Where the heck have I been?

Here, of course, and doing a little knitting, too. I am working on a replacement pair of Fuzzy Feet for the hubby. He wore the first pair so much, that he wore them out! (Talk about a compliment!) I only have one done and it really isn't picture worthy at this point, so you'll have to wait a bit for the final pics.

But Fuzzy Feet are incredibly easy, so how come I'm not done? (I cast on in April.) And why haven't I been posting, or doing anything on the Rav? Well.... I would love to say I was out globetrotting or something very cool, but it is mostly because we're buying a house. Our very first house. So, it is cool, just not in the same way. More in the "incredibly stressful and time-consuming" school of cool. :-) We have an accepted offer on a house and are closing this month. All the spare time has been devoted to the mortgage, the inspections, the giant stack of forms that must be understood and signed, and last but not least, packing. Oy to the packing. We started on the library yesterday. Let me just say this: twenty-six (26!) boxes of books so far, and we're not done.

So the Fuzzy Feet might not be ready for awhile!

Intimidation

I fell in love with Butterfly, while browsing Ravelry.

I bought Rowan 37 so I could knit it (on the cover). Now the magazine is here, and man is it ever freaking me out. The patterns are lovely and classy and I want to knit almost of all them. But I am sooooo intimidated. Little tiny needles! Charts! Expensive yarn!

Yikes!!

FO: Newfoundland Mittens

Horray!

I think I may rename these the strawberry and blueberry mittens, since each one looks like a different fruit. :-) I couldn't be happier with these; the colors rock, the pattern was easy, and my fingers will be toasty warm next winter!

(Check out my ravelry notebook for details on yarn, needles, and mods. I am LinknKnits.)

Love

I am in love with this pattern and this yarn and my wonderful, almost completed first mitten:

It is the Newfoundland Mitten. It is so easy and cool looking that it boggles the mind. I started these on Sunday and am almost done with the first mitten (after I took this photo I started the decreases at the top). You can check out the stats on Ravelry (I am LinknKnits there), but I will just say that I am using Noro for the first time and am almost convinced it is worth the price (in this case, $18/skein. Yikes!). The colors are vibrant and the transitions subtle and the yarn soft and squishy... and can you tell I love it?

The one thing I don't love is that I started these NOW, instead of 4 months ago, and will have to wait until next winter to wear them!

P.S. I added a Library Thing widget in my sidebar to replace that list of books that I hadn't updated in months. If you are curious, I am only adding recent reads (not every book I have read, want to read, or own) because, quite frankly, they only give you 200 entries for free and my list would be WAY bigger than that. :-) I finished Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris last night (click the cover; I don't feel like adding a text link), which has a spectacular twist near the end. Totally makes the book!

Peep show

First off. The picture is terrible, I know. My camera has been just incapable of taking a decent photo lately. They all end up blurry and out of focus and I think the tax refund may go to buying a new camera! :-)

Anywho, the pic is “The Peep Dishcloth” named in honor of Easter’s sugary little treats. Are those colors not classic Peep colors? The pattern is called Basketweave from this booklet, that I have had for years. I wanted to knit something that would give me a bit of instant gratification, because let me tell you, I am so bored with my Under the Hoodie sleeves right now. A bright and easy dishcloth seemed like the perfect solution, and it was. I really like it.

While knitting the Peep, I watched Escaflowne, another anime that came pretty highly recommended. Both my hubby and I hated it. There is also a series with the same name, which looks like it might be better and we were wondering if we should have watched that instead. In fact, I put in on my Netflix queue to give it a try. Keep your fingers crossed that it will be better than the movie!

A movie or three

When I revived this blog last summer/fall, I had promised that I was going to talk about my non-yarn hobbies, too. I have been terrible about that promise, though, even though I spend a huge amount of time on them. I'm not sure why. Maybe I think that the people who stop and look at my knitting won't have the same taste in movies/books/games as I do? On the other hand, I love when the knit blogs I read mention something besides knitting. I have found many great books and movies based on the fact that I like so-and-so's taste in knitting patterns, so I *must* like her taste in movies, too. Ok, that logic is completely busted, but it has been true a surprising amount of times.

Anywho. Besides re-knitting my sleeve in the proper color (ahem), I have been watching:

1. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? This is part of my Top 100 challenge that I blogged about, oh I don't know, six months ago or so. Excellent movie. It was a bit like watching a car wreck; you feel like you should look away, but are strangely compelled to keep watching the carnage unfold on screen. Taylor and Burton were amazing.

2. Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. I have been on an anime kick recently and these are the two I started with. They are from the same studio and share a lot of the same themes, which is why I mention them together. The animation is beautiful and the stories intriguing. The stories never quite go where you expect them to, which makes them much more engaging than a Disney movie (at least, to me). My hubby and I often sit and talk about the motivations and meanings in these movies for days afterwards. Also, Christian Bale does the voice of Howl and man! That man has a sexy voice! :-)

If anybody out there has any anime recommendations, please leave them in the comments. Specifically for movies, as I don't have the patience to watch a long series right now. Thanks!

In which I discover that I am color blind

Or can't properly read very, very, VERY easy directions. Scroll down to my last post. See that nice little sleeve I had started? Well, I have been diligently working on it ever since. Last night, I was one repeat (one repeat!) from finishing it. I noticed I was short on light gray yarn so I went rooting through the yarn for this project to make sure I had another ball. I didn't, but for some bizarre reason I had three balls of red. My brain sorta froze as I processed this information. And then it hit me.

I was knitting the sleeve in the wrong color.

The sleeves are supposed to match the thick stripe on the front, not the little tiny accent of light gray. What the heck was I thinking?

So, yeah. I am pretending that this whole incident was due to a temporary onslaught of color-blindness and that I am not just plain ol' retarded. I am also pretending that I didn't frog an entire sleeve last night. You know, setting myself back WEEKS and all.

I need a lot of pretending right now.