Yarns

I've moved to Wordpress

2010-04-13T19:56:00.002-04:00

I have been evaluating my blogging needs and sadly blogger cannot support all my needs at this time. So I've decided to migrate this blog to WordPress. Check it out here: http://karako17.wordpress.com.

Oh Caryl (Carol)

2010-04-09T20:34:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, the Creative Director, Joe, started singing this song called "Oh Carol" when he introduced me to Nicky Epstein. I asked him who sang that since I'd wanted a song with Caryl (Carol) in it forever. I bogarted Sweet Caroline as my song calling it Sweet Carol - ine. Today, when he introduced me to the photographer, he again started singing the song. This led to us wanting to know who sang it.

Here is my new theme song. By Neil Sedaka.

Meeting Nicky

2010-04-08T21:22:00.002-04:00

Today I worked (interned) at a Soho Publishing photo shoot. First thing I had to do was put all the clothes from a trunk on hangers onto a rack. Then I had to steam iron all of them. I got a few steam burns - steam hurts!

Then during breakfast, a woman showed up and I was introduced to her as Nicky, the designer. I was like "Hmmm... I only know one knit designer named Nicky." So I asked the assistant to the Creative Director what Nicky's last name was and as you can guess it was Epstein. I was a bit thrilled. We were shooting a Fall booklet of Nicky's latest designs.

Nicky was awesome. During some quiet times, I sat knitting so she came and talked to me about it. I told her I was trying to be a designer and happened to have my Paluk snood on me. She looked at it and I could tell she wasn't impressed. Then she was like, if I want to get noticed as a designer, I need my work to stand out. So when we would shoot a new sweater, she'd take me to the side and ask me what made that sweater stand out and give me advice on the kind of things I could do to get my work to pop. It was a great learning experience for me and I wrote down some notes of what she said.

The Creative Director was also really cool and genuinely chatted with me. I found his assistant less than cool. I'm finding (and I don't know if it's a NY thing) but people don't seem to really care much about you. When I first got back and saw my family at our first family get together, you'd think after years of not seeing me they might be interested in what I'd been up to. Nope, they were like hi, nice to see you again and just went on discussing hum drum life things. I'm finding the same interning at Vogue Knitting. Being the new person around, I thought people would be a bit curious about me and ask questions but they're not. I think most of them assume I'm a college student interning at the place and that's that. It's a bit annoying but what can you do. It's weird to be 30 years old, having had a fairly interesting life and no one caring at all. Overall I'm having a tough time finding my place in this city. I don't want to go around putting myself forward, that's just not my style, but it seems the only way to even get noticed.

Here are a few pics from my day. Lots more on Flickr. Sadly I only had my crappy point and shoot on me so the pics aren't amazing.

What a day!

2010-04-02T00:32:00.002-04:00

Today has been a harrowing day. It started out well. I'd been working on a sock design for a while. While I love knitting socks, I hadn't really thought of designing any. Then I saw information about this sock revived design contest and decided I had to enter the fray. I knew I wanted to design something using colorwork since I've been on a color kick lately. From my library I was able to get Vogue's Color Knitting Stitionary and found a stitch pattern I really loved. I was able to then visualize the pattern and needed yarn to make it happen. I had a trip to Madison, WI and at the Madison Knitter's Guild knit-in I found the two perfect skeins. It actually wasn't that difficult as most skeins of fingering weight yarn there were variegated and I wanted solid. Those two colors called to me and I liked the idea of knitting from a small, local Madison vendor.

My two skeins of yarn:

I then started knitting and taking notes as I went along. After the heel flap I knew I wouldn't want to attempt to try to decrease in that pattern so I thought, stripes! why not stripes?!? I kept going and the last couple of days I photographed my finished prototype and wrote up the pattern.

I named these socks: Electric Boogaloo because for some reason I thought disco. I discussed the naming with a friend and I've now decided the final name will be 'Circuitry' (friend's suggestion).

Then today, April Fool's, I decided to solicit test knitters. Knowing that socks aren't to everyone's tastes I decided to ask for test knitters on one of the sock forums on ravelry. I got lots of volunteers and lots of compliments and was feeling good.

As you can imagine, a great fall was to come. Someone pointed out these socks to me. I'd never seen them before and now I looked like I copied her design. I was pretty distraught because a lot of work had gone into my sock design and I couldn't believe that I'd have to scrap the whole thing. I sought advice from other rav friends and just kept thinking "this was all for nothing". I then decided I'd message the other designer and ask her thoughts on the matter. She was absolutely lovely and told me I should go ahead and publish my design. She also posted on the thread to let people know that we had discussed the situation privately and that she believed me to have designed mine independently and that she thought I should publish my socks as well. I was really happy for that. It just took a huge load off.

So now I'm going to go ahead with those socks. I do try to do some research before publishing a design but it's tough with so many patterns out there. And really, I don't know how I could have searched to find another sock with that similar stitch design.

What a day!

Stop the Presses...

