A new crafty project!

Happy Monday! If you're in Massachusetts, Happy Patriot's Day! Jeff and I spent the weekend in Vermont visiting my mom and brother -- we finally got to have our long-delayed Christmas visit with them. (We'd planned to go up in January, but the weather was awful and Jeff had to have a tooth pulled, so we stayed home. Then we tried to go in February, but... it snowed a ton. Then we planned to go in March, but, well, remember this?

Yeah, we didn't go then either. But the snow has finally melted, so we made the trip up on Friday, and had a nice, relaxing weekend of knitting and talking and playing board games (I rule at Bananagrams, as it turns out). We exchanged presents -- Mom loves Trader Joe's, and there isn't ojne anywhere near her, so we brought a huge bag of various cookies and candy and body washes and whatnot for them to share. My brother really wanted a tiny ear of corn, so I knitted one up for him. Mom gave us some kitchen gadgets, some snacky treats, some lovely scented body washes and lotions (for me), some fancy seasonings and whatnot for cooking (for Jeff, he's the chef in this house) and this cute little guy for tea-making!

There was also yarn, of course -- since Mom knows my love of purple well, she'd picked up a couple of skeins of lovely sock yarn for me a few months back:

(Cascade sock yarn, very squishy!)

(More Cascade, this one with silk. Mmmm...)

My knitting was plagued by gremlins on Saturday -- first, the cable part of the circular needle I'm knitting my sweater with pulled out from the connector that joins it to the needle tip, and I couldn't get it back in, so we dashed out to Michael's so I could get a cheap replacement needle to use until I got home. Then, later that night, I pulled the sock-in-progress out of my purse to work on, and found that two -- TWO! -- of the double-pointed needles had snapped in half! I don't know what happened -- the project back was tucked into my purse, just like always, and I'm not in the habit of flinging my purse around or stomping on it or anything, That set of needles did feel flimsy, though -- they were Knitpicks wooden DPNs, and were very, very bendy -- more flexible even than some much thinner bamboo needles I've used. So I guess I wasn't that surprised that they broke, I'm just flummoxed by how two of them broke while in my purse. 

I borrowed a set of aluminum DPNs from Mom to keep the sock from becoming an unraveled mess until I could get home and swap to an unbroken set. Good thing Mom and I share the same craft interests! (The circular needle that broke was also a Knitpicks one. I'm becoming less and less impressed with their needles over time -- I know that, when they first introduced their interchangeable sets, they had a big problem with the cables coming apart. I had several cables replaced because of that. But they've been making these sets for quite a while now, you'd think they could figure out a more durable way to put the needles and cables together. And of all the different wooden DPNs, I've used, their are the only ones that have ever broken on me -- I had three break while I was knitting the various tiny things, a couple have had the tips splinter while knitting socks, and now these two breaking... I love Knitpicks' yarns, but I think I'll be buying needles elsewhere from now on.)

And now the new crafty project! The backstory: I have a couple of bottles of perfume oils that I love the scent of, but very rarely wear. I don't like dealing with the oils -- they feel messy, like I'm going to get stains on my clothes or something, and it's hard to control how much comes out of the bottle, so I always end up wearing too much. About three weeks ago, I decided to wear one of them, and when I opened the bottle, the plastic cap fell apart in my hand! So, I couldn't close the bottle securely, and I didn't really have anything else to put the oil in... and it occurred to me that I could probably make it into a solid perfume fairly easily. A little poking around online, a quick order from Mountain Rose Herbs, and voila, a few nice little tubes of solid perfume! 

(Exciting, huh? Looks like lip balm! But you probably wouldn't want to use it that way, I bet it doesn't taste good...)

I used equal parts beeswax and sweet almond oil, melted in a makeshift double-boiler, and poured into lip-balm tubes (with Jeff's help, otherwise I'd have spilled it everywhere). I got three full tubes out of my first trial run, and am already obsessed with getting more supplies and essential oils to make different blends. (The perfume oil I used this time was from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, the "Embalming Fluid" scent. It does not smell like dead people. It smells lovely, in fact. And now I'll wear it a lot more often! I have another of their perfume oils that I plan to turn into solid perfume, too, later on.) So now I have a new idea for handmade gifts! Which is always good! 

Sweater progress

The Kara sweater went to my knitting group with me tonight:

It's draped on the table, so the bottom edge is kind of in my lap. But you can see sleeves forming! Progress is being made!

Out of hibernation

So, the Bruins season is over. Ended with a whimper. Kind of like I expected it to. Let's talk about something else, shall we?

