Self Restraint and a Cat

So. It occurs to me that I probably have enough yarn (see above for pretty green things!). More than enough yarn even. Realistically speaking, I could probably continue knitting at my usual rate for an entire year without needing to buy more yarn. This is arguably a rather delightful problem to have, if indeed you could call it a problem, but I have decided that seeing as I don't really need more yarn, but will have a need to conserve money (exams are not too far off, so I won't be working nearly as much as usual), some self restraint might be in order over the next little while.

I'm not going to use the word "diet" because I'm not keen on it. It's not something I do when it comes to food (frankly, I'm young and healthy, so what on earth is wrong with just eating well and exercising?), and I'd really like to keep my life "diet" free. So I'm not going to stop buying yarn all together. However, there shall be creative and productivity-encouraging restrictions put in place: the rule of this Not Yarn Diet is that I am now supposed to knit 500g (so ten 50g balls, or whatever) from my stash for every yarn purchase I make. Blog will keep me accountable. Hopefully this will curb the unwarranted impulse buys.

I considered putting a meterage requirement instead of weight, but decided against it: I'm too lazy to add up lengths, and I don't really care about yarn weight as long as it gets used up. Yes, I know that I'll burn through 200g of bulky yarn in the same time it'll take me to knit up 50g of fingering. I don't much care - it's not a competition. I just want to reduce the space being eaten by my terrifying stash of knitting fodder. To play fair though, I'm not counting any part of Sylvi, as it's been going for so long (shame, because I believe that there's over a kilo of yarn in that monster). To not play fairly, I'm counting all yarn knitted from the point that I received my last purchase in the mail. Which puts me at nearly 100g, all from the Gathered Pullover (which is coming along nicely, thank you very much).

That's the plan. Now let's see if I stick to it.

In other news, well, life is crazy. Beyond crazy. Between uni, work, and social commitments, I have so much to do that it isn't even funny. For the first time in my life, I'm being afflicted by semi-regular insomnia, because I lie in bed unable to sleep because all of the pressing demands on my time are dancing around in my head humming circus music loudly. Thank heavens that knitting is a hobby that you can sort of slot into the gaps formed between everything else - one of the many reasons that I love it.

In knitting news, I have started seaming my Sylvi and have commenced the hood. I am so close to finishing that I can almost taste it - and I'm hoping that that will help me finally knock it on the head. Even the fickle Melbourne weather wants me to finish - the weather at the moment is bitingly cold for October, and it's just begging for a slightly unseasonal woollen coat. The Gathered Pullover is coming along nicely as well - I am still in love with the colour.




Unfortunately all is not well in other areas of life - the furred and finned areas, more specifically. More diligent readers might recall me gabbling happily about Titus, my fighting fish. Well, alas, poor Titus succumbed to a fungal infection yesterday, despite putting up a brave fight while we treated him with scarily green medicine. Poor wee fishy - he was a lot of fun, had a lot of character as far as fish go, and I will miss his hungry little face in the mornings.

If that wasn't enough, my poor old geriatric cat Alex has a large nasty swelling in his neck. The vet is not sure whether it's cancer or just a gland that's swollen up as a result of an inflamed tooth - he's going in tomorrow for blood tests and possibly dental surgery if he's stable enough. Anything involving anaesthetic is risky for a 19 year old cat with heart issues, so I'm trying to be prepared for the worst, just in case it happens. He's content enough at the moment though - asleep on my dressing gown, which I suspect is now officially His dressing gown. At any rate, please send cat mojo for my poor old man!

And that's about it. Hopefully the next post will involve a finished Sylvi - let's just hope that procrastination doesn't strike (again) in the meantime...

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...