stuff part 2

Remember how I said I was waiting on packages to get here?? Well, right after I clicked publish post, I went outside to check the mail and our teeny mail slot was jam-packed with three of the items I was waiting on. One of them I didn't expect so soon! :) This is Birds of Paradise, an installment of the sundara petals collection. Thanks Thuy! And this is Sugar Plum, Sundara Seasons (Spring). Thanks Leah! :) Not sure this picture does the yarn justice. :( It is sundara! The unexpected package, was my first PDY Dead Poets Society Club shipment! :)I'm not sure the photo did the yarn justice since the lighting is horrible in my living room! This is Langston Hughes and he came with a cute pendant and some candy. :) Now if only my Robyn's Nest kit would get here!

stuff

We're leaving for a few days tomorrow so things will probably remain a bit quiet while I'm on my Winter Break from school. We're doing a few days with the folks but we'll be back to ring in the new year here in LA (as well as celebrate my fiance's birthday!). Mail has been slow. Real slow. I've been waiting on a trade since the early part of last week and I'm also waiting on my November Ultimate Sock Club kit from Robyn to get here (amongst a few other things!). I don't know why packages typically get to me while I'm away. This morning my final Woolgirl Sock Club kit arrived. :)This was a great finale to the end of the 2008 sock club especially since I love hazelknits yarn. :) And the calendar! I've never seen a Thomas Joseph calendar before and now I'm sold. :) It's been cold..cold even for here! School is finally over. That last week was definitely the longest ever. Who knew that could be possible!

As for knitting, after admitting that I was in a slump, I slowly found my way out of it. :)This is progress on my shrug...I'd like to finish it very soon but I just might not get around to finishing it until I'm away!

One finished man sock.

And the early beginnings of the second half of the man sock pair!

One finished athena sock.

And the early beginnings of a second athena sock.

What I didn't take a picture of yet is the pile of yarn that is in the living room that have all been earmarked for projects that I intend to start (and ideally complete!) while I'm at my parents. I've been commissioned to whip up some mittens, a hat, and a pair of gloves (all for my freezing fiance!). I could probably get the hat and mittens done while we're there but I don't know yet about those gloves.

Oh, and as promised, here are two pic of two of the ornaments I made this year..a mini-sock

and a pair of baby mitts

It's insane to knit these things any smaller than baby size!! I started a snowflake but have yet to get around to doing the crochet edging. This will probably be my last post before Christmas so I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and enjoy your time with your families!

Happy Holidays

knitting blues

I must have them. I haven't felt like knitting in weeks..but maybe that's because two out of the three projects that I've got going require plain old stockinette knitting in the round. Where's the challenge in that?? I picked up my shrug again while I was watching "The Starter Wife" season finale. It's the one project closest to being complete so I thought why not. I may cast on for another pair of fingerless mitts too. I miss the quickness of those! I did knit up a couple of ornaments to go with the tree we got last week so there has been knitting. Just not regular old enjoyable knitting. Isn't that sad? I guess I'm in a bit of a rut. Hopefully I'll find my way out of it soon. In the meantime...I'm happy to announce that I have only four and a half more days of school left!!! Maybe once I'm on vacation, it'll be easier to get out of this rut.

How many have you read??

Dawn had this on her blog and thought it'd be fun to do! a) Look at the list and bold those you have read. b) Italicize those you intend to read. 3) Reprint this list and leave a comment——————————————– 1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (read The Two Towers) 3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6. The Bible (haven't read the whole thing, just parts of it) 7. Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte 8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (tried to) 11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve read a lot of them) 15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (was read to) 17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks 18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 20. Middlemarch - George Eliot 21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens 24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (does it count if I've heard the audio book??) 26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (read East of Eden) 29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34. Emma - Jane Austen 35. Persuasion - Jane Austen 36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 37.The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne 41. Animal Farm - George Orwell 42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving 45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50. Atonement - Ian McEwan 51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel 52. Dune - Frank Herbert 53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth 56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz 57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt 64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac 67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding 69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie 70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville 71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72. Dracula - Bram Stoker 73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75. Ulysses - James Joyce 76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78. Germinal - Emile Zola 79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 80. Possession - AS Byatt 81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker 84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry 87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White 88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton 91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (in French!!) 93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 94. Watership Down - Richard Adams (was read to) 95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare 99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Christmas Meme

