TIMMY! or: I've Been Living a Lie

So I finally found out for realsies this time that I HAVE been doing yarn overs wrong for the last two years. Apparently I am super special at this figuring out how to knit thing. First the ssk, and now the YO.

This means I am never supposed to knit lace.

Also, I have two big honkin' mosquito bites on my leg. Like, as big as my thumb tip. I bet I've been scratching them in my sleep.

I haven't knit anything except a swatch since I came to school, and that means it's almost been a week! Not good. And yet, I think I'm getting that not-carpal-tunnel, which is the one where your pinky fingers go numb instead of your thumb/forefinger. Although that might have to do with the way I put my hands down on the desk. No, wait, now there's forearm pain.

In conclusion, I have no idea when I'll be able to knit again, which sucks because I have a buttload of yarn.

Whistles, I might still be able to handle. I don't give Clares enough credit; they're wonderful. Also cheap. That is part of their charm.

Why did I never have an injury-related label before? That's clearly all I blog about besides knitting (and underage female pop stars, but I keep that on my other blog--I don't want to come across as too creepy in TWO places if I can help it). Oh dear, there goes the spine.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Man, so I've been too busy futzing around on IMDB and NOT reading Bleak House, which I need to finish by tomorrow (I've got 180 pages left, and there's Sparknotes, so I'm not entirely worried) that I've somehow NOT been knitting. Which makes me very sad. My yarn for the rest of the Ruffled Surplice (as well as knittyknitter's top-down raglan, Stitchdiva's Sahara, and red TLC Cotton Plus with an undetermined purpose--Joann.com was having a sale, and how can you go wrong with 30% every skein of yarn?! I should have bought some of that expensive yet pretty sometimes Moonlight Mohair) came yesterday, but since I don't know how packages work in my new apartment, they TOOK IT AWAY, leaving one of those UPS stickers that says they'll be back today, and I can only assume it will be at the same time. If it isn't, I have to give a lot of people a stern talking-to, such as UPS and my unreachable RAs. I would probably be a good RA since I'm always AROUND.

But anyway, aside from my runaway yarn, there's not much in knitting news. I'm thinking about waiting until it gets cold to finish my Alexandra top (it's 97 degrees here, or will be this afternoon, and there's a high wool content in the yarn. Well, not really high, so much as noticeable to my uber-sensitive skin). I'm really reluctant to do anything with that ridiculous Cambridge Sweater (which is fine, my girlfriend's birthday isn't for another 2 months). But I do really want to work with that Bernat Super Saver yarn (because I'm cheap and allergic to everything except, apparently, cashmere, and that's a wee bit out of my price range), and I bought enough of it last year to make the Cardigan for Arwen (Winter 2006 IK), so that might get started.

Wow, I had a lot more to say about knitting than I thought! Crazy.

FOR SOME REASON THIS PARAGRAPH GETS DELETED WHENEVER I TRY TO ADD ANOTHER PICTURE AND THEN IT AUTOSAVES AND I AM NOT WRITING IT A THIRD TIME, THANKS A LOT, BLOGGER.

The gist of it is, I went to the Big Whistle site today, and lo and behold:

I already own a Dixon aluminum whistle (the one with the brass tuning slide), but this one looks kinda ugly pretty neat. I'm a fan of the Dixon mouthpieces, although I wasn't at first, and I absolutely adore my brass Trad. I'm tempted to get a nickel Trad as well, since I love my nickel whistles (except the Waltons; that one is a bit awful), and the nickel Trad costs about half as much as this new aluminum deal. That and this new whistle costs as much as my brass-slide aluminum, which I have a love-hate relationship with. I'm not entirely sure I'm sold on the aluminum sound yet, although the brass-slide is the only whistle I've got that goes into the third octave without sounding HORRIBLE. I lie, the Susato Dublin VSB I have can get up there too, but then it REALLY sounds plastic-y. I've gotten my Oak up there too, but it squeaks more often than not.

