Needlephile

I realized today that it has been a long time since I have made a decent post here!  Did you miss me??  Ive been pretty distracted with everything... school, work, social life.  I even missed my monthly SNB yesterday cuz I really just wanted a nap after work more than anything.  Ive also been trying to get my new place in order, too.  I really enjoy unpacking things, but it does take time!  I have been knitting  a little... not much though.  I'm working on a new felted laptop case, made with Knitpicks wool in the colorway Spumoni.  Its such an odd combination of colors, and I love it... pink, turquoise, brown and lime green.  I think it will look super cool once its done.  I am a little nervous, though because I have never felted anything before.  Yep, Ive been knitting for two years now and I still havent felted anything!  So today, instead of doing school work like I should be doing, I'm watching football, blogging and knitting.  Sweet, huh?  I have to catch up on my blog reading as well... theres a lot to read!

Another cool thing is that I actually won something!  I won the prize for my Misty Meadow scarf for the Knit the Classics KAL.  Very cool, huh? My prize is a bunch of Knitpicks sock yarn... I guess I'll have to knit some socks... another thing I have yet to knit!  Hopefully I will actually get it in the mail because I still havent gotten any mail here yet.  I'm worried... I'll have to call the PO tomorrow. 

Phew! It has been quite a week... starting up school again and starting a new job. I feel like I haven't had much down time. I have started my internship, and so far I have had three patients. It is so satisfying to finally be able to use everything that I have been learning up until now. Acupuncture is an art in addition to being a medicine... no two people will treat one patient the same way. So being able to choose which points I want to use and which techniques I want to perform is very challenging, but so much fun. And of course helping people feel better is so rewarding. I think this will be a fun semester.
As far as knitting goes, I haven't done much this week. I think I only got a few rows done of my Misty Garden scarf at SNB yesterday. I will get more done today while watching the Red Sox lose to KC again, and of course football. My poor, poor Sox are so sad right now. As of last night, we are actually 10 games behind the Yankees. Ugh. But, to cheer me up, I finally got my very own copy of MDK. I'm ready to get started on those dishcloths!

It seems my must-knit list is getting longer and longer... have you seen this from Magknits?? so pretty... but I must focus! I just bought yarn this morning for the Simple Knitted Bodice from WEBS. I scored and got 14 skeins of Berrocco Softtwist at the LOW LOW price of $3.75!! Most of the other colors are $5 each, but a few are at the lower price... so how could I resist? Dis of A Little Loopy is also using this yarn for the SKB and said it was a good sub, so I'll give it a try. I didn't enhance my stash at all yesterday during our yarn crawl, but I didn't come away empty handed...

Wow, thanks to everyone who has expressed words of support for me! It really does mean a lot, and every little bit helps me right now. Sometimes I am feeling great, and other times not so much. I've been trying to keep as busy as possible to keep my mind off of Dumbass (which is what I will call him from here on out). So since I am done with school now (yay!) I've been working a lot, and of course knitting, and making sure I have my friends around me. Luckily, I only have a week until I fly home to Massachusetts for a well deserved vacation. I will be amongst all the support that my family can give me, and FAR FAR away from Dumbass.
So what have I been knitting, you ask? Well, I am still working on the VK skirt, which is taking forever on size 4's and sport weight yarn, but I like the way it is coming along. I also got a bit ambitious and thought I would try my hand at a lace shawl since I had a couple skeins of Knitpicks laceweight burning a hole in my stash. So I saw a beautiful finished Moutain Peaks shawl, and I thought, "Oh, I should make that!" So, I immediately bought the pattern and sat down to try it out. I got about half way through the first chart when my head started to hurt, and I got incredibly frustrated. This is my first attempt at such a detailed lace shawl with charts like this. I suppose it will get easier when i get the hang of it, but I also really need smaller needles. Since my size 4's are occupied my the VK skirt, I tried it on my size 6's, but it looks way too wonky with such thin yarn and it is way too difficult to work with. So that project will be on hold until I have the time and money to buy some new needles.
Then I thought I would start on something completely different, and start a shrug that I have been eyeing on Craftster for a long time. I got about an inch of the ribbing done yesterday. I'm also using some yarn from the stash for this... Caron Simply Soft in black.
Oh, and the Red Sox swept the Orioles yesterday, and the Yankees lost! That always makes me feel good ;)

I don't know about you, but I hate it when I actually have a day to sleep in, but I wake up at 6 am and I'm wide awake. That didn't happen yesterday, when I actually had to get up early. WTF? I tried to go back to sleep, but after a while, I figured it was a lost cause, and I should really get up and do some studying or something. So here I am, blogging.
In the mornings on my days off I like to catch up on the blogs that I read regularly, and this morning I was reading my favorite Red Sox blog (cuz the Sox just got swept this weekend and I think misery likes company), but instead of getting all fired up about the Sox, I was really touched by this post. It sounds like something my dad would say.

*****
Last night I actually finished a sweater! Can you believe it?? Well, a tiny little red sweater for RedSweaters.org. If you haven't heard about this yet, check out the website. This woman is making a statement about the war in Iraq by putting one red sweater in a tree for every soldier killed in the war. She needs help, though cuz there are 2500 dead American soldiers so far. I don't even want to go into how depressing and frustrating that is to me. But I will say that it only takes a couple hours to make a little red sweater and send it off to her to help with this project, so please help out if you can.

Wow. Its been kind of a crazy weekend so far. Yesterday was great... apparently it was Worldwide Knit in Public Day. Conincidentally, we had our monthly StitchnBitch in Hillcrest at WineSteals. We always set the start to be at 1pm, and somehow I am always the first person there, even though yesterday I showed up at about 2pm. C'est la vie. But then once one person showed up, pretty much everyone else did right after her. We thought it might just be three of us, but then four non-regulars showed up, which was so cool. Its always great to meet new knitters! I was hoping to make it to Kris' going away knitting party today, but due to my lack of studying so far this weekend, I don't think I can make it happen. Yesterday was spent recovering from a hangover, then going to SNB, then going to a housewarming party for a couple hours, and then to another housewarming party, where there was an abundance of Red Sox fans. Somehow we got a Yankee hat and we burned it in the fire pit. That was fun!

so today will be spent studying for my midterm and recovering from another slight hangover. Ugh.

I apologize to all of you who actually come to visit my blog looking for knitting content, cuz there is none lately. I do love baseball, and especially the Red Sox and I must warn you (in case you haven't already figured it out) that I might make some baseball related posts. There may also be some occaisonal Yankee-bashing. I am making some progress on Diamonique... I finished the back, and am about an inch into the front, but any pictures I could take wouldn't be very different than the pictures I have taken of it.
I did however get my financial aid check on Monday, which of course means that I have money to buy yarn again! Uh oh.... I have restrained myself so far, mostly because I have so many expensive text books to buy this semester. But i did spend my elann.com gift certificate from my secret pal swap on some Endless Summer Luna in the color lapis (royal blue) to make the skirt from the latest Vogue Knitting. Hopefully I will get the yarn in time to start it at my monthly Stitch n Bitch.

Have you all seen the new long awaited issue of Spun?? The best thing in there is a beautiful skirt by the amazingly creative Christine, who just had her second baby!

As far as my knitting goes, I am about half-way done with the back of Diamonique. Its going much better this time around, placing stitchmarkers every repeat to keep me on track.

Here is a picture of my herb/veggie garden that I planted the other day. I can't wait until I can just go outside to get a tomato for my salad!
I'm so sad that I only have a week left of my break from school. I start up again on May 1st But I think today will be a nice beach day, so I can finally get rid of this pale skin I have! I love sun-bathing, even if it is horribly bad for you. I do a LOT of it in the summer too, considering I'm only a block from the beach. Don't worry, I always use sunscreen. There's just nothing better than being on the beach, reading a book and drinking a beer with my honey.
Oh, speaking of books, I finally finished "I Know This Much is True." I LOVED it. I found myself not wanting it to end... I highly recommend it. Its about a set of twin brothers, one of which has schizophrenia, and the other one is left looking out for him. The "normal" brother has problems of his own though, and the book takes us on a journey throughout his life, and his search for their birth father who is unknown to him. Wally Lamb has a great feel for human behavior and psychology. I really liked his other well-known book "She's Come Undone," also.
So what to read now?? I only have a week left of break, so my options are limited. I think I may re-read "Rebecca" by Daphne DuMaurier, because it is one of my favorite books ever. It will be a good beach-read.

Ok, I'm probably the last to know (as usual) but the new Knitty's out! Although there are a lot of cute, creative patterns, there is nothing that I'm just dying to knit (thankfully). I liked the socks in there... one of these days I will knit me a pair of socks.
I've gotten a little work done on Diamonique:

Its hard to make out the pattern in the pic, but it's looking good so far!
Its always weird the first few days of a school break... I feel restless, and slightly anxious because I feel like there is something I need to be doing... studying, or writing a paper, or doing some kind of homework. I go from spending so much time worring about tests and papers, and then all of a sudden, I have nothing to worry about but going to a job I have three days a week. On Sunday, I spent most of the day reading, which was so great! But I kept having this feeling like I needed to be doing something for school. But don't worry... it won't take me long to get over that!
I really like this book, too. I'm half-way through now, and totally engrossed in it. My only concern now is what I should read after this...

It seems that there is never a shortage of patterns out there that I JUST HAVE TO KNIT. When I get one thing done, there is always a new magazine, or a new knitty, or a clever blogger who comes up with a great pattern. Well, one such clever blogger, Melissa, came out with a great cardigan pattern called the Granny Smith Cardigan. Its knit in kidsilk haze, which just sounds perfect. Cardigans are so versatile, too.
So here's a sampling of some of the things I want to knit in the near future:

-Granny Smith Cardigan
-Orangina
-Tiered skirt from spring VK
-Diamonique
-Starsky


Eesh... that will certainly keep me busy for a while... not to mention drain my wallet! Thankfully, I will be on break soon, only a week left. My hardest final was today in herbal formulas. All my other finals should be a piece of cake because two are take-home, one is open book, and one is only for a couple weeks worth of classes. This really is a hard program, I swear! Usually I will have one solid week of tortuous exams and studying. I know next semester will be tough for me because I will be taking my second year-end exams, which determine if I will be an intern (or not!). I can't wait to be an intern!! I can't wait to have my own patients in clinic and feel like I am actually helping people. Acupuncture is an amazing medicine, and it just fascinates me all the time. I love it.
Hmm... I guess I should go study, huh?