Mission Accomplished

Look what I finished! Do you see those wonderful mitts? And the thumbs? The thumbs are amazing. Because I spent a great amount of time working on those freaking thumbs. Admire them. Thank you.

And now, I need something else to knit. I'm thinking I'll yank out the good old melonstrosity. Because it's been quite cold lately, and a blanket would be nice. 

Next time, remind me to show you what I've spun. It's very exciting.

Ouch

I've been standing up all day. Seriously, this is the first time I've had the chance to sit for more than about 2 minutes since I got up this morning. I had to clean the house, bake some really delicious cookies, go to work, come home and get ready for my pumpkin party, and then actually have the pumpkin party (which was really fun). Then, after the pumpkin party, because my dog is really sneaky, I had to chase her down the street and up an alley and corner her in some strangers driveway while waiting for my dad to bring reinforcements (peanut butter).

In the dark.

She is a black dog.

Bad combo.

Especially on aching legs.

Anyway, now that I'm sitting down (without my beer, dammit, I don't want to get up and get it), I thought I'd show you a couple things.

Pretty sweet pumpkins, right? The third one from the left is Mariah's first jack-o-lantern (she thinks). Yeah, I'm a twenty-something and I had a pumpkin carving party, what are you saying?

Mine is the one on the far right, it's the Grim Reaper (or Death, if you read Discworld). Pretty awesome, right? That's cuz the pumpkin kits my dad got had templates in them. Pretty much amazing.

Also:

Almost a whole, entire mitten! How exciting! And it fits. And it doesn't pucker (which I always worry about with colorwork). Yay! I haven't cast on the second mitten yet. Not because I have SMS-second mitten syndrome-but because I finished it kinda late last night, then had to sew the ends in and then I had a busy day and and I'm too stupid for colorwork. But never fear! I shall do my best to cast on tomorrow.

And now, my dears, I'm going to soak my aching legs in the hottest water I can stand. I was going to spin, but I don't see that happening.

Return of the knitting

Man, I am still exhausted from this weekend. So tired I nearly nodded off at work today. And I needed an energy drink to get through class, because I don't want to embarrass myself by snoring through someone's presentation. I'm not that rude.

I did, however, knit my way through class. I started a hat:

That's the first inch or so of Pasha, in Lorna's Laces Honor in color Poppy. I decided that I needed a new, excitingly colored hat. Which is totally not true, but it makes me happy to lie to myself. It'll be pretty, though, and extra warm because it's wool and silk. Which also means luscious. Yay!

The reason I cast on Pasha is because these are not going the way I want them to:

That's version 2 of those fingerless mitts I was trying to make. I've decided that the wrist is too short, and the thumb is too long, so I'm frogging them. Because they're clearly just not meant to be. I'll just let the yarn sit and stew on its fate for a while.

Also, the Rainbow mitts are not very portable, since they involve changing colors every 3 rows at this point, and they involve 8 colors. Not hard to knit, just hard to keep track of the colors and what is going in class at the same time. However, I did get a fair amount of cuff done last night:

Very exciting!

Want to know what came in the mail today? Of course you do. Who wouldn't? My mailbox is an exciting place

That's the Toboggan Hat and Mitten kit from Knitpicks. They had them last year, and I didn't order in time, so they were sold out by the time I was ready to order. Which made me le sad because I really wanted the blue kit, but they weren't getting any more in and you couldn't get the pattern by itself... anger. Anyway, they have them again this year. I went back and forth between the purple and the green kits, Caitlin told me to get both and make one up for her, but I decided to just go with purple, since I don't own a lot of green winter gear. We'll see how I like it. Now that I have the pattern, I could make all kinds of colors of these little buggers! Not that I need them (see the hat comment), but I could.

Anyway, it's all very exciting on the knitting front, and I'm going to have to exercise self-control (not a lot of that around here these days) in order to keep from being buried in a pile of WIPs. Or being committed to the sanatarium because my parents think I've finally lost it. Wish me luck!

