The wedding itself is less than three weeks away, and I've finally been able to admit to myself that this afghan is not going to be done in time. I'm only about fifteen inches into the second panel (out of sixty-five), and I have a whole third panel to knit, not to mention the edging I was planning on adding to the final pattern. So, it won't be finished for the wedding, and I have no one to blame but myself. Oh, how could I go running off with shrugs and dishcloths and charity squares and neglect such a huge responsibility? Besides my ADD tendencies and natural unfaithfulness to knitted goods (except for the glorious Golden Shrug--I stuck by it the whole time), the Wedding Afghan was just plain starting to hurt me.
See, it's on US size 11 needles, which isn't huge, but it's a little bit of a hindrance when one has such tiny hands and wrists as I. Plus, those panels get pretty heavy after knitting on them for a while (thank God for circular needles!), and I woke up one morning with a very sharp and throbbing pain going through both of my forearms, all the way to my wrists. The pain lasted into the next day when I finally took some pain medicine. After that, I was a little put off by the Wedding afghan, and I didn't touch it for a few days for fear the pain would come back. It really hurts to cross one stitch behind three to make those cables travel--takes a bit of elbow grease.
I've been knitting on it today, and I still hope to complete it as soon as possible. At the very least, now that I'm not on such a tight deadline, I have time to add all the extra touches I was planning. It's going to be gorgeous when it's done, and I'll be more than happy to present it to Dad and Lisa then.
Otherwise, there's been work, complete with dealing with very interesting customers. Most of the time, our customers are very normal, polite people, but being a lingerie store, we also get some strange ones. I've been having a good time hanging out with Kalan, too. We're planning on going to visit Peter in Valdosta this Saturday, and I can't wait to see him! I really liked having him here in Columbus, so I'm glad he'll be back here for a week or two before heading off to Athens. I hope a lot of our friends can come too. Road trip!
I've been missing Lauren, and I'm happy Kalan and I are going to bring her to Columbus for the weekend next Friday. Mom and Stan are going to see her tomorrow; I would like to go too, but I have to work, and they'll be going to Gainesville as well. Dad wants us to sing a song together at his wedding (he has a penchant for cheesy things), so we'll have a chance to practice together when she's here next weekend. He also wants me to sing a song on my own, so I've been practicing them for the past few days. Thanks to years of what I suspect is acid reflux (mmm, the taste of stomach acid in my throat!), my voice isn't the strongest, so I'm trying to practice and beef it up. He picked a rather powerhouse song, so we'll see how it goes. I'm just glad it's not a country song.
Just got back from an eight and a half at work, so I am tired. We've got a big sale going on, so I'm working full time this week. Woo, money, but ow, my knees.
Now that I got the shrug out of the way, I've been working full-tilt on the Wedding Afghan. There's no picture because it's pretty much been more of the same thing--tons and tons of latticework. The first panel is almost done, and then I'm moving to the center panel to shake things up a bit. I did the math and found I need to knit at least five inches a day to get all the knitting done about a week before the wedding. This should give me time to sew the panels together and get it all ready without having to rush. Unfortunately, because of work I'm two days behind already. And with all the time I'll be working this week, it doesn't look like it's going to get any better. I'm going to try to keep up, but we'll see what happens.
I snagged tickets to the Silverchair concert, and I am incredibly excited. I found out Peter should be able to come, so so far it'll be Lauren, Peter, and me. Eric is going to check out their music, and if he likes them, then he'll be coming too. The end of July is going to be very busy!
Oh, man, does my brain feel fried. That's all I can do for today, folks. Time for a nap.
Alas, there was no time for knitting today. It's been a rather long and busy day, and I am exhausted. I continued to be responsible by getting up early this morning to work out. Since I would be going to work today, I decided to cycle for only twenty minutes today instead of my typical +30, rounding it off with a little yoga before Kristen and I went home. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that I would be kept for my on-call at work.
Yup; instead of the nice short four-and-a-half hour shift, I got to stay in the mall for a wonderful nine hours. Now, I've done my fair share of eight-hour shifts, but those are typically shifts that I'm aware of before I get to work. I found out about an hour before I should've gotten off that one of my coworkers had called in sick, so my manager asked me to stay until close. I was pretty bummed for the first hour or so, but then I was glad I stayed; we were so busy tonight, I would've felt bad for leaving. Besides, I get paid pretty well, so it's good to get a little more cash.
The thing is, I immediately regretted cycling this morning after the first few hours on my feet. By the time I got off work at 10 tonight, I was hobbling my way out of the mall. Kalan was sweet and got me a Frosty float at Wendy's on the way home. Those things are pretty damn good, by the way.
So, sadly, I haven't gotten a stitch of knitting in today. I was hoping to finish the Silk Shrug in a few days so I wouldn't take too much time away from the Wedding Afghan, but it seems that I'm being prevented. Tomorrow is my rest day of the week, so I don't have to get up early to exercise. I'll probably stay up a bit later tonight and knit on the shrug. Hopefully I won't fall asleep in the process.