I took two sweaters out of knitting hibernation this week, in an effort to clean up some of the yarny chaos around here. The first one, my Rocky Coast cardigan, was supposed to be my Rhinebeck sweater for 2013, but it just wasn't really doing it for me. It's a lovely sweater, but the all-over cabling is just too bulky for my taste, I guess. So it had been sitting in a tote back, partly-finished -- I had the body and one sleeve done, and just needed to finish the second sleeve and pick up and knit the ribbing around the front, but... it just sat, collecting dust. So this week it went from this:

to this:

(The color in the top picture is closer to reality; it's very hard to get a good picture of dark blue yarn!)

At some point, I'll re-skein the unraveled yarn and wash it, since it's all crimped up and dusty. Then, it'll become another sweater.

The second sweater, the Kara pattern by Cecily Glowik MacDonald, has also been in stasis for a really, really long time, but it's meeting a happier fate (I hope!). I decided it really needs finishing, so I dug it out, figured out where I am in the lace pattern, and started working on it again while Jeff and I binge-watch Daredevil on Netflix. (Excellent show. But very very dark! And some parts are violent enough to make me cover my eyes, and I'm not squeamish!) Which is what I'm going to continue doing now. Happy weekend!

Not-so-great health news, and a nice surprise

I had a doctor's appointment on Friday that I didn't think was going to be a big deal -- I really only made the appointment to ask her about possible solutions for the week of misery I have every month, if you know what I mean (and I suspect you do...*). So I was surprised when the nurse whipped out needles and vials and prepared to draw loads of blood! A few needle pokes in my arms (right arm decided it didn't want to play nicely, so she had to switch to the left, which bled quite enthusiastically, and now I have big yellow bruises on each arm) and a finger stick later, I finally got to chat with my doctor and... yeah, the instant blood test thing they do shows I'm diabetic. Not terribly severe -- an a1c level of 6.5 is the cutoff, and mine was 6.6. Alas. But not a big surprise, it runs in my family and all. So, I'm on medication, and working on eating less crap and getting more exercise. (Which will be easier once the goddamn snow melts. This winter was hellish, just walking to work was an ordeal, so any exercise outdoors wasn't gonna happen. I wish we had room for an exercise bike or something, but our apartment is tiny.)

I was worried about the new medication initially, because it was making me feel really sick to my stomach. Plus, I have a nasty cold and sore throat, so this weekend was less than fun. It all seems to be subsiding now, though -- I still have a whiskey-and-cigarette rasp to my voice, though.

I did have a nice surprise this morning, though: last night I noticed a giveaway from one of my favorite designers on Ravelry, one of those "leave a comment to enter" things, so I posted a quick comment and then promptly forgot all about it... until I got a message telling me I won! I'll be getting the pattern and yarn to make this lovely shawl. I chose a nice purple colorway for the yarn. I never win anything! Such a nice surprise.

Yarn Crawl!

So, this happened today:

This has been Boston's snowiest winter. 108.6 inches. ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT POINT SIX INCHES. And it's snowing right now! I like winter, and I don't really mind snow, but for crying out loud, enough already!!

I did venture out into the rain/snow mix today, though, since C. and another friend and I went out to hit some shops on the North Shore Yarn Crawl! First stop was Seed Stitch in Salem, where there was a lovely table full of yarns by Dirty Water Dyeworks. I was sorely tempted by a skein of merino/yak/silk in a deep, intense purple, but it was more than I wanted to spend at our first stop... gotta pace yourself, you know?

Next up was a new shop in Salem, Circle of Stitches, which wasn't officially part of the Yarn Crawl, but we couldn't pass up a new shop! The shop wasn't open quite yet when we got there, but the owner saw us through the window and let us in early, which was nice. The owner dyes Toil and Trouble yarns, which I've been meaning to try for a while, and as soon as we walked in, a skein of her fingering-weight yarn in the Yeti Love Note colorway called to me:

The nice bright colors are so nice, after all the snow and ick.

Next up was lunch at Woodman's! They're known for their fried clams, but I'm not a big clam fan, so I go for the chicken strips, which are really good. And they have excellent onion rings. After lunch was our last stop, the wonderful Coveted Yarn in Gloucester -- my favorite local-ish shop. I picked up two skeins there -- first, a nice soft squishy skein of MadelineTosh Merino Light, in a colorway called Lepidoptera:

More nice bright color! It just glows in person, so pretty. And after browsing around, I noticed this skein hiding behind a few others:

It's Frabjous Fiber's Mad Hatter yarn, in a gorgeous purple called Phantomwise. The picture doesn't do it justice, it's just beautiful.

We headed for home after that -- the weather was getting nastier, and we'd been to all the shops we really wanted to go to. And a nap was calling to me, so after showing the yarns to Jeff, I crawled into bed with cats on my feet and slept for a bit. The Mollycat has the right idea:

"I'm not getting outta bed until Spring."

A tale of roommates past...

...because a post on  Go Fug Yourself asked readers to tell their Very Worst Roommate stories, which reminded me of my very worst roommate. This story usually "wins" whenever I have the "bad roommate" discussion with people. I swear on my life, this is all true. I wish I was making it up, but...

