Struggles and Triumphs

It’s funny really. Actually, I seem to saying that quite a bit lately even though funny isn’t how people describe these scenarios. Pretty much everything is funny to me lately. However, the current thing that I’m laughing about are the socks that I did in March.

Possibly the most knit socks to ever exist. Cookie A.’s Monkey socks. Using the Knit Picks Stroll in canopy tonal that I had in my stash. I was so excited to use this yarn but I don’t use much multicolored yarn that often. Or at all really. I’ve seen it go bad for a lot of people with a weird pattern or weird striping and I can’t stand pooling, so I tend to stick to solids or semi-solids. Still I loved the green of this yarn, so I threw my cares to the wind and went with it.

Well, I posted earlier this month, I had to frog my first attempt right before the heel because they were just way too big. I ended up going down to a size zero and now I’m feeling really good about these socks.

They ended up striping up really nicely! Originally they were pooling in kind of weird ways. So I guess from now on, when that happens I should take it as a sign that I’m doing something wrong.

Despite having to rip out and getting really frustrated (0′s are really small, okay?!) these were the quickest socks I’ve knit up so far. Maybe it was the yarn, or the pattern or my sheer determination to dominate these socks but I finished them with a week and a half to spare in the month.

Although I had kind of a scary thought. Since I’ve been wearing my knit socks, I’ve noticed that they really start to get baggy after some time wearing them. About an hour or so into wearing my socks they start to slouch off my feet. (Does anyone else have this problem?) These socks were a little snug but I’m hoping they’ll actually stay up/on. Otherwise, I realized, maybe I don’t really even like knit socks. (*gasp* *shock* *thud*)

Craft exploits

So I’m always looking for new fun things to do in the world of crafts. When I got a newsletter from one of my favorite stores here in Columbus, Wholly Craft, saying they were going to have a beginning origami class, I was like hell. yes.

Uh, yeah, so I took that class (with a friend). I made some origami stuff and then asked if I could take a picture of everyone because I’m creepy and like to take pictures of everything. The teacher was like, oh no, are you one of those bloggers? I didn’t realize bloggers were such feared creatures but yes. Yes I am and I will eat your children.

For some reason I find this hilarious.

We made some paper cranes, a box, a balloon and some random notes. There was an obvious winner from this class for me and that was the shiny paper crane necklace that we made. Because it is the most perplexing bling I think anyone could ever have and I love its little face off.

Some other things that I’ve done lately are that I taught a former co-worker how to knit. She paid me in baked goods.

At least, I tried to teach her when Shmoo wasn’t getting in the way trying to be all cute like she does with strangers. Here’s a story about Shmoo. She does not care what’s going on until at least two people are involved. Then she’s like, oh, there’s a party?? I’m invited, right?

She did eventually leave us be and as you can see, my student got a real pro-stance. I don’t even hold the yarn that professionally. I’m more slobbish when I knit, just sort of throwing it around, hoping for the best. But this girl was an overachiever. Her goal was to learn how to knit cables, even though she didn’t know how to knit because she was tired of trying cables in crochet. (Can’t blame her there- I didn’t even know you could cable in crochet, it seems so… wrong.)

Well, she got what she wanted! This is her finished project and there are the cables that she knit. I was really impressed.

I’m hoping to have some finished stuff to show you soon but things might get a little hectic… since my birthday is coming up!

Oh yeah and I also got a new banner for my blog here- what do you think? Crystal is so incredibly talented you should commission her to make yarn-y designs. I think she draws yarn perfectly. Also, don’t forget, you can still ask me anything you want to here.

What do you think- did I throw enough links at you?

housekeeping

This is probably going to be a boring post because it’s about the boring every day things that I’ve been up to. So… strap in!

I realized that I haven’t made like some big announcement or anything and some people don’t know (because it’s no big deal) but at the beginning of the year I officially went vegetarian. I didn’t say a whole lot about it because usually when I announce things, I don’t do them. Well I’ve already had a couple of set backs, so I figure it’s no big deal to talk about it now. Mostly I’ve had problems with not eating seafood. Which brings me to being (un)officially pescetarian. (If only shrimp weren’t engineered in a lab somewhere to be so damn delicious.)

This has led to me making a lot more food at home.

What’s kind of odd is that I’ve always been kind of anti-vegetarianism. Just because most of the people I had known who were vegetarians were smug ass jerks about it. (Also because my favorite food was bacon… and filet mignon.) So why would I start this randomly?

Well I’d heard a couple of interesting arguments for laying off meat but none of it resonated with me. I love my cats and everything but I feel like if it were down to me and them, they’d get eaten. That is, if they didn’t eat me first- none of us have any loyalty to each other.

Then I read a book and while some of it missed home with me, other parts actually made really good points. It tied a lot of the disjointed information I’ve heard about the food industry together and asked the most basic question of- what are you really eating? So I’ve been spending this year trying to pay attention to that. I’ve found that it’s a lot harder than ‘just paying attention’ would seem. Shooting for vegetarianism was the goal but the overall journey is trying to notice what I’m doing everyday with the very basic/tedious parts of my life.

That probably sounds dopey but if you’re not doing it already- try it. Like notice how many times a week you just need to grab something to eat on the go. If you have a schedule and sit down to dinner at the same time every night does that work out for you or even how often you sleep all the way through the night. I’ve found it hard to be thoughtful of the tedious mundane crap that I’ve come to take for granted. Eating is a big one but so is just general life maintenance.

Before I decided to try this veg. deal, I kept a food journal and noticed that pretty much every meal I was eating had meat happening somewhere. Some of my snacks even had meat (or meat byproducts) in them. (Damn you pepperidge farms!) However, while giving up meat at first seemed daunting, it’s not nearly as hard as me giving up sweets would be. I mean seriously, sweets are too delicious.

Together with a friend, we made pumpkin whoopie pies with cream cheese icing for the filling.

They came out pretty delicious. I was impressed anyways. It was that same friends’ idea to make stuffed pretzels the next week. Which were incredibly amazing.

Although all of these pictures show a bunch of cheese in them… for some reason I haven’t been taking picture of the stir frys that we’ve made or the random fruit bowls that I’ve been putting together on the table. I really have been eating a lot more vegetables and I’m surprised at how much I like it. Mostly I’m excited for when it gets warm and more stuff will be in season. Plus I’m excited to use my blender for more smoothies… although I should probably make a soup in it before it gets warm!

Anyways, this isn’t like a new years resolution or anything- I started back around the holidays but knew I wouldn’t be able to get out of family dinners, so I was still eating some meat. Mostly I’m just trying to notice what I eat and why I eat it. I’m also trying to make more food myself. Because it turns out that I don’t suck at cooking, like I originally thought. It’s not super hard or anything. It’s just a pain to clean the stupid dishes every night.

In other news, I had to frog some monkeys this past weekend because they were HUGE.

So that was a bummer and set me back on my timeline. I’ve also been searching all over for some sock yarn that I thought I had to make argyle socks for the SF one-sock-a-month-group and have come to the conclusion that I must have taken it back to the store and not noted it in ravelry. Pretty lame on my part.

I really like these socks but I think it’s just my love for Veronica Mars that is blinding me.

Also! I really want to start a knitting podcast but need a podcast mate. Anyone interested? I’ve been drawing pictures from thinking about different topics I want to talk about. Ooookay, this is long and pointless now. I’m sorry.

Oh! P.S. Ask me anything you want to here.

For your consideration

End scene.