It must be genetic

At least it runs in the family. Or maybe it's just a family trait.

People in my family tend to buy gifts for birthdays and holidays early or on time, and then just never send them (instead, waiting to give them in person), or send them really late. It's not a negative thing, because we all do it and so we all expect it.

So that is why my Auntie Carol got her birthday necklace three weeks late! It was one of the things I was madly trying to finish in June, but I didn't exactly send it until the middle of July. At least the outcome was success -- she loved it! After all, it was her colors! :-)
This isn't the greatest picture of it. It was almost 100 degrees outside when I took it. (I was determined to take it in natural sunlight.) I had to run inside before I could take another one! But you get the idea...

And now, I'm off to watch the new season of Project Runway! Woohoo!!

<3

I love making things. It's like my comfort food. My chocolate cake. (OK, well maybe that's taking it a little too far, but you get my point.)

And that is why I spent my Friday night making myself a necklace. It's the same one that I made for Angela and Hilary, but in olive green. Back in the day when I used to sell jewelry, I always made quite a few pieces for myself. So while I have some new ideas up my sleeve, the first few things will probably be for yours truly. Besides, I use them as measuring devices. (Who needs rulers anyway?) It's just the same as using an old sweater to take measurements for a new one when knitting.

I used Japanese Delica beads that I got with my mom at an expo in Australia a few years ago. As a rule, Japanese seed beads are more uniform than Czech seed beads, and that is why I mostly bead with them these days. But these Delica beads, though freakin' expensive, are the most near-perfectly uniform beads I have ever used. I love love love them!

Olive green has always been a comforting color for me. I know that that is really silly, but it's true! When I was a little kid (like, three years old) my mom put me in a pottery class. The teacher's only complaint about me was that I refused to paint anything any color other than olive green. I can only imagine how strange it would have been to see me come home with a clay sculpture of a bowl of Cheerios, painted olive green. That I, at three, had chosen that color, is pretty bizarre.
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten my UFOs. I've been working on Sam's mystery item, but I think I don't have enough yarn, so I went back to the place where I got it last weekend to see if they could get that dye lot in, and I still haven't heard back from them. (So I should probably follow up on that.) If they can't get it in, I will probably have to incorporate stripes of some sort.

I swear, this is totally not cheating, but I am counting long overdue gifts that I haven't exactly started yet as UFOs. Hence my dad's fiftieth birthday sweater come-post-fiftieth birthday scarf. I am using Misti Alpaca, which is amazingly soft. I looooooooooove it. I using the pattern I mentioned before. It looks pretty cool and it's not as tedious as seed stitch. My only minor annoyance is that it isn't quite symmetrical. On both sides, it starts with garter then knit, and ends with purl then garter. Even though I am a very messy, cluttered person who loves olive green, asymmetry to this magnitude annoys me. But I'm not starting over. And I still love the scarf so far. I just hope my dad isn't allergic to alpaca!

At Last

I actually finished something on time.

A hint: Tomorrow is the last day of work before Christmas.

the knitting season

This month, I have assigned myself the following task:

Make your @!^%#** holiday presents.

Surprise, surprise, I don't think these will be done in time.

After realizing that the incredibly expensive non-returnable all cotton yarn I bought for my dad's sweater is the wrong weight, I've decided that the sweater will have to wait. Instead, I some alpaca wool to knit him a scarf for his fiftieth birthday. I am amazed to have learned that alpaca is not a kind of sheep (hence, hopefully, no allergy). Somewhere along the way, I missed that.

I've been promising to knit my aunt a scarf ever since I started knitting, so I bought some Be Sweet Magic Ball. It's made of wool, mohair, ribbon, and silver foil stuff. Although it is not purple, it is soooo my aunt in every other way. It's supposed to be able to knit up a whole scarf in one ball, but we'll see about that. It's made through a job creation program in South Africa, which in itself is awesome.

I'm going to buy presents for my parents and sister this year, and everyone else who I'm making things for reads this blog. So you'll just have to wait and see what I come up with. :)

CONGRATULATIONS KATHLEEN AND JUSTIN

on your engagement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!







