TAKING BACK [THE KNIT]

I'm listening to the catchiest fucking pop-punk song right now. I'm going to have it in my head for a week, and the worst part is that I have it on a mix tape somewhere, and I know I'm going to accidentally listen to it and just get it into my head even more. Anyway, on to something relevant ...

I got all the way to the ribbing on Bad Penny before trying it on. So I decided to put it on some waste yarn and make sure everything was okay. Too bad. It was like 2-3 inches looser than I wanted it to be. I use #7s, so I though it would be a little smaller than the 36" chest the pattern gave. Nope. I have a really tiny upper body (except shoulders) for a 5' 10" girl, especially compared to my hips. I also like my clothes to fit tightly so 36" is too big. Thus, I decided to frog the whole freakin' thing and start over with my own numbers. It took me a little while to figure the math out, but I think (HOPE) I've got it right. I really don't want to frog it the whole time. Oh, I almost forgot to share the best part: when I re-cast on, I got about 5 rows in before I realized that I'd TWISTED before joining it! I was pissed when I realized. But it's going well so far, and I'm a couple of inches in. Wish me luck! (Actually, I'm not even done with this one, and I'm envisioning a cotton version. After knitting Lelah with cotton I'm really in love with it.)

I've made some good progress on my (seemingly) hundreds of scarves that are in progress. I can't work on any one thing for very long though. Scarves really bore the hell out of me. I think after this batch I'll be done with them for a long time.

If my computer will cooperate, I might have some real life pictures, show pictures, and maybe even some knitting pictures sometime this week. Who knows though. I have my senior project presentation on Thursday. I get to talk about knitting, blogging, and myspace for 8 minutes. And after 11 minutes I get penalized. So needless to say, I might have a problem. I could go on for hours on just one of those things, let along all three!

Oh man, I've been reading Craftster obsessively lately, and I've just wanted to do crafty things 24/7! I realized I need to start doing cross-stitch and blackwork again. I used to be crazy about cross-stitch. And I also need to learn to embroider, since it seems so versatile.

And I've also had NO attention span at all lately. And with that I'm off to go do crafty things.

Okay, I'll tale a little page out of everyone else's books, and post a bunch of pictures. They're random, so watch out.
And we'll start with the new bridge (?) that's being put up. I'm guessing it'll the new Bay Bridge since it's right next to the old one! Then there's Alcatraz, and some random shots of the City from the bridge.

I love how you can see the guys working in this one! I can only imagine what those jobs are like.









Then there's my lovely sister, looking oh-so-happy:


Our after make-up artist shot. Too bad it's blurry. Claire says I look gorgeous, but I think I look like a clown because of the blush. She looks great, however. Notice the differences in out skin tones. (That little brat tans like a Mexican while I stay pale. Oh the genes!)


Cool-ass carpet at the Elk's Lodge where we had lunch. I love that they have their own carpet! When I was in Job's Daughters we didn't have our own carpet. I'm so jealous.


This street was real fun to go down in a bus. It felt almost vertical (exaggeration) and I just about shit myself (not an exaggeration).




Enough bandwidth wasting for now ...

I had a wonderful day today. No knitting accomplishments, but I did get some shopping done. I didn't go to school and spent the day in the City. I love San Francisco so much! If I didn't live in Sacramento, San Francisco is one of the few places I would consider living. Anyway, I finally found some short that fit and match my bathing suit. Doesn't sound hard, and shouldn't have been because said bathing suit is multi-colored but it was a bitch. I also got the Polo shoes I'd been dying for but in a different color and for almost half the price! SCORE! One more pair of slip-on shoes for my collection. Pretty soon I'm going to forget how to tie my shoes. I also got a sundress which I think I will wear for graduation. It's halter-top, striped on one stide and polka dotted on the other. However, the tag is on the polka dotted side, and I like that side more. So I'll be doing a little surgery on it before I wear it. And the best thing about all this is that everthing I bought today matches! I've decided that since I was so stuck on wearing black and white last year that this year it's going to be about blues, greens, and off-white. The shoes and the dress match, as do the shoes and the shorts. I'm becoming a real shopper.
And also while I was in Macy*s, I got my makeup done at Laura Mercier. The lady emphasized how I wore a lot of eyeliner, and I got the idea that she's not a fan of the thick black line on my upper lid. So I had purple-ish shadow and peach lips, which was all to bring out the green in my eyes. Or so she said. And she gave me eyebrows! I have naturally blonde eyebrows and lashes, so normally you can't see them. I took a picture, and maybe I'll put together a little before and after.

