Liesl and such...

Well, I'm still alive! Uni is kicking my arse several times a week, but I'm definitely still alive and kicking. Or alive enough to be quite chronically bored by the Acts Interpretation Act anyway (erm, hooray for statutory interpretation, or something...). And my Japanese classes started this week, just in case law school wasn't enough. Japanese looks like it's going to be a lot of fun, though learning how to write hiragana is a challenge - I've done so much Western style calligraphy in my life that the different stroke order (horizontal stroke before vertical) is driving me spare. In a good way though!

Thankfully for my sanity, there have been plenty of developments on the crafty front as well.

For a start, I finally finished my Liesl cardigan:


The nitty gritty: Liesl by Ysolda Teague. Knitted with about 2.3 skeins of Malabrigo Worsted on an 8mm needle.

The colour commentary: I'm mostly happy with how it came out, though I think that I really could have made it a size smaller - you can't see it in this shot, but it's actually a little bit large for me, and therefore not as flattering as it could have been. Also, I'm not entirely sure that this style suits me. Oh well - I'm still mostly happy with it, and I've already worn it, so obviously I don't dislike it that much!

Ha - this project was really me wanting to see what all of the fuss was about. Liesl is such a popular pattern on Ravelry, and people never seem to shut up about Malabrigo either, so this was a good opportunity to suss both of them out. Liesl is a great pattern, for all that I'm not particularly sure that it's quite my style. I wasn't particularly surprised by that though - Ysolda is such a talented designer, and I'm never anything less than enthralled when I knit her patterns. They always come together so nicely - it's very satisfying the way that everything just works! Working with the Malabrigo was very nice too, as I believe I've already said. It's beautifully soft, though I'm not sure that I'd want to use it for everything. Perhaps I'm a little old fashioned, but I kind of like my wool with a little more substance. Still, I'll definitely use it again!

In other crafty news, I broke out the fabric paint - something I'd been meaning to do for a very long time:


I love painting random designs on things - it's so therapeutic. I was very pleased with how this one came out too - don't worry, it's a lot less patchy now (the above shot was taken just after the first coat). It was the test run, since I hadn't used this brand of fabric paint before, and the directions for setting it were infuriatingly vague. But it's been washed since, and all seems to be well. Now it's all I can do to restrain myself from running out to buy more plain tops to paint. And I have plans for skirts as well. Because I don't have enough hobbies already, or anything...

I've also started a scarf (already halfway through thanks to all the lecture recordings I've sat through this week - my iPod is a lot more forgiving of me knitting through lectures than I imagine the actual lecturers would be if I tried doing it in class!), and a shawl. I have particularly high hopes for the shawl. It's a Laminaria, and I'm using some Wired for Fibre yarn in the most beautiful shade of dark green ever (in case you haven't noticed, I have a bit of a tragic addiction to green). I'm scared to death of it, because it's my first attempt at charted lace, but the thought of how beautiful it would be is enough to spur me on. But first, I need to knit something ridiculous for a friend's engagement party tomorrow. More on that at a later date...

Back to reality

I have officially been reminded of the reason why I'm always so tired during semester. Urrkkk. Of course, I can't really complain too much, because I doubt that the situation is really improved by staying up until 4:30am watching bad sci-fi with a friend when you need to get up again at 7am. Um, whoops... Ha, at least this shows how I'm still emphatically not one of the cool kids, even with the fashionable Monday morning sleep deprivation. Blake's 7 has not been cool since the 70s, and even then I suspect it wasn't as cool as my dad makes out...

I've been knitting away on my Liesl, but it's coming along slower than I had expected. This is mainly due to the general business of life and my younger brother corrupting me with computer games far more often than I'd like to admit, though can also be attributed to the fact that writing is currently trying to wrest it's title of "Anna's Procrastinatory Craft of Choice" back from knitting. I've written a colossal amount over the last few days. I'm nearly finished on the piece that I'm writing (I am hesitant to say book - it's not a book unless someone publishes it...), so now I've got some adrenalin going and it's hard to put down. Sigh. Poor neglected Liesl...