In other news, this UFO thing isn't working out too well. I'm onto the sewing stage of my sweater, but that's it. Perhaps the month that I got sick, went on vacation, and started studying for the LSATs like it's my job wasn't the best month to do this. I hate to give up on this so lightly, but I don't want to be a downer...soooooooo onto the next thing. Christmas! Hanukka! Dad's birthday! I don't think my dad reads this blog, but I'd like to think that some of my friends do! So a lot of the next few months will be revealed after the presents are given.

That is all. Off to do some reading comp. Wish me luck.

...and again

This is the sort of thing I should do while doing something else (talking to people or watching TV). Because...I'm done with my mom's hat! (Such a huge reward for so little time!)

I seem to only give gifts to people who do not like to post their pictures on this blog. (My fear of random internet pictures ended with facebook and myspace.) I have a feeling my mom will be no different from my sister or Amna (although Amna promised she would one day pose with her hat). I would take a picture of myself wearing the hat, but I feel like doing that too many times would be kind of lame. So I won't...this time. Once again, my wooden floor will have to be the background.

Yesterday was a lot of fun. The weekend was beautiful, and I decided to walk from my apartment to Knit New York at Union Square. I wanted to start really checking out the knitting scene, and I also wanted to walk for a really long time and soak up the sunshine.

Two summers ago, I lived in New York for six weeks in the dorms at Columbia (I took a summer class there). I spent many days walking down Broadway. Often, my destination was School Products Co., but that place is closed on Sundays. But that was a lot of fun, and I want to start doing things like that again.

Having a day to myself is always nice. I decided to take Broadway all the way down, for old times' sake. I stopped along the way for a hot dog, water, an iced chai latte, and new mascara. Then I finally reached Knit New York, a knitting store and cafe all in one. Brilliant. I found some bulky pale pink yarn for my mom's birthday hat (Laines Du NordSorftlight) and a cool blue for my own (Debbie Bliss Donegal Aran Tweed). Unfortunately I have chosen the worst time of the year to go on my hat kick. At least it's autumn in Sydney (Aussies never say "fall"), so my mom will get use out of her hat right away. Ah well. Such is life.

I bought a corn muffin (just as Sam called from Denmark, which made the day even better!) and ate it while I knit my swatch (I've finally begun to make a habit of this, and not nearly soon enough).

I didn't stay long, probably because nothing compares to my old turf in philly, but then Amna came down and met me and we went out for yummy yummy sushi. And we went back to her place and I started my mom's hat. My mom's birthday is May 17 but I have to finish it a little early if I'm going to mail it to her. Thank god for bulky yarn and big needles.

Triumph!

Amna's hat is done! It did not take nearly as long to make as I thought it would. Maybe it's because I'm not at Bryn Mawr anymore, so I don't have the "every minute I knit is a minute I don't study... unless it's for my thesis" mentality. Probably it's because I used bulky yarn, size 10.5 needles, and I didn't use cables as I did in my last three hats (excluding the one that ended up beyond repair). And there weren't any cables involved.

But still! My first non-square for which I didn't use a pattern!

On the Needles...I'm starting to get some use out of this new digital camera. Excuse my floor as the background, I'll have to find something classier.

This is my first lace project. It's a scarf, but the idea was to wear it in my hair. I'm making it out of cotton instead of laceweight wool. I'm almost done, but it's taking me forever to finish. At first it was captivating but now I'm getting really bored with it.

And I just finished this. I crocheted it for my sister's birthday (Sept. 5th). I crocheted it, based on the Anarchy Irony Hat from "Stitch 'N Bitch Crochet: the Happy Hooker." I used the same yarn as I did for a scarf that I made for her a year ago, so now they match. I was going to have just the last row in blue, but I ran out of purple. The great thing about crocheting is that it's really hard to see mistakes and easy to make changes. I'm modelling the hat because my sister doesn't yet have it to take a pictue.