Crafty Kitty

I might be bored today at work, but is that any reason to peruse My Space for people that went to the same high school as me?  Um, no – I don’t think that’s a good reason at all.  Sadly I did and sadly I walked away from the experience mostly scared (and somewhat scarred).  I don't know exactly what I thought I'd find out there.  There are a number of people I know, mostly a number that I didn’t want to ever think about ever again.  I guess I thought it might be interesting to see if any people that I was actually kind of sad to have lost touch with were still out there: there was ONE.  The run down is:

- Scary boy who dated my friend throughout high school.  Very, very scary - big weirdo - he actually took the time to latch hook a pillow of Eeyore for my friend.  What high school boy does that?  He, at the age of 23, claims to have never been drunk before.  I find this unusual – as I had seen him in a bar a summer or two ago.  I know I wasn’t drunk when I saw him, more than likely I was stoned, but I was also very distraught as I had just seen the guy that I had been dating for SIX months at a concert holding another girls hand while he was still presumably dating me (LONG, dumb, idiotic story for another time).  I was waiting for my friend to get out of the bathroom so we could leave the bar and I was tossing my wallet up into the air and catching it as I tend to do when I’m bored and waiting for someone (and when I’m very obviously trying to ignore people I went to high school with).  I think I dropped my wallet and they took this to assume that I was drunk, instead of highly uncoordinated, and started yelling, “You’re drunk.”  I just gave them a look of death and went outside.  Yeah – not cool.

- Scary girl who played clarinet in band with me and who very obviously got a boob job based on the picture I saw on her profile.  This girl was flat as a board and now she claims that her “boobies” are her best attribute.  Apparently she works in the “fashion” industry.  I like to use that term loosely as it seems she works as a personal shopper at Macy’s in Chicago.  Good lord.

- Two girls that were quite popular in high school, one who was mostly nice to me, one who was mostly not (although I swear she had a thing for my older brother), who apparently both live in San Diego now and enjoy posting pictures from middle school and high school.  When I saw some of them I seriously wanted to barf.

- Crazy Christian freak boy who I don’t remember being so into Christ during high school.  Apparently lives in Nebraska.  Dear lord, why would you want to move to Nebraska?  This was my major elementary school crush from 3^rd-5^th grade and now I look at him and think that he’s totally gay except extremely closeted because of the whole aforementioned being a crazy Christian thing. (Now would be a good time for me to say that I do not think all Christians are crazy nor do I think they are all homophobes – but seriously, I can tell just looking at his My Space page that he IS one of the crazy ones who don’t accept people for who they are.)

+ The only positive was finding my aforementioned best friend from 7^th and 8^th grade (in the Myth of You and Me post).  She seems like she’s doing well and is happy and didn’t turn into some psycho crazy person so good for her.  I wouldn’t expect anything less.

So let this be a lesson to you all to not go nosing around My Space unless you really want to be confronted with strange memories of years past.

This is how my cat Taz decides to help me while I knit - by using my skein as a pillow.

I am proud to present Ella in all her glory:

Date began: December 26, 2005
Date finished: January 18, 2006
Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot in colorway Lupine
Needles: Size 8's
Finished size: 78 inches wide, 29 inches long

I am so very proud of this finished object.  It was one of those projects that was a pleasure to knit from start to finish.  She may have gotten slightly (and I emphasize the word slightly) tedious at the end.  I don't think I ever took the time to count the number of stitches that I had on the last rows but I know it was A LOT.  Even then, I knew I was so close to finishing, and I was so happy with the results thus far that I just kept on plowing through.  And I can't say enough about the Mountaincolors yarn I used.  It was so soft and so worth the $20 a skein.  I had never really bought yarn that expensive before (I like to keep it under $10 a skein) but I am so happy I decided on this.  It was calling my name at the yarn store and I could not for the life of me resist.  YAY for finished objects!

I've also made some more progress on the Pinwheel Baby Blanket.  It's a pretty mindless knit - great to do while watching some TV or a movie.  I was going to work on it tonight, but I have a knitting project that I need to get started on for a wine themed swap on Craftster so I need to get cracking on that.

The boy made it very clear to me over the weekend that he wanted a pair of socks from me, so I started on one on Sunday night when I got sick of the baby blanket.  I want to finish them in time to give them to him for Valentine's Day.  Don't think that should be a problem, as I've been taking them to work and knitting on them during my lunch break.  So portable and so fun!

