It’s coming along good. I have all the leaves done in the section I’m working on. I’m starting the pears this morning, and should have those done shortly. After that I need to do the filler-colours between the leaves. Once that is done I shall take the promised progress pic for you all.
Edit: The promised update.
Yesterday I started working on the Tapestry again. I’ve been stubbornly ignoring it because a few weeks ago I got a big tangle at the back and I knew I’d have to cut that mess out and start that spot over. After all that work in that area I was not looking forward to taking it out, so I refused to work on the thing at all. It’s all better now. It took about 20 minutes of careful cutting and untangling to get everything back to normal but it was well worth it. The whole snarl looked much worse than it actually was and I lost much less work than I thought I would.
For those of you that are asking why I couldn’t just leave the tangle there, since everything looked good from the front: needlework is a strange thing, your reputation depends on the back of your work looking as good as the front, so a knot or a tangle is a huge no-no. Sure, no one would know once the thing is finished and framed, but I would know and the framer would know and that would drive me nuts every time I looked at the thing.
Once I get some notable progress I’ll take pictures so you guys can see the pretties. Maybe I’ll take pictures of the back too. 😉
For now I’m going to go work on it some more. There’s lots of thunder outside making me happy. Storms rock!
It’s been one hell of a week. I’ve been sick, first with an ear infection and then a touch of the flu. I’ve been all queasy and gross feeling all week, and still am a bit. I had toast for dinner today which helps.
My computer died again. I spent a good 6 hours between Monday and yesteday on the phone with Dell. On Monday they decided my hard drive was busted, and sent me a new one yesterday. It was still busted (which I could have told them) so I called them back and spent some time explaining and trying to get them to listen to me. Eventually they caught on that I have a piece of crap with lots of stuff wrong with it so they told me to send it in with most of the peripherals and they are going to check it all. It’s about damn time. I stole Dean’s iBook for the next week while they fix it so I can still do school stuff.
Tudor visited on Tuesday and delivered a copy of his book, which is amazingly wonderful. Go buy it. I was feeling icky and out of it and forgot about the offer of tea. Bribes work best when you deliver on them.
I crammed like mad in order to finish the WTC quilt squares before Wednesday, but they are done and mailed now. I’m so glad that I’m done. I never should have volunteered for the second one. It was really making my carpal tunnel act up. Oh well. Hindsight.
I got some Koigu KPPPM in the mail that I ordered a few weeks ago. It’s beautiful and amazingly soft. I’m going to love the socks I’m making out of it. It bugs me that it’s made in Ontario but you pretty much have to buy it from the US. *grumble* It’s worth it though.
My amusement for the day: Rocky talked about truthiness and the Colbert Report. Philosophy classes kick serious ass.
To give my left hand I break, I started working on the Peacock Tapestry again. Thanks to the floor stand I got for Christmas, I can work on it without using my hand at all. I don’t need to hold the pattern because it’s on the laptop, and I organized all the floss into one of those plastic organizer boxes.
It’s looking really good. I’ve changed tactics. Rather than working one colour at a time over the whole piece, I’m doing six. I was going to try parking threads and going by rows, but that kind of technique doesn’t work with TW designs. There are too many distinct areas and the colours don’t really flow from one place to the next. Working multiple colours is working wonders though. I’ve already found three spots that I missed when doing the colours separately. This makes it so much easier to see everything in relation to the rest of the design. I’m having fun watching it develop.
There is one obvious drawback to this. I can’t work on it in class or in the Concourse anymore. At least, not without taking the whole stand with me. 😉
It was a pretty uneventful vacation this time around. I think I needed that. I didn’t get to see Leya, or Meggie. Leya’s got a new job at Wendy’s and they made her work pretty much the entire time I was down. She got time off the weekend after I came back. I called Meg’s a couple times and got no answer, but considering it was Christmas and how much she has to do for it, I wasn’t all that surprised. It would have been really awesome to do stuff with her since I haven’t been able to pretty much at all in the last couple years.
For the most part, I spent most of my time at home with the family just sitting around and watching movies/tv. I got to see Spencer and Joey once. I was going to visit them more as well but got sick again, which also helped encourage the sitting around and doing nothing. We (Dean mostly) set up Stephanie’s computer. It got completely wiped and reinstalled which took a lot of time. We got her internet up and running too. We needed to download the service packs and doing that on really crappy dial-up is never easy. It took a couple tries because the breaker popped in the middle of the install the first time.
Pete stole the coat I stole from Dean. The little mooch. Though I let him have it rather than taking it back so I can’t really complain. It’s better than any of the coats that he has. They’re all really old and practically falling apart. He’s grown a lot in the last year and most of his coats are at least 6 years old. It’s safe to say they barely fit if at all.
For the first time in a very long time we had Christmas dinner at my grandma’s house. All of us. It went surprisingly well. Everyone was well-behaved and there was no yelling or screaming or complaining. Good times. my grandma is big on Christmas, though my parents don’t really care. My mom swears she just went for Emile’s cooking. I got Tim Hortons gift certificates and some bath stuff, and a mug for the bicentennial of the chapel where I was christened. I was not expecting that last but it’s a great gift. I got my grandma a tealight lamp, and some cans of stew for when her and Emile go camping. She looked really surprised when she got those open. It was totally worth it. Dean and his family got me the Bumble, a scroll frame/floor stand, a nice white dress shirt, a red jacket thing, and Christmas dishes for when we have our own house. Pretty darn sweet. I like the pattern on them. It’s not too flashy. Considering most of the Christmas dishes I’ve seen are really showy, these are nice.
I got some other stuff, but not because of the holidays. A cell phone because I got out by myself a lot at night, and on the busses alone a lot, and it’s good to be able to let people know where I am/call for help if need be. A USB drive to back up the websites and my school stuff so that if my computer has anymore pleasant surprises for me I won’t lose anything important. I bought myself a new purse to fit all my pills and crap in. A new wallet while I was at it because I could never properly fit everything in the one I have. These are perfect. I caved and got a new razor since the one I have is obsolete and it’s almost impossible to get blades for it anymore. Fishies! Three (now two) fantails, a pleco, a black moor, and an albino clawed frog. The poor froggie is in a separate container for now because the fish keep eating his food. The other fantail ate a huge chunk after already being fed and died from overeating on the first day it was here. Stupid fucking fish. I’m mad at a dead fish, I know. But jeez. How dumb.
A person from the cross-stitch list I’m on sent me her spare Q-snaps. I’ve been using them pretty much since I got them. That was a wonderful way to finish up the year. Free stuff is always good. Useful free stuff is even better. I’m so thankful. She put her return address on the package so I’m going to make her something as a thank-you and mail that. I’m not telling her, so it’ll show up one day as a nice surprise.
I’ve been kind of spotty with my knitting this last week. I’m making my parents wool socks this time instead of the cotton ones. Wool holds its shape much better than cotton so these should not only be warmer but hold up better. I’ve ordered a lot of sock yarn in the last couple weeks. Probably 15 pairs worth. It’s selfish, but most of that is for me. I don’t like store-bought socks, but I wear them because I have nothing else. I have four pairs of socks that I’ve knitted for myself, but once those are gone my feet freeze. I hate buying socks, so most of the ones I have are a couple years old and getting holey. I get to spend the next couple months making me nice warm wool sockies.
Currently I’m making Sra a pair of anklets out of a really nice green shade I got from Elann. I bought some more of it last week for me because they are almost out and it’s really a great colour. I also got another Addi. Most of my knitting is done in class and if I’m going to be making all these socks with fingering yarn it’s got to be portable and two-at-a-time. Addis kick some serious ass in the magic loop knitting department.
I’ve got some Kroy for Dean that we got at Len’s Mills a couple months ago. I tried making socks with it at home using a chevron pattern and couldn’t get the right number of stitches to cast on. After frogging everything three or four times I think I’ve got it. I hope they work. It’s a nice pattern.
Tomorrow school starts and I proceed to have no life. I’ve insanely signed up for three seminar courses, two of which are kind of above my head. I’ll have class for six straight hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s going to be interesting. As a plus, still nothing on Fridays, and only one 80 minute class Monday and Wednesday. So not too bad. Still, tomorrow and Wednesday will be especially busy. I have to get up early to try and get used books before everyone else buys them all up. Then go to class all day, come home and get planner and binder and stuff ready for the term, then off to a Blueprint meeting. Wednesday I have to go through the OSAP mess, go to class, get my blood test done finally (I was supposed to do it in November), try and schedule and eye exam and dentist appointment, and then most likely start reading for the whack of seminar-ness on Thursday. Still, it’s good to get stuff done and start a routine now. Though it’s a lot I’m rather looking forward to it.
I’ve also got a volunteer job at the public library, so I’ll be doing that six hours a week. I still have to negotiate the schedule, but with any luck I’ll be allowed Wednesday and Friday afternoons. I’m excited about that, but a little nervous about screwing stuff up. It seems pretty simple though so I should do fine. My main concern is that I tend to work really fast once I get going. It’s kinda hard to do six hours a week if I can finish faster than that. I’m supposed to be putting out the books on hold as they come back in. Since that depends on books and movies being returned it’s not like I can create more work for myself once I’ve emptied the bin. Ah well. I’m sure there’s other stuff they can find for me to do.
I’ve finished a lot of WIPs lately, and finally got my computer back to take pictures of them. Rather than explaining them all again, since I know I’ve mentioned them as I’ve worked, there’s going to be a lot of linkage. If you want to see it all, check out Flickr.
