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...

This time of year...

Ahh, November - the time of year when my brain and all of my time both fly merrily out of the window. The Essay of Doom got submitted with a blessed lack trouble, but I am now languishing slap bang in the middle of exam period, with more revision to do than I can shake a decent sized stick at. I suppose I should be making the most of it - as long as there are no catastrophic academic disasters, this will be my last semester of law, after all...

Thankfully, as always, there is still time to knit. Or rather, I manage to do it anyway. It stalled for a while, but I managed to finish my Gathered Pullover:




(please excuse the fact that I look knackered - I had just gotten off a very long shift at work)

The Business End of Things: Pattern is the Gathered Pullover, from the Winter 2007 issue of Interweave Knits (in a custom size somewhere between S and M), knitted on a 4.5mm circular needle, and 4.5mm dpns. Yarn used was six skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light (50% alpaca, 50% wool).

The Blathering On: For a start - man, but that cable is much simpler than it looks! I was almost disappointed by how easy it was - there weren't nearly as many crosses as I had initially assumed. I nearly blinked and missed it all!




This is a really great pattern, as is somewhat obvious due to the fact that it has, at time of writing, 984 projects on Ravelry. It's easy but interesting looking, and had it not been for my huge workload and the comparatively lightweight yarn, I probably would have finished it sooner. The only modifications I made were to omit the decorative decreases/increases from the bust, add waist shaping (because these days I just don't do jumpers without - such an improvement from so little effort!) and lengthen the body and sleeves slightly. I probably could have done without the latter as the sleeves grew quite a lot with blocking, but thankfully I am quite partial to longer sleeves, so I'm still happy with the result.

Amusingly enough, despite the fact that I've definitely knitted my fair share of jumpers over the last few years, I'd never worked one in the round, from the bottom up, with set in sleeves. I quite liked the method, but somehow I think that I might remain devoted to raglans for the time being - for all that my seam sewing has improved immeasurably over the last year or so, I still prefer to work seamlessly where possible. All said and done, I'm quite happy with this one. I'm not thrilled with how the rolled neckline quirks up a little, and it's warm enough that I won't be able to wear it for a good few months yet, but these are pretty small quibbles really.

In other news, I've been thinking that I need to blog more often. I think that my main problem with updating a knitting blog regularly is this: I don't work fast enough to only post when I finish a project, but I have a chronic inability to take decent in-progress shots. Oh well, I shall attempt to find some way to fill the gaps. Watch out, blogopshere...

In the meantime, here is a picture of the very delightful afternoon tea I had with a friend on Friday:


Why yes, it was delicious. What you see there is almond croissant and sticky date pudding from the local bakery, washed down with a couple of pots of jasmine green tea. Om nom nom.

In other news, I am working away diligently on the Noro cardigan I started as an exam-time, no-though-required, relaxing, therapy knit. It somewhat failed on the relaxing front when my circular needle broke and spilled my stitches everywhere, but thankfully the knitting gods were smiling on me and I managed to restore order with no lasting harm.

The Not-Yarn-Diet is going well too - I haven't bought any unauthorised yarn (and for this I thank this blog, just for keeping me accountable), despite being occasionally tempted. Soon I shall indulge though - the Gathered Pullover took up around 300g of yarn, and I've used 150g on my Noro cardigan so far. This means I am a single paltry ball away from being able to buy more yarn, though I must say that the urge has, for the moment, passed. Oh well, I'm sure that it will be back soon enough...

Procratination, pullovers, and cupcakes.

So, I should probably be writing my essay, but that's all right. All work and no play makes Anna a gibbering idiot, so it's really in everybody's best interests that I take a blog break, right? Besides, this is my reward for reaching 3500 words. When I get to 3750, I get to knit some more of my sleeve. It would be nice if I could work without lame forms of bribery, but oh well - the main thing, after all, is that the essay gets written.

