Progress, Classes, and RICE!

Yeah... so I'm not so good at updating every day.

Classes have started, and I'm loving them all! History of Premodern Japan (super-interesting, but loooots of reading), Second Year Japanese language (soooo hard!!!), German conversation and composition (my opinion is still pending, but the prof seems cool!) and Statistics (super-easy math class w/ a great crackpot of a professor). Yaaay!!!

Here's some progress on the Vilai sock:



It doesn't look all that different, but I only have a few more rows before I start the heel flap! :-)

Here is the super-easy sock I'm working on. It's gonna be great for working on while watching a movie or reading or whatever. :-)





I cast on 56 stitches, and am working in a simple k3p1 (knit 3, purl 1) rib. It looks like it's gonna be a good size for me. We'll see when I get a little farther along :-)

Also: I made rice today!!!



I got a super-cheap microwave rice cooker from target a few days ago, and my friend EK and I decided to experiment, and the results were not bad! They were edible, at least! ^^ We had some trouble getting the right chewable-ness, but it was pretty good for a first attempt :D

I'm trying not to drown in extra-curriculars (lots of publicity for getting freshmen into my clubs, and lots of auditions coming up soon!) and schoolwork (yikes the reading!) and my messy room (SOOO MESSYYYY!!!), but I'm having a blast hanging out with all of my super-awesome friends and doing all the stuff that I love :-) Hopefully I'll get into a nice routine soon, which means I'll knit and blog more :-)

Knittinglove,
~YoungKnitter

New Sock!

Sadly, I'm not keeping up the every-day blogging D:

I did cast on a new pair of socks today while watching a movie with a friend! Simple k3p1 rib, plain and simple lazy sock for watching movies and stuff :-) The Vilai socks tend to get a little.... focus-consuming ^^

Pictures tomorrow! Also: new classes start tomorrow! YAY!

Lots of college love,
~YoungKnitter

Vacation from knitting?

I think this is the longest time I've spent not-knitting all summer. Three days! Yikes!

Yeah. So I have no progress to report.
I spent today sleeping, painting a sign for Concert Choir for a freshman initiation thing called Founders Walk, hanging out with people I've missed, and getting to know my fellow Choir Board members at our retreat. Not a lot of knitting, but quite a lot of fun :-) I should have down time tomorrow, so hopefully I'll finish getting my room organized, knit on those Vilai socks, and post pictures of both :D

Until then, happy knitting!
~YoungKnitter

MOVED IN!

Wow! What an adventure!

I had a few spare minutes today between unpacking and organizing my dorm and hanging out with some people I missed desperately over the summer, so here go pictures!

So I finished the Kalajoki sock #2:



and then realized that I couldn't find #1 D: So I put #2 in a safe place, and the first one will show up eventually, and when it does I can send it off to Socks For Soldiers.

Mutti and I left Cape Elizabeth on Thursday, and made it to Nashville LATE Thursday night. I had some excellent down time in airports and on planes, so I made some awesome progress on my Vilai sock:



That's just a few rows short of 2 full stitch pattern repeats, and the pattern calls for 2.5 stitch pattern repeats before turning the heel, so I'm almost there!

Friday, Mutti and I got to be tourists! We went to the Hermitage, where Andrew Jackson lived:



Which was just gorgeous!!! The house was beautifully renovated and kept in gorgeous condition. I wish I'd thought to take more pictures, but here are some pictures from his lovely wife's lovely flower and herb garden behind the house:





Then we had some time to kill, so we went and saw Eat Pray Love (that new Julia Roberts movie) in this ridiculously awesome movie theater:



The movie was good! Not my favorite movie of all times. I love Julia, but her character kind of got on my nerves. But they showed some gorgeous countryside and some AMAZING food, so it made me super-hungry and really really really want to travel XD

We went out to dinner with one of my best friends, JK, and his mom, and then got to see his new dorm room, which is just one floor down from mine!

Saturday we got an early start to move in! :D



That's my room when we only had about a third of my junk in the room ^^

We made a Target run (and got me a bike! YAY! it's suuuuuper cute, but I forgot to take a pic of that)

And here are some after pictures (after I spent a little time unpacking, organizing, and cleaning, that is):







Looks much better, riiiight? :D

I'm so glad to be back on campus, and to see all my friends that I missed, and to be busy again. Well, the business will cut into my knitting time, but that's all for the best, I think :-)

Lots of CollegeLove,
~YoungKnitter

MOVE-IN

Wow. I need to get better at this. Or at least get settled O.O

I'm officially all moved in to my dorm at Vanderbilt! Today was long and exhausting, but i'm all moved-in :D

Pictures tomorrow, I promise!
~YoungKnitter

in Nashville WOOHOO

So it turns out that I did actually finish the blog before the midnight deadline, just my computer was in the wrong time zone. WOOHOO!!!

Unfortunately, again, I am so pooped that I shan't blog-blather tonight, but I did take some good pics at the Hermitage (historic plantation home of Ex-Prez and revolutionary war hero Andrew Jackson) today, so hopefully I'll have time to post them tomorrow :D

ZZZzzz....

Okay, so I didn't quite make the day's deadline, but I made it safe and sound to Nashville! Mom&I just got to our hotel room (at 12.30pm!!!) and are ready to crash! But I did get lotsa work done on the Vilai socks today on the planes :D More news (and hopefully pictures?) tomorrow!

Planelove,
~ZZZzzz....

Packing Craziness!

Jeez! I forgot to blog again yesterday!

Let's just say that things have gotten a little crazy chez moi the past couple of days. I leave for school tomorrow (!!!!!) and I've been last-minute packing, last-minute shopping, last-minute baking, etc. etc. Lots of last-minute stuff!

But, in spite of all the hullabaloo, I got the Fallen Leaves afghan all washed, de-pilled (yeesh! little white fuzzies ALL OVER IT! Totally uncalled for), packaged up all pretty and sent off to the lovely MW and WE in NC!





I'm excited to hear how they like it :-)

Also while at the UPS store, I finally packaged up and sent off these two baby blankets I made for afghans for Afghans about a bazillion (read: 3) years ago. Yaaaay!!!





They're super-simple stockinette stitch blankies (not even a clever border!) out of 100% wool scraps I had lying around, while I was still getting the hang of knitting/purling with constant gauge. Wow! It's pretty awesome how far I've come since then :-)

And now, in the spirit of before- and after-pictures, here's a pic of the progress on the Vilai socks!



Lookin' pretty good, eh?

Other non-knitting related news: my webcam is up again! yaaaay!!!! Daddy the super-computer-man can fix anything!!

Also, mom and sis and I went through all our old family jewelry today, to figure out what we want to use and what to put in the lock box, and I now have in my possession the most BEAUTIFUL ring that my mom had made when she was my age. I'll have to post pictures. It's interesting and totally unique, and I friggin LOVE it! I also snagged some of my grandmother's old pearls, and some gorgeous garnet beads from when we lived in India. Sometimes I love being really girly and swooning over heirloom diamonds with the womenfolk of my family. ^^

Now I just have to go finish packing up all my clothes, shoes, books, stationary, and YARN (seriously, how do you decide what yarn you'll need for the next 4 months?!?!) for the new semester :D I'm SUPER EXCITED YAAAY!!!!

Hopefully I'll have time for a quick post tomorrow before it's off to Nashville!
Lotsa yarnlove,
~YoungKnitter

Blanket: DONE

OMIGAWD I totally forgot to blog yesterday D:

Well, I remembered, but it was 11.40 and I was already snuggly in bed and falling asleep. So... laziness won out ^^

So I shall distract the internet from my yesterday-fail by pronouncing that the Fallen Leaves Afghan is DONE!!!!! HOORAAAAAY!!!!!

