huzzah

the holiday madness is over! *dance*

and my last shift at horrible retail job is tomorrow! *double dance*

me and daddy went skiing today *triple dance*

I cast on my own sock patter *quadruple dance*


it just keeps getting better :D so, updates. mom felt left out cause she didnt get anything hand knit. but I think I'm going to try to finish the clapotis for her before they go away on their trip. a little french scarf will be perfect for their trip to europe. I balled up a bit of my stash that was taking over my room. seeing as it takes up less room in balls than it does on a hank. and I fell in love with my Celestial Merino Dream. I cast it on to my 2.25mm dpns. and i decided that I was going to make a basket weave sock with a short row garter stitch heel. it'll be fun. I also started listening to Sticks and Strings after my godmother (who has previously listened to L&V but didnt realise that I was goddess Gwen) told me about "the austrailian bloke who knits". I'm seriously falling in love with everything this week. I want a hunk of a man with an accent. honestly the accent will do. he can be butt ugly but if hge has an awesome accent I might just jump him.

In completly unrelated news, I got a thick green plaid blanket for christmas.... mmmmm warmy plaid goodness..... *drool*

oh dear, oh deary deary me

so I nearly broke down and cried at a lab this morning at the recording studio. first off, for the first hour I was the only person from my group to show up, and our project is due WEDNESDAY!. I was trying to transfer said project onto the mac there, and it kept getting hung up at different places. so it wassn't a corrupt file, it was technology and life hating me. well, I hadn't reformatted that drive in quite some time. like 6 months or so, so I decided to do that. I transfered all my data onto my laptop then formatted the drive on the mac, then put ONLY the project (all 3.3 gig of it) onto my 80 gig external drive. Tried again. same problem. it hated me. so after forcing a reboot (the third time of that day) and verifying disk permissions I tried again, and again, and again. the i tried transfering individual files. that worked, but there was 3.3 gig of stuff, mainly all audio files of 2 to 5 MB. so that would have taken forever. I got frustrated, so I went and sat on the leather coach in the back with my head in my hands. My lab supervisor came out of the office and asked me what the problem was. I told him and he sat down and tried some stuff. after a while, he got up, took my drive, went around the back of the console (to get to the CPU) and plugged my drive directly in there. transfered the project, and it worked. I opened the project, AND 50% OF MY FILES WERE MISSING. i was ticked, then we realised that not everything had transfered, so we did it again, and this time it was good. Everything was there and hunky dorry. this was two hours after the ordeal started. by that time two more people had shown up.

but other than my fights with technology, I've been knitting up a storm, and apparently not getting anywhere. I started excheckered from knitty. love it. with thanks to michael from the lime and violet message board I am knitting the back color holding the yarn with my left hand, and the front yarn with my right. its fun, and im about an 8th done. knitting it with cascade, white and purple. I'm still working on dad's second sock. I did turn the heel, and only have like 2 inches left before i do toe decreases. so I'm excited. I finished nanny's my so called scarf. it looks good. not as long as I like scarves, but considering my danica is like 7 feet long....I like uber long scarves. this one will be nice for her though.

I'm done wrapping all the gifts I already have, except for the bottle of rum I bought for my bro, but I can get to that later.I just need to have this term over with, and get my christmas shopping done.

oh! and I have a gig with my past music teacher! I'm excited. I did the gig before, but its been like... a year and a half since Ive even picked up an upright bass... I hope I do well!

stand up and go squeeee

so. totally into Lime and Violet podcast, if you havent checked it out, I totally recomend you do so. limenviolet and it came out on the message boards that I was an audio engineer. and Miss Violet contacted me and proposed a job offer. Pretty much I am now editing the podcast. I'm super excited, cause this is stuff other than the repetitive stuff we do at school. and this actually melds two of my loves together: knitting and audio engineering. I'm still catching up on the back episodes, but I'm mentioned in episode 49.5....SQUEEEE

AND I died my hair today, AND I'm almost done my christmas shopping/knitting. Dark purple hair, knitting, editing podcasts, ski season soon.

Come with me people. Stand up, clear arm room all around you, and repeat after me. SSSSSSSSSSSSSQQQQQQQQQQQQQQUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

one more down

I finished the "my so called scarf" in the patons merino classic for my nanny. im excited, its shorter than I would like for myself, but nanny likes shorter scarves. its got some pretty awesome pooling, kinda like a winding snake along the length of it, pictures to come soon.

I also started another project.....*guilt* its a double knit from knitty. exchequered. im doing it in cascade 220, white and a black/purple heathers. <3 it so far. interesting technique DK, I like it, and i think i may have found my rhythm and my own technique. im excited.

we're supposed to get snow tonight, and I write an exam tomorrow....pray for the snow to overpower EVERYTHING!

update on GIR

omg! love him, so cute, I don't want to give him up, but Graham is so excited for it, and I'm excited to give it to him.



oh, and Kyle changed his mind, he doesnt want a MArvin, Im gonna make him a gir too. and Ill prolly end up making me one too, I still have more than half a skein of grey cascade 220, so I'll at least get one more, if not two.

Fourteen Ungodly Christmas Knits

figure out the acronym.

Im realising that I have alot to do for christmas before Im actually ready. Dad needs another sock. nanny needs to get her scarf finished. Claudette needs a rum bottle. Graham needs a Gir. Kyle needs a Marvin....not to mention the amount of shopping I have left to do.

Im also working on a pair of Jaywalkers from Magknits. Damn you Lime and Violet for making me a sock addict. The shadow knit Linux scarf is on the back burner, more important things on the go right now. I still haven't cast on Whit's other mitt.

I think I need to find a knitting group just so I can sit down and not have people make fun of me (damn rents), or feel guilty cause I take up two seats on the bus.

BUT I finished two toques. One was just plain ribbing for a friend of Rich's. and the other was a cable toqu in cascade 220 quatro for me. <3 it.



oh well, cest la vie. btw, SNOW *SQWEEEEEEEE*

tear drop

Im now realising just how much fibre I have in my stash that is untouched. cascade220, merino dream, lion brand suede, red heart soft n silky....it goes on and on :(

makes me sad, but Ive just got so much stuff going on right now...

it will get all knit up

eventually

but im excited for battlestar thie saturday! and I got a new laptop! and I don't close for the next two saturdays at work. yay!!!!!

cable sweater!

okay, its done! I just need to sew in the ends, and sew on the buttons. problem is I dont have a darning needle small enough to fit through the button holes. I might have to make one out of some relatively thin gauge beading wire. I'm excited, its super warm and super comfy! yay!

oh and I got some new pins. 5mm bamboo, <3 love them!


Update: whits mitts, one down one to go
paul's crochet'd toque, done
nanny's "my so called scarf with a keyhole", about half way done

quick toque

I was bored, and the mittens fro mthe freedom wool got frogged. I took them out, and after about 30 minutes decided to make a toque, and was bored of knitting, so I grabbed a 10mm hook. Three hours of work later, I had a toque. It's awesome and was incredibly simple. Chunky warm, and took about 1.5 skeins. I'm happy and have photos to boot.

garg

so, yet again, I'm waiting for cascade tweed in black to come into the country at my LYS. I only need like one skein, but they don't have any and their supplier is kinda flighty and they never really know when they're going to get anything. I wanna finish my sweater, just have like 3/4 of a yoke to do, with button holes, and then sew on the awesome buttons and sew in the ends. I wanna finish it now!

I also finished Jack's toque. So now I have JAck and Emma's toques done, with about 40-50 grams of the Galway yarn left over. what to do with the remnants...

I started some mittens for me on 8mm needles with some verigated Freedom (Twilleys of Stamford) yarn, but I dont know if I like them. I'm just about done one mitten, but I'll prolly take it all out and make a toque. I <3 my toques. I just need to find a cool pattern, maybe a cable toque, I'm currently obsessed with cables.

wooohoooooo

So I think that my cable sweater is breaking the $100 mark...eek! but thats okay, cause it is awesome, and I bought some awesome buttons that match both the black and the pink perfectly.

I also have started an entrelac toque made out of Cascade 220 The Heathers. the wool was on sale, and I just couldnt pass it up, even thought I have far too many projects on the go currently, and I have far too much wool, so much so that I dont know what to do with it all!

I haven't finished a project since my last post, but I have made progress on a few. Jack's toque is nearly done, just a few more decrease rows and weaving in the ends. Whitney's mittens have been started (cascade 109 tweed in pink). Linux scarf has had a few more rows added. Sweater has had the collar and one half of the yoke done (button side, working on button hole side now but I need more wool).