2010-03-24T20:02:00.002-04:00

Well yesterday was a crazy day. Back on Feb 22 I applied for a job with World Teach, a volunteer organization, as the Summer Program Coordinator for their Ecuador program. After a few weeks had passed and I hadn't heard back from them I assumed that they weren't interested in me for the position. Anyhow, yesterday I heard from them. They said that due to the Chile earthquake and the program over there the job hiring process had been sidelined. So interviews were scheduled for today: one with the hiring person in Cambridge, Mass and another with the Field Director in Ecuador. Last night I was watching the Spanish-speaking station (the second interview was partly in Spanish) to try to get used to listening to Spanish and just trying to prep for it.

The interviews went well but they were phone interviews so you can't really be sure that it all went as you might interpret. So I was happily surprised when at 6pm I received the following in an email: "It is my pleasure to offer you the position of Ecuador Summer Program Coordinator." Then mid-reading the email my phone rang and it was them saying that I'd gotten the job. Yippee!!!

Now they'd like me to start (meaning fly to Ecuador) on April 19th. It's all so soon but so exciting as well.

Roku

2010-03-19T00:46:00.003-04:00

Roku means six in Japanese. With the changing weather and my love for color, I've wanted to design items using colorwork. These mitts have been knocking around my mind for a while and they put me in mind of technology, futuristic, words like that. I kept trying to come up with a name for the design and then 'Roku' came to mind. These mitts will be my sixth pattern published since I began publishing patterns. It also has the right sound for what I'm hoping to achieve with this pattern.

It's interesting knitting what you have in your head. The colorwork bit came from a Vogue Colorwork Stitchionary. I saw that stitch pattern and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I was also happy that it used slip stitches rather than stranding colorwork. I call it color without the work. :-) But through the knitting process, I found that my vision didn't completely translate the way I'd seen it. I'd planned on having the colorwork cuff, then knit the body of the mitt in blue as is and then do a ribbed border for the top and the thumb using the contrast color. As I knit it, it was just terrible looking. And so instead I decided to incorporate the cuff design into the top border.
Then I was of two minds on the thumb and I'm still of two minds.

I thought stripes would be fierce (as Tyra Banks would say):

But then I thought it would be nice to incorporate the Tweed colorwork from the cuff.

So I did both and in the end decided to include the instructions on how to do each as part of the pattern. That way the knitter can decide which she prefers or like me, might do one of each.

Pattern: Roku
Yarn: Any DK weight yarn; in the photo Malabrigo Silky Merino MC: Teal Feather, CC: Topaz

Madison Trip

2010-03-18T23:45:00.006-04:00

Andrea and I casting on for Little Birds

This is way late for posting this but I spent the last half of last week in Madison, WI. It was a pretty great knitstravaganza time. Andrea (ravname: Selkie), co-Mod on the Anthropologie Knits group on ravelry, hosted me in Madison and she was definitely the hostess with the mostest. Her husband Jason was lovely and while Kaiser wasn't too happy with me, he was such a cutie that I didn't mind.

The lovely Kaiser [ganked from Andrea's flickr]

Friday

Andrea was lovely and took the day off on Friday for us to go yarn crawling. We started at Off the Beaten Path but it was not a happy place. It was a yarn shop caught in a time warp - like going back into the 80s. The yarn choices were sad and the colors were worse. It just wasn't a shop to inspire.

We then headed to The Knitting Tree which was a huge improvement on Off the Beaten Path. I was hoping to buy some Malabrigo there but they had about four skeins in the store. They were waiting for a new shipment. They had tons of pattern booklets, magazines and books there. I bought Made in Brooklyn which I'd really wanted but couldn't get at any of the yarn stores I frequent in NYC. Ironic, I know.

After that was Lakeside Fibers. That store was just sad. They had so little stock and the shop just seemed like it was weeks away from closing. The cafe was great and busy. The baristas engaged us in some convo about zodiac signs. I mentioned I was Scorpio and the guy working there stared me deeply in the eyes and asked if we scorpions had piercing? seductive? eyes. That's the problem with waiting too late to post, you forget the exact words. I also met up with my ex. He lives about a 5 min walk from Lakeside Fibers. Had plans gone accordingly, I too would have been living around 5 min from Lakeside Fibers but plans changed.

Our final stop was The Sow's Ear in Verona. That was a much better stop. The Sows Ear was friendly and warm and I enjoyed my Chicken Salad sandwich. I also got the yarn for my Little Birds cardigan. I got Jamieson Shetland Spindrift in maroon as the main color. Then a lovely aqua blue for the birds and for the leaves, Isager yarn in gold.
That evening we went to Tex Tubbs which was yummy. I haven't found any good Mexican food in NYC so it was nice to have some good food (even if it may be deemed TexMex). The wet burrito was delish and the Frito pie was strange but tasty. It was an open bag of Fritos covered in cheese, beans and other yummy nacho toppings.

After that we headed to the movies to see Alice in Wonderland. It was good fun. It was especially great when Andrea burst out laughing during the scene between the red queen and the frogs. No one else was laughing and she was losing it. It was great. It got quite a lot of people in the theater laughing to (including me) just because she couldn't stop the laughter.

