Promised knitting

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I said I’d finished something. And of course it was the baby blanket. I’m sure no one was guessing. I just spent today weaving in all the ends and cleaning up the look of it. Now I just have to block the sucker. At least I think… I haven’t actually checked to see if this type of yarn would actually benefit from a good blocking or not.

It seems that another baby sweater pattern made out of this same yarn called for some blocking, so I think that this baby blanket will benefit.

How is my woven scarf going you might be asking? Well, not so good at the moment. Josh and I went off to Pacific Fabrics & Crafts and got myself some dpns in size 4, but I managed to break one of those on the first night. -sigh- The whole evening started out with some issues anyway, because I couldn’t decide on a stitch pattern for the short ends of the scarf. I needed something other than garter stitch, and when I finally started knitting it up I didn’t end up liking it.

Off to a new stitch pattern: moss stitch. I think that one will work better, but I still had to rip out the project to put the needles back in the case. I called Hilltop this afternoon, and they have a size 4 12″ circular, so I’m thinking that I might be able to stretch the stitches around that instead and eliminate my awful ladder problem that I can’t seem to get rid of!

I know I should be practiced at this by now, but I just can’t seem to pull tight enough to get rid of them. I’ve tried the whole needles-are-right-next-to-each-other thing, and I’ve tried the whole pulling-until-you-think-the-yarn-will-snap thing, but neither of those worked, and those were the only tips I’ve heard of. So my new idea is just to switch to the circular and see if that works. And yes, I know I’m cheating.

Oh, and I figured out how I want to package up the finished baby blanket. The size is such that I can’t really make it into a nice small square shape… it’s either a floppy rectangle or it’s a too tight mini-square. Either way, I’m going to roll it up like a rug and just tie some string around it and be done.

Also, all the books that Josh and I borrowed at the Bellevue Library yesterday have been lots of fun. Of course I got all knitting books, heh.

DKNY makes poker chips?

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When Josh and I were off in North Bend on Sunday, Josh’s mom asked if we played card games. Of course we do! Well, it turns out that some time ago she got a “gag” gift (which wasn’t even funny really) from some friend awhile back, and she had no use for it.

It was a little James Bond-style briefcase (a very mini one, maybe 6″-7″ across) that’s shiny silver metal. It even has a handle and a little lock key. Inside? Black and white poker chips, two decks of cards, a dealer chip, and two black dice.

Why would DKNY make such a thing? Why would someone give it to Teena as a gag gift? Nobody knows.

Either way, Josh and I now have a portable poker set I suppose. I haven’t yet decided whether it’s useful.

In other news today, I spent a lot of time at Tully’s this afternoon (more on that tomorrow), and after I was done there I found Josh standing out by the road outside our apartment, waiting for me.  Apparently he thought they’d be taking one of the (many) tower cranes in Bellevue down today, and he wanted to watch.  Well, it didn’t happen today, but the makeshift elevators on the side of the new tower have been removed, so it won’t be long before they do take it down.

Of course, his new monocular will come in handy for that won’t it?

Not much else happened today.  Josh made a box of flavored rice (heh) and sausage for dinner, which was actually quite good.  I had a lot of orange juice.

Oh, and I re-loaded my shuffle with Top 200 Hits of the 90’s.  Good times.

A new book? Again?!

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1000 Great Knitting Motifs

Yep! I got a new book. It’s called 1000 Great Knitting Motifs, and I got it at Borders.

Josh and I had just come from REI in Redmond Town Center, where Josh bought a very nice monocular for himself ($30, but he had the return credit for a failed umbrella christmas present). I immediately wanted to go to Borders and remind myself of their knitting section to see if it was better/worse than Barnes & Noble (better). During my browsing I found this book, and Josh agreed to get it ($20) because, “well, I got a toy today, so should you.” As we walked up to the counter, I remembered that I had a few cents left on a Borders gift card that I got from my dad in exchange for cookies, and decided that this would be a good time to use the rest up. When she ran the card, it turned out that there was enough on the card to pay for the whole book! Can you believe it? That was an exciting time, although my attempts to convince Josh that I deserved another book fell on deaf ears. -grin-

Some of the stuff I’ll never use, but there’s a very cute sheep motif, and some other fun stuff (including letters! Messages on scarves? Hmm). The sheep gave me a good idea though. I’m going to get some green yarn, and make some wrist warmers for Josh’s mom (Mother’s Day is coming up and all) with the green background and sheep on the back of the hand. Cute huh? I’m going to use fuzzy white yarn for the body of the sheep, and a cool loop stitch that creates big fuzzy loops. That should look quite cute.

