Too Cool For School

In Act III of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, the first song has three groupies singing about Captain Hammer's dry cleaning bill, "Four sweater vests!"

I do not possess four sweater vests.  I like sweater vests, however.  So I made myself one (Ravelry link).

 (Oh yeah, and I cut all my hair off.)

 This is the Back-to-School U-Neck Vest (Ravelry link) from the book Fitted Knits.  This book has so many cute projects, and the speed and ease with which I completed this project means I may pick out a few more to do from the book.  In fact, I finished it in three weeks, and I feel like I could have finished it in a few days if I had focused on it.  It's knit with Cascade Lana D'Oro, a soft alpaca-wool blend that I love.

Though I'm not in school (yet! Though I am accepted at UA...) anymore, this vest is perfect for work.  It's soft and comfortable, and I want three more in different colors, so that someone can sing about my four sweater vests, if I ever gain any groupies.

Bag Lady

I made a bag:


It's the French Market Bag, and it was my first felted project. Also my first use of the Kitchener Stitch, which was surprisingly fun.

I started this bag a few years ago, and when I decided to start working on projects that were languishing in my project bags, I picked this one back up. It's a fairly easy pattern, and I finished it quickly, once I focused on it. I'm pretty pleased with it.

Felting was quick and easy: throw thing to be felted into the washing machine with some towels, hot water, and soap. Let agitate until desired level of felt. Dry. Tada! Felted object.

I use this for my lunch sack currently because wool is awesome and this keeps my food pretty cold if I decide to leave it out. It's also handy for toting things generally.

Stay tuned for another FO: a sweater vest!

It Begins

The holiday season approaches, which means my mad dash to make lots of handmade things also grows near. Last night, my pal AW hosted a craft night, and I worked on knitting washclothes and making the cutest ornament ever. Here, let me show them to you:
The half-eaten gingerbread man! Deliciously morbid, and morbidly cute!

Now, the not so exciting washcloths (to be paired with nice soaps for a good gift):


Really, though, the whole post was to show you the cuteness of my gingerbread man. I'm going to make like 17 more of them--so very cute!

Accomplishments and Events

They are small accomplishments, but here they are:

• Almost one page of thesis writing! Okay, so it looks miniscule when I type it out...but if I do one page tomorrow...and maybe two pages the next day, that's four pages before the end of the week*.
• I got up and ran 4 miles this morning
• I sketched out a rough, preliminary outline of my thesis. Just to get thing moving.
• I printed off some documents for the engineering class so I can start working on my syllabi
• I read a chapter of a book for my thesis.
• I started a new knitting project that should be finished soon. More details later.
  

*My goal is gradually increase what I'm doing until I've got it done. Or something like that

And now, for events:

• I went to the dentist today, and I have groovy teeth. Groovy is good for music or hippies, but bad for teeth apparently. Even though I'm a good brusher and I floss and I don't drink soda, I have some teeny spots that have to be filled next week. Uggh. My first non-cleaning dentist appointment.
• They later called to tell me the price. It is then that I discovered that my dental insurance sorta sucks.
• I've thus been weird about my teeth all day. I think I'll go brush them now. And floss.
  
• It's raining. My cat is hiding under my chair (she doesn't like bad weather).
• My new boss started today. I think he's all right. He even poked fun at me about my thesis.

And now I'm heading to bed so that I can run and work on my thesis tomorrow. I really want to graduate this semester, and I'd also like to say I've been productive when six people in one day ask me about how my thesis is going.

Knitters' Coffee Swap Questionnaire

QUESTIONS

1. Whole bean or ground? Whole bean--I love grinding my own.
2. Fully-loaded or decaf? Fully-loaded, definitely.
3. Regular or flavored? Regular--I add my own flavors!
4. How do you drink your coffee? Strong, with a splash of cream. Occasionally, I add flavored syrups, like cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, or vanilla.
5. Favorite coffee ever? How do I choose??
6. Are you fussy about your coffee or will any old bean do? Quite fussy.
7. Favorite treats to have with your coffee? Scones, biscotti, chocolate.
8. Anything else about your coffee preferences? I really like organic/fair trade, and usually beans from good local coffee shops.
9. Yarn/fiber you love? Love the natural fibers...mmmm
10. Yarn/fiber you hate? Scratchy, icky feeling acrylics.
11. What's on your needles? Three scarfs, a top, and a dishcloth.
12. Favorite colors? Red, pink, green--warm, rich colors. Earthy tones rock too.
13. Allergies? Cigarette smoke.
14. Anything you really love, really don't like, or just need to get off your chest? I'm so excited about this swap! I'm looking forward to meeting a new person, and enjoying some different coffees.