It's in the washer right now:



So there's not a lot to see there. :P

I've also started the toe decreases on my last Kalajoki sock:



So I should finish that up today. And then I can mail off the blanket to my cousin, the socks to Socks for Soldiers (SFS), and mail some baby blankets I made eons ago to afghans for Afghans. YAAAAAY!!!!! I anticipate a super-huge shipping bill, but it'll feel good to have all that good knitting karma on its way to new owners. :-)

Then once that's done, I'll re-start the Vilai socks on that new lighter Happy Feet yarn with my new Addi Turbo 32" size 0 needles I bought yesterday from the stitching mantis! I also bought another skein of the Wings from Classic Elite Yarns in a lovely navy blue, so I can use that along with the light purple I bought a few weeks ago to make some lovely gauntlets with nice colorwork. GAH my first colorwork project! (scary) more on that soon :-)

Until then, happy knitting!
~YoungKnitter

BOX OF LOVE

I promised pictures, so here they are!

This is a box of goodies (a "back-to-school care package," I believe is the term) from my lovely lovely LOVELY friend Deborah!



Ta-da!!! Full to bursting with loveliness!

We've got yarn (of course):



Including 2 skeins of Deborah Norville collection Serenity sock yarn, 2 of Sensations Soles&More sock yarn, 2 skeins of Lion Brand Magic Stripes, 2 skeins of a mystery sock yarn with fantastic texture and bright colors (failed project, I think, Deborah? ;) ), and 4 lucious, stupendous, glorious skeins of Plymouth Yarn Co Happy feet. *happy sigh*

Speaking of: remember those Vilai socks I talked about here ? I lamented how the yarn was glorious, and in such great colors, but that the darkness of the colorway would kind of detract from the delicate stitch pattern? Well how's this for an idea: how about I use one of these new colorways for those socks, (like, say, this one?:)



and save the dark color for something simpler? Why not indeed!

Then we've got books:



Including
- The Wizard's Ward and The Destined Queen by Deborah Hale
-The Knitter's Bible: Knitted Afghans and Pillows and Knitted Accessories by Claire Crompton
-and Vintage Style Jewelry by Schneebeli-Morrell

Then we've got loose-leaf patterns:



And Canada pencils:



And more sweet treats and microwaveable munchies than a girl could ask for!



And then last, but not least, my dear darling Deborah knitted me a gorgeous ruffly scarf!



Can't wait till it gets cool enough to wear this!

So let's just say that I have enough ammo to be yarnfully happy (and well fed!) for quite some time this semester. ^^

In other good news (MORE good news? how can it be?!) I've made it to the final seed stitch border on my fallen leaves afghan!



Just 2 inches of this and then this beast of a blankie is DONE!

And believe me, it's quite a beastie:



Hopefully I'll finish that tonight, then I can finish my Kalajoki socks (I'm ready to decrease for the toe!) and then maybe get started on some more socks or that dress I've been lusting over! YAAAAY!!!!

Serious yarnlove,
~YoungKnitter

Late Blogging D:

I got a huuuge awesome care package today from my super-awesome friend Deborah and its got all sorts of awesome stuff in it but it's at my house and i'm house-sitting and so I can't take pictures. Also: it's super-late and I suck at deadlines. SO! I'll blog more tomorrow :-) Promise!

Yarnlove,
~YoungKnitter

Progress?

Yes. Lots of it.

Well, I didn't spin or knit at all today. But I DID finally completely unpack the boxes in my room, went through and organized my clothes, helped my mom set up dust ruffles, AND worked out! Yeah!

Anywho. Hopefully more to report tomorrow!

To Bath and Boston

I made the 53-minute drive up to Bath today to visit Halcyon Yarn store to go to their weekly casual spinning session! I got to meet a bunch of great ladies, all spinners of various levels! They gave me some really great tips, like how, when I want to ply two ... uh ... plys? Two already-twisty bits of string together, to make a 2-ply yarn, you can wind them from the spindle onto an old soda bottle or something to hold the twist, instead of splurging for a Lazy Kate :-) And I got to try out a real spinning wheel! Turns out I'm not so bad at that, either! :-) (successful first try = major-ego boost!)