Bad Penny update: I hate when ideas look/sound great in my head and then I work on the and they end up not quite so good. I had the brilliant idea to do the top in red with a white collar and cuffs. Until I picked up stitches for the collar and realized I'm going to look like SANTA CLAUS! ARGH! Okay, Mrs. Claus. But still, I think the white accenting is not going to work. I'll just have to scrounge up some other yarn. (random though: I mean to find a yarn shop in the City today but didn't. Damn.) Anyway, I'll take some pictures and y'all can tell me what you think.

I took a shitload of pictures today, so once I finish getting pictures from this weekend uploaded, then I'll upload those. There will be a photo extravaganza. And it will be of some people no one knows, random pictures of San Francisco and things like that. Maybe I'll take some gratutious stash pictures or something. Oh, but I'd have to organize my stash first. Damn.

I'm sitting at school AGAIN, and someone has decided that the font on this computer should be so tiny that I can't even read it. I have no idea how to change it, and only certain pages are effected. UGH! So I can't really see what I'm typing right now, and I hope there aren't a thousand horrendous spelling errors.

Thanks for all the compliements, etc. on Lelah! I love it soooo much, I really do. I can't wait until It's warm enough to wear it. Summertime, here I come!

Okay, I gotta go. I have to sit in the gym for an HOUR. Thank god I brought something to knit (Bad Penny) and something to listen to (Rancid - And Out Come the Wolves, which has been in constant rotation for me lately). Only one month until I gradute! YESSSS! Longest month of my liiiiiaaaffeee!

Okay, finally, Lelah pictures! YES!   The waistband is gray I-cord. I got to impatient too find an appropriate ribbon. I'm 90% sure I'm going to add straps simply because I want to wear something underneath it to cover my extremely pale stomach, and I don't own another tube top. So I need straps. Although, I might go buy a tube top solely for this purpose. Hm.

I think I'm going to put up some pictures of my weekend, which was full of picture taking tomorrow. They just need to be uploaded, and it's late.

I'm sitting in class killing time. I am so BORED with the INTERNET! UGH! I can't even think of anythign to do. Myspace is blocked, so that rules out sending stupid messages and stuff. I could leave everyone blog comments but I'm not inspired enough to do that. I've read all the music messageboards, and craftster, and I have nothign left to say!

Pictures this afternoon! I was going to take them last night, but the lighting looked weird. I'll take them in natural light once I get home. I know Christine needs just that one more Lelah to add to her gallery.

My horoscope today: "You've never shied away from working overtime. You'll do whatever it takes to get the job done (and done well), but when it's time to play, it's time to play. For days now, you've been thinking about taking some time off. More than once, you've come awfully close to actually walking up to the boss and asking. It's now officially time to stop thinking and start talking. If you haven't earned this, no one has." This is definitely true, though. I definitely have felt like taking some time off ... I wish school was over sometime sooner than it's going to be. I can't wait to be out of high school!

I'm listening to the song that my title came from (Comeback Kid - Step Ahead). It makes me smile! Oh god, I sound like Toni. I'm in a music downloading mood at the moment, and I'm downloading the new HOODS song that's on eulogyrecordings.com. I'm sure it will be fucking awesome, like most other HOODS already is. I'm not sure what I'm going to download next. Maybe I'll browse through myMUSICbiatch and see what I don't have.

