Tinking's evil cousin

Now I'm not going to lie, I hate tinking. I will do all things possible to get around it, mostly by just pulling the thing off the needles and ripping back. But I have found something even more annoying than tinking. It's undoing a sewn bindoff. I thought that I had finished my Endpaper hat, so I started to bind off. But after finishing a quarter of it, I looked at what I had done. It was too loose, and had ruffled. It was all pointed out to me by my mom, who also commented that the brim didn't cover my ears, and should be longer. Once again she is right.
So I'm sitting here undoing the sewn bind off, which I predict will take me quite a while. When I'm done I'll knit a few more rows, then bind off. Properly this time.

Romni Boxing Day Sale!

So yesterday was Romni Wools annual Boxing Day sale, where the entire store is 25% off. Last year I barely made it, this year I made sure to be there in the morning. I arrived with my mom at about 10:30, before my cousins and my aunt since I knew that I would take much more time than they would. It took a good hour or two for me to finally get out of there. And here are my final choices.

First off was four balls of Fortissima Socka, two red and two gray. Solids so that they will be good for cables and lace work and all sorts of wonderfull things.7 balls of Sisu Fantasy to make Frost Flowers and Leaves. The thing is going to be 'effing huge since I'm using sock weight instead of lace weight. But I couldn't find any laceweight that I liked, so I bought this instead! Oh well, I need something like it, and I am determined to make a big lace shawl this year.
Two balls of Lambs Pride Bulky in Fushia to make a big ribbed scarf.
Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush, three circular needles, tapestry needles and I also got a set of metal dpns, but they are already being used to knit the brim of my hat. The two bigger needles are to knit the shawl.
These two balls, Lambs Pride Bulky in Lotus Pink, and Nature Spun in Grey Heather, are for Secret Santa stuffed animals. The pink will be Womb, and the grey will be Buddy. Buddy has a head now, and might get finished today even, but womb will have to wait until I can get the size up of needles, it's just not working with what I have right now.
Well that's my pretty satisfactory haul. I have a something in mind for all of it, though those last two will give me a large amount of leftovers.... What's a stash for but to add to?

Now with 100% more pictures...

I finally feel like I can blog properly. My parents gifted me with a very sexy new digital camera for Christmas, which will greatly enhance this bloggine experience. I've kind of felt like I'm pretending, since a knitting blog isn't much without pictures. I digress. The above picture also shows the Endpaper Mitts by Eunny that I knit last week. These babies are so perfect, that I've decided to knit a matching hat.

I took this picture this morning, and have since finished all the increases and have started the main part of the hat. I should be done before school starts again on the 3rd. Back to school in style!


Speaking of the gifting season, my Aunt Kathy gave me this gorgeous Malabrigo worsted merino, and a pair of super cute needles with polka dot ends. The colours are Bijou Blue and Ladrillo, simply gorgeous!

Thats enough pictures for now. Tomorrow .... Socks!

In the end....

I only knit three gifts for this holdiay season. A plain black hat for my dad, socks for my mum and legwarmers for my cousin. If I knit a hat for my dad next year too, it definentally needs to have cables or something, it's just so boring! I mean, it's a nice hat and all. But it is very unexceptional. The legwarmers rock. They are k2p2 rib, in really chunky yarn. I would keep these for myself! Maybe I'll make myself some..... They literally took one day to make, very easy.

Well, three that are actually ready for tomorrow. I have three more pairs of socks that must be made at some point. I have 1.75 socks knit already, but they aren't a pair. The unfinished one is for my grandfather, with size 10.5 feet, which translates to miles and miles of boring stockinette. It is almost done though, with the majority of the knitting done in the past few days. Mostly thanks to watching The Curse of the Golden Flower on Friday, and Kinky Boots last night. The one finished sock it a modified Jaywalker for my friend Claire. For my grandmother I am planning to knit knitty's Hedra in a heathered gray. I should finish the grandpa sock tomorrow, so then I can cast on for the first Hedra. I'm figuring that the Hedra should be a comparatively quick knit, so that I can imediately cast on for the second of Claire's socks, ready to be exchanged on the 13th of January. The grandparent socks will be finished when they get finished.