In other news: my Autumn Leaves Afghan is now 54 INCHES LONG HOORAY!!!



This pic is of the wrong side, so you can tell that the autumn leaf lace pattern isn't as gorgeous on both sides. *sigh*

My mom and I drove down to Boston to drop my brother at a friend's place from whence they will begin their cross-country roadtrip back to school on the West coast. So we had to say goodbye *sniffle* but it was cool to hang out on the 2.5 hour drive down :-) Then mom and I stopped by IKEA on our way home (always an adventure) and are wholeheartedly exhausted from a big day!

Oh, and Finneghan the cat is helping me out with my afghan :-)



Time for some sleep (and maybe some spinning!)
~YoungKnitter

Fiber Freak?

I think I'm getting better at spinning!



I'm hoping to visit Halcyon Yarn again tomorrow for the spinning afternoon hang-out session thing, so I can get some tips from a pro :-)

Also, the Fallen Leaves Afghan is now 46" long! Progress, but not a lot of it. *sigh*



I've been thinking, my blog name "The Adventures of Young Knitter" implies that I only knit. Which is untrue! I also crochet, and now I'm learning to spin! Also, I'm younger than most knitters, but I won't be young forever, and it makes me sound like I'm younger than I am. I imagine that other people would imagine that I'm ... i dont know, 13 or something YOUNG. So I'm thinking maybe "The Adventures of a Fiber Freak." What do you think?

More thoughts on that later. :-)

Until then, happy knitting!
YoungKnitter

I'M SPINNING!!!!!

HOORAAAAY!!!!



Those are the fruits of my very first attempt!!! Rather lumpy, somewhat messy, and most likely unusable, but I DID IT!!! *happy dance*

Then I practiced it a bit more and managed to make it a bit thinner:



(by the way: it's SO hard to take a picture of that yarn while it was off the spindle, since I had to hold the camera with one hand and try to keep tension with the other! My cell phone is holding the yarn in place...sort of)

This is what happens if you don't hold the tension:



It gets all kinked up!

Here's my lovely spindle, with adorable sheep on the top:



And my 1/2 lb of domestic wool top roving:



And Fallen Leaves Afghan (lookin' the same, just a bit bigger. I forgot my measuring tape, so I can't even tell you how big it is, either. *sigh* )



And the totally sweet dog I'm house-sitting with, Brick:



Wish me luck as I attempt to make yarn with constant grist! (Fancy term for thickness of the yarn XD )

Until then, happy knitting (or spinning!),
~YoungKnitter

Fiber Roadtrip!

Today was a busy day! The family and I all got up to cheer on my dad as he finished his first 10k run in the Beach2Beacon! Super proud :D

Then Mom and I went on an epic Fiber Roadtrip!

We headed to Lisbon, ME to visit Spunky Eclectic , which looked like a SUPER cool store on its website! Buuuut it was closed when we got there. D:

SO! We drove to Bath, ME to visit Halcyon Yarn . OMIGOSH most glorious yarn store EVER! A great big retail space, with narrow rows between shelves that go allllll the way up to the ceiling with a zillion types of knitting yarn and a million types of weaving yarn and a billion types of roving for spinning.



(Photocred Novamade on flickr, I found the pic on Google images)

And. I. Bought. A. DROP SPINDLE! GAAAHHHH!!!!! I'm SO INCREDIBLY EXCITED!!!! I got a Louet High-Whorl Drop Spindle and it ROCKS.

And I bought a half a pound of plain ol' cheap ol' wool top to practice on! YAAAAAAAYYYY!!!!!

And I bought two 1-lb cones of a gorgeous deep purple cotton weaving yarn that I'm gonna double-strand and use to make my Little Black Dress and I'm SO EXCITED!!

Have I mentioned that I'm excited?!?!? YAAAY!!!

