Carefree and slothful

Eating: salted pistashio nuts by the handful (mmm....)

Listening: this afternoon it's been a few compilations, the Waifs, and Travis

Reading: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch - far too much fun for just one book.

Yeah, I should probably be studying. But it's such a Nice Day... I'm fairly certain that this will continue to be the justification for all my brands of procrastination, at least for the next while anyway. Definitely until the novelty of sun wears off...

Anyway, since it is such a Nice Day, I walked home from my morning class - 3 kilometres of glorious sunshine! - via the market, where I acquired smoothie makings and chocolate biscuits. And now I've spent the afternoon with the television off and the stereo on, full of strawberries, banana, passionfruit, and general feelings of good mood. Hurrah!

Above is said smoothie (tasty!) with the beginnings of a Mrs Darcy cardigan (in my very favourite shade of green - the yarn is cheap and unimpressive, but I love the colour so much that all is forgiven). I started it yesterday, and ended up knitting quite a sizable chunk of it while sitting on the couch with a mug of tea, avoiding reality and watching back to back episodes of Stargate Atlantis (for I, my friends, am a tragic nerd).

I've been thinking the last while that I really want to get back into sewing. Well, "back into" might be more than a little misleading - I was never particularly proficient. I could make skirts, capes, and occasionally ill-fitting pants. But I want to get better. Working against me is the fact that my sewing machine is ancient and the instruction manual that came with it has long since been lost, but I am nothing if not determined... I've been reading a book on how to make skirts, and if I can learn how to do that, then I will be a happy camper indeed. I like wearing skirts, but I am not really shaped correctly for lots of shop bought ones to be flattering. One simple thing keeps thwarting me: my widest part is not my hips - it's my thighs (surely I'm not the only woman out there with this problem?). So if I can learn to make clothes to accomodate this I shall be happy indeed...

Oh, and speaking of happy, I have lovely yarn from Live 2 Knit. Figured it was about time I tried some of their yarn - supporting the locals and all that. So I acquired some 4ply 100% silk in the 'Seaglass' colourway and some 10ply merino in "Tidal". They're both so beautiful I don't even want to take them out of the skein. Behold my photo that totally fails to do justice to the beautiful colours (both skeins are much darker in real life):

I have no idea what I'm going to do with them (a few hazy ideas for the silk, but nothing too specific yet)... They're so beautiful that frankly I'm happy enough just to know that they exist and that they're mine...

Anyway, off to enjoy the rest of my afternoon. Tonight I need to go up and do the final clean of my old place. I've conscripted my Dad to help (well, by conscripted I mean he very nicely volunteered), so hopefully the cleaning won't take too long. Though it's not the cleaning I'm fussed about - it's being there. Too many bad memories now. Oh well, I'll just have to remember the good ones. After all - a whole lot of knitting took place in that lounge room too!

Isn't it awesome when stuff works for a change?

Have corn chips, guacamole and beer = good. Just the thing to dispel the tedious remnants of this morning's Remedies class (unless unjust enrichment cases really float your boat, for some perverse reason).

I've been knitting away like a mad thing the past few days - somewhat obsessively, I'll admit ("mustn't...sleep...until... knitting... blocked")- and I have shiny nice things to show for it as well!

First thing's first - after I knit the thing in under a week, nearly a month went by while the Bevin tank lay neglected on one of my many to-do piles. Poor Bevin. But it's all good now, because Bevin is finished, complete with armhole alterations (which ended up doing the trick quite nicely). I had to weave in a highly implausible amount of ends to get there (though I'm under the weather at the moment, and was slightly feverish at the time, so maybe it only felt like 800,000 ends), but get there I did. Here is me, in said tank (which for some reason makes me look a lot blonder than I am, and like I have really buff arms - valkyrie channelling tanks ftw!):




I really like the way that this turned out; it was a little on the skimpy side at first (not that that's a problem, but there are times/places for skimpy and in those times and places, I'm usually less likely to opt for knitwear), but a good blocking worked wonders. I really like the colour; a dark and slightly shiny red. I'd definitely make another one of these too; perhaps in a lighter colour - could look nice in a medium grey (I don't/can't really do white). I like the lace pattern, and it was a ridiculously easy one. I especially like the subtle shaping it gives to the bottom and neckline. It's just a shame I'm a little on the boyish side up top - I think this top would look amazing on someone a little further north of a B-cup.


