EK Podcast #2

Hello again,
Today I come bearing a second podcast. I am keeping this post simple because all the updates are in it!



Show notes:

Updated picture!

Questions:
1. When and how did you start knitting or crocheting?
2. Whats your most favorite finished object that you’ve made?
3. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever knitted or crocheted?
4. What was your most epic fail in knitting or crochet?
5. What size crochet hook or knitting needle do you use most often?
6. If you could only choose one color to knit with for the rest of your days, what color would that be?
7. If you could only knit or crochet one thing (category, scarves, hats, etc) for the rest of your days, what would that be?
8. Tell me about your ideal knitting situation-where are you? Who are you with? What are you doing? What are you wearing? Etc.

***Please let me know if you'd like to contribute to the podcast like I discussed at the end! If you would like to record a short piece for it, I can also add that as well.

Best lounge everrr...

Hello again,
As I mentioned in my last post, I'm in school, and I go to school in new york city (you may be able to figure out where I go from the pictures in the post, that's cool with me). I have a four hour break between classes every wednesday, which sucks. For the past year, I've stuck with the same lounge on one of the floors of the student center. It's got lots of comfy sofa chairs, a tv that's always on CNN, and that's good enough for me. However, it does get really loud (so I can't hear the tv) and I always feel a little weird being by myself a lot of the time as people congregate around me with their friends, eating lunch.
Last week I decided to venture out, and in my boredom I was surfing around on foursquare. If you haven't heard of foursquare, basically its an app where you 'check in' to places and you can leave tips for other people (its a bit silly). I was checking out what people wrote for the student center, and someone suggested the 9th floor.
I went.
It's amazing. It's got even comfier chairs, its a smaller lounge, and its always quiet because people seem to generally just be on their computers doing work, not congregating with friends. Also, it happens to have an awesome view of the city:

My iphone camera really doesn't do it justice, but that's okay. Also, see the girl sitting in the chair facing the windows on the right? A few minutes after I took this picture, she left and I took her chair right up against the window. I felt more calm than I had all day, sitting up against that window, knitting peacefully and listening to music. 

That's a fuzzy picture because the lower part of the window had dots all over it (purposefully). That's a view of washington square park, you can see the arch pretty clearly.

PS: I discovered a knitting group! As I was leaving the building my classes are in, I spied yarn! Turns out, these two girls had just started a knitting group in my program! I was super excited, but I couldn't stay long because I had plans with a friend to go to lunch. But, I did get a chance to chat with them for a good 20 or so minutes about knitting, crocheting, and ravelry, and knit a couple rows on my sweater in the process. My first real live actual young knitter interaction!

Sweater Details + a little background on my life

Hello again,
Thanks for all the feedback about the sweater! As of right now (I haven't knitted yet today) I don't have much progress to show you, I've only done five or so more rows past the armpits at this point. I never thought i'd say this, but its a breath of fresh air to be doing 140 stitch rows instead of like, 250 stitch rows. By the way, I just wrote fresh hair instead of air. I'm tired.
Anyway, here is the details of the sweater I'm making for anyone who is interested.

The pattern is the 'Lodi Cardigan' by Tanis Gray, from the summer 2011 issue of knitscene magazine (by the way, if you haven't checked out that magazine, I highly recommend it, they always have really cute projects). It's a simple top down raglan (duh, first sweater and I like to watch tv while I knit) and I really haven't had any issues with understanding the pattern at all. I had to frog it a couple of times at the beginning, one time that was particularly frustrating because I realized a few rows too late that I had to knit a stitch instead of yarning over. When I ripped it out I couldn't figure out how to pick up the yarn overs and I had to undo everything. Irritating.
Anyway, here's a link to the pattern on ravelry: check it out. By the way, my username is longridehome on ravelry if you aren't friends with me yet and would like to be.

I'm using Vanna's choice yarn on size 9 needles. I kind of hate vanna's choice yarn. Please don't ask me why this is what I chose if I don't like it, I'm just stupid. Seriously. That's the only reason.

Anyway, I've also realized that while I've talked a whole lot about knitting here, I haven't really told you any background about myself other than what you see on my little about me blurb. I'm in graduate school working on my master's in social work and I've just begun my second and final year. I've had a lot of free time this summer, but my life gets pretty crazy during school. I'm a full time student and I have an internship three days a week, which can get pretty stressful. I just started yesterday (Monday) and I had my first week of classes last week. If you are curious what I'm doing at my internship, I am working in a college counseling center as a counselor (that was repetitive). Since I just started, I don't have any clients yet, but I'll keep you updated on how things go. Last year my internship was in in a day program for severely mentally ill adults running lots and lots of therapy groups. While it was interesting, it was always really really hard and I didn't like it very much. Working with students one on one is a lot more geared to my skill set.

Thanks for reading!

I have divided and conquered!

...AND MY FINGERS HURT LIKE A MOTHER@#(*@#.

Okay, so let me tell you what happened today.

I knitted all day long.
Seriously. All day.
Because I wanted to get to the point where I had to divide the body and sleeves, the exciting pivotal point of the sweater.
Has this ever happened to you? Where you just want to finish some knitting, or get to a point in your knitting, and you are like, it's only ten more rows? Or five more rows, or two?
Let me tell you. It's never just five more rows, not when your rows are with 200+ stitches! Gosh. It took way longer to get through those last 'just five' rows than I thought. And my hands are aching. But I just had to.
I was really worried when I tried it on before dividing the sleeves and the body that it was going to be really big, because it was looking really big. But at this point, it seems to look pretty good! I'm really more worried about the arms now, because I've got skinny little arms and they might be a bit big. We'll see.

...and yes, I'm wearing my pajamas like in yesterday's picture.

Don't judge me.


PS: I realize I've given you no information yet on the pattern, except I will say its a top down raglan if you haven't figured that out yet.

I'm nervous. So let's not talk about it too much, okay?

The saga of the first sweater.

Blank face is blank

FO: Garter & Ribbed Cowl

Hello again,
I finished it! I mentioned in the podcast I posted on Thursday that I've had the cowl I mentioned in June on the needles without working on it since....June. With some encouragement from Cecilia (don't drool on the wool blog) and in my disappointment with the karius scarf (curl city), I picked it back up again last night.
Since it's been a while since I've blogged about it, I'll give you the stats again:

Yarn: Bernat Softee (leftovers from two scarves I made for my boyfriend and for myself...both were made out of the 'scrunchable scarf' pattern on ravelry, which I love)
Needles: size 9
Pattern: CO 36, 1x1 rib for 6 rows, 6 rows of garter and repeat

When I was working on the cowl in June, I was debating doing a pink stripe in the cowl. When I picked it up last night I decided to just go for it, and I like the result. The colors are impossible to photograph, the pictures really don't show the colors well.

P.S.:
Here are pictures of the original scarves:

yes, that's his 'i'm modeling' pose. uhhhh...

I love this scarf. I wore it all last winter, it's my fav.

P.P.S. Check out my new haircut! Goodbye split ends, that's for sure...

Podcast??

Hello hello,
Today I have a podcast for you! I'm not sure if this will be a regular thing, but I was in the mood for something different.
I discuss:
My curly scarf of doom?
UFOs
Caron Simply soft-yay or nay?



Here are some pictures of the scarf: