New Year, Same Sentiments

I was never able to break the habit of thinking of September as the start of the new year. Thanks, school! It didn't help that at my job, two of my clients had two different "starts" of the year (January and April, which was just confusing) that I could never get used to.

But now I am in school again! And today (it is 1 AM) is the first day of the school year! And my years will be defined by the school year for the rest of forever now (we hope), so that takes care of that. Because I have been going to grad school in order to ensure that I will be stuck in high school for the rest of my life! That's right, my few friends and readers, I have decided to become a teacher. There are several clever, self-deprecating lines I have prepared for people who judge me, all of which I have decided not to include in this post, because I do not have to apologize for anything.

For the last few years, I have resolved to start blogging again. I used to be a pretty decent writer and a pretty prolific blogger, and now I think I am neither of those things, but practice will make slightly better!

Also, we finally got a new computer at home. It actually works! Things open within 20 seconds of clicking on them! I can open more than three tabs at a time! I have installed Firefox, and it crashes repeatedly, but that is not the fault of the computer!

I shall conclude with some pictures of some nice things I have made, and one picture of my cat. The cat is the last picture, so you must scroll past the non-cat photos to see him. Mwahaha.

Aestlight and Surprises!

In the interest of avoiding bathroom/mirror shots for my FO pictures, I have K as my designated photographer. She went to art school and knows more about taking pictures than I do, as I learned photography taking pictures of the animatronic multicultural children on the "It's a Small World" ride (the photos were always out of focus, and generally included one of my fingers).

We always wait until I have a bunch of FOs and then we do a "photo shoot" in some location that is far nicer than my bathroom. The first batch we did earlier this year was at the beach in Evanston (it's a lake beach, so, you know, it's not TOO exotic. Also it was freezing). This time, we decided to go to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. I had a bunch of shawls and scarves so we figured it wouldn't be too difficult to schlep them around, and we'd find some nice scenery to go with it.

Anyway, this particular post is about the Aestlight, a pattern that I loved as soon as I saw it. I think it's the lace part. This pattern actually took me a while to knit because I ran out of yarn on the edging. I decided to start the edging over again with two fewer stitches per "scallop," but still ran out of yarn. It is pretty nervewracking wondering if you're going to have enough yarn to finish, so I just gave up on the edging and knitted some rows in garter, an eyelet row, and then more garter rows until I had enough to bind off and that was that.



Yarn is 1 skein of Pagewood Farm Denali in the "Sky Blue Pink" colorway. I think the colorway is kind of misleading because there might be sky blue in there but there is really not any pink. The purple parts are lovely! Also, in certain (not-natural) lighting, there is a lot more green. Since we went with the sun as our lighting, you won't see the greens.



A few more photos are on my Ravelry project page.

What I didn't realize at the time was that K had an ulterior motive for wanting to take photos at the Botanic Gardens (and here I thought it was just her love of art, or me, or maybe my knitting...?). We had already taken pictures of two other FOs, but I really wanted to take pictures of the Aestlight in the Dwarf Conifer section, which is my favorite. We found a bench (pictured above) with a nice view and after taking some photos of the shawl, K said she wanted to take some more pictures of me wearing the shawl. I sat down on the bench and she started rearranging the shawl and positioning me so that she'd get her good shots (or whatever. I know nothing about photography). I lamented that I had not planned for the photo shoot properly and chosen an outfit that actually matched any of my shawls. K said, "I have something that would go with your shawl..."

...and suddenly she was down on one knee and proposing to me!!!!!! WHAT. It is still surreal. Clever K, distracting me with my knitting so that I wouldn't see it coming. I mean, I guess it has been almost 8 years and I should have seen it coming.



So, I went to the Botanic Gardens to take fancy pictures of my knitting, and came back with a fancy ring and I AM ENGAGED, EVERYONE. This is more exciting than knitting and whistles combined.

So Much Happened! Find OUT What Happened!

Title is paraphrased from the "Wicked" TV commercial.

I can't believe it's been almost 3 years since I last blogged. I think I'm going to try blogging again.

Since my last post, I have quit my uninteresting job and lost 30 pounds! Now all of the sweaters I have knit for myself are too big.

Oh, also, I found my camera and it is broken. But K has a camera so we have been doing photo shoots. If all else fails, I'll do FO posts. I'm going to try to get on a schedule, now that I am funemployed and have the time for these sorts of things.

That's all for now. Starting slowly!

I Hate November.

Well, I got up to the sleeves on my Snow White and I tried it on...and wouldn't you know it, I've managed to increase 2 inches in circumference pretty much EVERYWHERE on my entire body. Absolutely ridiculous! I weighed more than this in high school and I was not this big. And of course I'm only going to gain more weight before I lose anything, because I know how I roll. There's a back-fat joke in there somewhere but I am too angry/depressed to tease it out.

Also, I totally quit NaNo (again), this time after 10,000 words. I started to get stressed out about making my word counts and I realized it just wasn't worth it. I also realized that I don't really care for writing on the computer because I live in the Stone Age. (On a totally unrelated note--I just didn't want to make a new paragraph after three sentences) I haven't been sleeping. Now I have to leave the TV on or I don't fall asleep, so I don't put my earplugs in, and then when my dad leaves for work in the morning I wake up and then I have to go back to sleep, but of course if you sleep for an hour it doesn't really count, so I've been averaging 5 hours of sleep every night. Lovely.

In addition to my problems, K got let go from BOTH her jobs. THE DAY AFTER HER BIRTHDAY. I hate November. Thank goodness it's almost over.

The Point is that I Want Azn Babies.

It is like the world is conspiring against me to not get any knitting or NaNo-ing done at ALL.

