Happy Knit-versary! Here's to 5 years!

In Febrary of 2008 I began what would become one of my greatest journeys, that of becoming a knitter.  I say journey because what started out with a few stitches, blossomed into a steady hobby and has progressed to be a pastime that's as important to me as my love of reading.  Anyone who knows how much I love to read, how I've spent entire summer vacations as a child in the house with my nose in a book, will see that this is a profound statement.  As much as my identity includes being a bookworm and a lover of sci-fi, I am a knitter.  Knitting has allowed me to explore untapped craftiness, lovingly gifted others, relaxed and challenged me.  My yarn stash is now out of control, my knitting gadgets plenty, I'm rarely seen without a project and my adoration for this craft continues to grow.

Here I am the other day with my very first scarf.  I'm never getting rid of this thing. :)
From the humble beginnings of this sampler scarf I've tried my hands at many different types of projects:

Hats...

Gloves...

Toys...

Colorwork....

Shawls and lace....

Tried my had at a bit of dyeing (with Kool-Aid)....

Cables...

More hats....

And gloves...

Socks too!

That's just a small sampling of the things I've knitted over the past five years!  I may not have accomplished much as far as larger items, blankets, sweaters, etc., but I've tried a bit of everything and that's important in being a well-rounded knitter. Looking foward I would really like to tackle more garments  and that first sweater.  I have the yarn to knit at least three or four and the pattern candidates as well, but I really want to make sure I have the time to carefully craft something that fits and I'll love, but it's coming soon.  Also, I need to make sure to take good care of my wrists and elbows so I can continue knitting for years to come.

Also, an indispensible resource and place to commiserate has been Ravelry.  When my desire to knit has waned, this place has added fuel to the fire every time!

I love you so hard Ravelry, you don't even know.

So that's it.  I happily look a  future that includes two needles and yarn in my hands always. :)

New Manicure Pics & Stuff

My Nails

I'm still keeping up with my nails and with all of the polish I've accumulated I'd better be doing two manicures a week for the next year.



This one was from late last week/early this week. Wet 'n Wild - Disturbia. Meh. It's a blackened plum color that I thought had some shimmer. Well, there's shimmer, but it's not discernable unless I have my nails all up close to my eyeballs. It's a perfectly nice color that suffered from not meeting my high expectations. (Am I excited about The Amazing Spiderman? Why do you ask?)

I must say though, WnW's Megalast line lives up to its name. I did all kind of work, cleaned the fish tank, you name it without nary a chip.



I like this one much better. Wet 'n Wild - Ebony Hates Chris, a shiny black creme, with two coats of Revlon - Scandalous, on top. I'm in love with Scandalous! A black jelly base with fuschia hex and round glitter. The glitter give it a pop without it being over the top. (Yes, my photo skills suck.)

Audio Books



I finished listening to Rob Lowes Biography, Stories I Only Tell My Friends. It was a great read! I didn't know much about Rob Lowe except from the impression he made with his Brat Pack fame, but I learned that he's more than just a pretty face. He's insightful and very grounded about his looks and stardom. He goes as far as to say that some of his interactions with fans, such as being mobbed by a group of girls, made him feel crappy instead of elated as he'd imagined it would. It's not that he doesn't love his fans or appreicate the adoration, he does, but he attributes some of these encounters to media hype, being the "it" actor and in his earlier brushes with fangirls, "group think and hormones being whipped up by Tiger Beat". He prefers real interactions with his fans and if I ever got a chance to meet up with him, I'd feel perfectly comfortable doing so as I wouldn't be trying to rip off a piece of his clothing or ask for an autograph while one of his loved one lays sick in a hospital bed (which happened...ugh).

The book glosses over a few of the more scandalous parts of his life, the sex tape scandal, his infidelities and his stint in rehab, but that was OK with me. I don't need sordid blow-by-blow details in order to get the full flavor of a person's life story.

Equally enjoyable is his recounting of how he got his break into acting, especially the audition process and shooting of The Outsiders which was one of my favorite movies in the 80's. So many crushable actors in that movie based on an amazing book (I read just about all of S.E. Hinton's books in my teens). Anyway, I enjoyed hearing his experiences on set, as well as general information about the audition process, how child actors are handled, how negotiations work, etc. I also though the story of how him and his wife, of now 20-years of marriage, started their journey together.

I seem to really enjoy biographies on audiobook, there's something about this format that works for me with this genre. Rob did the narration himself and has a uncanny ability for doing voices that made me laugh.

Let's see now I'm listening to Stephen King's time-travel thriller, 11/22/63. I loves me some time-traveling books and I love Stephen King's non-scary-giving-Iggy-nightmares books (I'm am NOT a horror fan), so I have high hopes this will be a good one.

Crafts

It's time for the new rounds of knitting games. Somehow I got mixed up with the Nerd Wars sign ups, so I'm not participating this tournament and am a little salty about that. But it's all a go for the Starfleet FAC and I'm working on chemo caps in colors for men. Actually I'm currently looking for the one I started as I've misplaced it somehow.

That is all for now...until next week!

The Ravelympics Are Here!

Wait, are there any of my two readers who don't know what Ravelry is?

Ravelry - Ravelry is a free social networking website. It functions as an organizational tool for a variety of fiber arts including knitting, crocheting, spinning, and weaving. Members share projects, ideas, and their collection of yarn, fiber, and tools via various components.

Basically it's an addictive, social site that sucks hours of time from you. Not just with chatter, but with endless patterns to browse, yarn suggestions and help forums, etc. It's loads of fun.

Alrighty then..

It's the opening day of the 2010 Winter Olympics and I'm waxing nostalgic. My daughter was born during the 1998 Winter Olympics and I fondly remember watching the events all day while I was in the hospital.

So what are the Ravelympics? It's a time where knitters are invited to challenge themselves by starting and finishing projects during the 2010 Winter Olympics. How you decide to challenge yourself is entirely up to you. There are teams to choose from and events to participate in, with many knitters joining in on the fun and supporting one another. I'm signed up with three teams, Team K'nerd (the nerdy knitters), Team Michigan and Team City Knits (my local yarn store of choice).

In a previous post I mentioned the problems with my wrist, which has affected my project/event choices. Since I rested from knitting starting Monday, iced and exercised, it feels better, but not 100%. Therefore, my alternate projects are much smaller, but that's OK I'm happy to compete and will be challenged just by completing these without hurting myself.





Here's Bob, the overall Raverly mascot and ambassador of this year's Ravelympics.

I'll be blogging about my first experience as a Ravelete as I progress.