I don’t know what else I’m going to use it for, other than for cool borders and whatnot for my knitted bags.

st-knitting-6.jpg

Oh, and I’ve tried starting the woven scarf two times now. It might be skinnier than I think it will be. At first I used my fun Big Book of Knitting Stitch Patterns and found a stitch pattern that I liked (for the ends of the scarf) called Honeycomb, but after I did a few rows I decided that I didn’t like it and frogged it. Now I’m trying Moss stitch, which I saw a fellow LiveJournal use, and it looked nice. At least it’s better than Garter stitch. Oof.

I have more knitting news, but since I’m too lazy to take a picture right now I’m going to blog about it tomorrow. There will actually be sunlight for good picture-taking tomorrow anyway.

Chow Fun = Yum

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Why wouldn’t I love chow fun?  My dad and I had some beef chow fun at this little Chinese restaurant in Bellevue here, just about a block and a half from our studio/dad’s work.  We had that, some fried rice with Chinese sausages and egg, some won ton soup, and some spring rolls.

Does it say something when all the tables are set up with forks and spoons, and they just leave us with that, but when a “real” Chinese person comes in they automatically hand them some chopsticks?  I always find it amusing because I know that my dad and I totally don’t look Chinese for the most part, so I don’t blame them.  But still.  Really, I know how to use chopsticks (although I was happy I didn’t have to navigate the fried rice with them after a few minutes).

My dad was nice and let me take home the leftovers, so Josh will be really excited about that when he gets home.  -grin-

What to do the rest of the afternoon before Josh gets home from work/the grocery store?  I’m thinking I’ll watch a movie of some kind, but I’m not sure what yet.  Knitting will be a priority for sure.

Apparently the boat is still rocky regarding Kate and her dad Doug moving back up to Washington.  He’s in danger of failing one of his classes, and even if he passes it he might not have a high enough GPA to get his degree.  I still haven’t talked to Kate in forever, so I’m not even sure if she’s excited or disappointed with how things are going.

Maybe I should try and call her again… her funky sleep schedule usually means she’s asleep when I try to call during the day.  Wish me luck.

Much progress!

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As you might be able to tell, the blanket is getting huge. Well, for a baby-sized thing anyway. I’m really liking it so far, but I think I’ll definitely have to block it when I’m done. I’m sure I’m not the only one noticing the waves in the fabric.

Still very exciting though! I’m on about row 12 of 36 for the 6th (and final) pattern repeat. We’re getting close!

And since I happen to already have the yarn I’ll need for the awesome woven scarf, I’m extra-motivated to finish this blanket early, just so I can get started on the scarf!

Hopefully I won’t find too many goodies at the Expo this April. Oof.

I'm hungry.

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Josh and I spent all of yesterday in North Bend so he could help out at camp and play with the big toys. I spent the whole day knitting, go figure.

His parents were really nice (as they always are) and invited us to dinner with them at the North Bend Bar & Grill. It was pretty good… I ended up ordering the same thing I had last time, the bacon cheeseburger (get their fries…. yum!). It’s odd, but Teena and I often order the same things at restaurants. At Red Robin we always both get the guacamole burger, and here at the NB B&G it was the same thing again. Oh, and we always both order iced tea to drink. Odd times.

So Josh and I get home around 9pm after dinner, and decide to watch a movie called 3-Iron which was directed and written by a guy named Ki-duk Kim, who also did that movie that Josh and I love, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring.

3-Iron was actually very good. I don’t remember where I heard about it, but I know that the library here in Bellevue has a copy for loan. Which reminds me, I signed up online for a King County library card, which should be really fun. Lots ‘o knitting books there and movies/CDs to borrow. Yay!

At first we were worried that there wouldn’t be any subtitles, but it turned out that there were, and we wouldn’t have really needed them anyway. The main two characters don’t say a word throughout the whole movie! But that was a really neat aspect of it I think. The story goes that a young guy goes around breaking into the homes of people that are on vacation and stays there for a night or two. To thank them he does their laundry, fixes broken appliances, etc. They otherwise wouldn’t know he’d been there, and most people didn’t notice. One day he finds a woman in the home he just broke into, who is the victim of an abusive relationship.

You can guess where that goes.