I went to Emerson College in Boston, and had two roommates freshman year: A, who was a stoner who really did nothing but lie on her bed and listen to the same Grateful Dead/ Jerry Garcia Band mix tape over and over and over and over (and is the reason I cannot abide that music to this day) and S, who was… well.

On the day she arrived, S. marched into our room and announced that she was a “Jewish American Princess,” and thus got whatever she wanted. No hello, no introduction, just that. Her favorite thing to do was to open the window (we lived on the fourth floor, facing the dorm on the other side of the street), sit on top of her desk, lean out the window, and scream the word “PENIS!!!!” at the top of her lungs, then laugh and laugh. She could, and often did, do this for HOURS. She made it her goal to sleep with one guy for each letter of the alphabet that year, and since I was dating a guy named Andy at the time, she decided he would be letter A. He stopped coming to our room because she would try to stick her hands down his pants, or tell him that if he got bored with me, she was available. She also had no qualms at all about having sex in the room when A. and I were there. Not while we were sleeping, mind you — I mean in the middle of the day. You’d be doing homework, hear suspicious noises, look up, and she and whichever guy she was with would be going at it. Sometimes with the door to our room open, so people in the hallway could see.

The best part, though, was this: (I advise you to skip this part if you have a weak stomach…) She and A. had the bunk beds in our room, while I had the single bed. A. was on the top bunk, S. had the bottom. S. got a steady boyfriend halfway through the year, and decided that, as a show of how deeply in love she was, she was going to KEEP ALL THE CONDOMS THEY USED AND HANG THEM FROM THE TOP BUNK’S SPRINGS. I wish I was kidding. She had one already dangling there when she announced this plan. She changed her mind about leaving them there when A. and I informed her that we would literally set her bed on fire if she did anything that disgusting. (I think she still kept them, though. I suspect they were in her desk drawer. I’m not sure.) 

S. also had a boyfriend back home, who she'd been with all through high school. M. was... oh, he was a very nice guy, but dumber than a bag of hair. He had some sort of heart condition, which meant he came to Boston a lot for medical appointments, and also to visit S. S., of course, treated him like shit -- she was on some sort of remedial program at Emerson, I think because her grades weren't good enough to get her in, but her SAT scores were? Something like that. Anyway, it meant that she never had morning classes, and didn't have classes on Fridays, and had, I think, a lighter course load than normal. Maybe she only had to take two or three classes per year, instead of two per semester? And they were special classes, too -- you could only get them if you were in this program, and they weren't anywhere near as challenging. (This also meant that S. would stay up partying with her one or two friends all night every night, even though she knew I had classes in the morning. I think A. did too, but she almost never actually went to class, so it wasn't really an issue for her. A. dropped out after freshman year to follow the Grateful Dead around... just a year or two before Jerry Garcia died.)

But back to poor M., who would often come to Boston on Fridays, wanting to spend the weekend with S., who would lie and tell him she had classes all day on Fridays. Andy and I would frequently arrive at our dorm on Friday afternoons to find M. forlornly sitting outside on the front steps, waiting for S. to "come back from class." Except she wasn't in class, she was upstairs in our room, probably screaming "PENIS!!!!" out the window, as was her hobby. We didn't want to lie to M., and were also thoroughly sick of S., so we'd sign M. into the building and bring him up to the room. I don't know what bullshit S. told him, but he kept coming around. (She would also make up reasons why he had to leave much earlier than he had intended, so instead of staying for the weekend, he'd end up going back home on Saturday morning or something.) I think the only reason she didn't dump him was because he gave her money every time he visited, and because she wanted someone waiting for her at home.

My freshman year of college was pretty horrible to begin with -- my parents split up right after I left home, and I didn't find out until I came home for Thanksgiving, since that was when my mom could no longer hold off on kicking my dad out of the house. And then Andy dumped me the day we all got back from Christmas break -- like, within an hour of my getting back, he did the "we need to talk" thing. Dude, timing. I was very nearly suicidal that year already, and then you add in S. and the fact that her antics kept me from getting more than a couple of hours of sleep per night... it wasn't pretty. And I'm still holding a grudge against the housing director who wouldn't let me change rooms, even though there was an empty space available in a triple with two of my friends -- their third had moved to an apartment -- because she had "already dealt with too many room changes and didn't want the hassle." My RAs were both appalled, and did the best they could, but alas, being a complete asshole isn't against dorm rules, you know?

S. was a horrible, horrible little troll of a person, and I still sometimes wonder whatever became of her. I stopped seeing her around after freshman, or maybe mid-sophomore year. And that is my sad, true story! Top that, if you can, in the comments!

Oh for crying out loud.

I was making such great progress on the mitts... until I realized I'd made two right-handed ones.