Crafty Kim

Another shiny new toy!

Probably not as interesting to my fellow crafty blog readers as my spinning wheel, but I got an iphone today! I don't know why, but I wasn't expecting a huge line at the Nashville Apple Store. A bit of a shock when we walked in at 7:45 am and discovered a few hundred people in line. I have a more flexible schedule than Tim, so I stayed in line while he went off to work. A mere 6 hours later and I was the proud owner of a new iPhone. Tim is waiting to upgrade until he sees if I like mine. As if there's a doubt :)

The only downside is that I will have to work on Sunday to make up for today. Lots of busy stuff going on right now with my research project!

ps This message was posted from my iphone using the new typepad iPhone app. Apologies for typos, I'm still getting the hang of the keypad! Also the photo of Oscar is just because 2 blog posts in a row without photos is tooooooooo boring!

ETA: Oh! And of crafting interest... of course I had a knitting project in my bag while I was hanging out in line. I worked on a gathered scarf in SWTC Yin. Coming along nicely, but still lots of knitting to do. A perfect project for standing in a never-ending line.

Hooray! I passed!

I'm unbelievably happy to report that I finally passed my qualifying exam today. I'm so relieved.

Picture me like the winning QB at the Superbowl...
Announcer: So Kim, you've passed your qualifying exam. What are you going to do now???
Kim: I'm going to take a really long nap.
Announcer: *confused*
Kim: And then I'M GOING TO JAPAN!!!

All silliness aside, I'm taking the weekend off and will hopefully have all kinds of crafty goodness to report back on afterwards. I have a million school things to do next week, but I definitely feel like I've earned a weekend off.

On a side note, I've decided to split out our Japan trip from this blog into a special travel blog. I'll post a reminder here before we leave, but feel free to hop on over there to check out our itinerary so far.

Well, hello there! Did you miss me?

Hi! I'm back! I turned in the written part of my exam today and rather than wandering off to take a nap, here I am blogging. The good news? At least for the interest level of the blog? The exam time was not without the knitting. Because the knitting is what I do when I'm taking breaks during long slogs of work.

No really exciting knitting of course, but at least it was something. Here's what I made, some felted bowls from One Skein by Leigh Radford:

Dispensing with the usual project stat layout because I'm too lazy right now to do that. I've had this skein of purple Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky laying around for a while. When I did the great stash re-org a few weeks ago, this yarn got a pink slip. It was headed for the trade/sell/give away bin. But I was putting away some knitting books the other day, flipping through books I've never used, and came across the pattern for these cute bowls.

I had a feeling I could get two bowls out of a single skein, but I was a little wrong. I was trying to get two large bowls of the skein, but after I got mid-way through the second one, I ran out of yarn. So I started over and ended up with one small bowl and one large bowl. I had forgotten how Lamb's Pride felts like a dream - it's like this yarn is made to felt.

The bowls aren't super sturdy, but they are cute. And mine also happen to be true nesting bowls:

Courtesy of the metal nesting mixing bowls that we use all the time in the kitchen. With special thanks to mother nature for dropping a little bit of snow so I could catch some good pictures of my bowls while the snow lasted. It looked like a little mini-winter wonderland in our backyard for all of 30 minutes but then the sun came out and it all melted. I was glad I was working from home so I managed to actually see the snow.

I highly recommended these bowls as a fun and fast knit that would probably work well as a gift too.

I expect I'll be back to a more regular blogging schedule for the next couple of weeks. I still have the oral version of my exam coming up (March 11th) and a defense of my proposal at the end of March and then of course the big vacation to Japan. But I should be around for at least some of the time in between :)

Shhhhhh....

I might actually have finally stumbled onto a PhD research topic.

And no, I'm not going to say more about it yet. But it is nice to be able to finally say that I might have a project :)

Done with the presentation!

It went really well, too. So nice to be done right at the beginning of the meeting, even if it was stressful to be first :)

I even got some knitting done during one of the other presentation session. I'm working on some Horcrux Socks using Hedwig yarns from Sunshine Yarns. So pretty! I'm doing it toe up though, we'll see how well that works once I get to the design in the cuff.

Now I'm sitting by the pool um, "listening to talks".

