Mucky Muck

Oh man, I’ve hit a road block. As of right now, my pumpkin sits with stuffing in it but no top. I wanted to do a pipe cleaner type deal but now I think I’m just stalling. I blame it all on the cat sweater. I just keep looking at those sleeves and thinking… man, I really hate you.

What will get me motivated to finish this stuff? Hopefully new (to us) furniture because that’s what we’ve been doing lately. We got a kitchen and a coffee table. Well, the coffee table still needs to be picked up.

Also, maybe a new project?

Since I’m going to MN on Wednesday, I figured it was about time I started my first pair of socks. So, to drive myself crazy I’ve decided to make a pair of Jaywalkers first off. Since everyone seems to love them.

Hope you like the random picture of my desk also. It’s actually pretty clean. We just put a stand next to it for the printer… although you can’t see it in the picture and the printer is just kind of magically floating in the air. Huh.

(without a flash, I think the colors look more accurate.)

I’m not going to lie. This four needles thing is freaking me the hell out. There are one too many needles going on for me. My mind was blown with three. Four is just- get out of town.

My thinking is that if I get hung up (say after the simple 2×2 ribbing) I can ask my Granma what I’m supposed to do. She might just shrug, but hopefully she’ll have some answers. Also, I’m going to Minnesota for a week, so expect some random pictures from that.

Darn you knitters block!

This felting nonsense

I love doing stuff the hobo way!

I know you’re supposed to felt stuff in like a washer… However, that takes forever and I wouldn’t have been able to use those freakishly huge spatula things. Seriously, what are those things even used for anyways? I figured, kitchen sink is good enough for dishes, which I eat off of, it should be good enough for a pumpkin I won’t be eating.

I’m a machine!

Also, sorry about the random dishes there. Yikes! Maybe I should actually do the dishes and quit the knitting. Nonsense, I say. So the pumpkin is close to being totally dry, it takes forever for wool to dry out. I’m going to stuff it tonight and I’ll hopefully have some completed pictures up for you later.

I was making good progress on the cat sweater, I decided to knit both sleeves at once. Since I don’t have two skeins though I was knitting out of both ends of the different colors and it became a giant knot. So, I’ve been slightly deterred from that. I think I’m also kind of in a weird place because I’m leaving next week and it seems like I have a lot of projects to do but I can’t think of any of them. Not good.

(My stem is a little long. The man of the house suggested pipe cleaners to hold it upright. Apparently duck tape and pipes cleaners are the staples in my husbands MacGuyver catalog.)

The internet is for-

YARN!

So I’m going to preface all of this by saying that I do love my dad. Very much. That being said, he is absolutely infuriating sometimes! Especially when it comes to knitting.

Not in the sense that he hates knitting and thinks it’s worthless. My dad is actually one of the most supportive people about me doing crafts and he used to take me to bead shops all the time and stand around awkwardly and and nod yes or no when I asked him if stuff matched. He’s got a good eye for colors.

He’s infuriating in the sense that he’s a contradiction. He’ll go with me to yarn stores now and look around at stuff and talk about how nice knit hats are and point to patterns that have the ear flap and say, oh man this sure is nice, *nudge* look at how cool this stuff is Linds and I’m like, yeah Dad, subtle. My dad is the warmest person on Earth. He can walk around in the middle of winter with just a hoodie, if that. Sometimes he’ll go short sleeves and be like, it’s a little bit chilly, eh?

Yet the man wants the warmest hat on the planet. A hat that he will never wear because he will probably never be that cold. Ever. He had a whole collection of “tukes” that he got rid of because they were too warm, yet I’m pretty sure he wants me to knit him one.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I went into the yarn store. I mean, I have projects:

I’m just seaming this and soon I’ll try and felt it… I don’t know where yet. Probably not at our apartment’s laundry area. Oh yeah, and that sweater for that contest, which I’m starting to think it won’t be so bad, Sax seems to already like her sweater:

She’s laying on the back and one of the front panels. Don’t let her fool you though, she’s been a real pill lately.

Oh yeah, tomorrow I finish up my sewing class, and I’ll hopefully have completed my skirt. So far I’m the one farthest along, I’m the only one to put in my zipper- my first zipper!

