Tying Loose Ends

With the Ravelympics opening on Friday, I want to get my loose odds 'n ends knitting finished up so I have just the sweater to concentrate on- no side distractions allowed!
First to finish was the Amanda Hat for Molly.I originally used the skein leftover from a Thorpe hat I made for my friend Aurora, and then ran out of yarn to close the top of the hat. After trying and failing, I finally just ordered yarn from a shop online, knowing that whatever I didn't use for this hat I will inevitably use elsewhere.
I ended up really enjoying making this hat. It's super squishy and comfy, and I really hope that the recipient enjoys it (it's pink, so I'm sure she will). I did it on size 9 needles with Malabrigo Chunky yarn, colorway of Lovely Lady. Best part of making the hat- enjoying the end result. Worst part- watching the ball run out of yarn and knowing that I would have to hunt for more...
After making a bajillion Amanda hats for everyone else, I finally finished my own yesterday, and tried out today while going to and from class. After trying on Molly's with the Chunky malabrigo, mine feels a little... thin. I LOVE the colorway and the hat and the fit, but I think I'm going to have to line it at some point to give it a little added protection from the chilly winds off the lake.
Ah well, it happens.It was nice to get these finished and off the needles in time for the Olympics. I have one more bartering hat to get through fast, as well as fixing the thumb on my pair of mittens, but the end is well within reach. I am also going to take a hiatus from making the Amanda hat- after 5 of them, I need a break. :)
Tonight I'm working overnight at B&N for our inventory night, so I'm off to make a giant thermos of coffee before heading up to the mall till 5 am.
Yaaaay overnights...

Feels Like Home

My Mom sent me home with a couple of her antiques she's no longer using in her house decorations, and with a drill and some shelves from Target I was able to make my room finally feel like home, and not so much a temporary "space".I'm particularily happy with the new shelves, even though I haven't quite made up my mind if I like my old pointe shoes and the glass on the top one.I'm not sure if pointe shoes can be considered a "decoration", but they work for now and I like them up there.I'm particularly excited about the old camera and picture I got from my Mom- it's in beautiful shape, which almost makes me tempted to see if it would still work, because I feel like the pictures out of an old camera like that would be fuzzy and beautiful. Maybe someday when I have a bunch of time I'll look into that. :) My next antique purchases on my "want" list are an old but working typewriter and dress form in my size for draping.My reading list has expanded this semester to include not only books on adaptation, but children's literature and french books to practice translation. I have to do a translation for my master's degree, and hopefully with practice I can get my french a point that I'm comfortable with a basic translation. Speaking it is a whole different animal, but luckily I don't have to worry about that yet.
I was out ice climbing at Casket Quarry all day yesterday, and even though I accidentally conked out at 8:30 during the movie last night I'm still tired and recovering today. I think I need to do a little more cross training so that when I go out for these all-day climbing marathons, I don't get so incredibly pooped. Swimming perhaps?
Time to go take my double-fudge brownies out of the oven... Mmmmm smells good... :)

Olympic Training

It's not a sweater, but training is training.
I have a big job ahead of me.
8 days...

I Gotta Feeling...

I was down in the cities (Twin Cities) this weekend hanging out with my Mom for her birthday, and because I didn't have class or work on yesterday, she talked me into staying down for the day and hanging out with her at school!
She teaches Phy Ed for a small private Catholic school, grades K-6, and naturally I had to help her out with class. She's been vying for me to do this for awhile, and when she told me her idea for her lesson plan of the day, I was excited.
She had seen awhile ago on the Oprah show a particular dance sequence- done in Chicago on Michigan Avenue with over 9,000 people. The Black Eyed Peas were giving a concert with their song "I Gotta Feeling", and while singing (and without Oprah knowing this was going to happen) one girl in the front started dancing... and then some more joined her... and people kept adding until these 9,000 people were dancing one big choreographed dance. It's really cool to see- you can find the link here to the YouTube video of it, and it's worth it to take a look.
Anyway, my Mom saw this dance and asked me if I could teach a slightly easier, cut version of it to the kids- which of course I said yes to!It was a lot of fun! The kids got really into it, especially the younger ones. When they're 3rd grade and under dancing is still fun and everyone can do it- it's not just for pretty pink girls. The older kids I think were just happy that when they learned they were doing dance but there wasn't holding hands involved. :) I was surprised how fast the kids learned it- I taught the exact same dance to every grade level, and they all were able to do (with me leading in the front) the entire minute and thirty seconds or so that I pulled from the dance. Everyone was moving and having a good time, and I had lots of thanks and big, excited smiles from the kids at the end of class. It was such a success that my Mom wants to have the whole school dance it for an audience at some point (since the entire school now semi-knows the dance!), and I'll be happy to come back again next year to teach another dance class (hopefully one just as fun and 'cool' as this one was- hopefully!).
After all, who knew that dance could be so much fun? ;)
(PS- for those of you that are wondering, no, I didn't fix my mittens yet. I'm working on it, don't worry... they'll get done... before the Olympics...)