Anyway, so what to write about in this delicious guilty pleasure of a blog post? Well, the wedding last week went off without a hitch (there's some kind of moronic pun there, I'm sure, but I'm choosing to ignore it). The weather was lovely, and everyone had a wonderful time. And I managed to brave two forms of public transport on a Spring Racing Carnival weekend and arrive with the cupcakes and shortbread still intact!




Since it was a wedding and all, I was well behaved and went in for nice pastel colours. Such restraint! I was very pleased with how they came out though, for all that I did have a momentary freak out when it occurred to me that I'd presented them to my friend without having eaten one for quality control first! What if they'd tasted like rancid baboon or something? Though I'm happy to report that they didn't... Also, my friend made some delicious spinach and feta muffins that I could have happily eaten all day. I have every intention of trying them in the immediate future - and the recipe is here, for all who are interested.


In other news, I've been very much enjoying my freedom from Sylvi knitting! I am still coming to terms with the fact that I Don't Have To Knit The Coat Anymore. Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to take advantage of this new found freedom with a million new projects, each more seasonally inappropriate than the last (it was 29 degrees today... ho hum), uni is not permissive on this front. I am hanging out for Monday. After that the essay will be in and I can knit merrily away to my heart's content. While, um, revising for my exams. Yay law school! Oh well.

I have been working on my Gathered Pullover though - you always need a bribery project (see above) when essay writing.




This one is now perfect for brain-exploded-essay-diversion because the only part that requires actual thought (i.e. those shiny nice cables that you see above) has been completed. Now it's just knitting sleeves in the round - hurrah! And I still really love the colour.

Anyway, I think that's all the time I can justify spending on a blog break. Back to the essay. I leave you all with tomatoes. I put them on my jumper to stop them getting bruised in my bag on my way back from the shops, and they just looked too cute to ignore.




Please let my odd obsession with foodstuffs slide. I think it's a product of the essay...
(that's a blatant lie, but it's a good excuse for the moment, and I'm sticking to it)

About time, I know...

Well, this one's taken a while, so without further ado: Sylvi!




The specifics: Sylvi, by Mari Muinonen. I used 12 skeins of Cascade 128 Chunky Solid, with a 6mm circular needle.

The rambling: I am not normally one for abusing the poor defenseless Caps Lock button, but there are certain select situations where I think that it's called for. I FINISHED MY COAT! FINALLY, I FINISHED MY COAT!

Ahem.

I've been working on this one since July, so having it finally finished is a huge weight off my mind (and also my fingers - knitting the hood with the entire weight of the body hanging from it was difficult!). I'm glad to say that I love it. Or perhaps I should say, relieved, as I honestly don't know what I would have done if I'd finished it and been anything less than delighted with it, after all of the time that it took. The only problem I can see with it so far is that people don't fall down and worship me in the street when I wear it, which really you're half expecting when you spend this long on a project (okay, not really, but you know what I mean), but I suppose I should give the poor unenlightened fools some time to come to their senses before I start getting irked... Oh, and also the fact that it is only a month and bit off of summer. But then again, this is Melbourne we're talking about here, so I'm sure there will be the odd opportunity to wear it out and about.




As far as actual commentary on the knitting goes - the pattern was awesome, of course, and very clear and easy to follow. I did make a few modifications though. I changed the cuffs because it was the only part of the original design that I wasn't too keen on - I made very slightly belled folded up cuffs. On the hood, I worked another leaf motif instead of a flower, partly because I didn't like the look of a flower randomly sprouting from my head, and also, I'll admit, because I was just so sick of marking petal stitches and working the leaves had gotten pretty intuitive by that point in proceedings. I also lengthened the body by a few rows, and there are a couple of places in which I deviate from the chart a little, just because I was up a stitch or two, or couldn't get the moss stitch to line up as instructed (disclaimer: I'm definitely attributing this to it being my first time following a chart, and definitely not to any errors in the pattern!).




Why yes, I am going to spam you all with excessive amounts of pictures. If you had just finished a coat that took four months to complete, you would be spamming too!

Oh, and the last modification: as you can see above, I didn't add button holes, as I'm going to opt for some kind of clasp closure instead. I haven't added them yet because I'm still deciding if I like the ones that I have.

