Yarn Galore!

Before I start with anything else, let me say...

Good news everyone! Quackers is almost fully grown.



Tonight will be the "release" night when Joey and I send him off at the apartment fountain where the bunnies and the dogs will... ignore him and what not.

This Wednesday will be my language proficiency test for my Master's. It will consist of four hours of translating in a small room with just me and my dictionary. I really hope they didn't choose something that's in archaic Chinese. I told them I could handle either simplified or traditional Chinese, but if it's written in ancient dialect, I'm screwed! But other test takers have said that the excerpts were always relevant to their field, and I have made it clear that my field was post-Qing dynasty. So hopefully the chosen material will be... understandable!

I came to an uncomfortable yet inevitable conclusion yesterday... I have too much yarn.

It's finally gotten to a point where the amount of yarn I have is overwhelming me. I am also no longer excited every time I look at my stash because ... it's just so damn huge! There's only two more things I want come September, but until then, I'll start destashing by working on my queue.

So here are some updates!



Well, I guess it's just one thing. It's my first attempt at socks! I tried it leg first before, but after looking at Mel's project, I was intrigued by the toe up method. I have to admit, it's a million times easier! I already started on the second sock, albeit with a different pattern, but Joey doesn't mind if his socks don't match.

Here are the new yarns I got over the weekend!



I bought this for my friend's daughter's scarf. She bought the same thing but in alternating colors for the other daughter. I'm so happy that the brand is carrying cotton yarn now! They are a lot smoother and softer than the Sugar 'n Cream brand, so it'll be more suitable for a light garment such as a scarf. The beads are so cute also!



The goldish yarn is actually from the scarf exchange. It's so soft! I've been really interested in a ruffle scarf lately, and the image of a gold ruffle scarf look the best in my head!



This! I have no idea what to do with this yet, but it was so pretty that I had to get it. At Woolie Ewe, there's a small section by the knitting tables with these caked up lace weight yarn, and it looks so delicious there. It's about 630 yards, so I think I can make a substantial shawl from it as long as it's not overly huge.

Finally!

I joined the Ravelympics yesterday with Team Woolie Ewe. This sounds so fun, I'll finally feel obligated to finish something in a set amount of time. Cast on is August 8th during the opening ceremony and I have to finish before the closing ceremony.

The project I chose is a pretty shawl intended for Jeff's mom. She baked our groom's cake for our wedding and I feel that I never thanked her properly. So now I have my chance!

The yarn I'm planning to use is this:



Maybe I'll wind it up tonight...

I got good stuff!

Here's what I just got today from my scarf exchange buddy, Annadownya, from Ravelry.

It's all so awesome!




She got me so much stuff! The Mario pen just slays me, I poked it all night long.

The scarf really is impressive, especially with the beads. It's a color I've been drooling over but haven't decided what to do with it yet, in fact, I have a skein of it myself! Now that I have this scarf, I might make some accessories to go with it. This will be a really nice not winter scarf, which in TX... is almost all year long!

Crime shows galore!

So I watched Numb3rs aaaaaaaaaall weekend. It's a crime busting show, and our interesting main character this time is a mathematician. Charles Epps uses math to solve crime for his FBI brother.

It's a pretty fun show. I was a bit skeptical, and my concerns were echoed in the show through other characters who were not mathematicians. For instance, the main problem that comes up for Charlie is that he's too logical, and that he's not taking humanism into consideration.

Watching Charlie Epps reminds me of Joey and some members of his family ... in a good way, because I'm obviously still watching the show!

I hope syndicated television will never run out of crime shows... I'd actually have to resort to reading and the outside to pass time.

Other than that, I don't really remember doing anything else this weekend. I cooked quite a bit and knitted a lot, but didn't do anything significant, so here are the updates!







All of them are going great. I'm especially excited about the knitted doily! It's my first attempt at it and it's just so fun!

And finally, our newest addition to the family...