And I have no idea why I felt compelled to go on about that, but I did.

I should be seeing Agnostic Front tonight, but I'm stuck at home. LAME. It makes me want to cry deep down inside. Every time they come on my windows media, my heart hurts. =\

No knitting content today. I'm just plugging away with the same old stuff: Bad Penny, and the 527540972 scarves I have going. Once I get around to taking a shower and looking decent, I'll take pictures of everything and put them all up. (I have showered in a while and I'm sitting around in a sweatshirt. Pictures now would NOT be a pretty sight!)

I hope all you east coast ladies have fun this weekend at MSW!

There are a few things in my life that get me motivated to actually work. Knitting is one of them. My senior project was NOT one. Knitting has been such a trend 'round these parts that I thought it would be brilliant to start a knitting group at school. However, all the other knitters at school are LAZY like me, and don't want to take time out of their busy schedules to knit with other people. Understandable. So I wasn't sure what to do. And as brilliant as I am, my English teacher/drama teacher/senior project advisor is twice that. She suggested I start a blog for senior project. And guess what you're reading right now? AWESOME! I also started a myspace group in the intention of using it to get word out for the group I was going to start. I used Christine's blog as a source, saying that she suggested blogspirit to me, and her site is a great example of the sense of community there is on blogspirit and in the online knitting world. (I tend to get a little corny when I write essays, hahaha!) So I'll be turning in my paper tomorrow and doing my presentation sometime toward the end of this month. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person EVER to use the word "boozehags" legitimately in a paper for senior project!

I'm done lurking craftster, and now I'm actually posting. DeadRedhead is my lovely name there. I'm loving it so far ...

Speaking of craftster, a thread there inspired me to finally get crackin' on my Bad Penny. I did a little stash depletion by using some Lamb's Pride in Red Wing that I had lying around. I just separated the sleeves from the body and everything seems to be going fine so far. Although I haven't tried it on at all yet, and I'm kind of paranoid it won't fit. But I'm just to lazy to put the whole think on waste yarn to do that and then take it off again. = (I think there's a theme with this post!)

A great thing happened to me today: someone gave me yarn. GAVE. As in for free. And gave me free reign to do whatever I want with it. I now possess some blue, purple, and greenish varigated worsted, some blue, green and purple ribbon, and off-white, green, and lavendar boulce-type stuff. (I'm guessing Sammy likes green, blue, and purple, you think?) I am in heaven. I think I'm going to use the worsted to do Branching Out, as I've been in love with lace lately. I've never knit with ribbon yarn, and I'm thinking I will hate it. Regardless, I think I shall convert Clapotis from bias knit to just straight and do that. I like to unravel stitches, and I think that might show off the yarn well. We'll see. I've no idea about the other yarn though. I think it mght be Lion Brand Homespun, and I've really liked it when I've worked with it before. However, I've never seen a color anything like this. So who knows.

Okay, I'm going to promise to post FO and WIP pictures, because if I don't then I'll never get them done. They will be up tomorrow or Friday at the very latest! I pinky swear!

Since I was talking about Highland, I thought I would post a picture from my competition last weekend. I'm the redhead in blue, closest to the camera. (And you can see why I placed fifth if you look at my left heel, compared with everyone else's. hahah, I'm not really that hard on myself, but being high on the ball is just one of those things that there's no excuse not to do!) If you want to see more of the pictures from that competition, go here to check them out. There are some really beautiful pictures there.

I'm being a horrible knitter. My hands have been KILLING me lately, and I've just ignored it and knit through it. Tonight, I even took a Motrin, and will tomorrow as well. And I'm sitting here typing right now! I'm treating my hands like shit! UGH! But I can't NOT knit and type and do all the fun stuff that hurts one's hands.

Oh gosh, I had so much on my mind to talk about before and somehow I seem to have forgotten all of it! I think I'll just leave it at this for now, and add more as I remember.