I did finish Eunny's Endpaper mitts. I added two stitches to each side of the pattern repeat, and increased the selvege stitches to two on each side instead of one. I've worn them lots already, especially since it's not that cold yet. They took me four and a half days to knit, two and a bit days each, definentally one of those fire under my ass projects. I've started a matching hat twice. The first time was bottom up, but I realised that I would invariably have issues with the way that the pattern would look when the decreased were put into the mix. So I started again from the top. It's looking pretty snappy. I have increased it to about four diamonds across already. At first I increased every row, and then at three diamonds across I switched to everyother row. After the hat, if I'm not completely mindnumbingly bored of knitting diamonds, then I will cast on for a scarf.

Christmas Knitting

I started Eunny's Endpaper Mitts last night, while watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. It took me a good 45 minutes to just wind the hank of Lorna's Laces I'm using into a ball. I think I may have to rethink that though. I'm using it and some black Fortissima Socka, but the contrast might be a bit too much. Plus the gauge is completely off from the pattern. I didn't like how it looked at guage, and knitting sock yarn on 4mm just felt wrong. So I'm moving down to 3mm. But I have to add stitches for that to work. It's getting to be complicated. Right now I'm just trying to finish the ribbing, on size 2.25mm I've probably knit the ribbing 5 times by now, but this should be the last. I also finally got yarn for my grandmother's socks, the second legwarmer, and my cousin's legwarmers. I really cleaned up!

Chuckanucka

This guy is all mine! I got him today in a Secret Santa from Mike. His name is Chuckanucka and Mike wrote me a letter as well.

Dear Natalie,
I've discovered this Monster just for you because he can do some pretty amazing things!
1. He can protect porters from drunken intruders and annoying converastion!
2. He hates people who steal frying pans and generally scares them away!
3. He loves people who knit!
4. He actually once dated Tinkerbelle, things ended well. They're still good friends!
5. He writes essays for people ... in his head!
6. He makes quite the excellent pillow when you need to sleeeeeep!
7. He can travel overseas with people to protect them from pickpockets.
8. He also scares away seedy European men, but attracts the hot ones.
9. He loves tutus!
10. He knows how to bust a move!
11. He can fight off British history homework!
12. He loves people easily, and eats people he doesn't like!
13. He likes the idea of donship if he's not travelling overseas.
14. He wanted to live with someone super cool!
But most of all he needed a home and who better to give him that than YOU!
Merry Chistmas,
Secret Santa M

Chuckanucka is the perfect cuddling size, and is also super cute! He's an Ugly Doll, except not really, since I don't think that he is ugly at all.

yawn....

My goodness it is late. I am on the verge of my first academic all nighter. I have stayed up all night for various other reasons, Lord of the Rings marathon, the last night of frosh week, Horatio Hornblower movie marathons, the list goes on. But this is the first time I've stayed up to the wee hours doing work. I got a surprisingly large amount of work done. The task at hand was a 2500 word essay on the English Civil War in 1642. I got the word count surprisingly quickly, the final count being 2824, including my works cited and footnotes. I think this is also the first time I've actually exceeded a word count, usually I fall a hundred or so words short. My bigger worry is whether or not the thing makes any sense, but that's less the fault of having written it in the past 24 hours than the fact that I rarely know what I'm trying to say. Not exactly the best thing for university essays. However, I was surprised at how easy it was to write so much compared to my English essays. It is kind of making me think that I maybe should apply to have History as my second major instead of English. There are so many decisions to make! Is a double major and a minor too much? Maybe I could major in Fine Arts Cultural Studies and History and minor in English. But then that would definentally mess up my plans for going to Wales next year. I'm planning having to take at least a few courses in a fifth year, if I did I could totally do a minor.

Enough with my boring academic headaches. My real decision is whether or not to sleep for a few hours before my 10:30 class, or to just stay up untill then. I think I may sleep. I can't think of what I would do for another 4 hours. If I sleep for two, then I can get up, look over the dratted thing, print it off and hand it in, then sleep the rest of the day away before I have to porter from 5-10, after which I plan on getting throughly shmammered. And finally be able to knit without guilt. *le sigh* I can't wait. I can finish Sam's octopus, the hood/scarf, start Kim's minisweater, the bind-off on mom's Baudelaire's, Claire's socks, maybe the monkey backpack. Dear lord I've got a lot of WIP's. And I know that there are more I'm not going to even mention. Tomorrow's portering shift will be the shift of finished objects, on the plate will be the octopus, mom's socks, the backpack and the hood/scarf. All of them are so close to being finished, it's not even funny.

Now I lay me down to sleep....