It finally looks like I’m getting the cross-stitch done. I’m not even close, but I decided to start filling in bits of the peacock so that the main areas of the design at least all have something in them. It’s coming along nicely. I’ve managed to lose some floss at some point though, since I didn’t have enough for a couple of the colours that I wanted to do.
The Majora’s Mask one had pretty much been put on hold the last couple weeks, though it’s going to make a come-back now that the sweater is out of the way. After Friday I’ll have a couple weeks to pretty much go craft-crazy.
Since the midterm, I’ve been working on my cross-stitch and sweater quite a bit. I now have one sleeve and the hood to go before finishing, and have started an entirely new area of the cross-stitch. I did break a needle, and another is almost broken. I need more, but everything closed early yesterday and I missed out.
Soon I get to go venturing for The Art of Breaking and see if there’s more needles at Zellers so I won’t have to go all the way down to Michael’s. Lazy, I know.
I want to read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We’ll see if that happens before Friday.
We had sushi yesterday, but it wasn’t as good as it usually is. Weird. Wasabi is goood.
I’m hungry and I sleep too much. I want cheese.
Kitty loves me. All it takes is for me to look at him and he starts purring. He’s going to be lonely as hell when I move back to Waterloo.
I need to start packing. I don’t feel like scrambling trying to decide what to bring home.
The Peacock Tapestry is getting some much-needed attention lately. I’m finding it a lot more relaxing to work on than my knitting at the moment. I suspect that I’m getting frustrated with knitting lately because I’m just finishing up pairs of socks and anyone who has knit socks can tell you how trying it is to overcome SSS. Even so, I am finishing them, albeit slowly.
While in Waterloo to check messages and pick stuff up I finally ordered the yarn for my sweater from Cloth & Clay. I changed the colour scheme though, so I’m hoping it works out. The main body of the sweater will be royal violet what seems a light shade of gray [many of the darker colours are unavailable until the fall shipment, and since I want to be wearing the sweater then, the violet was replaced], with the sleeves and bottom in a mauve/lavender-type shade. The accent stripe is a pale peach or so. I looked up the colours online, since none of the places around here actually keep that particular yarn in stock, so the exact shades are a guess. I don’t mind too much. Experimenting is fun. I just hope they have all the yarn that I want and that it doesn’t get too expensive. Some places had this stuff listed for $10 a ball, and I’m ordering 11 of them, so at the very least I think I can say it will cost $100. I highly expect it will be worth it. A handmade kid merino hooded-sweatshirt for the winter? I can’t see why it wouldn’t be.
I am going to have to remember to make a copy of the pattern, since I’m doing it from the Stitch ‘n’ Bitch book that I bought for my mom. I know she’s wanted the book for a while, so I hope that she uses it, or that my sister does. It’s got some great advice and is a great resource.
At least I doubt that I’ll get anymore yarn until next year, between the sweater and the stash I have of Bernat Sox yarn. I love that it was on sale for $1 a ball. There’s maybe 20 of them here and whatever remains of the stash that I have in Waterloo. I’ll be making socks blissfully all winter long. It’s acrylic and nylon yarn, so it’s not the warmest stuff, but it does the job and it’s cheap enough for me not to feel guilty. I justify the sweater since I’m planning on making it last for years to come, and I get to make it myself. The alternative would be spending that money on another WLU sweatshirt, but since I have three already and I’ll probably want a Western one when I get there, it’s better not to take that route.
I’m making some more dishcloths, this time for the Cambridge house. All the ones I can find are falling apart or close to it. At least I know the knitted cotton ones last for years and hold up well. They get to stay after the summer, a useful gift.
I can see myself using up some of my mom’s stash while I am visiting to make a bag for carrying these projects around in. Maybe to make a purse that isn’t slightly larger than a wallet. I know that’s just asking for trouble, since it makes it very easy to carry around tons of stuff I’ll never use, but considering I’ve had positively tiny purses my entire life I’m not entirely worried about that.
I’ve finally gotten brave enough to start knitting some lace patterns. The first is a simple gauge swatch with lace on the front to turn it into a useful bag. The others are a bit fancier. Some sock patterns and a skirt that I may get up the courage to wear sometime.
I’m also planning on making the hooded sweatshirt from Stitch ‘n’ Bitch since I want to try making something other than tubes and squares. I never really make anything with seams. This way I get to try using mohair and experimenting with new techniques. Learning is never a bad thing.
The Majora’s Mask cross-stitch is coming along nicely, though I am still making a few pairs of socks at the same time. Dean’s mom asked me to make baby socks as a gift for someone in Portugal, and I’m making a few extras since babies grow so darn fast. I doubt the first pair will fit for long.
I seem to have lost my only crochet hook. I shall have to find that.