The reason that I'm just posting links instead of uploading pictures is that A) my webcam is on strike, and B) I'm house-sitting for my neighbors, and I managed to leave my camera at home, and its dark and I don't feel like going over and getting it. Yaaay laziness!

So I'll post pictures of my spoils tomorrow. But before then, I'm gonna try my hand at SPINNING! YAY! :D :D :D

Until then, happy knitting!
~YoungKnitter

Twilight: Egad

My brother and I went to see a matinee of Eclipse (3rd movie of the Twilight Series) today! Good gracious that was an awful movie, and I enjoyed every minute of it!

Let's get a few things straight, first of all. I read and enjoyed all the Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer, and saw and enjoyed all three movies (out so far) in theaters. The books are GREAT if you're looking for a fun escapist story, and not some serious literature or a realistic love story. The movies are GREAT if you're looking for some gorgeous manly eye-candy or sweet action sequences, and not cinematographic (its a word, i promise!) genius or breathtaking acting skills. And I go into the movie theater and bookstore expecting just those things, so I enjoy them immensely.

Luckily for us, the only other people in the theater with us today were a couple sitting a few rows back, and they seemed to be laughing and enjoying themselves as much as we were, so we didn't feel too guilty about giggling at the lovey-dovey dialogue and re-enacting the more awkward conversations ourselves.

My favorite scene of the whole movie:
Charlie (Bella's dad) "What's going on here?"
Jacob (werewolf/Bella's best friend who wants to steal her from Boyfriend/Vampire Edward) "I kissed Bella. Then she broke her hand. Because she tried to punch my face."

Charlie's face in response to that line was the movie's saving grace. I was laughing so hard I missed a whole minute of (riveting) dialogue afterwards.

But Jacob was so incredibly sexy in all his shirtless glory, and the fight sequences were pretty groovy, and the scenery (Washington rain forests) was breathtaking.

All in all, a rather enjoyable show. :-)

In other (more knitting-related) news: the Fallen Leaves Afghan is now 44" long!



Just 26" to go! YAAAY!!!

Edited to add: Jeez, I can do math. I meant 16"!!

p.s. I need to stop posting at 11.55pm. I'm cutting it pretty close for my blog-once-a-day plan. O.O

Bigger Afghan

Today was a bit cooler, so I sucked it up and pulled out the Autumn Leaves Afghan.

Tada!



Like Virginia said in her blog blog earlier today, it looks just the same as it did before, only bigger.

It's now 40 inches long, and I've decided I want to make it 60 inches long, total. So that means I'm now 66.7% done yaaay!!!

I head to school on the 18th, which is less than 2 weeks away (YAY/yikes!) and I'd reeeaalllyyyy like to get this blanket finished by then so that I don't have to lug it to school with me or wait until Thanksgiving to finish it. Now, lets see if I can actually do this...!

No progress on the Kalajoki sock #2, but here's the pic that wouldn't upload yesterday:



I had another good knitting sesh with the ladies at Paneras tonight. Met a lovely new knitter and talked about earthquakes, care packages, and sock construction :-) One of the ladies ordered the Spring/Summer seasons Shawl Kit from Knitpicks in the Shadow Tonal yarn, and spent the evening winding balls out of hanks, going over the pattern, and passing around her new interchangeable needle set for us all to drool over. The yarn is SO GORGEOUS!!! Beautiful colors, and so lovely and soft, too. It's in a lace weight, so the yarn is super-fine, but its so pretty *squee* Now if only I wore shawls... :-)

I'm starting to include direct links (yay links!) in my posts (in blue font!), so check out all the cool stuff!

More news (and hopefully lots of progress!) on the afghan tomorrow! Also: my dear brother finally consented to go with me to see Twilight: Eclipse. SO EXCITED! More on that tomorrow.

Until then, happy knitting!
~Young Knitter

Well, I made major progress on Kalajoki sock #2 today (in spite of the heat. Yaaay me!) buuuut I went to take pictures of it and A) my iPhoto wouldn't talk to Blogger and upload the pic I'd imported and B) my PhotoBooth decided it didn't have a camera. O.o

So here's a picture of some socks that I didn't make YAAAAAAY!