In which life returns to normal (whatever that is)

It's official. Shelby and Chase are married, and all of the wedding events are over (except for opening presents, they haven't had the chance to do that yet). I can now return to my regularly scheduled life. It was a pretty hard core weekend. Lots of fun, lots of driving, lots of silliness. Not lots of sleep, unfortunately... but who needs sleep when you're making memories?!

Heads up: this post involves no pictures of knitting, and very little knitting information. Scroll to the bottom if you want to read it, though.

We started out by getting our nails done, then running some errands, and then we went to meet the lady who would be doing our hair! She did a lovely job, day-of:

That's Caitlin's head, because I can't take a picture of the back of my own. And Shelby's hair was mostly covered by the veil. Just in case you were wondering, that hair style is a result of 45 bobby pins and 2 clips, and a ton of hairspray. That's how we roll.

Then, Shelby and I loaded up in my car and hauled ourselves down to the location of the bridal shower. Which was lovely, and Shelby got many pretty presents. The themed shower was a great idea, and I think everyone had fun. Hopefully. I didn't get many pictures of the shower, I was busy leaping around and giving people clothespins, or offering them drinks, or writing down the names and gifts as Shelby unwrapped them. She did get quite a few ribbons, which made a lovely ribbon bouquet for the rehearsal:

After the shower, we headed into Denver for the bachelorette.

We had SO much fun. Lots of dancing, no mishaps, everyone got home in one piece and, as far as I know, no one suffered a hangover, which is more than I can say for the groom. Good times all around!

The next day, we had kind of a lazy morning, I failed to send a fairly important homework assignment in, and we packed up all of Shelby's shower gifts into my car with all our luggage, and trooped back to Fort Morgan for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, which I don't really have pictures for, since I was kind of busy at the time.

Then, it was wedding day!







Doesn't she look lovely? This is how she decided to sit on the floor so we could play some cards. Silly games, of course, because we didn't have the attention span for more difficult games.

Caitlin looks totally relaxed, doesn't she? 

Every 30 seconds this happened:
Despite the lovely job that the hairstylist did, my hair is very opinionated, and didn't want to stay put. There was just this one curl that kept popping out. Caitlin did her best to restrain it.

The cake was agreed to be very pretty, and perfectly acceptable, and we didn't have mountains of cake left over, so that was all good. I'm not saying there were no leftovers, just an acceptable amount.

And, since Caitlin and I were completely done with our responsibilities, other than making sure the bride had someone to hold her dress occasionally, we indulged ourselves:

The sad part? We drank most of 2 bottles of champagne, and didn't even get buzzed. No clue what was up with that. Oh well, it was fun, but remind me to never try another marathon wedding weekend. It was exhausting. And going back to work is so hard. I guess it could have been worse, Shelby and Chase had to be up at 3 the next morning to make their plane that was taking them to their honeymoon cruise. Poor buggers. I hope they're caught up on sleep by now...

One result of the busy-ness of this weekend was that I didn't have much time to knit. I think I did all the thumb gusset stitches for the little mitt that I've been working on. But otherwise, mostly nothing. And I'm not even knitting on those things that I already have started now. Know what's sitting next to me on the couch right now? Rainbow mittens! *Wiggly eyebrows*

Deja Vu

So, I finished the sleeves for the Runcorn. Then, just to be safe, decided to pin the fronts and backs together to make sure the sweater will actually, you know, fit. And I discovered that it was way too short. So I ripped back 8 full inches on the back and began re-knitting it, adding 4 inches to the part before the arm shaping. Because I don't want to end up with a sweater I won't wear. I've put too much work in.

This means that I can't really call what I'm doing this week "progress" because I was already done. And it also means that Caitlin has beaten me at this KAL, because she finished her sweater this week and I did not. This sweater is really starting to wear on me.

On the bright side, and I do mean bright, I got a bunch of yarn in the mail this week! Because the new Knitty went up this week, and it included a pair of mittens with which I quickly became obsessed. And it turns out, the yarn that the design used is discontinued. So, of course I absolutely had to have the yarns, and the mittens. And now I have 8 new skeins of brightly colored yarn, waiting for me to finish the Runcorn. That's my motivation. I just hope it works.