Columbus has been very busy ever since I got home--I'm so surprised at how fast the days are going by. May is drawing to a close, and I'm nowhere near finishing the first panel of the wedding afghan.
I'm maybe halfway through--miles and miles of latticework, my friends. And did I mention that working with two strands of yarn can be a real bitch sometimes? And, of course, I have not been faithful to this project in the least. In the time I've been working on the wedding afghan, I've started and finished numerous projects, and I'm on a huge dishcloth kick right now (and I have no idea why). You see this?
It's the silk/cotton blend I bought during Kalan's and my anniversary back in March, and I'm turning it into the Silk Shrug from Erika Knight's Classic Knits. I cast it on two nights ago (technically yesterday). I knit most of the back while watching the Shear Genius marathon on Bravo--and as an aside, wasn't that a fantastic show? No annoying bitches, no manufactured drama, just a fun watch. Pretty much everything Top Design wasn't, really. Congrats to Anthony for winning it all. Also, I think I'm in love with Tabatha.
Please don't get too excited by these pictures--I still haven't found my camera cord. these are just pictures I had saved into my computer. You'll have to view the splendor of the golden Silk Shrug later.
Kalan, Peter, Ivette, and I went to Flatrock today, and I had a good time. Unfortunately, I hadn't eaten much that day, so once we had walked pretty far into the park, my energy took a nosedive. I felt like a zombie until we got some dinner at Subway, which made me miss Jimmy Johns all the more. Peter offered to get dessert, so we trekked over to the new Bruster's and bought us all a pint of Peanut Butter Puddle ice cream, which was ten different kinds of delicious. We arrived at my house just as the D&D episode of Dexter's Lab was coming on on the den TV that my step-brothers had left on. I miss the old episodes of that show; if they put them on DVD, I would buy it in a heartbeat. Good nostalgia there.
Silverchair are going to tour the US soon, and I wonder if they'll be coming to the southeast as well. From what I gather, it's supposed to be a pretty thorough tour. I've never seen them in concert (they haven't toured America since 1999, save the occasional concert in New York), and it would be so exciting to go. They should be announcing the tour dates soon, so I'll be watching closely.
Tomorrow's going to be another full day as well. I'm going to the gym with Kristen in the morning, then spending the rest of the morning with Kalan; meeting Peter for lunch at Golden Chopsticks, then catching up with Ivette when she gets off work so we can all go to the Asian grocery store. We tried out a lot of really tasty snacks from there a few days ago (and I got some nice Chinese herbal tea as well), so we'll probably try something else tomorrow. I love the ice cream omochi cakes especially.
I didn't get to knit at all today, so I'm going to get a few rows in before I go to bed tonight. Goodnight, everyone.
I've had quite a bit to do lately, and I've spent almost none of it online. I spent most of the week working, but I also managed to hang out with some friends, too. In fact, Peter, Ivette, Geimer, Rachel, Kalan, and I all played a crazy round of Monopoly on Wednesday, with Jon on the sidelines. Ivette, Rachel, and I decided to band together and form the Conglomerate against Kalan and Geimer while Peter started out as an independent. When Kalan made Peter pay him a lot of money for landing on his property (the Conglomerate absolved him of his debt when he landed on one of ours), Peter joined the Conglomerate, and it was a showdown between us and the Partnership of Kalan and Geimer. By the end of the night, we were nowhere near done; we had an equal amount of property, but the Conglomerate had much more money, so I think we won in the end. Kalan and Geimer put up a pretty good fight, though.
I've finished a few projects over the week I haven't been blogging; for instance, I knit up the Saturday Market bag a few days ago, and it turned out very nicely. It's holding some food I bought earlier today, but I plan on taking it with me the next time I go shopping. I also finished my Halley's Comet Slouch hat that I've had in the works for a while--it's basically Marnie MacLean's Halley's Comet Hat redesigned into a slouchy hat, and it looks really cute. I knit it out of cotton, so it's even slouchier than the brown hat I knit a while ago. I've been making progress on the wedding afghan, and I hope to get this first panel done by the end of the month. Hopefully I can get the other two panels done by the end of June so I'll have all of the first half of July to get it sewn together and add any embellishments I might want.
What about pictures of these things, you might be asking? Unfortunately, I can't find my camera cord, so I can't upload any pictures into my computer right now. I promise to post some as soon as I can find that thing.
I had a rather long day last Wednesday. It started with an opening shift at work; I had to be at the mall by 8:30 am, which isn't crazy early, but early enough that I had to make an effort to get up on time to get ready. I got off work at 2:00 pm and went immediately to the doctor's for a basic checkup. I was a little late because my appointment was right at 2:00, but fortunately I didn't have to wait as long as I thought in the waiting room. After the initial basic tests, the nurse led me to one of the examination rooms to wait for my doctor to talk about medication, etc. I sat in a chair and waited, expecting him to come in in about ten minutes or so like always. The room was silent except for the "wonderful" sound of Sunny 100 drifting through a speaker on the ceiling. After around thirty minutes, I began to wonder where my doctor was; I'd never had to wait for him for this long before. I expected him to come at any minute, so I continued to sit there in the middle of the room, my brain slowly turning to mush from the radio.
