Reading

I absolutely have made boring to look at progress on two project this week, and I'll show you a progress picture of the big one in a minute, but to put things in a bit of perspective, this is what is taking up big chunks of my day.

The blue circle are the resource books (not to mention a few binders) that I need to be familiar with for this school year, the green are the books I've already read, and the blue are the ones I need to/am currently reading. I'm hoping to finish Herodotus in the next few days as well as do an online course for teachers at my new school before I go in for another Omnibus orientation meeting on Thursday. And I have that stack to keep working through, as well as hopefully get my science materials so I can start working through that too. So, simple knitting it has been for while I relax in the evening after a days reading with a few errands thrown in. One of many reason why I wanted to move down as close to two months before school as I could!

In addition to doing a lot of reading, I've been doing a few other things. All my DMC embroidery floss is now neatly put away in boxes again--I brought it back from Zambia in bags to save weight.

I made a small cake with my mini spring-form pans,

and I tried mini pizza waffles- some more tweaking is needed, but they were acceptable.

I splurged on some beautiful yarn that I've wanted since I first saw it a few months ago and Yarnia just got a fresh stock of- Amanda Hope's Aegean colorway. Not only is her yarn amazing, but it's also locally dyed!

And, I'm almost ready to start the bust shaping on my Cityscape tank; I'm adding a bit of length as I have a long torso 'cause I'm tall, but I need to do a bit of knitting math before I determine exactly how much. If my stich gauge was slightly off, my row gauge likely is as well.

Sorry for that last picture being a bit blurry; I had interference from a certain Ginger Pants while trying to photograph it. It's so nice to have a cat around the house again!

Well, that's all for now; more history of the Persian war in Greece tomorrow!

Settled

I have pretty much got my apartment set up the way I want (I ended up going to buy a 6th bookcase--I'm going to need it!) and have even got most of my decorative items where I want them, so now it's on to other projects. Like re-sorting all my embroidery floss that I lugged across the ocean and back and now needs new boxes. I'm working on acquiring kitchen tools as I need them, working through the huge stack of reading for school, and of course working on some knitting and spinning!

I gave my finished pink/purple yarn a bath right after I moved but forgot to take pictures of it, so here are the finished skeins in all their glory. Now to figure out what project they go with... I'm pretty please with my increasing skills, and despite my fears it looks like the two main skeins aren't too different.

On Sunday I started working on my birthday gift from Beth- some lovely alpaca that she dyed. I spun up half of it that afternoon, but I'm stalled out a bit because I can't decide if I want to 2 or 3 ply it, and if I'm going to do it 2 ply, if I want to have two seperat balls, or ply from the center and outside of the cake at once. The problem with that last method is there is a high potential for a mess as I don't have any kind of kate to help me tension, but at the same time that will guarantee that every little bit gets used. Hmm...

I'm still working on the baby sweater; one arm is getting close to done, and the long tedious ribbing is already done, so I should be able to finish this off quickly. So cute! And I like how my two-color ribbing turned out.

The main thing I've been working on is my Cityscape Tank, in Lion Brand Coboo, a cotton-linen blend. I love the color and got the yarn at a great price over the 4th of July, but it is rather splitty, so while it's a very simple stitch pattern (sooooo sick of twisted ribbing!), I have to watch pretty carefully to make sure I'm not splitting stitches. I'm pondering how I'm going to weave those ends in and if I need to do anything extra. I'm thinking I might need to do clasp-weft joins to help keep the ends from fraying, but that might make it worse. Hmm... White this isn't exciting to knit, I love the excellent shaping of the finished product, and have found hopes of getting to wear it soon. It's not like Texas is going to run out of summer!

One of the best parts of having my own place has been having my own kitchen again. I've been enjoying meal planning, shopping, and then cooking. I made hamburger buns last week; not quite what I was hoping for, but definitely edible!

