I have waited so long

Today is a day I’m catching up with stuff I’ve been putting off for a while. Like darning, changing my sheets, upending my hamper and looking what’s what, studying vocab, organize away all the random half-balls of yarn I have hanging around everywhere, vacuum… all those little household chores I cannot fucking stand.

However, with the hamper-upending came the discovery that I have about 10 pairs of handknit socks more than the five or six I wear on a regular basis, they were just sort of forgotten in my big ol’ hamper. Also, I own more underpants than I can remember buying, ever. I need to do more laundry.

Another thing I also need to do is stop procrastinating when it comes to darning. After sleeping on it for six weeks or so, the teeny tiny hole in my bedsheet got so big there’s now a two-inch seam in the middle of the sheet. It’s a good, sturdy one, but damn.

The second life lesson of the day is that I am really, really awesome. Anyone remember the Wilf’s Hat that I did? Well, I made another one, widened the cables, shortened the intervals between cable rows, and did some perfect crown shaping. Usually, that’s my weak point, I can’t figure out how to incorporate it gracefully into the pattern. But I charted a bit while watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and laid a lifeline I didn’t end up needing, and I’m pretty damn charmed by what I whipped up.

Excuse me while I go sit in the corner all smug about how the small cables run straight up all the way and the big cables cable one more time before gracefully running into a point and then there’s only one more row before the whole thing is done. Truth to be told, I’m pretty much insufferable right now.

I’ve already charted everything out, but I’m still waiting on what the girl who did up the first chart says before I (hopefully) wrestle it all in a nice, tidy PDF and put it up here.

The yarn is Lang merino something-or-other. I don’t like it quite as much as the Lana Grossa merino, and I don’t like the color quite as much as the bright red, but it’s still an okay yarn and I don’t need two bright red hats. (Not that I need any more hats, period, but… y’know. At least none of those turned up in the hamper.)

Also, this little thing also makes me feel very smug and crafty, even though technically it’s a travesty, because, a crochet holder for DPNs? There’s gotta be some law against that. Still, it’s kinda handy.

Now, more cleaning and darning and folding laundry and possibly even some cooking, to wear down that damn smug smile in my face.

Plus, Grey’s Anatomy is starting back up! And next week, SPN too!

And I’ve rocked them all

Kay. I might not have managed to clean up my room. BUT!

I finally photographed the TARDIS potholder. And I did it in a way that makes it seem like it’s not as wavy as it actually is.

I cleaned up and reorganized the spice cupboard. We have a lot of spices. It’s kind of insane, considering we’re students.

I learned some vocab and managed to reduce the words I didn’t know from around 200 to around 100. And then I labeled all my clothes and accessories because I can finally name them. Article AND material.

I cleaned the kitchen. Wait, cleaned? I basically spit-shined it. I also made some pasta with a pretty good pumpkin-tomato sauce.

And I finished a washcloth. I started that one yesterday, my great plan, yadda yadda yadda, and I kept ripping it back. It was weird, cause it wasn’t supposed to be that HARD – I mean, come on, a washcloth shouldn’t make me want to tear out my hair. But I did it.

I’m now proud owner of a washcloth proclaiming, in big block letters, BITCH.

The matching JERK cloth is for tomorrow.

And that’s the only thing I don’t have a picture of. Yet.

 

And the most exciting thing about today: DOCTOR WHO: WATERS OF MARS IS OUT.

When the moon is in the 7th house

It’s 3.20, the middle of the night, I still have a cold from hell, and instead of sleeping it off, I’m blogging. Marvellous.

I still haven’t decided what to post as 100th Ravelry project. This is starting to sound rather silly even to me, but I just can’t. decide. (whether you should live or die, oh you’ll probably go to heaven *does Master dance routine*) However, I have worked on Muir a bit more, done about three and a half rounds on the TARDIS socks, crocheted an entire TARDIS potholder AND done a Baktus scarf in only three days, so the cold’s at least good for something.

No, really. Knitting makes me forget about my headache. At least a bit. At least if it’s garter stitch.

Now, crochet is a whole ‘nother thing. Especially cotton, which isn’t my favoritest material at the best of times. But potholders kind of require cotton, and I found some in just the right shade of Tardis-blue, and potholders are quick… except I hadn’t anticipated how fiddly this was going to be, and how much I’d be ripping back.

I don’t think I’ve ever ripped back so much. Especially not on what is essentially a rectangle with a tiny bit of shaping on the top and bottom. And those weren’t even the parts I kept ripping back. No, at one point, I had this clever idea about crocheting in the windows. So I ripped back twelve rows, crocheted the windows in, then realized it wasn’t going to work, and ripped the twelve rows back again. Started going on in plain blue, realized after eight rows that I’d missed a single edge stitch, ripped back. Went on for six rows, discovered I’d missed the edge stitch on the other side. And so on. And when it got to crocheting on the doors and windows and all that shebang… oh, man. The windows were quite easy, because I crocheted the panes in white embroidery floss, sewed them on, and then just edged them. But the rectangles under them? A nightmare to match up. I ripped back every single one of them (except for the last one, I think) at least five times.

And I still haven’t put ‘POLICE BOX’ on the top. I might just skip that part. Seriously. And so something simpler for the other one. Like… a Dalek. Or make the other one a simple blue rectangle, because there’s only one TARDIS. (that’s actually a pretty good idea… to avoid Belgium!)

Then, Baktus. I chose it because it was simple garter stitch, I kinda needed entertainment while I was out useless on the couch, and everyone in the Gut Betucht shawl/scarf comm on Ravelry was absolutely raving about it. So I wound some HandArt (in Vulkan), with my sister holding the skein… the first obstacle. Honestly. Never met such a dispirited swift-person in my life. Kept losing strands, kept getting tangled up, and didn’t move an inch so the whole occasion took way longer than it should have. I’d venture to say that it didn’t take much longer for Saskia and me to wind 100g of lace yarn, and that’s twice the length of a measly 100g of sock yarn. So, yeah.

Now that I’m finished with Baktus, I have to say… maybe the yarn was a bad choice for this. I dunno. I do love this yarn, I made my Autumn Lace Scarf out of it last year around this time (hooo, that’s creepy! finished baktus exactly a year after ALS!), but somehow with this pattern, it looks a bit like camouflage. It might just be Baktus, though, cause seriously? I don’t know why everybody seems to be so absolutely crazy about it.

I mean, it’s obviously an easy pattern, nothing much to memorize, customizable to no end, you just have to weigh your yarn so you start decreasing at 50%… but let’s face it, it’s a freaking garter stitch triangle. It’s nothing special! I mean a kind of special that goes beyond the holy-crap-I’m-making-fabric-from-a-bit-of-string special. It’s not special in the way that you just have to grit your teeth and plow through the miles and miles of garter stitch, until your persistence pays off in the end. It’s not some great design feature. There isn’t this extraordinary spark of design in it that has you gasping and staring and exclaiming to your non-understanding family, ‘I can’t believe she took this one stitch pattern and this other stitch pattern and this shape and combined into something totally different and unique’. It’s a freaking garter stitch triangle. In 420m of yarn. Which is not much at all.

So, dear Baktus designer, if you read this, don’t take this personally. Please. I did enjoy knitting your pattern, but, you know. It’s not like nobody’s come up with something like this before you.

**

So, anyway. I’m going to London on Monday! Which is massively exciting and equally terrifying, considering I haven’t done any preparation at all due to being all congested and feverish and generally being a lazy layabout. So tomorrow… well, today, actually, I’ll have to go to the bank to get me some good ol’ Pounds Sterling (legal tender, thank you, Michael McIntyre), wash some clothes, write up a packing and a to-do list, wire some money about, apply for voting by mail, call a company because of my broken bedspring, properly resew the buttons on my leather jacket cause they’re loose, and generally do a lot of random shit I’ve been procrastinating away for about a week.

Oh, and I have to really get cracking on the (not yet cast on) Rose’s Wrist Warmers, because for some reason I did not pack any and what was I thinking, wanting to go to London in September without any sort of hand protection? For all I know, it could be freezing with 24/7 rain when we’re there, and that is just not acceptable without mitts. Good thing I bought that random yarn, it might be just right for this.

Shut up and brush the glitter off

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our latest installment of the Holy Crap That’s A Really Good Deal Time! *cue fanfares*

I went to the Wollmarkt in Hamm to get some kitchen cotton for making TARDIS potholders. I did buy two balls of pretty much the perfect blue, plus white and blue embroidery floss. And a crochet hook.

And then I went to the section where they have the marked down and really cheap yarn that you can sometimes find real gems in for ridiculously little money.

As it turns out, surprisingly enough I’m not the kind of person who will buy absolutely anything if a ball is under one buck. I resisted the temptation! And am currently researching what in god’s name I could make out of yellow sport weight cotton/linen/poly they had for 75 CENTS per 100g skein, just so I can go back and buy at least five or six or all of the skeins they have left.

But I did go a bit wobbly in the knees at the creamy white Jaeger Langora. 70% lambswool, 20% angora, 10% nylon. 75 cents for 20 grams. (I just noticed that now. they’re as big as a regular 50g ball. wtf.) A perfect little halo of fuzz. Buttery soft. And, judging from the lovely shade of puce of the label, maybe a bit of an antique.

Now excuse me, I’ll have to go and find out how old exactly this yarn I bought is.

[aaaand I have a ‘crochet’ category. Shame upon me!]