The Old Heave-Ho

Today, I rant about cleaning my apartment. I need to clean my apartment, in general. Once I've got it all done, I'd like to make it more homey, and maybe post pictures.

I need to get some shelving for the living room, and put that up. I need to get my other bookshelves from Mr. Ex's place, and go through boxes there and fill those bookshelves. I need to sort the kitchen and get all the dishes put away at the same time, as many as I can fit, and find a new home for the ones that I don't have the space for. I need to clean out the fridge.

I think I want to paint, but I don't want the hassle, and I don't want to have to redo it later. Still, light green walls would make the place seem much more welcoming. Part of me wants to do a mural, but I would have to paint over it when I moved.

I need to re-organize the yarn cabinets, so that I can fit all of my stash, yarn AND fiber, into one place. Either that, or I need to put up shelves in the bedroom as well, for fiber.

I need to get a better system for feeding the cats in place. Their bowls worked well when it was just Heed, but now that Ripley is a growing girl, I think I need to get one of those larger bowls with the food reservoir, in case I don't notice right away that she's inhaled her body weight in kibble once again.

But life is good. I'm glad that I have these nesting urges, because it means that I'm liking where I am, and wanting to stay here for a good long while. And that's certainly true - I want to set up part of the living room as my spinning nook, and part of it as my reading nook, and maybe actually plug in the television that my dad was kind enough to give me.

So today, I think I shall invest in a hammer and some nails. Or drywall screws. You know, whatever works.

Holy Crap, Even More Spinning!

Well, I spun up most of the Roger Caruso from FatCatKnits that I've had for a good long while, and as a reward I let myself buy 4oz of merino/tencel from Fiber Optic in the Black Coffee colorway (I figure if I only let myself buy fiber when I finish spinning something from the stash, I will eventually work my way through the whole thing, especially if I buy 4oz for every 8oz I spin). I also picked up a trio of new bobbins, since all my smaller ones are full of things that require another bobbin to ply on, and I still want to be able to have multiple projects going on at once.

So I got my Black Coffee roving in, and put on a leader, and started spinning on the Babe. Result: Fiber too fine. It wants to be spun cobweb-weight, with plenty of twist, and the Babe just isn't built for that.

Ergo, I turned to my old standard: make something. One small block of stamp rubber and a piece of wire coat hanger later, and I had a tiny takhli spindle just ready to go! This is going to be a crazy long-term project, but I figure if I keep it up at work and do it a little bit each day, I will eventually get it all done. I'm not going to stress about it, I have plenty of time to finish all the projects I want to do, and if I don't, then eventually I will be well-off enough to hire test-knitters and then I can just whip out patterns and watch the projects parade before me :)

Ha! Oh, sometimes I crack myself up.

They Grow Up So Fast!

Spinning, Spinning, and More Spinning!

After finishing up the sock yarn I talked about in my last post, I went hunting in the cabinet to see what I should work on next. I found some merino/bamboo (also by FatCatKnits, in the Roger Caruso colorway) that I'd started spinning up laceweight, so I popped that back on the wheel and got going. Today has been a lovely day of old Star Trek reruns, cat petting, and spinning. Life is good.

In other news, Ripley has decided to help me spin.

Spinning, Socks, and Socialization

Lately I've been spinning more. I got in a 5oz piece of roving from Fat Cat Knits (75% SW merino, 25% nylon), and it's the first thing I've actually finished spinning in quite some time. It's refreshing to remember that hey, I really would have free bobbins, if I just finished spinning what's on them now. I spun this up as a sock yarn, chain plied it, and last night gave it a good soak and let it set the twist of the yarn. Today, I'm starting on the first sock, and I have no idea at this point what it's going to be like.

I'm also about halfway done with the Nudibranch that I owe Hastur from years and years back, which once I started actually working on has been going really fast. In between these two projects, I've been working on PSS Prime, but not nearly as much as I should be.

In other news, I have become completely hooked by Plants vs Zombies. If you have not tried this game, go try it. Right now. I got it from popcap games, and it's amazing. You'll thank me for this later - it's almost as addictive as knitting.

Boring, Boring Person

I am the queen of all boring people, ever. This past week my little brother came to stay with me, and our days have been filled with Warcraft, petting kittens (still working on taming Ripley properly), and watching bad monster movies. I got some spinning done for Tour de Fleece, but honestly, I'm not even close to spinning every day, much less for a set time every day. The roving I'm spinning up is Monica by FatCatKnits, a one-off roving used to pick up the last of the colors from the dyepot. It's pale and colorful and interesting, and I'm hoping it'll spin up nicely into some sock yarn.

One thing I did do this past week, was find a spinning wheel for a friend of mine! I have my google reader set to let me know when anyone in Aggieland, Houston or Austin puts up a wheel for sale on Craigslist, and this week I found an Ashford Traditional for $200! I emailed the seller to see if it was still available (it was), and my friend Megan to see if she was still looking for a wheel (she was), and since she's out of the state right now, if she wanted me to drive up to Austin and pick it up for her (she did). So, long story short, she deposited the money into my paypal account, and I drove and got my friend a wheel :) It came with a lazy kate and 4 bobbins, so I'm pretty excited about it. She's a fairly new spinner, but she's definitely got the touch, her singles are already fine and even and lovely, and I'm so happy that she's going to have her first wheel.