I blame YOU, Juri Ueno. You will not be forgiven until one of us has the other's babies. Or you can have K's babies or she can have your babies. We've got lots of wombs to work with here.

Seriously, why didn't anyone tell me about Last Friends? It has everything I love and almost none of the things I dislike! Japanese people, motocross racing (I am not being sarcastic. I have extreme enthusiasm for the fictional portrayal of motocross racing. I don't like real motocross racing because I don't like watching races--I get too keyed up), sissy main heroines getting beaten, lots of unnecessary drama, most of the cast of Nodame Cantabile, and, most importantly, an adorable, aZn, gendrally*-confused girl (we all know that's my favorite kind)! And since K and I promised to not watch it on our own, I have to wait until tomorrow to watch more of it...and until I watch it I have to spend every waking moment thinking about it. I'm pretty sure I wrote the exact same story my freshman year of college, only everyone was American and therefore much less adorable.

Unfortunately, that means I will be blogging more because I can vent my enthusiasm to the internet instead of annoying everyone I know with my inane chatter. Therefore, I will not be writing my novel nor will I be knitting. This show could not have happened to me at a worse time. Thank goodness I have less to do at work. My brain could have exploded.

I wrote some 3,000-odd words before I realized I wanted to get rid of one of my major characters. So I had to start again. I'm way behind, but I think I'm further ahead than I was last year (considering I quit after two days because of the intense wrist pain). But it seems as though I am unconsciously doing NaBloPoMo. Too bad when I blog frequently, it's mostly me fangirling over something lame.

I've learned that I enjoy reading my own blog. Is this the same as laughing at your own jokes? Do authors read their own books? Where the hell is my camera?

*If "center" becomes "centrally," then "gender" necessarily becomes "gendrally."

Blendtastic.

"Fauxmosexuality" has got to be one of the most hilarious blends I have ever heard. And I thought I was pretty funny when I came up with "flesbian" (same concept--I'm sure I'm not the only one who came up with it).

Even funnier than "po-mo sexuality," which is also delightful.

In other news, I am apparently not keeping up with my queer celebrities. This is what happens when I actually have STUFF to do at work.

I joined the Sexy Knitters' Club on Ravelry because I have been meaning to make Snow White. I bought the yarn back in May (Valley Yarns Sugarloaf), but I've been putting it off because of the other sweaters I started. I thought I'd be able to start Snow White today, but I think I might need the size 6 circular I'm still using for Riding to Avalon (I'm on the first sleeve and I've sworn to actually finish this instead of letting it sit around for two years like my Rogue...I guess I have a thing for hoodies. I like to keep my head warm. Or my back warm).

I'm also doing NaNoWriMo (not NaNoPoBlo or whatever the blogging counterpart is--I did that last year and I ended up writing about candy or Canada or some third thing that has those same letters), so I don't know how much blogging I'll get done. I've already done two posts in the last month, which is better than I usually am about this! Stay tuned, all my loyal fans!

?!

My camera is gone. For realsies. I have absolutely no idea where it could have gone. I vaguely remember loaning it to someone, but K says she didn't borrow it and I know my mom has her own camera, so I can't imagine who I could have loaned it to (because I have no camera-less friends). I am also extremely suggestible, so I could very well have lost it on my own with no help from a second party and then imagined that someone else did it because I felt so guilty. I don't know why I'd feel guilty. It's a pretty old camera and it was relatively cheap because my mom bought it after it was discontinued (story of my life--one day when I run out of ideas I will tell the story of my defective pants).

So I will have an ugly, pictureless blog. And I am going to give away the socks and booties I made and I will have no pictures of them (side note: Red Heart's "Heart and Sole" sock yarn got me a pair of child's socks and a pair of booties with barely any yarn to spare out of one skein, which makes it worth the five dollars full price I paid for it. Whoo!).

In other news, I have 871234021384 skeins of recently purchased yarn because I am crazy. My parents are going to disown me, I think. Or they'll disown the yarn. Whatever, my yarn is nowhere as huge as their dining room table, and God knows we use that even less than I use my yarn. Large, ornate dining room furniture is nice, but when it is so ungainly that it makes eating in the dining room a chore, then something is not doing its job. I apparently am full of direction-less rage.

On a lighter note: I may be participating in NaNoWriMo this year! I did not write so much in this blog about it last year, because of the carpal tunnel. I had to quit after a couple days because of the unbearable pain. But I am getting my laptop back from K and I am writing 50,000 words of utter crap just to say I did it. I've written several novellas in my lifetime, by hand, with illustrations--all when I was under the age of 14. They were crappy. Ridiculously so. With plots I stole from various Boxcar Children books. I plan to do better this time, but I can't make any promises. I hear supernatural/paranormal stories are on the way out. What's on the way in? I hope it isn't stories about racial tension. I'm several of the least important minorities and being from the melting pot that is my Northwest Chicago Suburb, I know very little about discrimination. Not that I'm incredibly familiar with vampires and sorcery, but nobody gets offended when you take creative license with THOSE topics.

I can't say enough nice things about the Cobblestone Pullover. Even out of my crappy Wool-Ease, it looks fabulous. You'll just have to believe me until I find my camera. K and I were going to have a photo shoot so that I'd have pictures for Ravelry, but now I have no camera, so I don't know what's going to happen. Maybe she will draw pictures for me now that she's a big time video game artist (seriously. My job is so unglamorous in comparison that I might as well just start telling people I'm a...actually I can't even think of a job as humorlessly unglamorous as mine. Don't get me wrong, it's a good job and I like it, but it does not make for a very impressive one-liner at a high school reunion).