I also bought a mini waffle maker, and after an initial trial run on Sunday with a waffle omelette,

I used it tonight to make supper, and I LOVE IT. I never knew I had a tinny waffle maker void in my life, but now I have some fun ideas for things to 'waffle' that I can't wait to try!

Well, that's what I've been up to so far! I'm having company over tomorrow, so I'm trying something out to see if it works as well in real life as it did in my head! Also, I seriously need to get a cooling rack for my baking...

Queen of her own castle again!

I totally meant to get this posted Monday… Yeah… Turns out unpacking is a pretty big job! Not to mention getting a cat settled, working on stocking your kitchen (food and tools), and getting all the details of running an apartment set up.

My goal is to be pretty much unpacked by today, a week from the commencement of unpacking, so we’ll see how that goes. While I’ve done the bulk of it and am mostly working on details now, I’m also making sure to take knitting and Netflix breaks from time to time! On today’s list is the last touches on the stash reorganize, as I found the bins I wanted at the dollar store, as well as sorting out the knits I want to keep, and the ones that can move on.

I’ve been working from the kitchen back, and spent a good chunk of time Sunday organizing my books so I could put them on my bookshelves. Unlike a lovely friend of mine who makes her bookshelves into art by organizing by color, I tend to organize by genre and how much I love the book. I enjoy the process of sorting and shelving, just like I greatly enjoyed processing books when I volunteered at the library this summer. While I did that I removed books that I no longer had to have in physical form so I could take them to my favorite used bookstore. I also remembered that I have another box or two of books coming from overseas while I was in the midst of sorting, and quickly realized that I was going to need another bookcase. So, I went to Walmart today and got another of the 5 shelf bookcases, and did a bit of work on Libib removing the no longer needed tags and deleting the books I’m culling. The question is, how long will that bookcase last me?

In the midst of all the moving crazy, I have some finished objects! While on my big trip to the ACCS conference and to visit both sets of Grandparents, I finished my McGonogal socks. I can’t wait for the weather to get cool enough for me to enjoy them! I didn’t mean to order the twisty sock base, but I loved the texture and will absolutely certainly consider buying it again!

As it’s still Stash Dash, the huge project I really wanted to finish was the car seat poncho. I found that using the percentage method to adjust the stitch counts worked quite well, and rather to my surprise I had enough to not only complete the hood, but also to do the ribbing! I had only a tiny ball of yarn left, and was rather pleased that this particular game of yarn chicken went well. I kind of want to get the same yarn and do this again, but with a different stitch pattern perhaps, and I know I want to change the short row shaping on the hood a bit. I wasn’t wild about that visible line of decreases, and I’m pretty sure I know how to fix it.

In the continuing sprit of Stash Dash, and because I have a childish need to whack the fuzzy pom pom on the crown of the finished hat, I’m trying to finish my re-knit of the Color Dipped hat out of my alpaca handspun. Fisherman’s rib is delightfully squishy, but I find I burn out on ribs pretty fast. So, now that I’m in my own place, hopefully I can get this finished up and ready for the next time I encounter some cold weather. Wow—I’m going to have real seasons again!

On of my projects this weekend was to get my Non-Euclidean Heel socks past the heel turn so I could work on them during my planned movie date, Spiderman Far From Home on Tuesday. That part went fine, but then I apparently dropped a stitch right off the bat, and had to laboriously ladder it back up once I got home and had proper lighting. Oh well, I know the risks!

I've been doing some baby things because a) they are fast, b) great way to stash-bust, and c) I like to have some gifts on hand for deserving babies. I just need to sew the pom-pom on this hat I started during LU's graduation and it's ready to,

And I'm working through the ribbing on another Baby Vertebra. I'm doing two color ribbing; still not sure it was brilliant or a mistake, but I'm committed at the moment!

And, while it hasn't recieved much love lately, I did work quite a bit on my Hasukai cowl while I was traveling in June. I'm going to love it once it's done!

I'll write a bit more about some cooking efforts later, but for now I'll close out with this picture of my handsome little ging- he can be a real butt, but I'm enjoying his company!