Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Progress

6.556 Final Project: 2%
6.334 Design Project: 3%
Thesis: 18%
Lap Blanket: 33%
5.310 Lab Reports: 80%
Lace Shawl: 100%!!!

Need to weave in ends, block, add fringe and then ship off to my mother. Just in time for Mother's Day. Hopefully, just in time to give me enough time to finish the other tasks (minus lap blanket).

Monday, April 27, 2009

Some like it hot

I have two roommates, who(m?) I love dearly (and I talk about all the time). One is from New York. The other is from Pakistan. I am from Louisiana. Naturally, we have different temperature differences:

New Yorker: cold but sunny
Pakistani: hot and dry (but not sunny)
Louisianian: warm and semi-humid

The weather is gorgeous outside. Our dorm turned off the heating system. Therefore, the temperature inside the room cannot make up its mind! (We are all doing our best to change the room's climate to our favorite.) During the winter months, our room is always just hot/warm.

No need to worry, though--any time I get cold, I have a perfect excuse to wrap my legs with the lace shawl-in-progress-that-is-getting-huge. Perfect study break! Hehe--life's quirks are wonderful. :)

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Working on > 1 project at a time!

Sometimes, an excellent project comes along. The project is so excellent, that everything has to be stopped in order to finish it. This project is the perfect combination of yarn, colorways, and pattern--and even work on a thesis is secondary to this project. Meet--the uptown boot socks.

As soon as the fun part of that project is over (the last knit stitch on the first sock; grafting is not fun), another project calls: socks knit from a sock flat inspired by a friend's (Dawn's) project. It's the first time I've knit socks from the toe-up and I try doing a short-row heel. Despite the holey heel, as soon as the heel of the first sock is done, the lace shawl I was originally working on looks kind of interesting again.

I've got a stockinette stitch boring sock leg to complete and I just want to veg out and watch some tv on a Friday night, so I decide to pick up the garter-stitch blanket I was working on. The second ball of yarn is ending, so I push through and add the third ball of yarn, but somewhere between the beginning and end of lion brand fun fur yarn, 145 stitches/row in garter gets boring. Meet lace shawl once again, and during tv-watching, this means dropped stitch.

So now, it's Saturday, and I went off campus to enjoy the weather by myself (i.e. shopping) and I needed subway knitting, so the sock flat returns to the scene. When I get back home, however, I realize that the lace shawl is really close to being done, and Mother's Day is conveniently close.

So my knitting progress in the past week (yes--the uptown boots sock began Saturday 11:30pm) has been scattered. I just wish I could have finished something instead of making little progress on everything. Hopefully, I'll be able to send my mom something nice for Mother's Day (never mind that I had made a swallowtail shawl earlier in the semester with the same idea in mind.)

P.S. I still don't have the courage to wear any of my own hand-knit shawls--they all go to my mom. Has anyone had any luck with successfully wearing a hand-knit shawl?

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