I also bought some 1/2" ribbon to use as my label base. Im gonna put my little initial logo on one side (outside of the item) and the date complted on the other (inside). I just need help to finalize the design of my logo. I'm far too chicken to do it on my own.

Speaking of Chikens, my budgie is chirping away down here in the basement. Hopefully the powere will go out tomorrow and I'll have an excuse to sit and knit for hours, rather than just sit and knit, trying not to work on the numerous school projects I should be doing.

oh well, s'all good.

been a while...again

I guess I'm not that good at keeping up with things as I thought I would be. \

I've been keeping up with my knitting for the most part. I've got a shawl (clapotis), sweater (my pattern), toque (my pattern). and Ive got a few other little things that I finished. A toque, a couple cubes, a penguin (which I've taken apart already)

during my trip down to the states I made a trip in to the Yarn Sellar, and the Knitting Experience. I got some Gallway painted and colorways, and some freedom spirit. <3 it.

I'm working on toques for my little cousins, using the Gallway yarn. they're great, I just need to decide what to do with the remnants of the skein...mittens, scarves, wrist warmers or leg warmers....who knows.

just let it be known that even if the posts are slowly (or quickly) the knitting ensues.

wow, been a while

summer was quite intense. broke up, got together with someone else, broke up (multiple times with the same guy), worked two jobs, went to school 5 days a week, and tried to occasionally knit. although, gotta say I did get quite a bit done.

geeze, I just took a look around my basement and I'm now realizing how much knitting and stuff I have down here in the basement. OH! and I also have Danica from Knitty upstairs in my backpack as my bus knitting. So let me count off all of my WIP's......Mario Bros scarf, mermaid socks (cool socks warm feet), Danica, cable sweater, clapotis (knitty), pasha (knitty), big blanket, and a baby blanket square.

okay, so it's not as bad as I thought it was, but my nanny thinks I'm crazy.

omg.........

so, im just realizing how much money im spending on wool. *jaw falls to the floor* first time i spent $25, then had to go back and buy another color, spent $12, and today i had to go buy even more cause i had run out of purple and was low on blue, another $25. So, if ya do the math, thats $62 on wool. cheap wool too, not expensive at all........omg.......im gonna go broke. Good thing I have two jobs, live at home, and never spend money!

Camp is great for knitting

so, I went camping with my brownies this past weekend, and although I missed going in town to knit in public, I still did it at camp. and got quite a bit done of my bag too. I probably only spent like two hours or so on it, and im amazed at the amount of work I got done.

Oh, and another thing, I definately misread (didnt read) the size of the skene that they were using in the pattern. so the balls i bought were half the size as what i needed, so I only have like half the amount of wool that I need. I've already run out of purple. and i think Ill need more of the blue aswell. this will teach me to read the pattern WELL next time.

just workin on the strap now. Well, I would be if I had purple wool :S

Loop craft cafe

yay, went down to the Loop on Barrington today before my lab, and got some real wool. :D yay! I'm using Freedom wool, and yes, the laptop bag has fallen under the radar and I just want to knit this purse from SnB and felt it! just to see how it is.

detail of the herringbone pattern.

laptop case

so, another project started because I'm yet again bored.

I was looking through my uber awesome Stitch N' Bitch Nation book, and came across the horizontal herringbone pattern included in the Candy Stripers bag pattern. Originally I was going to knit the messenger bag, but I don't have real wool on hand (only have acrylic) and it wont felt. So after getting the hang of the herringbone pattern I tore my hour of work apart and began to think.

I had already made an awesome sleeve for my latop in Feb out of brown and pink polka dot and also pink fuzzy zebra materials, but that soon got left in my room as I grew tired of it. So I thought about my pattern made out of a single strand of green Phentex "Chunky" and realised that if I double stranded it, it'd be thicker, and less strandy, and would make a great laptop bag.

So here I sit with 5 inches of 2.5" wide herringbone pattern, and an idea in my head. I'll keep the updates comming!

tis me!

So, my name's Gwen. Im seriously in a world of guys. I'm a student at the Centre for Arts and Technology in Halifax, Nova Scotia in their Audio Egineering program. That includes me and 10 guys, and my all male teachers.

I can't remember not being able to knit, my nanny taught me when I was so young, and the love of unwinding after a long day with knitting has never left me. I've knitted just about everything that can be thought of...maybe not completed them all, but I've started them. lol.

I currently still live at home, and try to knit as much as I can between jobs, school, and my lovely budgie Trillian (aka. Trill).