Oh what the heck, here’s another picture:

I get so excited about this sewing stuff because it’s so much faster than knitting. I wish both were a little less expensive though. But honestly, I’ve never felt more accomplished than when I finish things I’ve made by myself… well maybe with some (a lot) of help.

So yeah, I went into this new yarn shop that’s pretty close to where I live. (Not good, it’s the nicest yarn shop I’ve probably ever been in.) I’m not looking for yarn. Then I think, I should think about making my dad something. That poor unsuspecting woman. I guess she was the owner, she reminded me of my high school senior english teacher.

“It looks like there’s something I can help you with!”

“Yeah, well maybe. I’m thinking about knitting a hat for my dad. Although he’s got kind of a huge head, and I mean, it’s pretty big. He heats up pretty quickly so it probably shouldn’t be wool or else he’ll never wear it. Even though he heats up he really likes those hats with the ear flaps, so I want to incorporate those. Oh yeah and if we could somehow add like a moose motif or something, that would be really great…”

It was a really nice store and everything, I just don’t think she wants to see me back anytime soon.

Aw geez

Sorry I’m so bad at blogging guys.

In my defense… well yeah, there really isn’t one. We just moved though and now we’re settled. Although everything is really messy, all the time. What’s that about?

However, moving and figuring out what there is around here hasn’t stopped me from doing some freaky Christmas knitting already. I noticed right away that this new place has a fireplace, something that is pretty obvious because it’s the first thing you pretty much see right when you come in the door. Those who know me know that Christmas is actually my least favorite holiday, so I don’t exactly get thrilled about knitting stuff for it. My goal this year though is to learn how to make socks. Well, for the first half of the year it was to make a sweater, since I did that my new goal is socks. Hopefully my upcoming trip to MN will help in this quest for sock knitting glory. What am I talking about?

Well the best way to knit something is to knit a bigger version of it first and then go from there, right?

Christmas stockings, so now we’ll have something for the holiday to put on that mantle.

The pink and blue one is the first one I made, which is pretty obvious. I definitely wrinkled out the mistakes with the second one which I made for my husband. Sickening, right? His and Hers stockings.

I also just cross stitched that raccoon ornament thing that’s right above them. It was weird doing cross stitch, that’s kind of my mom’s thing.

I also made this grape-y bracelet. I just got a new pair of needle nose pliers that also have wire cutters built in. It definitely makes beading a lot easier. I’m taking a class tomorrow to learn how to make some kind of earrings or other. The beads are purple cats eyes that the mister got me at a bead convention a while back. I made some earrings as well to go with them, but so far I don’t like them enough to take pictures of them. I like them, they’re just not me so much.

This past Friday, the mister asked me out on a date and took me to this place called the Amazon Grill. Which is a sort of meat buffet, only not really because they bring the meat to you at the table.

Pretty wild right? Just think of it as a vegetarian’s worst nightmare.

When the block thing is turned to green they bring around meat to your table. When it’s red it means you want a break from heart attackville. They also had a buffet that you actually walk to and around, where they had, among other things, fried bananas.

Elvis would be so proud. I assure you the sign says fried bananas. Although I wanted to retake the picture because of the glare apparently people get weirded out when you take pictures in restaurants. Especially when you take pictures in restaurants in the snooty end of town, yeesh people! I’m not selling your pictures to the paparazzi.

After going to the snooty meat buffet, we were going to go see a movie but it was so nice out that I thought we should take a walk instead. Explore our new part of town.

Since we live in Dublin, the fire hydrants are green. How quaint. (Quaint’s not exactly the word I’m looking for though, hmmmm.) The night ended with a four mile walk, from our house to some random shopping center that has an amazing grocery store that we’ll probably shop at from now on. This place was just, I don’t even know how to describe it. An organization freaks dream, that’s for certain. Oh yeah, we also got to Anthony Thomas right before it closed.

I knot they’re not real gold but I sure felt richer.

It was a really great night, a very fun date. Although my feet hurt a lot since I haven’t been walking as much. Also, people in Dublin don’t walk anywhere, ever. For being so “rich” you’d think they’d want to have some nice sidewalks to make the place look a little nicer. No, they’re definitely sending the “we hate you” vibe to everyone.

A preview of what I’m working on now:

Cat sweater for Crazy Aunt Purl’s contest. Sax seems happy with it so far… I think. Or she’s happy with being comatose.

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