His name is Quackers. I brought him home from Hobby Lobby on Friday, and he's been growing since. He's very cute and Joey and I love him very much. Maomao... not so much, but we love her too.

Seven more days and we'll be able to release him to the wild.

Boy Bands Galore!

Seven gory movies later, I'm finally zombied out. So let's turn a 180 and move on to....

Asian boy bands!

I stumbled upon a Japanese boy band named Arashi last Thursday and am now infatuated with their catchy tunes and mediocre dancing. They're so embarrassing to watch, but I can't help it! Their songs are just so.. catchy! Their Chinese counter part is called F4. Literally, they're counter parts of each other! Both groups acted in the same TV drama, but just in different languages.

The dramas were based off a Shojo manga with a reverse harem... one girl and four guys, and they have high school romances and live happy lives.

I can't talk about too much anymore, or I'd lose my street cred.

I got a new haircut!



It's so short now! The hairdresser did a fantastic job, and I'm really satisfied with it. It's now so easy to take care of after showers, and brushing is a lot faster now. I might grow it out just a little longer, but not by much.

And finally... here is the biggest news over the weekend....



My yarn came in! With every order of yarn from Knit Picks, they'll give you a free Maomao. I got quite a bunch this time, my yarn mountain is getting a bit higher now. I gave Amee one of the hanks from the Seaview sampler, but everything else is mine!

Mine mine mine!

I don't have that many updates as far as projects go. I'm still working on the same things, but none of them were really picture worthy. I can't spread out the shawls for pictures lest I lose my stitches again. Sometimes it helps to be extra paranoid.

Now that I have my yarn, I can show my top 5 queue list!



All the yarn I need for those projects are in the pile of yarn shown above. Ravelry's Woolie Ewe group is thinking about participating in the Ravelypmics where you have the duration of the real Olympics to complete a new project. I think I'll join!

Zombies Galore!

So I watched the 1978 version of "Dawn of the Dead" a couple nights ago, and I wasn't scared at all! That could only mean two things...

1) The movie was just too hokey
or 2) I'm getting braver

I'll opt for the latter! It's better for my self-esteem and my continuous efforts for post-zombie-pocalyptic preparations. I already know what to do in the event I get bitten, but just in case I manage to come out of it unharmed, I need to be prepared.

I don't have a lot of updates this time because... I messed up on lots of things! I made a huge booboo on the blue shawl, so big I couldn't fix it, so I started over. But on the plus side, I tried it on and it was really cute! So now I changed my mind about shawls and will definitely make myself a couple in the future.

I must be going through a zombie phase, because I also sat down to watch "Zombie Strippers." As the name would imply, it's safe to assume that the movie was campy and horrendous... which it was! I was not disappointed. The main star was Jenna Jameson, so that pretty sets up the feel of the movie pretty well. It was like Planet Terror, but with even more stripping!

I was quite shocked to see Roeper of Ebert and Roeper reviewing it. Now I don't feel as sheepish for watching it.

The only two updates I have are these:





I'm really enjoying knitting with smaller needles and thinner yarn! I always worried that the lace weight yarn would break with all my pulling and yanking, but it has been quite a trooper. I bought the plastic needles from Hobby Lobby, and they are working fantastic. I hate the clicky clacky of the metal needles, they grate on my ears. I have yet to try wooden ones, but have ordered some from Knit Picks to try out.

The doily... eh... I don't want to give up on it, but it hurts me so much. I accidentally added two double crochets to every set of seven, so there's about, a million extra DC's. As a result, it's ruffling a little, but I'll just have to block it with extra vigor. On the bright side, I did finish off a skein of doily yarn.

I went to Joann's Fabrics yesterday by myself, and it was Joeyless and peaceful. I refrained from buying a loud yarn... an interweave type of black and white doily yarn. It was only fifty cents, but I convinced myself that in reality, I'd never use it.

