm waiting on it to dry before I make my final judgement. Started another cowl, this one out of some Mal Chunky, today based off a pattern from one of my many stitch dictionaries. I love stitch dictionaries, they're the most useful texts a serious knitter can own. I really need to collect Barbara Walker's volumes, because it seems like every other dictionary is a rehashing of her work, though that is a purchase that will have to wait.

The Sims is one of my biggest weaknesses ever, and has been for years. Which is sad, because it's essentially a bug-ridden, money-eating timesink... but I can't give it up. It's just too funny. TBoyfriend caught me watching it and was like, "Oh lord, WHY are you watching the BACHELOR?!?!" My answers, in this order were:

1. because Scott & Todd (the morning radio dj's on 95.5, who I've faithfully listened to every weekday morning that I've ever driven anywhere) make fun of it.
2. it's actually frightening how addictive it is, and also how hilarious it is. Seriously. I think my family watched the first season of the Bachelor (just for reference, this is Season 17, not including the Bachelorette seasons) when it was on tv because it was new and exciting and I was probably 12 or 13, and I've avoided it ever since. But talk about a guilty pleasure. Seriously. You can't script this stuff. One girl talks about kicking the crap out of other girls who get in her way, and "falls" down the stairs, pitches temper tantrums when she doesn't get 1-on-1 dates, and according to the "Next Week On The Bachelor" vignette, appears to get chased by a wild animal, fall into some icy water, and give herself hypothermia. All I have to say is this: Bitches be trippin'.
3. it makes me appreciate you [Boyfriend] ever so much more.

A fourth answer, which arose later, is it's an excellent show to watch whilst I spin, because I don't have to really watch it. As long as I can hear the insane word vomit that is this show, I can follow. I'm not proud of either of these pasttimes, not like I am of my continued love for Pokemon, but there they are. That's the worst of me. The Sims 3 and some horrifying reality television are my only real vices. Some people might think that I ought to include my overwhelming stash of yarn in this list, but we all know I really need that to live so it doesn't qualify as a vice, right? ....right?

A New Cowl, A Familliar Game

This weather is driving me bananas. I feel so rotten, between stuffy nose, cough, and a raging sore throat... Ugh. Boyfriend and I stayed home yesterday, me because of germiness and him because he had an insane amount grading to get done. I don't think I ever appreciated before exactly how much work teachers put in. He's done absolutely nothing but work for the past six days, at school and at home. No one is underpaid like teachers are underpaid. Kind of disgusting really.

Anyway, I finished a cowl yesterday that I'm pretty excited about. I love to buy variegated yarn, but finding patterns to show it off can be tough. When I get pictures I'll post them along with some more about the pattern. If there's enough interest maybe I'll post the pattern! I had enough leftover to start a matching hat too, though I'm not sure that's going to work like I intend. We'll see.

I also descended once again into time sink that is The Sims. Sometimes its sirens' song just calls... and I am powerless resist. It may impede upon my knitting time, but this phase too shall pass eventually. :)