The getaway weekend was a rousing success.  Since I'm not so much a fan of little children who run around unsupervised, I thought I might get a little annoyed at the water park but it was actually not a problem at all.  The boy and I went on many slides and floated around the lazy river a time or two.  We had a fantabulous dinner at Marley's, a Carribean themed restaurant, and fruity drunks at the bar at the hotel (where they're all about the bar tricks).  I couldn't have asked for more!

I might have missed my new goal of posting weekly to the blog but I blame it on deciding to start a job hunt. Not that my current job is so incredibly horrible by an stretch of the imagination but I've been looking for a change of pace, a change of scenery and maybe something related to the field that I've decided to go back to school for. Updating my resume and writing cover letters took up a good chunk of my time last week. And I also planned a mini dinner party so I had to take the time to go food shopping and seriously clean my apartment. I don't need people to know that I'm sort of on the piggish side when it comes to my living space.

SIDE NOTE - If you're making Mexican food anytime and want a really good side dish to make with it I highly suggest you check out this recipe which was to die for. SERIOUSLY.

I did however manage to get some knitting in and I made it to Stitch 'n Bitch which was again super fun. I'm going to try to make it this week and every week from now on. I know it will be slightly more difficult once my class begins, which is actually this Thursday, but it is still an admirable goal. The kind of sucky thing is that I started knitting the Jaywalker sock last week while I was at SnB and sadly I didn't check my gauge and it was all off and plus I decided I didn't really dig the yarn I was working with so I had to rip it all out. It's so sad when you see an hour and a half's worth of work go bye bye. I bought some Dye Your Own sock yarn from Knit Picks and once I dye it that's what I plan on using. I also have a bunch of mohair to dye for the Dye Your Own sweater from the Stitch 'n Bitch book. My weekends are pretty full for the next few weeks but I'm setting aside a weekend to do it in February. I also need to find a big ass pot at a thrift store so I can use it for dying the yarn as you are NEVER supposed to use the stuff you actually cook with. Needless to say, I don't even have a pot large enough that I actually use for cooking purposes so I need one anyways. The boy and I had plans to get our thrift on this weekend but he ended up having to work which worked out sort of well as I got a lot of knitting in.

I am almost done with this here Ella. She's turning out GOR-GE-OUS and I'm hoping to finish her this week. I kind of want to finish it by the weekend because I'm going out of town this weekend and want to have something pretty to wear to dinner. Granted I'm only going to Wisconsin Dells to Kalahari (it was my Christmas present from the boy!), but I do know we'll go somewhere half way nice for dinner one night so I might as well debut her then. That is if I can get her done in time. I'm on the sixth repeat and I have 8 more rows to go of increases plus 2 rows of knit. But I have tomorrow and Wednesday at SnB to finish her off so I think I'll be able to manage.

This is a more accurate picture of the colors.  It's actually more purple than it is blue.

My next project in the queue is the Pinwheel Baby Blanket for my friends who are expecting in March. I couldn't for the life of me fall asleep last night but I didn't want to work on Ella anymore after spending a good portion of the day on her so I cast on and got a few rounds done. I need to switch to circulars but my size 8s are currently being used on Ella, which I suppose is good motivation to get her done so I can continue to work on this. They are decorating the baby's room in a green-y kind of jungle theme so I thought this yarn would match nicely. Plus, they're having a boy so the blue works well too. I really like it thus far!

One last thing - I need to give a big shout out to Laura from Scooter Knits who was awesome enough to purchase one of my knitting needle cases from the last post.  It was great to finally meet someone who I've only ever really conversed with through the comments section on our blogs.  She works at a neat yarn shop about 10 minutes away from where I work so I'm sure I'll be seeing her again when I go off my yarn diet.

I did manage to knit and sew a little bit over my holiday break from work.  The Ella shawl is coming along nicely.  I've decided to make it in the traditional triangular shape because I'm pretty sure I don't have enough yarn to make it the way the pattern calls for.  I'm on the fourth repeat of section two.  I'm thinking that I'll do a fifth repeat and then possibly half of another one.  Actually, I should probably just make it the size that uses up all the yarn I have.  Here is my progress thus far:

I've also sewed a few double point needle cases.  The green one I think I'm going to keep for myself because the colors kind of didn't work out quite like I thought they would but I like it enough for myself.  The other two I will most likely sell once I get an Etsy shop up.  I've been meaning to do that for ages but haven't gotten around to do.  It was one of my goals for the new year.  I prefer to call them goals as opposed to resolutions because somehow it seems like more of a failure to not meet a resolution to me.  I set little goals for myself all the time but don't necessarily meet them so it's less of a let down.  Which is rather sad.  It's the big goals I strive for.  Anyhow, here are the needle cases: