To my boyfriend (bf)* last night:

Me: The cat needs to die.
BF: Why?
Me: It's good character development. And it's a plot device.
BF: Okay.

[A bit later]
Me: What's it like to run over a small animal?
BF: You've never run over something?
me: No. Maybe that means I'm a good driver.
BF: Maybe that means you're a Yankee.

[even later]
Me: What do bones look like when they're sticking out of a body? I assume they only look white when they're bleached dry.
BF: They look like bad teeth.
Me: ?
BF: You know, yellowy.
Me: Ah.

[later]
Me: The cat still needs to die.
BF: She's pulling into the driveway. I don't think it's plausible that the cat gets run over when she's pulling into the driveway.
me: Then how can it die?
BF: Poison?
Me: *Mutters* Wouldn't that get into her milk and kill the kittens? The kittens need to live.

[five minutes later]
BF: I know! The cat has rabies and she has to kill it with a machete!
Me: Would she have that in her garage?
BF: Maybe it could be an axe.

*giggles* Maybe I'm the only one that finds these snippets of conversation amusing.

In other news, I knit two socks out of Noro yarn, and they came out looking completely different. So I'm having to knit two more socks, hoping I'll come out with near matches. Not that I'm complaining.

It's getting into finals, and I'm really busy, hence the lack of writing. There's lots of things I could tell you about... like the not-quite-masks I'm making for sculpture class, but I don't have the time right now.

BTW, if anyone out there has scraps of novelty yarn they don't want to use, I'd love to have them sent to me. I could really use them.

I'm running a fever, and my joints ache.

*My boyfriend, is also known as Southern Gentleman (SG) on previous blogs, and perhaps previous blog posts. I waver between the two nicknames for him. He's really sweet and I'm terribly in love with him. He has a slight (or more than slight) bias against Yankees (he's mostly joking) but makes an exception for me. And you want an example of how great he his? He winds center-pull balls of yarn for me.

Missing my boyfriend

I've been feeling kinda low lately because my boyfriend and I are on two timezones apart. He works at Philmot, which is a boyscout camp in New Mexico, and I work at Camp Chimney Corners (an AMAZING camp) in Massachusetts. Days off are normally for 24 hours, and there's no way we can see each other all summer. Then, before we can get together I fly out to North Carolina where I go to school, and he is doing a semester at sea that goes out of Wood's Hole, MA. There's a good chance I might not see him until winter break.

So this summer we are going to be communicating entirely by handwritten letters, and last night was the last night I could talk to him via electronics. To compensate for missing him, I'm making him a pair of socks. As I knit the soft material, it's both soothing and fun to answer questions about him to my friends. Luckily, I'm now at camp working, so I have less time to be missing him. It's nice to watch the socks grow.

Do you use knitting or crochet as therapy?

Continuing adventures with the boyfriend socks

IMG_2058[1]
Originally uploaded by jenamberautumn

Now, I've only made one other pair of socks before I did these. I had always been told that socks were hard to do, but with the top down socks I worked on first, I found them quite easy. However, for my boyfriend's socks I wanted to try something different so I did some research on different sock patterns and came up with something I think I like. (This might change when I get to turning the heel).

For figuring out what needle size to use and generic information was helpful. However, for turning the heel I think will be helpful. The toe start might be an official pattern, but I "invented" it by casting on ten stitches, knitting the row, purling the next row, then knitting again, and then taking a crochet hook and creating ten stitches on the side I cast on, putting five stitches on four needles. #I knit in the round, for one circle. *The next circle I knit one, made a stitch, and knit the next four (so there were six stitches on the needle). The Next needle I knit four, made a stitch and knit the last. I repeated from the * for the next two needles. Then I repeated from the # so I ended up having ten stitches on my four needles. I then switched to my longer dipoint needles and knit in the round.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my boyfriend's measurements yet (for his foot) so I transfered my first sock onto my connected needles and started the second sock. Now that I have my boyfriend's measurements (as of midnight this morning) I can proceed. We'll see how it works out. It might come out terribly, in which case I'll try again. But so far, so good.

Lavish and Boyfriend Socks

IMG_2051[1]
Originally uploaded by jenamberautumn

I got this in the mail the other day and oh god, I didn't expect it to be so soft. I have to admit I dropped what I was doing just to work on this. I looked up a real basic pattern for toe-up socks and I'm making a pair for my boyfriend. They're coming along quickly and the yarn is just amazing to work with- SO soft. I was susposed to be unpacking yesterday but instead I was working on these socks.

Knitting continental style has made such a difference to both my outlook on knitting and my speed. I'm so much more pleased with what I'm doing.

In other news, I've been playing around with Ravelry more often, with wonderful results. Also, I signed up for a yarn swap type thing (see my last post) and it's got me really excited about doing crafty stuff. I have a lot of different projects on my plate right now in different states of progress. I've got my own pair of socks and a stuffed kitten I'm experimenting with. I have a bathmat I almost finished, decided I didn't like it, and am now unraveling in order to do over again. The first time it just wasn't squishy enough for my tastes- too loose. But that's another story I"ll get to another day.

What projects are you working on? Is there one that you dropped because you just had to play with the yarn? Or is there a piece you made, decided you didn't like, and are now reworking?