Ravelry--jenniechris

Ravelry! (and miscellany)

I finally got my Ravelry invite. I was so excited--and I'm impressed with the abilities of the website. One feature I particularly like is how you can put patterns that intrigue you into a queue--then add them to your projects when you cast on for them. And patterns! Ravelry has become yet another way to find neat patterns and cool projects.

Miscellany

• Lance departed today for Montana for 3 weeks. I found myself a little sad, though happy for him because he gets to hang out with his brother and do lots of outdoors stuff; however, Irealized we haven't been so far apart for so long since before I moved to Fayetteville.
• I like the word "miscellany"
• I finished Housekeeping, the beautiful book by Marilynne Robinson. I'm quite taken with it.
• A good friend brought me some blooms from her orchid plant--it's so pretty, and it brightened my day.
• My twisted foot is longer giving me pains when I run--yay!
• I jumped from the 3 meter board yesterday. Next week: 5 meter and diving. (And I went ahead and signed up for the intermediate class...)

I hope you all have a good evening! Look me up on Ravelry...any adding will be delayed with the removal of my digital camera to Montana, however. I'll just have to go with what I currently have!

Knitters' Coffee Swap--Received!

I got my package from my pal! (after an unfortunate delay and a re-addressing incident).

(goodies!!!)

Thank you, thank you, RACHEL! It was fantastic--it contains a ton of coffee, 4 skeins of really nifty yarn (2 skeins of sock yarn! And some great Nashua wool/alpaca)! That green round disc on the front is a pocket mirror, which I'm happy about because I've been wanting one to stick in my purse, since I don't wear makeup. And the other is wonderful arty buttons. Instant City, the book in the back, is a literary journey through San Francisco. There is also a project bag (you can barely see it peaking out) for socks, a journal, a David/Amy Sedaris book, and a Knit.1 magazine. I feel so spoiled--thank you again. It was totally worth the wait.

Prose: Knitting Gathering

As I've discussed with the Secret Knitter, I love that I've found an online knitting group. However, since I knit frequently in public and at gatherings, friends of mine have approached me about wanting to learn. I decided that it was time to finally start a real knitting group. So, in a couple of weeks, many friends will gather at my apartment and we will knit and drink wine.

Why did I feel the need? I figure it'd be a good place for people of all levels of knitting to come together to share and develop their skills. Thus far I've recruited mostly newbies--people who either know rudimentary skills of skills or who are still learning to cast on and knit. I'm, I believe, the most experienced one...which doesn't mean a whole lot since I don't know how to properly teach knitting. I just say, "Uh...do it like this", which isn't the most effective.

But I am looking forward to the knitting group. It'll be a good way--in some skewed sense--for me to practice my professoring skills. Or something like that. But mostly it's a way for me to develop and belong to a community of knitters in the non-virtual world, just like I have here.

(This post is mostly in obligation of some desire I've formed to actually attempt to post everyday...)

Poem: Oh, Hat

Oh, Hat.
You've plagued me longer than I like--
The child of a whimsy, flimsy promise
That returned to bite me for a year
(and a half).

Oh, Hat.
Look, you have been created,
The bastard child of circular needles,
wool yarn, online pattern, and my
Own imagination.
(And hands).

And there you are, your creation
Completed. You are warm, you are
handsome, you are a good Hat.
I take pride in you, pride in your
Workwomanship, Lovely Hat.

You are the first Hat,
Thus the best one always,
Bearing the fondness of
A First. And as a
Proudly-Worn Love-Gift.

