This is a Peaceful Protest

One of the classes I'm taking, Creative and Critical Fictions, deals with the issues of war, and books as an art medium. For our final project, we had to create a book around a war that was currently being fought. I chose the conflict in Lebanon that has been extended from over the summer. I made a bag, (a book bag, get it?!) that holds all the things I would find useful in a sit-in protest.

The first pocket is the flag of Lebanon, with the word Independence.


Olive branches and Freedom. I think that I will make a bag of this image, maybe to sell. What do you think?

Map of Lebanon and National Unity and Soveriegnty.


Rafik Hariri was assassinated on Valentine's Day in 2005. Much of the protests are a call for authorities to find out who killed him, so it goes with Truth.


All the pockets are bound together like pages.


The first pocket is just two pieces sewed together, the second are and inch wide, and the third is three inches.


I am especially proud of how I got the strap on, D rings and everything!


All the words were hand embroidered, but the images were done on my machine. It was a pain in the butt to sew all the pages together, there was so much fabric everywhere. The project was due last Tuesday, but it only got handed in yesterday because my sewing machine has completely crapped out on me. The thing that holds the bobbin in keeps trying to fly out, and won't stay put. So I no longer have a working machine. Luckily I could use my mom's when I went home for Easter, so all is well in the end.

Grandparent socks, beers and a sleeve

I finally have FO's to show off! These would have been shown earlier, but my camera has been where the cable is not for the past week, so I was not able to. These are the socks I knit for my grandparents, finally finished. The solid grey are for my grandmother, Hedra from Knitty. I don't think I did too many mods, I think I did 12 repeats on the ankle instead of 14. The yarn was Fortissima Socka I believe, which is so soft and cushy. The stripey socks are just a regular old sock, nothing fancy. The only thing is that they are freaking huge, 76 sts. The wierd thing with the yarn is that it didn't stripe evenly, they ended up more like zebra stripes than anything. The yarn might be Regia, but in reality, I can't remember. I do know it was an extra large skein, and I knit both socks from it.

On Friday night I met up with some old friends, and celebrated a first legal drink in Toronto. Matthias and Olivia are siblings, the two blondies, and Pietro is their friend from Italy who has been staying with them since September. We went to the Tap on Bloor , which was muchly fun. Liv was home for the weekend, and hadn't seen her brother since Christmas, in which time she had celebrated a birthday. Moral of the story, we all got shmammered. My knitting for the past week has still been Thermal, and it is trucking along slowly, but steadily. This is about half of the first sleeve. The body has been separated for the sleeves, and now makes a crap travelling project, so it's all sleeve all the time right now. I really want to wear this sweater! Oh well, it'll get there eventually.

In the mean time, I must finish up a project that needs to be handed in this afternoon. It deserves a post of it's own, so you will hear all about it tomorrow.

omg, FIRE!

So after the ultimate in stressing and crappiness from school, my building had the shittiest thing happen. Someone lit all the huge bulletin boards in the hallways on the third floor on fire. Yes fire. The stuff that burn things, and hurts people. Luckily there was only one very minor injury, and everyone is okay. But it's almost 9 right now, and all this happened in the wee hours. The fire alarm went off at 3:45, we didn't get back inside until 6:30. Don't worry we didn't have to stand outside the whole time, we were able to go into the building across the courtyard to wait.
Of course my biggest worry was my yarn. What would I do if something happened to my stash? Or my Thermal that I have worked so hard on?

Squish?

Today was a wonderful day in the end. Full of good weather, and not a word of my essay written. I means that tonight will be stressful, but I at least got to enjoy the weather. Part of my procrastination involved drawing this little guy, who I now want to silkscreen on everything. Isn't he cute?
The "squish" is in reference to what The Boy and I call hugs. Hugs are fine, but squishes are better. He makes me squee. I think he needs a name, but it can't be a real word. I would call him squee, but Johnen Vasquez might get mad at me, and I just don't want to get involved with Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. That would be not fun.