There's my dodgy work-in-progress snap to prove that I am still persevering. The body is done, and now all that's left are the sleeves. But I'm just having trouble biting the sleeve bullet for some reason. I think it's just a little bit of "I-can't-be-bothered-to-pick-up-stitches", because I'm generally quite happy with how it's coming along. Hopefully the laziness will pass - once it does I should finish fairly quickly.

I also did a little bit of dyeing on the weekend. On the rare occasions that I dye yarn, I tend to go mainly for blues and greens, so I decided to deliberately do something different for a change.


The goal was to try and dye yarn in fiery colours, and I'm quite happy with how it came out. The last time I tried for red, it came out orange, so this is a definite improvement on that front. I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing to do with it (though with my nerdish/mythologically inclined leanings, attempting to knit a phoenix isn't out of the question...), but I'm glad that it worked out.


In other news, uni is making me lax on my recreational reading, and I really need to update my reading/writing blog. Perhaps I'll wait until I finish the piece I'm writing, and then do some kind of fist-pumping victory post...

I'm pleased to report that the resident critters are all doing well. Titus is still happy and full of beans in his tank. He's a greedy pig by betta standards - every morning I wake up and he's bobbing up and down in the front of the tank wanting to be fed. He's very cute though. And Alex, my dear senile old man cat, has discovered my bed. Because it's not the room I used to sleep in before I moved out, and because he's 19 and really not quick on the uptake any more, it's taken him a while to figure out the whereabouts of my bedroom. But a few days ago, he made a discovery...

Hats and Fish

Well, uni went back yesterday, so I am now officially Busy again. I picked up my Restitution handbook only to find that I'd been assigned four chapters of the textbook as reading for the Wednesday class. Erm, yay for starting off slowly. And this is for just one subject! It's going to be a long semester. Not surprising though - I'm doing mostly electives, which inevitably means a gargantuan amount of reading (it's the trade-off for fewer contact hours and more specialised subjects).

On the upside, I have yarn and a hat! The yarn, retrieved from the post office this morning, was from The Loopy Ewe (again! I think I have a problem...), and here's the hat:



Ha - the downside of hat shots is that you can't crop out your face like you can when you're taking photos of jumpers, scarves, etc. It might be a shot of the hat, but it is also undeniably a picture of yourself. A mug shot. Not for the faint hearted when you're a little sleep deprived, a lot overheated, not really one for makeup at the best of times, and you know the thing is going on the internet... Oh well...

I designed the hat myself, mainly because I wanted to use this yarn (it's from Wired for Fibre, in the 'Tidal' colourway, and believe me when I say that it was far, far too beautiful to leave languishing in my stash), and I'd found some buttons that went with it rather nicely. I'm mostly happy with it - the problem is the one that comes up whenever I design my own hats, being that I mess up the crown decreases. I am improving - this one came out much better than the last, because at least the decreases are even. But I started too late, and then did them too close together to compensate. Oh well, I'm learning, and that really is the main thing. Unfortunately, I've always been better at learning from my own mistakes than by those of others. At least the yarn and buttons are cute enough to distract me from my inadequacies:


I'm not done with this idea though - the buttons-and-varigated-yarn-hat-thing, I mean. I'm going to take another few bashes until I get it right... I can be very stubborn sometimes...

Also, as promised by the post title, I have a fish! Working at a pet store was beginning to be a bit of a problem for me, because I kept getting distracted by the aquariums. I'd be trying to go and make the most of my meagre lunch break, and then find myself snagged in front of the fish tanks, staring with a glazed expression. Eventually the fishy temptation became too much...


Now, I basically fail at taking photos of fish - or at least I do at the moment - but here is the critter in question. He's a betta (aka Siamese fighting fish - to go with my ancient Siamese cat!) and his name is Titus! The above photo, for all that it isn't very good, actually shows his colour quite nicely - he's a lovely shade of cool blue with red on his fins. He's got his own little tank, all to himself (spoiled brat), and he seems quite happy in there so far. He's spent plenty of time exploring, and he's eating very well for a betta. I am quite enamoured with him, if you can't tell...

And now it's time to go to uni and plough relentlessly through textbooks. And staunchly ignore the new yarn - I'm not allowed to so much as ball it up until I've finished my Liesl cardigan...