What I did for a lot of today instead of knitting (super-hot heat, did I mention that?) was researched spinning and roving and spindles and fiber and GOOD SWEET LOVE I WANT TO LEARN HOW TO SPIN!!!!!

D*mn my lack of job and crafting-funds DX

I did some researching, and I've been looking at drop spindles and fiber that would be affordable for a poor, starving college student.

Check some of these out:

Online Fiber sources:

http://www.knitpicks.com/yarns/Bare_Peruvian_Highland_Wool_Roving__D5420200.html

http://www.yarn.com/webs-spinning-fibers-natural-wool/

http://www.spunkyeclectic.com/shop.php?crn=220

Groovy Shop in Lisbon, ME

http://www.spunkyeclectic.com/shophome.htm

Spindles:

http://www.spunkyeclectic.com/shop.php?crn=236

YUM!

SO! Mom and I are planning a road trip on Saturday to Lisbon to visit that great store and also to Bath to visit a cool yarn store we found in a magazine article. After cheering my dad on in the Beach to Beacon race, of course :-) More pictures soon (once I sweet talk my iPhoto into working again)

Until then, happy knitting!
~YoungKnitter

Baking = perfect excuse for a knitting break

I made banana bread today!



And in the meantime I made good progress on my Kalajoki sock #2!



I'm all set up for gusset decreases. :-)

One hilarious mistake I consistently make in knitting socks is jumping the gun on picking up the gusset stitches before I even turn the heel. So I go straight from the 2.5" heel flap to picking up stitches for the gusset to the gusset decreases. Which means I have WAY TOO MANY stitches around the heel. Now, I did this for my mom's mother's day socks, and the results weren't TOO disastrous. The heels were a tad baggy, but not horribly so.

Luckily, I didn't do that on these socks :-) I almost did, but I caught myself. *so proud*

So I have gusset decreases and banana bread to look forward to tomorrow :D

Until then, happy knitting!
~YoungKnitter

SO MUCH YARN!!!

Today, I went through ALL of my yarn, needles, hooks, and patterns to see what I want to keep and what I don't. And can I say WOW! I have a lot of stuff O.O I ended up tossing quite a bit of stuff out because it was either a puny good-for-nothing ball of yarn or a pattern I'll never make from a skein-band on a yarn I didn't like or whatever. And I took most of the yarn that I don't want but is still good enough to use to the Yankee Yarn Swap with my lovely knitting ladies tonight! They liked what I had to offer (even the legendary rainbow-vomit Red Heart SuperSaver yarn I've had since I first learned to knit) and I came home with quite a few spoils of my own!

(Good news: I found my connector cable! So I can take pics using my camera now! HURRAY! Bad news: I completely forgot about tonight's blog until just now, so I had to take pictures of my new yarn in extremely poor lighting in my room. Sorry!)

First: some scrumptious LionBrand Imagine, 80% Acrylic, 20% Mohair in a nice tan. Could be a good scarf for my mom?



Second: The totally luscious LionBrand Romance, 85% Acrylic, 15% Mohair in a lovely pale lavender. And a good 480 yards of it, too! Another scarf? Some fuzzy mittens?



Third: A skein of Red Heart Collage (100% Acrylic) which is surprisingly soft, and a really pretty red-fading-to-blue color. Maybe a hat for me :-)



Last but not least, this is what Deborah tells me is just plain ol' TLC, but I just couldn't pass up these great colors!



I had a great time with the ladies at Paneras, as I usually do. We gushed over yarn and shared our cool projects and giggled over countless random topics like we do. Getting to know the Harmony Haven Knitters has made me really want to start my own knitting group at Vandy. More on that later :-)

(p.s. Paneras Smoked Turkey sandwich on Country Bread never fails to impress me. Ahhhh the simple joys of life ^^ )

I also made some good progress on my Kalajoki sock #2! :-)