I was very pleased with the length in the end too. It seemed woefully short while I was knitting it, but I put my faith in gravity and the tales of those who had gone before me, and it did indeed grow a mile with blocking. I know it's still a little shy of full length, but bear in mind the fact that I am nearly six feet tall - this is not a short coat!

And now I'm going to stop rambling about the coat. Nearly. It feels great to be finished with this one. This is definitely the biggest project I've ever undertaken, and judging by the incursions that it made into my sanity, I think it will be the last. I may later embark on projects as big. I may also start projects that are just as elaborate. But never again will I ever try anything that it both this huge and this intricate! It's been fun though, in a masochistic way, and I learned a lot. I am now a lot better at following charts, and have a much better understanding of the ins and outs of cables. I realised that seaming a slipped stitch edging is actually the opposite of scary, and that bobbles aren't nearly as difficult as I thought they'd be!




At any rate, now I am free to dive into all my new projects with complete abandon! Or as much abandon as I can scrounge up, given the fact that I have a massive essay due in a little over a week. Doh. But still, it feels awesome and really very liberating to be finished.

Anyway, farewell all - I have a wedding to attend, and baked goods to muster!

Food related diversions

See, this is the part where I feel torn. On the one hand, last post I (foolishly) promised that I'd be showing off my newly completed Sylvi coat in the next update. But on the other, it's been quite a while since I updated!

Behold, my compromise! I shall indeed post, but it will be food related! I've been languishing, sad and baked-goods-less, for quite a while now due to oven related technical difficulties. But then my delightful engineer father returned from overseas and managed to convince the cranky old contraption to work again, so I have been making the most of it.

As shown above, I made Spinach and Feta Pie (under the guise of being Very Sensible, as I froze a goodly portion of it for my upcoming exam period and all those nights when I want to eat breakfast cereal for dinner because I'm just too burnt out to cook).

I made an absolutely delicious Honey Chocolate Cake as dessert for some visiting friends (see, this is why I need a functional oven - baked goods are my social currency and without them I feel woefully inadequate!).




And in a fit of silliness, myself and a gentleman caller (haha, yes indeed...) made Triceratops Pie. Kindly note the delightful dinosaur shaped pastry decoration. I should probably note at this point that the pie did not contain any actual triceratops - and my most sincere apologies to anyone who is disappointed on that front. The pie did however contain pumpkin, leeks, onion, ricotta, garlic, parsley and other such tasty things, so none of the parties involved felt shortchanged by the lack of actual dinosaur product.




These culinary achievements aside, there is no reprieve in sight for the poor hardworking oven. A good friend of mine is getting married on the weekend, and I have been conscripted to provide some delightful nibbly baked goods for us to graze upon while we prepare and make merry. I shall do my very best not to suffer from any kind of performance anxiety at the prospect of cooking for such an auspicious occasion!

In other, less pleasant news: it was confirmed week before last that my poor old man cat does indeed have cancer. This was obviously not good what we were hoping for, and I'm sad that my family are all away and are therefore unable to spend more time with the poor old fellow while he's still around. However, the fact that he's had such a good run of it is somewhat of a comfort - if only all cats were lucky enough to live to his age, after all. The good news is that despite all of this, he's perfectly chipper and is acting his usual nuisance self (i.e. stealing my computer chair every time I get up to get more tea). He's not thrilled about the various pills I have to wrestle into him twice a day, but you can't have everything, can you?

Oh, and many thanks to all those who sent good wishes his way via the blog, Ravelry etc - much love and gratitude to you all! The senile old man says thank-you too!

(well, actually in this photo I think he's just irked because I'm bothering him, but I'm sure he would have put on an obligingly grateful face if he knew the purpose of the photo!)




In closing, back to the details of the compromise. The next knitting related post shall remain reserved for my Sylvi (which is anyway so close to being finished that I could knock it off this afternoon if I put my mind to it, so hopefully the wait won't be long!). So I'm not waffling! Not even a little! Most definitely not!

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...