So yeah, aside from that, my week has been pretty uneventful. Me and Ripley napped in the sunshine by the windows, with Heed sleeping on my knees as per usual, and it was nice. But for now, I think I'll get back to spinning, and see if I can't finish up that sock yarn!

Bring Out Your WIPs!

So, the moving process has been an interesting one for me. Yes, yes, I know, I should already count as moved because I'm actually living here in the new Casa del PenName and have been for a while, but I am still bringing stuff over from Mr. Ex's house, so bear with me.

I have found so many works in progress, just by moving my stash over. The most recent, which I am working on right now, is a sock knit up in Cherry Tree Hill's overdyed Louet Gems yarn, with a picot hemmed cuff and what was a half-finished twined-knit heel, which I have since completed and turned.

So, yeah, other than those two small points, this is a completely plain, stockinette sock, which I don't think I've done often. No stripes, no holding yarns together, just a stockinette sock with pooling stripes, and an interesting heel that I'm hoping will hold together well. I went up a needle size (1 from 0) for the heel, to keep gauge, and I'm about to pick up the stitches for the gusset. I considered trying to go and dig out the second ball of this from within one of my big boxes o' stash, but eh. I'll work on this one in the traditional manner - get one done, get second sock syndrome, eventually find first sock again and think why didn't I ever finish these?

You know. The usual.

The Halfway Dance!

Whohoo, I'm 50% finished with the Persian Star Shawl! It's an awesome feeling.

I didn't think, this past January, that PSS would take so long. I figured, yeah, I took the better part of a year on Galveston, but really, I slacked on it so much, surely I can knock out a completed shawl in four months or so.

Hahahahahaha. Hahahahahahaaha. Hahahahahahahaha.

*Wipes away tear* Yeah, that's a good one.

So I started this in January, January 20th to be exact, and that was almost 7 months ago. I'm not sure if that date was when I cast on the first stitches, or when I started sketching it out, but that's the date I put into Ravelry. So far, the PSS has been with me on the Rav February Meet-Up in Austin, has been with me while we planned our trip to Iran, and when that trip was canceled. It has been with me while Mr. Ex and I went our separate ways, and has been with me as I build my new life. The shawl has seen many changes, both in its design and in my life while I designed it.

May the next 50% be entirely less eventful.

Holy Crap, Christmas?

Someone mentioned today on Ravelry that she's already working on her christmas presents for her family - now, while she has plenty of time, instead of later, when she'll be swamped with fall schoolwork, holiday preparations, and all sorts of dreary weather.

Damned if that doesn't sound like a good idea, right?

Last year I think I went a little overboard on the whole OMG I CAN MAKE THE SOAPS idea, and honestly there was a lot of trial and error involved, but folks did seem to like them.

So tonight I'm going to clean the apartment but good, and then Wednesday I think I'll go by Mr. Ex's place and pick up all my soapmaking supplies (yes, they are still over there, as are a lot of things). I think I'll focus more on one or two good recipes this year, fancy, luxe stuff, with stronger scents. The one comment I got a lot last year, was that none of my soaps had a really strong scent.

Keep On Keeping On

Well, not a whole lot going on in Case del PenName. Ripley is adorable, she is putting on weight nicely and may almost be up to 2 pounds now, which means soon she'll be able to actually get her vaccines, and I found out that microchipping is $10 at the local shelter, so I'm definitely going to get that done as soon as she gets her rabies shot and county tags.

I'm in a new D&D game, it's 4th ed, which I had resisted for a long time. It's a very mini-centric system, to the point where it feels more like a minis combat game that had RP tacked on, rather than an RP game that worked out a system for combat. It doesn't feel like those old games I played in school, me and my friend and a hastily-drawn notebook of maps that were to be used only when I was figuring out a puzzle or getting lost in a maze. I still remember when my second character ever, an elven thief, died because she pushed a statue over that caused a chain-reaction of collapsing stonework. I was SO upset, because my friend told me that unfortunately, I could never use that character again, because now she was dead. It didn't matter that I had written up a lovely backstory. It didn't matter that she was the character I had wanted to play from the beginning, she had died, and that was that. (yeah, it was middle school, okay? Drama happens)

But this new game seems fun. I'm playing a rogue, again, though a halfling this time. She's not your typical merry agile trickster type thief, she's your slightly dim burly thug :) A halfling so butch, she's sometimes mistaken for a dwarf!

So, yeah. I'm having fun. I've been watching the original seasons of Star Trek, and it's really interesting to see how the gender dynamics play out. I'm pretty sure none of the ladies on the Enterprise could possibly be in Engineering, not because of lack of ability, but because honey, those uniforms were NOT built for bending over, much less climbing machinery. It really makes me want to start a Star Trek campaign, if only to play a Kaylee-esqe grease monkey... in space!