Done with the presentation!

It went really well, too. So nice to be done right at the beginning of the meeting, even if it was stressful to be first :)

I even got some knitting done during one of the other presentation session. I'm working on some Horcrux Socks using Hedwig yarns from Sunshine Yarns. So pretty! I'm doing it toe up though, we'll see how well that works once I get to the design in the cuff.

Now I'm sitting by the pool um, "listening to talks".

Dashing through the day

When I'm writing papers for school, one of my best tricks to get over procrastination is called a Dash. I have a really hard time concentrating for long periods of time without breaks. Under a normal scenario, I decide to take a break and then realize a few hours later that I've been goofing off for a long time. When I use the Dash idea, I do 16 minutes of work and then get a 4 minute break. I have a little timer application that I like to use called FlexTime that reminds me when it's time to take a break and just as importantly when I need to get back in gear. The biggest benefit of this approach is that I'm giving myself permission to goof off in advance so I don't feel guilty for taking the breaks I've earned PLUS I've got a defined way to convince myself to get back to work. I know this might all seem a bit over the top, but seriously - I'm a Master Procrastinator. I need this kind of system.

The important thing is what I do with my 4 minute breaks, especially when I'm working from home like today: knit of course! The problem is that 4 minutes doesn't give you much time to make progress. I definitely couldn't work on, say, my icarus shawl. Knowing that I've got a lot of writing to do this week and next, I cast on for a sock yesterday.

I'm using the Tofutsies yarn that Tim got me back in May. Looks a bit odd on the skein but it knits up nicely. I've heard about people having problems with this yarn being splitty, but aside from the cast on that hasn't been a big problem for me. I've found some horrible tangles that took a while to undo though. It's nice yarn to work with though, very springy and pleasant to knit with. It makes a super stretchy fabric, stretchier than any sock yarn I've knit with before. I'm not sure exactly where this sock is headed - the colorway is a bit too variegated for anything fancy, but I am thinking about the Tidal Wave socks from SWTC. That sock has a plain stockinette foot, so I've got plenty of time to decide.

There were great discussions last night at guild about stash and about sock knitting. I'm clearly a n00b regarding my stash - I don't have a huge stash, although my yarn bookcase (pictures eventually, I promise) is starting to look a bit full. The sock knitting discussion revolved around the big questions: toe up vs top down and DPNs or circulars. It was really interesting to hear why people preferred specific sock knitting ways over others although I doubt anyone was converted one way or the other :)

Even engineers do bad math (sometimes)

There's still a big pile of dirt on our driveway, although it is a lot smaller than it was on Friday. Apparently the "amount of dirt needed" also had a big SWAG element because we also wanted some extra dirt to refresh our existing raised beds.

We put the dirt in the new bed. We put the dirt in the five old beds (including the "alley beautification" bed behding the garage). We put dirt in every available pot we'll need this summer. We put dirt in the garbage can used specifically for holding extra dirt. Then we went out and bought two additional containers to hold extra dirt.

There's still a lot of dirt left. It would be fair to say it's a "small pile", I suppose. I couldn't even force myself to take a picture, I was so sick of this dirt :) We can only get one car into the garage because the driveway is partially blocked. Even if we could get past the pile of dirt, the car wouldn't actually fit in the garage because... it's full of containers full of dirt.

And if you've made it this far... I'm done with my sweater and I'll post about it soon. It still needs some little mods (the sleeves are too long, the hood is too big) and a final blocking but it's really really comfortable and I love it.

A momentary break in blogging

I just thought I'd post quickly that I'll be AWOL from blogging for the next couple of days. When you're a grad student, it works like this: procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate, deadline approaching, work, work, work, deadline, collapse from exhaustion. Repeat until you graduate (if you ever do). I have a big deadline coming up this Thursday for the main conference for my field and I'm editing, compiling, writing, and occasionally giving up and taking a break to knit. Pictures, knitting talk, etc, to resume on Friday.

I am (of course) taking a break tonight to go to knitting group and also on Wednesday for a bit in the middle of the day to learn Fair Isle knitting from David.

Side note to Betty - I would totally get a 3rd skein of the Malabrigo lace weight, gives you more options.