I hear that the Sweetheart pro models can get up in the third octave. I only know one tune that goes up there (Countess Cathleen, from Riverdance), but I'd be willing to learn more if I had a whistle that didn't sound gross. I keep trying to post a picture, but it keeps deleting my middle paragraph for some reason, so I'm going to NOT do that again. In fact, Blogger has made me sufficiently angry enough to end this post now, which is all well and good since my posts are rambly and long and let's face it, I'm no Walt Whitman...although I could be...if I learned the names of the trees and then listed them...more whistle posts will come, for those of you who are definitely not interested...posts about Sweethearts and Feadogs and Waltons and Generations and Dixons and Silkstones and the Composite Burkes and the Aluminum Burkes and Chieftains(es?)...and that was only funny if you've read Leaves of Grass, and even then it's still a stretch.

I'll Never Win a Blog Award

Man, I've been knitting and stuff, but my camera KILLS batteries like nobody's business. I got some rechargeables and even with those, they die after maybe an hour of using the camera, and then I'm too lazy to recharge them. So I'll just wait until I have another FO, which will be God knows when, to post pictures.

I ran out of the yarn I was using to make my Ruffled Surplice, and I'm almost certain that the yarn I ordered will be of a noticeably different dyelot. I'm thinking that it won't be a big deal, since I finished the body pieces and will only be doing the sleeves and the ruffle in the other dyelot, which might end up looking neat. Worse comes to worse, I wash and dry the thing and the colors will all fade away. I really wish I'd gotten the potpourri color, even though beige looks awful on me (it matches my skin tone! Yaaaay!).

I'm stalling on the Alexandra top because the sleeve instructions do not work for someone with stumpy little arms like me. I've decided to make them long sleeves instead of the 3/4 like the model has in the book because I've already bought enough yarn to do so, and a sweater that warm might as well have long sleeves (this is also how I feel about the Spicy V-Neck, but I'm going to try and find a thicker cotton blend or something. Maybe I'll get a cotton blend yarn and then just recalculate the pattern for a smaller gauge. Yeah, we'll see how that goes).

I've just bought yarn for the Bulky Mini Cardigan as well, which I can't wait to start. If Alexandra was (mostly) a quick knit for me, the Mini Cardi should be even quicker. I love Stefanie Japel's patterns; of the three sweaters I've actually finished, two are hers. I wish I'd bought the wool-ease chunky that was on sale at Hobby Lobby last week, because I've got another of her patterns I really want to make (the bulky cabled sweater or something). However, no more yarn for me. The yarn I bought for the Mini Cardi was basically so I could make ANOTHER skein of yarn in my stash go away.

Oh, by the way, I will be blogging from St. Louis now, as I have returned to the gateway to boredom and allergies (not to mention humidity HOLY SINUS TROUBLE, BATMAN) to finish college. ONE MORE SEMESTER and then I never have to come here ever again. I think I'm getting sick from the location change. Glorious.

Edit: Oh yeah, I finished the Booga Bag, but my camera batteries were dead. Then I gave the bag to my mom. Expect pictures in November if I ever get around to it. I've also got a Kureyon-Chan hanging around somewhere in my house that is 300 miles away from where I currently live. Augh, I hate college.

ADD

So, my Alexandra top still has no sleeves, because I can't bring myself to knit with the wool in the 90+ degree weather. That did not stop me from finishing up the knitting on my Booga Bag (both use the same set of needles...heh). One day I will felt all the bags I've knitted (they are supposed to be felted, but my washing machine is HUGE and has no agitator so I am waiting until I have a bunch of crap to throw in there at once). The yarn I used for the bag is some Fisherman's Wool (or whatever it's called) that I dyed with Kool-Aid, and the only picture I have is this:

Yeah, it looks a lot less gross in person, I swear. I wish I had used more of the green color, but oh well.

Also, I've started on the Ruffled Surplice (the cover pattern) from the Spring 2007 IK. At first I wasn't very impressed with it, as it is in a baby-blanket-yellow which would look nothing short of awful on me, and it was in some sort of bamboo ribbon yarn, which sounds to me like "expensive" and "handwash." However, I saw one on Craftster out of the Sugar 'n' Cream cotton, and THAT sounded like "cheap" and, honestly, that's the most important thing for me.

So I got one of those 14-oz skeins at Michaels on clearance for $2, but I think it will turn out to be not enough, in which case I will have to pay some exorbitant amount for a couple of extra 4-oz skeins from Jo-Ann fabrics or something, as Michaels doesn't carry my colorway (Swimming Pool) anymore. But, considering I got the clearance price, I shouldn't be complaining.

By the way, I've finished the back and am about 1/3 of the way through one of the fronts. It's a really quick knit!

Oh, and I finished the Indigo Ripples skirt. I don't remember if I posted about that. Not saggy, but I have no shirts to wear with it! D'oh. So it's sitting in a tote bag in my closet waiting for the ends to be woven in, and then I can wear it never. Whooooo.

I bought the Sahara pattern when it was on sale at stitchdiva, but I have no yarn to knit it with (most of my stash is Red Heart because I am SUPER CHEAP). I'm hoping to make a joann.com splurge in the near future, when they have another free shipping promotion.

Also, a Harry Potter Action Shot

We were going to get in line to have our picture taken with Harry Potter, but then we found out it was just a cardboard cutout of the cover of the book (you can see it over my left shoulder--your right). Instead we took a picture with the sign in front of it, and still managed to get Harry in the picture, because we are just 2 kewl 4 skewl (I wrote a paper called that once. I think my professor died a little).

Semi-annual Photo Dump

So here we are: FOs!

Rogue and Two-Tone Shrug, hooray!

First, my lovely shrug that I totally thought would be too small and then it wasn't!

And from the back:

And also my Rogue, which was done in MAY but I never got around to taking/uploading pictures. I still haven't washed it yet because I'm terrified it will pill. This picture is blurry but I can never tell on the little window on the camera!

Hood detail, and also my gross room with anime posters of yesteryear (why, yes, I know there are a disproportionate amount of Gundam Wing posters; there are about twice as many on the other wall. What can I say, it was every pre-emo--premo?--girl's dream: angsty teenage boys and mechs).

Gunter glieben glausen globen:

Sleeve detail, sans Def Leppard reference:

Action-ish shot, because standing is the most action I do these days. I look mildly pissed...probably because I'm wearing a sweater in 90-degree weather. I'm also wearing men's Nike shorts, which is HOTTT.

I put the sweater on the floor to take a picture of the whole thing, and the damn cat sat on it. That's what we get for giving him old sweatshirts to sleep on.

Then he didn't even have the decency to stay still so I could get a cute picture. It looks like he has four ears! Damn cat.

Oh, by the way, the shrug is just plain old Red Heart super saver, and the sweater is some discontinued color of Wool-Ease that I got for about 1.50 a skein. And the cat is half Siamese and half tabby, because I didn't want to end up looking like my cat so I got a cat that looks like me. Asian eyes and a big ol' butt.

Pictures TOMORROW, I Promise (For All My Millions and Millions of Readers)

This Indigo Ripples skirt...augh. It's almost not worth doing the 1000-odd bind-off stitches when I know it'll probably turn out saggy and gross on my giant bottom. But then again, I thought my Two-Tone shrug would be awful and it really wasn't...so I honestly don't know. I'm sort of itching to turn this yarn into a Camisa from the fall 2006 Knitscene, but I can always buy more Cotton-Ease in a less fugly color to make something I'll actually wear.

Not that the charcoal color is fugly, it's just not a color I would wear as a shirt. Plus, it doesn't really match any pants I have, except jeans, I suppose.

I wish Cotton-Ease had more colors! I really like how the yarn feels, but I only really like the purple color (and the orange and yellow colors, but I tend to not wear orange and "Chinese people can't wear yellow," or whatever the line is from "Saving Face." I guess that goes for orange too? Except that Chinese people wear the hell out of red, which is the other half of orange. And away I go into parentheses-land).

I've noticed that I post nothing about whistles. Um...I've got a Dixon trad in brass, and the fingerholes are totally all discolored because I play it all the time. I forgot I had it for a while, due to the Freeman Nickel Generation taking up most of my time (I have no idea why I like it so much; you wouldn't know because I'm always dropping it). I composed a waltz yesterday because I am a total dork. I think it's pretty! One day I'll be a whistling, knitting superstar and you'll all WISH you'd read my blog when it was all written in parentheses by me, instead of blurbs written by my assistant's assistant. Yup. Just like my myspace page.