Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Unpaused

Hello readers! Are you confused? Don't be... just changing up the look of the ol' blog here. I didn't really like that last template design (plus it wiped out all my previous FO's and WIP's lists... they should be mostly back now...) and have settled on a simpler cleaner layout. Hope you like! I do : )

While away, hubby and I celebrated 10 years of married-ness. That certainly went by fast! We celebrated by going to our fave Japanese/Thai restaurant and took the kids since it coincided with our daughter's birthday with was a few days after our anniversary. The highlight of the evening was their attempts at eating with the chop sticks and my son wondering why the rice was so clumped together LOL!!(Bajan men prefer their rice grains not so cozy with each other!). I had the tasting menu which consisted of tempura veggies and a tempura prawn (which was given promptly to hubby because of my shell fish allergy), a California roll, some sashimi, a giant salad, teriyaki chicken and jasmine rice. The kids had teriyaki chicken and beef and hubby had a shellfish dish off the Thai menu. Dessert was icecream for me and fried cheesecake for the kiddos. We were well stuffed!! It wasn't the cruise that I was hoping to do but it was fun nonetheless.

Since June I've been on pause with regards to my studies. I sat my last two exams and had to wait six weeks to get my results.With much trepidation and with my heart in my mouth, I clicked on "course history", scrolled down and looked for that magical word. That one word that carried with it so many possibilities. See, the word could be either Failed or Passed.

Failed would mean having to resit the exam, delay in getting certified and just the overall feeling of depression stemming from the failure and acceptance of the loss of money spent to the course (about $600+ Cad a pop!).

Passed would mean the complete opposite - it would involve looking at the world through certified eyes, it would mean I did not spend the last few months studying so hard for nothing, it would mean that I'll be a bad ass - in a good way! LOL! It would mean SUCCESS.

People, I saw PASSED. On BOTH courses so this means that I am officially done with my studies. There's one more administrative step and I'll have those three extra letters behind my name. To say I am happy would be the biggest understatement of the year. But, it's late and I cannot think of anything smart and cute to say that would impress you so happy it is.

Completion of my studies as a student should essentially mean that I should be knitting like a woman starved for her needles and yarn. But I am not. It's like my body is on a strike or something - refusing to do anything that entails reading or the s-word i.e. studying. Reading a pattern right now involves figuring out instructions and following instructions and the like. I did however, at least TRY to start Miralda from Knitted Lace of Estonia: Techniques, Patterns, and Traditions but I seemed to have some difficulty counting the 300+ stitches needed for the cast on. When I figured that out, I kept doing something really stupid and wasn't getting the required amount of stitches at the end of the rows. Once I got that sorted out, I realized that I really and truly didn't like how it was knitting up with the Malabrigo Lace. It was too fuzzy and the stitch definition was crap. So I frogged it, found a yarn store that ships directly to Barbados without charging me my first born son and bought two skeins of Berocco Ultra Alpaca Fine in some bluish colourway, three skeins of St. Denis Nordique in Ruby Wine to make the Juneberry shawl (cause I love the colour of Jared Flood's!) and the St-Denis Magazine issue 2. As we speak they should be on their way. I say should because the whole shipping thing is another story. It would be extra nice to get these this week but that's me being very very hopeful. So once those arrive I should be in the mood to knit one or the other.

Then I'll have some actual knitting content to share.

Friday, July 02, 2010

Victory

Ladies and gentlemen(?) Damson is done. There is nothing quite like finishing up a project that was so easy to knit but yet has beautiful results! Well the results will be beautiful once I block it. Like the Ishbel before it, Damson will remain unblocked until I get my hands on some blocking mats and blocking wires. Hopefully that will be this month once I get a few things on my list squared away.

Here she is in all of her unblocked glory:

I had one or two problems with this pattern though - even as ridiculously easy as it was. I lost count of some yarn overs and was too lazy to go back and untink my mistakes (I did a lot of untinking further on but not on this initial error) If you look closely at the two main yarnover sections there you will see that I am talking about. The problem is so minor in my books that I've left it as is and am still happy. I guess mainly because it's an error on both sides. Now if it was an error on only one side it would have been ripped out.

Second problem is that I ran out of yarn. On the bind off - halfway through. Bah. I asked if any one over on ravelry had some scraps to send me and was basically told to go buy a skein. People can be so nice! I guess it's which part of the world you hail from and maybe your knitty superstardom as well. I can't imagine anyone not helping the yarnharlot should she have a similar quandry. But then again, such a harlot would never run out of yarn on the bind off. Maybe I shouldn't expect those who purport to be nice to be actually so. Maybe I shouldn't think that everyone out there will do as I have done in the past. Ah well. I wound up getting out some debbie bliss 100% merino yarn I had, cutting off a length of it, splitting it in two sections (each section made up of 3 strands of yarn), splicing it to the malabrigo sock yarn and binding off. If this is successful remains to be seen when I block this baby out.

So next up is my prize! Earthtonesgirl - Denise sent me the lovely skein of yarn that I won over on her blog some weeks back. She mailed it when she said she would and it arrived in no time at all! I LOVE getting good mail and this definitely falls into that category. Here are two pics of the yarn. Denise, if you're reading, we weren't able to take the skein to Oistins for a photo op as we've all (excepting hubby) been under the weather and are now recovering. My daughter had the worst of it I think as on top of her cold, she had a double eye infection. Not pretty at all but today her eyes are nice and clear. Hooray for medicine!

Yarn looking wistfully out of the window wondering where the heck she is:


Yarny in better light:

Thanks again to Denise! I have a few ideas about what I want to make with it so stay tuned if you will : )

Today if everything goes well, the much talked about Miralda will be cast on. Yay!

Later guys!