Exams are over, and I have the summer to do what I want

Well guys, after a (very) long hiatus, I’m back and raring to go. I haven’t exactly been idle on the crafting front either, even if most of my time was taken up with my (successful! yay!) application to York. So this September/October I will be moving all my things from Plymouth to York to start studying for a PhD in pure mathematics. Go me!

Anyway, I doubt you’re all here for that. I finished a pair of socks, on apparently the 18th January. They were lots of fun, mostly since I was trying to get to grips with 2-at-a-time magic loop. Which is great fun, and could well get sued again at some-point. Right now I’m practicing double knitting, so stay tuned for some extreme 2-pairs-at-a-time knitting later this summer(which will hopefully stop me getting bored to plain boring socks. Here’s a photo of them, in all their worn glory:

They don’t quite match, but I really prefer them this way. Not to say I don’t like my perfectly matching patterned socks, but the not-quite-matching-ness takes away from the fact they are so, well, boring. I don’t like boring yarns, and evidently I don’t like boring patterns. But colourful yarns in exotic patterns really don’t work. *sighs*. Anyone got any patterns which do work with stripy yarns?

I’ve also been cross stitching a lot, firstly there’s Spirit, which has now gone over half a page!!!

Here she is at half a page, I think I’ve mostly done another column after this

What I think it’s amazing about this pattern is that the S for Spirit takes up more space than the rest of the word! One more column puts me half-way, and the S is pretty much done there, with just the beginning of the p, and there’s more blank space on the right of Spirit than there is on the left! Pretty awesome, huh?

I also found a giant cross stitch pattern of all the first gen Pokemon. Now I know I’m not the first to stitch this, but I’ve only seen of one other person, and I think they’ve only done the one (there are patterns for 5(?) gens), and I’d like to get them all done eventually! Here’s my start:

So far it’s very yellow! That should stop soon, but after that red/yellow one underneath the first yellow one, I’m going sideways and doing a (yep, you guessed it!) yellow flaming bird! Ahh well, after that it gets a bit more interesting.

Well, now this has finally been written, I can get back to my crafting! Got to squeeze as much in as possible before October, when I start ay York! Squeeee!

gone gone gone, Smeagol is free!!!!!

Yes, I survived the first term of Uni :P. Now just to hope I manage that50 page essay I need to write (the 50 pages may be an issue, I want to write so much!).

So, since that deadline’s out of the way, I’ve been spending the last few days being crafty. Wanna see? Of course you do.

Yesterday was supposed to be spent knitting… but. *sigh*. The yarn I want to use (that I got in Holland, remember?) is sport weight. After moaning lots about not having sport-weight when I wanted to make a cowl (I used DK in the end :P), now I want 4ply, it has to go be sport-weight. And I couldn’t figure how to cast on loose enough, so I gave up on the handwarmers (I will try again, going up a needle-size, I just got irritated :P). Then I tried making up my own pattern for a pair of socks, toe-up, stocking stitch. Pretty basic. BUT. I started them, then while I was increasing for the toe, read some articles about ad-hoc sock knitting, and there was this one article talking about how cuff-down socks were so much easier because you could still try them on before the heel, and then you only knit to 2 inches (for example) before the toe to start decreasing. And me, immediately seeing the logic in this ripped back my socks, only to remember that the reason I was doing toe-up in the first place was because I didn’t like the way to cast on loosely enough :P. So that yarn got thrown across the room in a petty fit and I started playing minesweeper again. So unfortunately no knitting picture to show you 😦

But, there is stitching goodness. 🙂 After the last Wednesday post (I think it was the day after) :P, I received the floss to stitch Spirit. So I started. Very basic gridding got done (literally, just around the edges :P), and I set to. So unfortunately you can’t see the yummy floss before I sorted it all, but you can see lots of progress on Spirit 🙂 And the floss box. 🙂

Here ya go:

Lots of lovely purples 🙂

Not entirely sure where the green is supposed to go…have to wait and see, I suppose

I’ve nearly finished the first column!!!

Yeah, in the beginning, I had this brilliant idea to make sure I was working in blocks of 100- as you can see in columns 2-4 I staggered the number of blocks I’d done, which meant it was easy to see how many rows away from the next 100, as you just had to look at the column on the left. Then I realised how many threads that involved, and decided to work till the end of the page :P. Given that I haven’t really gridded enough, this may cause issues, however, I think it’ll be ok. After all, I am the girl who didn’t put in lifelines for the first lace pattern I knitted. Didn’t have to rip it either. So I think I’ll be alright 🙂 I’m also thinking of saving all the sparkly Kreinik threads till the end… at least, that was the plan before I saw how many there are coming up right now in the first column. Anyone have any idea of how I could store it on the needle between areas being stitched? I’m kinda toying with the idea of putting the needle somewhere out of the way so nothing with irritate it in between using it???? How have other people done it? Just park it with other threads???

Well, I’m getting back to my cross stitch, it’s calling my name loudly 🙂