A Brief Interlude.

This afternoon I sat my second last exam. The final one, for my Environmental Law subject, is on Friday, so I'm tantalizingly close to being able to fall down and sleep for a week, but I'm not quite there yet. So I need to plod onwards, and give myself small rewards along the way to encourage my poor brain not to curl up and die quite yet. Rewards like a new cardigan...




What you're looking at: Easy Top Down Raglan, by Laura Chau. Knitted on a couple of 6mm circular needles (long one for the body, little one for the sleeves), out of six skeins of Noro Kureyon (100% wool), colour 213.

The endless prattle: Well, I had some Kureyon that I'd gotten my filth paws on the last time that the Aussie dollar was doing well, and I needed some stress-free exam knitting, so it's not particularly surprising that a cardigan happened. This is a great basic pattern, though I didn't follow it exactly, as my gauge was different. I used it to get a rough idea of how many stitches to cast on, and then went from there, adding a very small amount of waist shaping along the way (placed quite low on the body). I opted for 3/4 sleeves because I thought that I didn't have enough yarn for full length - though the body turned out being somewhat larger than I thought it would be, so I really could have just knitted it smaller, and then I likely would have had enough yarn for long sleeves. Oh well - I'm still happy with it.

As I mentioned before, everyone who has seen me knitting this in real life has admitted to finding it ugly. Yes, I'll admit, it's a little garish - Noro has a tendeny to be that way sometimes. But I like it anyway - it cheers me up to look at it. And I'm very enamoured with the blue buttons. I'm not normally one of those people who pays a lot of attention to such finer details, but these please me quite a lot.




See that smile? Totally forced - less than two hours before this was taken I was writing frantically in an exam, and really, what I dearly want to do is collapse (possibly after ingesting a glass of wine and something unhealthy). That said, I still quite like the cardigan.

Up next: Anna's adventures in needle-felting, a.k.a: Anna discovers a craft that basically involves stabbing something repeatedly with a barbed needle - and realises that this is actually quite a soothing hobby to pursue during exam period!

The last time...

Well, it's exam period again, which of course means that my life is now devoted to pouring over endless 30 cent notebooks filled with the usual scrawl - the above-pictured page, I believe, contains commentary on the Geneva Convention, though this time last week it was privacy law. It's rather hard to keep up - I know my brain always struggles. At least it'll all be over by this time next week. Not to mention, as alluded to by the post title, this will (notwithstanding me having some kind of epic freak-out and failing my remaining exams) be my final semester of law, my final batch of exams. So theoretically, I should be relishing it. So much for theory.

And of course with exam period comes the stress-relieving exam knitting. The above pictured cardigan is coming along quite nicely - I've only got a sleeve and a half to go now, so I'm very nearly there. Due to yarn limitations (some people would tell you that six skeins of Noro Kureyon is not enough to make a cardigan, but those people are quitters!) it's a little shorter than I might otherwise have made it, but I'm actually rather liking it this way. It's jaunty. I think I'll go with 3/4 sleeves and some bright blue buttons. Everyone I've shown it to so far thinks that it's ugly as sin, and I suppose they're probably right, but I don't care - it makes me happy, and stops me from feeling like all I've done with my day is write something bleedingly obvious about Additional Protocol II.

In other news, it's been far too hot to do anything particularly constructive, so I've resorted to my usual fallbacks for the small smattering of recreation time I do have - reading, playing woefully outdated computer games, and cooking. And buying things on the internet - have to make the most of the strong Aussie dollar. It would be simply irresponsible not to... On that note, I bought more yarn (curse you, Sanguine Gryphon, I just can't resist your charms), but that's perfectly all right, because in keeping with the Not-A-Yarn-Diet, I used up 300g of Berroco yarn and 200g of Noro before doing so. Hurray for me. And I bought less than that, so I'm still making progress. Of sorts.




Also, as I mentioned, I've been cooking, and I have pictures to back it up. This here is the makings of a very fine pumpkin, spinach and goat's cheese risotto, because I took it upon myself to buck the trend of living on breakfast cereal during exams. It never ceases to amaze me how spinach wilts down. I mean seriously, from the above, to this...




...in about thirty seconds. Crazy stuff. Crazy but delicious. I also made this cake, because I couldn't resist the pull any longer. For some reason, it's taken me a very long time to get into looking at recipes on line - up until now, I have been strictly old-school, preferring my cookbooks. But I think I'm finally beginning to get with the times. How astounding. Then again, cake tends to be very persuasive...