I saw this on Danielle's blog and liked it so here are my responses! :) 1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Definitely wrapping paper. I love getting to choose a new roll every December. 2. Real tree or Artificial? A real tree. Having grown up with an artificial tree, it has been great to get a real tree of my own. Funny thing is now, that most of the kids have left my mom's house, she now gets a real tree! 3. When do you put up the tree? Growing up, we always put it up the day after Thanksgiving. Since I've been on my own, I haven't had a set date for putting up the tree. 4. When do you take the tree down? Always around the Epiphany. 5. Do you like eggnog? No. 6. Favorite gift received as a child? I remember getting this kit where I could make my own nailpolish and stuff. That's the one thing that sticks out in my head! 7. Hardest person to buy for? Definitely my dad. 8. Easiest person to buy for? My sister and my fiance. 9. Do you have a nativity scene? Not yet. It's something I want though! 10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Definitely mail! 11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? I don't think I've really had a worst Christmas gift..and if I have, I've blocked it out completely! 12. Favorite Christmas Movie? It's a Wonderful Life used to be my absolute favorite. Now it's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and I also love all those classic real action cartoons (I guess that's what they're called!) that they've brought back. 13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? You know, I used to wait until November but now it's whenever I see something that might good for someone. 14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Only things like lotions/candles. 15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? cookies! 16. Lights on the tree? yes! 17. Favorite Christmas song? Gosh, I have to pick one?? Um, right now I'll say "The Christmas Song" but growing up "The Little Drummer Boy" was my favorite. 18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Travel 19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? Of course! :) 20. Angel on the tree top or a star? An angel 21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? My brother, sister, and I developed a tradition where we pick one gift to open at midnight on Christmas Eve and then we open the rest on Christmas Day. 22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? All the hot heads while holiday shopping. I can't believe people are fighting over things at stores. It's insane. 23. Favorite ornament theme or color? I like handmade ornaments 24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? no favorite 25. What do you want for Christmas this year? It's hard to say. I just want to have a good Christmas with my family and for everyone to be happy and healthy. 26. Lights, blinking or always on? Depends on my mood!

back

I don't know why it is every time I go away and come back it becomes more difficult for me to get back into the swing of things. We ended up staying an extra day (which was probably a good idea since my dad went into the ER again!) Mom thought it was all in his head but it ended up being that he was having an allergic reaction to one of his meds. They kept him through early Monday morning due to his sodium levels being too low. We got back Sunday night after a 7 hour drive home (it's usually only 5!). We left late in the day and we paid for it in spades. Oh well. My sister left even later than we did so who knows how long it took her! There was knitting and there were silly times with my niece as well. Here's my evening shrug so far. I had already finished the first sleeve before leaving for Thanksgiving and started the second sleeve while at my parents' house.Finally a pic of what I've got so far for my sesame. I'm finally ready for some arm shaping for the back! And the new project I started while at my parents' is Robyn's Mathematical Equation socks. :)

Still fast asleep.

Take me back to bed!! Hmm...what's this? When my niece found the yarn in my bag, she said, "Good night" and did this: Ooh, fingering weight. I like it..now what to make? Look at me, under the kitchen table (on Thanksgiving day) being goofy!Genius at work.

I'm finding it harder and harder to take as many pics as I'm used to of my niece when we're up there visiting! I'm spending more time just with the girl since she's so much more social now. What a crack up! We'll be seeing her again in about two weeks and then we won't see her again until I go on spring break! We got our tree today! :) We haven't had a tree in a while but it was my Christmas request this year. No picture of her yet. Maybe once she's semi-decorated. :)