Anyway, off to write an essay on "The European Tribe", also known as "The book where the author tries to deconstruct racism, but just enforces equally negative stereotypes about every single person he meets". Ugh. Luckily hating it means that I just have that much more to say about it, so I don't mind writing a paper on it, I just got horribly annoyed writing it. I'll let you all know how it's gone tomorrow!

Also, thank you for the well wishes Michelle!

Still Breathing

I'm having a few days where nothing seems to be going right. I'm super stressed, I have far too much work due, and I'm not sleeping enough. Sunday night was an almost-all-nighter, I slept from 4:30-6:30, got up and worked on the essay again. I have another 10 page due tomorrow, which will be written in the wee hours of tonight. I was so planning on getting a solid 8 hours tonight, I went to bed at 11:30 like a good girl, which is hard since I live in res where there are lots of things to distract me. Sigh. However, I was woken up at 4:30 by obnoxious people in the quad who were talking VERY loudly, completely oblivious of the havoc they have wrecked on me. BAH! Instead of starting my essay, which would have been the intelligent thing, I have been reading the archives of the Knitting Philistine, which is very fun. I just found her blog last night, though I can't remember how for the life of me how.

The lucky thing is that after this last essay all I have to do is a studio project, which is so much less stressful, it's even fun. I look forward to 36 hours from now when I can finally breathe. And knit. All I want to do tomorrow night is knit. I am excited.

Mostly this is because the body of Thermal is finally about to get interesting. I have been knitting a shapeless tube for the past 13 inches, and have two more to go. I decided to lengthen the body because this thing has to stretch a lot to get over me, which means that it shortens like crazy. Plus I like my sweaters a little longer. I am almost there! I am probably about half way through my third ball, I will definitely need to start a fourth at some point, but I don't think that I'll use it all on the body. I would post a picture, but it looks exactly as it does the last time I posted, just longer. Hopefully something more interesting soon!

Fine Arts means buttons

When I pulled out Thermal in my Enlish Lit tutorial today, a girl gasped and commented that it was very thin yarn. I decided not to go into a discussion on sockweight, and that lace and cobweb do exist. She then asked if I was and English major, I said no, not wanting to get into my as of yet officially declared double major. She then asked if I was Fine Arts, which I affirmed. Then she said that she knew because of the buttons on my jacket. Buah?!

I guess that they are kind of artsy, but nothing really out of the ordinary. I got them at the Dude Show, from The Sweetie Pie Press. I had to get Knit Till You Die, and then they were 6 for $5, so I got the others. There was a pink version of the little girl with an arrow through her, but I gave that to Sam for Christmas. I just didn't know that buttons were such an obvious indication of being in Fine Arts. Interesting ... Maybe I should make one that says "I'm in Fine Arts so I wear buttons." Or would "I wear buttons so I'm in Fine Arts" be better?

Progress and patterns

This is my progress on Thermal thus far, about 6 inches. I just added the second ball of yarn today. I'm trying to figure out what exactly my yardage is going to be for this. I think that I'll be okay, but I really don't want to run out, since that will mean ordering another ball off ebay, which will be a pain in the butt. I figure that the body will take about three and a half balls, maybe four. Which leaves two for each arm. I'm quite confident that I'll be alright, I just want to be sure!

Speaking of knitty, the new issue is out! If you are checking the main page, and it keeps coming up as the winter edition (which happened for me) then try typing spring07 into where it says winter06 in the browser bar thing, and you'll get it. Or go here.

Of the patterns I will definitely knit Clessidra, and will probably use the images in bmp somewhere, but probably not as socks. I really like the kids patterns, but I just don't have anyone to knit them for, which is a little sad. Dashing is a big option for me, I love fingerless gloves and wear my Endpapers all the time, so it would be cool to have another option. Carolyn looks cool, but I really don't like the big sleeves at all. I wish that there was a better shot of Isabella from the bust down. I have a good idea of what the top looks like, I just have no idea how it fits below that. Which is sad, because the bottom part is what I really like about it. I know that the top of that would look so horrible on me, so I'm not even going to try and think about knitting it, but I might use the bottom in a modified way.

But before I can even think about knitting anything new, there are projects to be finished!