Quick Notes

1. When you give your Dad your blog address so he can see climbing pictures, and then you blog about possibly completely his sweater that is over a year late, be prepared to come through on said sweater when he attacks you next time he sees you with, "Isn't it done yet? When will it be ready? Wasn't it supposed to be done by now???"

2. If you know you are bad at directions, and you know you have to drive somewhere you've never been before, save an hour of driving by Google-mapping it. It will save much stress and swearing at street signs.

3. When a long drive is about to take place, two large cups of coffee beforehand isn't a good idea.

4. Especially when you get lost for an hour.

5. Buying another coffee while lost and needing to go to the bathroom does not help said situation.

6. Perhaps I drink too much coffee.

7. Point 6 is moot because there is no such thing as "too much coffee". Sillyness.

8. I think I'm going to stop this before it goes too far.

Stupid Thumbs

I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to write until I finished my mittens, especially since I was oh-so-close to the end and could finish them in one sitting. With this in mind, I picked them up on Sunday while the Vikings-Saints football game was on TV.
I didn't know it, but both things were doomed from the start.See that lovely pair of mittens? They have a beautiful alpaca wool lining, ready to be loved and worn... but there's a slight problem. I discovered that I may have been slightly too much into the game when I was knitting the last thumb at the end.
It wasn't until I put them on at the end that I noticed something.I closed the top of the thumb too early- without measuring it, without holding it up to the other mitten- just glanced down and thought, that looks right, and started decreasing. I finished the mittens as the Vikings lost the game (I really didn't care- I'm a hockey girl. Talk to me during Wild playoffs), then put them on, excited that I had finally finished them. I noticed the fail right away when the thumb cut off way before it was supposed to.
&#(@!!!!
It's just barely long enough to maybe work, but as they're going to be my fall-back, good mittens for awhile, I want them above the "it'll work" status. Tonight they're going to take a step back, get fixed, and then hopefully (finally) these stupid mittens will be done.
Another thing I'm working on is a special something for my Mom's birthday, which is today.I wanted to have it done for Christmas, but finals kind of got in the way and it had to be postponed for a bit. I'm making her a "Mother-Daughter" scrapbook of just the two of us, hopefully ready for when I go to the cities this weekend to celebrate her birthday. It'll be a fun project to put together, and I'm excited to see what she thinks of it.
Time to finish homework reading for tomorrow before getting hard to work on this.
Stay warm, everyone. :)

Olympic Task

School and work have kept me pretty busy this week (not to mention ice climbing on Monday!) and I haven't gotten any farther on my mittens. I do, however, have a long stretch of working at VE coming up this weekend, so hopefully they'll finally materialize and I can stop wearing my winter camping mittens everywhere.
After the mittens, I've got a bit more of a task ahead of me. The Winter Olympics are coming up in February, and I've joined the Ravelympics on Ravelry to attempt to accomplish a knitting goal, and I have two possibilities in mind.
First of all is using gift yarn to make the Seneca sweater by Jared Flood (his blog, brooklyntweed, is in my sidebar links). As of right now, I own one sweater that I've made for myself after knitting for about 3 or 4 years. This pattern is perfect for the yarn I have, and I know at some point I'll knit it, it's just a matter of when.
The possibility that I'm thinking will be most likely, however, is challenging myself to finish my Dad's Dale of Norway sweater that I started over a year ago. It's been sitting in the time out box for a very, very long time now, and this seems like the perfect time to bring it out to finish. I've gotten (what I believe to be) the hardest part out of the way- the endless 13 1/2 inches of blank stockingnette stitch over and over in navy blue, and it's only fun colorwork from here on out. Plus the sleeves will feel like a cinch compared to the arm, right?The whole point of making this sweater is that it's for my Dad, commemorating the Olympic Miracle team that he loved and which meant so much to him. I think it'll be pretty memorable for me to work on and finish this sweater during the Vancouver Olympics- not because I believe the USA team will win, but because these Olympics are being held in Canada, and my Dad is in part of his soul a Canadian (I think I am a little bit, too, having collectively traveled over a year of my life in Canada- I absolutely love it there).
It's going to be a bit of a challenge, but I think I can do it, and after having this thing be undone for so long, I'm pretty sure that I have to do it.
Darn it.
Bring it on, sweater.
I am going to take you down.