I love this - more photos on Ravelry if anyone is masochistically curious. One thing though - there are a few errors in the pattern. Aside from the armholes being too big (someone else on Ravelry said they had the same problem with that, so I don't think it's just me), there lace pattern is incorrect - I think there's errata on the designer's blog. It's common sense to fix though - you just need to make sure your yarn overs match your decreases.

Anyway, and yesterday I also finished the raglan jumper I've been working on. This went so quickly - a week and a day to be precise, and I would have finished it earlier if my weekend hadn't been so busy. And I love it. Absolutely love it. I didn't use a pattern, just cast on 40 sts and went from there. Did yarn over increases because they look fun, a little bit of waist shaping (decreased 6 sts, from memory, and then increased the same amount), and added a moss stitch neckband and similar edging. Just used cheapo yarn that I had obsessively stashed in my excitement to find Lion Brand yarn in Spotlight (turns out it isn't that exciting at all... meh) - managed to get an entire jumper out of three skeins, which I was pretty proud of (knitted at a pretty loose gauge).




(hehe, I'm in the exact same pose, in the exact same place... weird... It's just that there's a convinient bookshelf there on which to place a camera with a timer set).

I was so irrationally pleased with how this worked out - it's so satisfying when you totally wing it and everything works out as perfectly as if you'd planned it meticulously (especially when you're like me, and half the time when you do plan meticulously it still gets all arsed up). It's surprisingly warm too, given the comparatively low proportion of wool.

Anyway, I was so happy that it went straight from blocking onto my body, and got worn to uni for my first Constitutional Law class (hmmm, that sounds like I'm punishing the poor thing, doesn't it). I wore it with my Argosy scarf, so I was very bright and very happy. Seriously, I was so pleased with this outfit, in all its handknit glory, that even stepping in cat vomit when I was in a hurry to leave didn't get me down...


Okay, I know I don't look happy in the photo, but I hate having photos taken, even when I'm the one taking them...

Sigh. The guacamole is nearly all gone... Shall distract self with more knitting. I have to weave in the ends on my Askew tank... it would have been done by now if the BLOODY YARN WOULD STOP BREAKING FOR FIVE MINUTES!!!! Um, sorry. I love Silk Garden dearly, but this batch is frustrating the hell out of me. I've never had this problem with it before - maybe these balls are a bit dippy...

Life, as I know it...

Well, this photo pretty much sums up what my life has consisted of the last few days:


(well, to be truly accurate you might need to throw in several hundred cups of tea, and most of my body-weight in Turkish Delight bars, but I didn't have them to hand...)

When I was talking about requiring the diverting power of lace (in my last post), I was referrring in no small part to the Evidence and Proof exam. It's got a reputation as being the hardest exam in the whole law degree, and while I beg to differ on that point, 5000 words over three days is nothing to be sneezed at. Posing with my dear old textbook is the second sleeve of my long suffering alpaca cardigan; it's nearly finished now, so I'm bribing myself with it to get myself to crank out the words on my assignment.


Oh, and just to prove that I have been using the diverting power of lace, and not just the power of long-languishing sleeve, here's how my Woodland shawl is coming along:




Close up of the lacey leaves (with visible varigation!!!):



My feelings can't stay constant on the shade of green. I love green, always have done. But this is very, very green. More obtrusively green than I susually go in for. When I dyed it I was going for the a 'new spring leaves' kind of colour, which I think I got fairly accurately, but I'd forgotten, well, just how green that colour was... So perhaps this will be a 'wear-it-when-I'm-in-the-mood' only kind of knit, but oh well. It is helping to keep me sane, not to mention attracting many curious questions from fellow Upfield train line commuters... A few days ago two young Indian men had a chat to me about it; they were interested to see that I was knitting, as they said that in India they'd only ever seen pregnant women knitting. At least they didn't think that I was pregnant. I've heard other knitters complaining about this a lot, but I can't say it's ever happened to me. My body shape is a lot of things, but easily mistaken for pregnant is not one of them (unless women start gestating children in their thighs...) - I'm all gangly arms, a waist small enough to thwart most clothes purchasing sessions, and tree trunk legs.

Oh dear, I've gotten on to musing about body shape. I think it's time to go back to the murder case now... I have to write 3000 words today :P