After sitting there for fifty minutes, I decided that this must be what hell is like--sitting in an examination room for an eternity, listening to Sunny 100. I wondered if maybe they forgot I was there; that my doctor wasn't coming at all? A note on the door that implored me not to leave the room until "a nurse came to release [me]" kept me from poking my head out and making sure someone knew I was there. I was beginning to seriously nod off as a result of getting up earlier than usual and not having eaten anything since 7:30 that morning, so I moved to a chair against the wall and leafed through a magazine to keep myself awake. Finally, after an hour alone in that room, my doctor finally came in. It turns out he had to readjust his schedule today because he had attended a funeral. We talked for a grand total of twenty minutes before he wrote me a prescription and sent me on my way.
I was basically a zombie after that, so the huge dinner I had at Golden Chopsticks with all my friends did me a lot of good. I love that restaurant to death, and I'm glad it's getting a good amount of traffic. They definitely have some of the best Korean food I've ever tasted.
I've got an eight-hour work day ahead of me tomorrow, so I'm going to relax some tonight while I can. Hopefully I'll have the will power to get to bed early tonight so I'll have enough energy to get me through the day. I'll be there all day tomorrow, so if you're in Columbus, come pay me a visit.
Well folks, summer has officially begun: I'm back in Columbus for the next three months, and I start work in a week. Mom and Stan painted Lauren's and my room before we got here, and it looks fantastic. Instead of the insanity-producing yellow it's been for the last year and a half, it's now a peaceful grey-blue. It's crazy how much bigger this walk-in closet of a room looks with new paint on the walls.
It's been fun trying to fit all of our stuff in this room too. One person would have a tough time living in here, but Lauren and I have to find a way to squish everything in and live in it at the same time. I'll miss Lauren when she goes back to Athens in a week or two, but I'll definitely be welcoming the extra space.
What's nice is that Peter's going to be in Columbus for the rest of the month, and we've been hanging out a lot this week. He bought two huge bags full of alpaca wool on eBay a little while ago, and we've made it our mission to get it all cleaned, carded and (possibly) spun by the end of summer. So, the other day we set out on our cleaning adventure in high spirits--with Lauren and Kalan for moral support.
We quickly learned that cleaning all the vegetable matter out of this wool was going to take a bit longer than we expected. We cleaned a good amount that day, but we made barely a dent in the bag, and we had another full trash bag of wool, to boot.
And doesn't it look nice when it's clean? I'm not sure what I'll do with the alpaca when it's all spun and plied, but I was thinking a cardigan or something. I like its natural color, so I'm not planning on dyeing it.
I found out a week or two ago that Dad and Lisa are going to get married at the end of July. I'm surprised that they're getting married so soon, so I started on their wedding present as soon as I got into town.
I've crocheted plenty of afghans, but I've never knit one before. This one in particular is a three-panel aran afghan with latticework on each side and a cluster of cables in the center. It's on size 11 needles, so it's knitting up pretty quickly, and the pattern isn't difficult at all. I just hope I stick to it and get it all finished and ready before the wedding.
Of course, I have a very short attention span, and it's things like these that are going to throw me off track:
I had some cotton left over from the aran knitting bag and a crocheted intarsia hot pad, so I cast on an entrelac hot pad last night. I knew we were going somewhere to eat that would require waiting on a table, so I thought to myself, "The aran afghan would be too big to lug around a restaurant. I should cast on something portable." Believe me, it didn't take long to convince myself. I'll probably knit a seed stitch back and crochet the two layers together for extra thickness. You can never have too many hot pads, I say. Plus, Mom saw the dishcloths and hot pads I had made over the school year and not-so-subtly hinted that she would like some too. I'm keeping this one for myself, though; I can't resist entrelac.
Je t'ai croisée
Un samedi soir
Et j'ai jeté sur ta silhouette
Une poignée d'épices colorées
Mon but était clair
T'envoûter
Tout en restant
Libre-moi et libre-toi
Car le roi de l'amour
N'a plus besoin d'esclaves
Adieu, adieu la nuit
Adieu tristesse, adieu les larmes
Je ne suis plus celui
Que tu as connu, plus le même
Ô bel enfant
Qui a tant pleuré
Adieu tout est fini
Adieu les larmes, adieu la nuit
Et le soleil de minuit a brillé pour nous
Jusqu'à l'arrivée du jour
Alors nous nous sommes séparés
Comme déjà saturés des délices du futur
Et j'ai marché seul
Guidé par ton ombre
J'ai traversé la ville déserte
Encore étincelante
Du voyage des rêveurs
Je t'ai croisé un samedi soir
Et déjà j'aimais l'odeur de ton rire
Et le soleil de minuit a brillé pour nous
Jusqu'à l'arrivée du jour
