Okay I'm back

I should tell you: I am a Reader. Please note the capital R. I've been a Reader since I was 9 years old when my family was moving back to the States from Colombia and my mom got me a copy of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales to keep me busy on the airplane.

I rarely read 'proper' literature. I have a problem with people telling what makes good reading material, so I mainly read lots of romance novels, sci-fi/fantasy and nonfiction. I find it highly amusing when people disparage romance novels for being flighty and silly choices for reading materials, especially when you consider how much crappy literature I've read over the years.

My current fixation for reading material is Anne Bishop's Realms of the Blood Series. It is very, very good. It's both dark and twisted, as well as wonderfully written. (I don't think that sentence makes grammatical sense but in my head it works).

Before I went of a two-day reading binge (the fact that it took two days to finish is a testament to how much I liked it--standard mass markets take no more than 3 hours for me to finish), I was spinning. Navajo plying is the coolest thing I've learned to do lately. I'm not sure I've been doing it 100% right but I managed to produce some wonderfully good (comparatively speaking) yarn over the weekend.

I should be knitting a few different things right now, but all I want to do is buy the rest of the Realms of the Blood books (I finished the original trilogy now, I just have to get the other books in the series). Not to mention that Feb. 4th is the release date for about 5 books that I want to read by my auto-buy authors.

It's kind of funny that I think knitting a pair of mittens and some baby hats is more important than cleaning the mess that is my bedroom. I would show you a picture except that it's way too embarrassing. My 3 year old-soon to be 4 year old- brother walked into my room yesterday and said "D why is your room such a mess?" Then he offered to help me clean. If you've ever experienced the helpfulness of a preschooler helping you clean, you would understand why I stopped reading and took him downstairs for distraction.

Today

Hush. I'm reading now.

New obsession

I've been spinning. A lot.

I made the decision that I was going to learn so I've been spinning about 20-30 minutes before I go to bed for the past couple of days. I finally hit that moment when you just get it. It all makes sense: the fiber and its relationship with the spinning wheel; all of the twirly things and strings on the spinning wheel and my hand and the fiber. It's a nice sense of accomplishment.

So buoyed by this, I moved on to plying--which didn't go too well, but I'll get it.

On to other news, I finally got my official certificate of completion for my M.A. Yay, all the i's have been dotted and t's crossed. About time.

Guess what I have?

Besides a new blog post.

A finished object. A pair of wrist warmers to be exact. But before I show you my lovely new wrist warmers, I should share its evolution.

First came the pattern:

Then came the substitutions:

Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk (80% alpaca and 20% silk) in two colors instead of four colors by the Fibre Company's Organik (70% Organic Merino, 15% Baby Alpaca, 15% Silk).

I had a bit of a learning curve for this pattern, mainly because knitting 3 stitches together is hard with this yarn, although I get the feeling this would have happened with any other yarn.
My second hiccup came when I tried to alter the pattern count to avoid the pattern stitch rows.
Third problem came when I tried the gloves on: it was too big, despite matching their recommended gauge.
Fourth problem, I get impatient to finish projects, so I made them too short.

In the end I had one wrist warmer which was missing all the qualities I liked about the original design. They were long and not too chunky or thick. The opposite of what I had in my possession.

So I started over. I switched down needle sizes to 7 all the way through the pattern, instead of just the ribbed sections. I also triple checked and finally understood the actual pattern (think of the first glove as an elaborate swatch).

Success is sweet (ignore the wrinkled sheets I used as background).



So you have a comparison point between the finished products and my bad first pair:

Now all I have left to do is weave in the ends and wash the pair.

My day

It didn't start out so great. Baby brother A went back to school today. A moment of joy and great sadness---I'm his official drop off for preschool at 8:30.
My mom is a very smart woman. The moment my older sister got her driver's license, she got a car to take us all to school. No more cold Michigan mornings for her, nope, she now had a built in driver in a teenager desperate to drive. My other sisters take turns dropping off my younger sister at high school (at 7AM!), but I get Adam. It could be worse. I could be dropping him off at 7. In case you haven't noticed, I am not a morning person.

The rest of the day was whatever, BUT, I finally used my gift card to the spa and got a massage and pedicure combo. I love massages and I especially love pedicures. Imagine it: 1 hour and 30 minutes of someone rubbing your feet. Heaven.

I started and finished a novel between waiting and half my pedicure. I've got to go to the library more, I just payed $8 for a book I finished in about 2 hours---I could have gone to the movies.