Anyway, I would definitely suggest checking out that movie, including Spring…

After the movie ended I got this awful stomach-ache, which unfortunately kept me up tossing and turning all night. Even Benadryl didn’t work putting me to sleep. It has finally started to dissipate this morning, partially because my mom had the brilliant idea to get some Pepto… the pink stuff. Hrm. But yeah, they offered to pick some up on the way to work, and they dropped it off. I had some and I do say I feel a bit better.

This afternoon my dad and I are supposed to go to lunch again. Hopefully he’s in a good mood eh? The only slightly sad part is that he asked if it was alright to invite his female Chinese co-workers, which would be fine if I knew them. I’ve maybe met them once, and I’m not in the mood to do the whole “so what are you doing these days?” conversation, you know?

That’s about all that’s been going on here. I’m going to try and lightly snack on something until I get a call from my dad for lunch. Maybe if I can get my butt up I can take a picture of my in-progress knitting. I got a ton done yesterday, enough so that I made a pact not to knit when we got home during the movie, in order to save my hands for knitting today. Oof.

Odeo!

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Okay, so I wasn’t going to mention it, but I’ve added an Odeo button to the sidebar.  Why is this cool?

Well, because you can leave me an audio comment!  You can use your microphone and record a comment, that’ll get sent to me.  I think that’s totally awesome.

Of course, I can’t take credit for finding this (free) service.  I first heard about it on Brenda Dayne’s podcast Cast-On (Is it about knitting?  Uh, duh.  Oh.)… fun podcast by the way.

So, in light of all this new information, what are you going to do with it?  Record an audio comment of course.

What are you waiting for?  Get going!

(Haha, I’m just kidding around.  No one really has to leave an audio comment, but boy does it look fun!  I haven’t gotten one yet myself, and I’m still slightly above recording one and sending it to myself, which is starting to look nicer and nicer.  Hrm.)

Lunch!

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I called my dad this morning and he suggested lunch at the gyro place that’s now at the mall. Yum.

New plan for today:

Knit while watching a movie.
Go to lunch with my dad.
Come home and do the dishes.

So that last part isn’t the most fun, but hey. If I get to go out in the sun, and I get some good knitting in it’s a good day right?

I’m thinking that maybe I should have a breakfast category. That sounds good.

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Lunch got canceled.  I might go and knit on the mini-deck or something.

New Layout

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If some of you haven’t noticed, I’ve set up a new layout for my blog.  I actually kind of like it, and I’m getting more and more used to it as it sits there, heh.

I forgot to check with my dad last night to see if we were going to be meeting for breakfast this morning, so I think we’re going to miss out this time.  He usually forgets his cell phone, and of course when I’ve tried to call him this morning I haven’t been able to reach him.  Oh well.

But it is wonderfully nice outside, so I’m looking forward to maybe going upstairs again to the mini-terrace and knitting for a bit.  Who knows.

Oh, and the other day we managed to update our chat client on the iMac, Adium.  I love this chat client.  I haven’t actually been able to mess around with any of the new stuff, but it looks like I can now go into invisible mode, and set my status to show what I’m listening to in iTunes (which is what it’s at right now).  Pretty cool, huh?

My pseudo breakfast this morning consists of  raisin bran and milk.  It could use some marshmallows.

I finished a book!

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Dara Joy - Mine To Take Don’t you love the cover? Heh. I was reading an article from Book Slut talking about the Worst Book Covers Ever. Or something like that. Based on the article about this particular book, I thought it would be great to go for some incredibly cheesy fluffy romance reading, and what do you know, I was able to find it on BookMooch right away. Someone actually wanted to give it away. I know, I can’t believe it either. /sarcasm

So how was the book? More romance-y than choc-full-of-sex than I’d expected, looking at the cover, but that was actually a really nice thing. It turns out that this is a book in a series, which I didn’t really know at the time, but since the author claims to try and make all her books good stand alone reading, we should be all good. She was pretty right, I didn’t have any trouble just diving in as they say.

Was it any good? Well, if you like cheese, half-men half-cat people who can’t help it but be sensual and sexual all the time, and a female lead who is newly discovering said “traits,” then I suppose this book is for you. I had a bit of trouble getting around the half-man half-cat thing, but apparently the only benefit of that is more than the standard 5 senses, extreme horniness, and the ability to morph into a cat at will, rendering you healthy if you happen to be hurt. Sounds good to me. Of course these half-men half-cat people (called “Familiars” in the book) are quite desirable pet-type things, and the rich folk will spend lots of money trying to “capture” one (which, of course is “against their nature”. Heh).

Ask me to borrow the book sometime if you’re interested, but that’s about all I have to say about it myself. Very light reading indeed. But fun.