Prose: Teaching Knitting

I began my boyfriend's hat yesterday, the one that's been looming before me as the penultimate goal of my knitting career. Penultimate because obviously there will be another knitting project that is more important and watched for with greater anticipation than his hat (I just don't know what it is yet).

So I begin the hat. It's my first project "knitting on the round" or rather, using circular needles. I already goofed the joining, but the rest looks good, so I suppose I got the knack of it. I may pull it all out, or use it to make sure I'm even making it close to the right size--the danger of using circular needles being the size is a secret until you've knit for quite some time. This hat has been bothering me in the form of my boyfriend for over a year now, when we bought some yarn and he jumped up and down with glee in the aisle of Hobby Lobby when I said I would make him a hat. Every time I'd start a new project, I'd hear about how his head was cold, how he wished he had a great wool hat to keep his curls warm...

But this is not a tale of the perpetually unknit knit hat: this is a story of how I taught my boyfriend to knit. It all began with my roommate holding a set of my needles curiously and looking through my handy-dandy knitting guide (I have a small spiral bound one that I whip out to learn all sorts of interesting things, like cable cast-on or how to do an increase or decrease). She wanted to learn, so I asked, "Do you want me to teach you how to knit?" "Yes!" she exclaimed, as she was looking for a way to escape her history texts and enjoy her snow day. Lance looked at me tellingly, so I asked him to, which made him say, "Yes, me too!"

Thus commenced the knitting lesson. I made them cast-on (over and over again) until they got it down. I had to get Sarah to reverse her hands (she apparently will knit "backwards" or left-handed), and Lance quickly progressed to purling. I swear, he is the best first-time knitter I've ever seen--his practice swatch was only a little crooked on his cast-on row. He's a mechanical engineer with an amazing ability for spatial orientation--and what is knitting but a spatial skill?--and he was able to capture the big picture of what knitting does in addition to being able to creatively add to what I taught him. The knitting circle has increased by two.

Lance started planning all his projects, and asking me questions about how things are done. I had the challenge of a bright student, and as a bright student, he of course tried to overstep what he knows by asserting he could knit a circle (not a tube like his hat, but an actual circle). Ah, haha, he will learn soon enough what he can and cannot do. I felt the slight tremor that a teacher can feel when faced with a particularly promising pupil that perhaps he'll soon overtake my skill--and I'll have nothing left to teach because he will be become better than me!--but I realized that for now, I have the advantage of several years of experience and knowing how to read the charts. So I have time to reconcile myself to the prospect of his surpassing my knowledge, and time to come around to the idea that it's okay if he does because I can then just learn from him.

I look forward to more cold afternoons and evenings with my knitting pupils and watching them grow in skill and confidence as they knit toward their first projects. I'm a teacher by nature, and I love being able to pass my passions along to those around me, whether it be literature and writing, or knitting.

Knitting, Delurking, and other Non-Literature Things

So...

This is my "literature blog". However, I don't write on it unless I have something burning about books to talk about. So I think I'm going to make more use of that prose bit of my title and write about a variety of my interests. Because my interests are many.

Take knitting for example. I've recently been caught in a wave of knitting madness: Donna is learning (yay!), and she introduced me to the Secret Knitter, who recently decided to secretly knit scarves for his family, and has since been hooked on knitting. My own knitting history began when I taught myself how to knit my junior year of college, knit a bazillion garter-stitch scarves, got bored, made my first project from a pattern, and have been tinkering ever since (I love stitch patterns). Here is one product of my tinkering:

There's a feeling that emerges from designing and creating a new thing. This didn't exist before I made it (it may have been available in other forms, but this particular manifestation emerged from the fusion of my mind and my knitting needles). And the story behind it is fun: my friend and bookbinding teacher offered to swap one iPod cozy for a bookbinding class (Japanese stab-binding, which I'll be using for a wedding guest book for two of my friends). So, I thought of a design that would be useful and cute (I own an iPod nano, so that was pretty easy), and out it popped. I like it.

Incidentally, if I have any blog lurkers, it's National Delurking Week. So leave a message and say "hi!" Thanks!