Quietish

(Amazing Lace Challenge #5)

Today is a cleaning and laundry day in our home. This morning I witnessed little Peacock slinking amongst the laundry like one of our 3 cats. Once it was in its hiding space, again like one of our 3 cats, it appeared to believe it was truly hidden from sight in the laundry.

My kit came in the mail yesterday from Angela for the Knit Sock Kit Swap and it is very, very cute!

She crocheted a handbag with orange-red fuzziness that she says is called Phoenix. How appropriate is that?! I also got a coupla Townsend patterns (leafy ones!), red Wildfoote yarn, some DPNs, some cute sock point protectors, and a doubly-cute sock-blocker keychain. It comes with a pattern to knit a tiny sock to put on it.

So, what’s in that box in the corner?

A row-counter bracelet, and handmade stitch markers.

Look, they’re the most adorable little owlies.

I can’t wait to use them. I know they will make me happy every time I use them.

Thank you so, so much :)

I have been craving a change, for the betterment of my health and appearance.

For most of this year I have been attempting to create a habit of exercising often throughout the week. At first I tried and tried to spend big chunks of my evenings down in our apartment complex’ “workout room.” It is such a small room though, and between my ability to become bored and antsy quickly when I’m doing one thing for any length of time and the awful music they insist on blaring throughout the clubhouse at all hours, it became obvious that it wasn’t going to be easy to keep on with that.

So then I tried walking. I like walking. And while the boredom thing kicked in again pretty quickly, around the same time I also discovered podcasts. Suddenly I had no problem walking for any length, because I also had something occupying my mind.

It has become increasingly obvious that I am a raging-multitasker. If I am not doing two things at once –killing two birds with one stone, etc– something inside me feels that I am wasting the time. There are too many things I want to get done to simply watch tv, for instance.

So the podcasts helped. I was getting in my daily activity, and I was keeping caught up on all the shows that I could easily get behind on. I also hate being behind on things.

Then sometime in April I began thinking about how hard it was to work on all the crafty things I wanted to, keep up with the housework (ha, what a joke!), socialize, and also find time to read. We talked a bit about this on CraftBorg: Episode One, and the obvious answer to getting in a bit of reading was to turn to the Audiobook.

This, my friends, has been the key to my success. For weeks now I have been going out walking many nights out of the week. I walk long and hard. I sweat. Instead of returning early because I get bored or am just lazy, I am to be found pressing on around the local “lake” and muttering to myself “just one more chapter.”

One more chapter usually ends up being several. So far I have chosen books that I am completely in love with. I think the trick is to continue to choose my books carefully, being sure not to get something that might prove to be uninteresting to me. Can you guess what I’ve been listening to?

Oh yes, Jim Dale is my buddy. I’ve been through these twice since April. I would have started the following books after the first go-through, but for awhile I had trouble procuring them in unabridged form.

I’m in the middle of The Hobbit at the moment. When I finish Fellowship, I’ll proceed on to The Two Towers and The Return of the King of course. Exciting, can’t wait!

Yay for healthiness! Yay for reading!

Last night I finished my first very own Gryffindor scarf. Yay me!

Yarn: Cascade 220 in 9404 and Cascade Quattro in 5010 (4.5mm needles)
Pattern: There isn’t one, really. I did the established 19 stripes (10 dark, 9 light) from the PS/CoS movies, but made the scarf much narrower than any movie-accurate scarf. It is about 5-5.25 inches wide. The stripes themselves are 22 rounds of knitting each, which came out to 3.75 inches per stripe.
Comments: The colors are hard to capture. They’re somewhere between the two pictures. I like the Quattro gold, I think the slightly varied colors gave it a bit of depth. I’m also becoming more and more fond of Cascade 220 wool, it actually feels pretty good. The pictures are pre-block. I plan to submerge and then block to give it a bit more drape and length.

Behold, new finished socks.

Ludovic (aka Ludo), finished last night at the Barnes and Noble in Norman.

Pattern: All in my head. Toe up, 2×2 ribbing, short row heel. Knit over 68 stitches for whatever reason. It causes the socks to have a column of 4 knit stitches together on each side–not being divisible by 8–but it works. I like it.
Yarn: Regia Nation something or other. Makes the big chunky stripes.
Comments: Again with the easy ribbed socks. They’re so stinkin’ comfy, so why not ya know?