I finally managed to find some size nine needles there too! It has been so elusive, every store I went to were always missing size nine needles, but Joann's was the only place that was fully stocked.

Joann's actually impressed me quite a bit. It was neat and so clean in there. This particular store was a lot smaller than the normal box stores, and their inventory was quite nice! There's a good variety of wool blends that were soft and plushy. But as mentioned before, I'm most happy with their stock of needles, in that they actually have everything in stock.

Someday... I'll pick up sewing!

Whee!

It's Monday morning and I'm unusually giddy!

I ... I... I want lots of yarn! So much that I can pile it up and perch myself at the top. And if anyone tries to make me do something I don't want to, like mopping, I can hurl knitting needles at them from the pile.

Sometimes when Maomao sleeps on top of my stash, I get really jealous because it just looks so... hedonistic! So carefree, and she's completely oblivious to her conventional bed that was so lovingly cleaned and placed under the window for her. I tried it by sleeping on top of clean (and warm) laundry and it was bliss, but Joey, aka, The Man, always tells me to fold it up.

:(

I'm working on a blue shawl right now, and it's coming along fantastically! I'm almost afraid to say this, but I haven't messed up too seriously yet! Hopefully I won't get too cocky.



This pretty yellow shawl is for my Grandma in Shanghai! Of course, the pattern actually called for lace weight so it'd look delicate, but Mom suggested that Grandma would appreciate something warmer... so ta-da! The yarn used is the Lion Wool, color Goldenrod.



When Joey and I went to Woolie Ewe the other week, he asked about the swift and the baller... so... after some deductive reasoning, it has to be for me! (You won't ever outshine me, Maomao!) It has to be! Joey doesn't need no swifts for Warmachine, and as far as I can see, he has shown no interest in yarning. It's fun to be presumptuous.

The following yarn has been a dilemma for a while...



I bought it from Knit Picks for a couple reasons ... 1) it was cheap! and 2) I wanted to see what type of quality the site provides. Of course it's hard to tell from just two skeins, but I was satisfied.

However... now that I have it, I have no idea what to do with it. It's not a color that I would wear... and it's too thin to be really useful, and now I have over 800 yards of it! Ah!

Amelia came to the rescue though! She suggested accessories such as headbands and belts to accent an otherwise conservative outfit.

She's so smart!

Ack! I'm doing it again!

Once again I'm going through the phase of starting way too many projects! I got really side tracked and started things whenever something catches my fancy.

Before I go too far... here's some of the finished stuff!



I made this baby blanket for one of Joey's friends. It went through many changes before I finally settled on the crochet pattern. It started out with granny squares, then knitted diamonds, then round loom knit. All those were pretty but extremely boring. Not that this design was any more fun, but it was fast and I liked the colors!



I just finished this one today! It's a secret holiday present for the end of the year... yeah!



This is one of the two "Small Red Doilies" from freepatterns.com. It's quite pretty when it's blocked. The doilies called for 450 yards of yarn, so 225 for each. It doesn't really seem to be that much, but it's hard to tell when it's all in loops!

The bottom doily does have an unfinished sibling, which is here...



This is a baby blanket for a family friend. I'll knit the body, and then crochet a border. It'll be very pretty. The lady is actually only about two months into her pregnancy, but it's never too early to start!



Socks! I finally managed to pawn off fingerless gloves onto someone else to make, and then I get bammed with socks. It's not as bad as I thought. I'm not using any patterns in particular, but just trying to make a very simple sock. At first I just knitted the leg, but I'm putting a three by three rib in it. That turned out to be tedious, so it's slowly expanding to a 9x9 rib. Teehee! They're for Joey if they fit him, otherwise... we'll have an reenactment of Cinderella's seesters at home.




I do have two other works in progress! One of them is a Zelda themed towel and a shawl for my grandmother. However, neither are in any photoable stage, so I haven't taken pictures. Though the socks aren't that ready either, but I was so proud of my round knits!