Later on that evening, I was not feeling well. I'm allergic to dogs and my breathing was really, really bad. I was starting to panic a bit because I felt like something was very wrong. Jason drove me to Walgreens where the surly pharmacist suggested that I go to the ER for an epinephrine shot and some prednizone. Due to my recent return to the US and being unemployed, I'm also without insurance so I wasn't too thrilled at that prospect. Jason and Andrea called their friend Carla who we'd run into at the restaurant earlier to see if she'd let me use her inhaler. Thank goodness for that. Ventolin was my savior.

Saturday
Me admiring this rug knit by Ann. She just happened to be signing some books next to me and was roped into taking a photo with me. Also, I'm wearing my Ulmus which was a huge hit with the Madison knitters.

On Saturday we went to the Madison Knitter's Guild Knit-in. There we listened to a presentation by the two women of Mason-Dixon knitting. They were very folksy and funny. I especially loved their clip "Grey Garments". It's hilarious!

Here's Andrea checking out some of Ann's and Kay's knitted blankets:

We then hit the vendors. I bought some yarn from Sun Valley Fibers, a local Madison vendor, for a sock design that I'm hoping to enter in the Sock Revived contest. I also got a gorgeous shawl pin seen here in my Elysium photo. I finished knitting this cardigan while in Madison. It was my traveling project.

I also got a lovely project bag and some lovely, soft Peruvian Tweed from Ewetopian Fibers.

After fun at the knit-in, we headed to the UW Memorial Union to wait for my bus to Chicago. Jason showed up. During breakfast I bragged about what a great scrabble player I was and Jay, a competitive spirit, wanted to show me. :-) Andrea is also very competitive and we got to playing. I'm going to sound a bit conceited but I schooled them both. (I'm super competitive and pretty much only watch competitive TV - sports, game shows and reality shows like Project Runway and America's Next Top Model). Andrea and I also managed to cast on our Little Birds cardigans.

It was an awesome trip and Andrea and Jason were awesome hosts and I def want to visit again.

On the road...

2010-03-10T11:30:00.001-05:00

I've been lamenting the lack of travel in my life lately and so I'm happy to be off on a short trip to the Midwest. I'm really looking forward to hanging out with Andrea (AKA Selkie) in Madison. Yarn crawl, Madison Knitting Guild event with the Mason-Dixon peeps, I can't wait! A lovely knitstravaganza long weekend. :-)

Goal Attained: Paluk Snood

2010-03-08T18:08:00.002-05:00

One of my New Years goals was to publish at least 4 patterns this year. I had no clue that I would manage to accomplish that by March 8th but I have. Today I uploaded another pattern to my ravelry store. This pattern is: Paluk Snood It's downloadable from ravelry or non-ravelry users can use the link in the sidebar of this blog.

It's knit using Malabrigo Silky Merino but would work in any DK weight drapey yarn. It can be worn as a cowl or a snood.

Here are some photos:

Fame! (15 min of Italian fame)

2010-03-02T21:22:00.007-05:00

A few weeks ago, a fellow raveler messaged me and asked if she could feature my pattern for Sweet November Shawl in the knit/crochet section of an Italian online mag called Leiweb. Obviously I said yes. Anyhow, the post featuring the Sweet November pattern was published today. It's about how film inspires knitting. I quite like this section:

"La talentuosa Caryl Pierre (qui il suo blog e qui il suo Etsy shop) ha da poco rilasciato, infatti, lo Sweet November Knit Shawl, per cui ho già chiesto e ricevuto dall’autrice l’autorizzazione a realizzare una traduzione in italiano."

I don't understand much of it but I like "La talentuosa Caryl Pierre". Maybe a movie title, a psycho knitting woman who befriends a couple and finds ways to eliminate the guy because of a Sappho-like love of the female member of the couple. :-)

In other news, I knit a tweed version of my Jay Street Slouch. I just wanted to see it in tweed. I thought the tweed would really lend itself to the seed stitch.

Pattern: Jay Street Slouch by Caryl Pierre
Yarn: Peace Fleece Worsted (0.8 skein) Siberian Midnight

Hot off the presses...

2010-02-27T11:06:00.002-05:00

I've released a new pattern. It's the Jay Street Slouch.

This hat is knit in worsted weight yarn. It's photographed in Malabrigo Merino Worsted (colorwary: Rhodesian).

The pattern can be downloaded from ravelry (click link above) or from the sidebar of this blog (both ravelry and non-ravelry users can use that link).

Snowpocalype - The Sequel

2010-02-27T00:13:00.002-05:00

It seems that winter is in no mood to let go. There were a few sunny days, then very rainy and then snowpocalype. My brother's school was closed today which I think made him very happy as he would have had to take a test otherwise.

.
Life lately had been up and down - almost manic depressive I'd say. I had a decent job interview and was told there would be a second one. I waited, checked in with my agency, waited and waited, checked in with my agency again and they told me, oops, the Company had called to say they'd found someone else. Sorry for not letting me know. Sucky, eh?

Then I had a dream job, working one day a week at a yarn shop. This led to meeting a lovely woman who provided me with some freelance work. Just as I started the freelance, the yarn shop said that she didn't really need me. So now no yarn shop job. I can still teach classes at the shop but I feel like I'm moving backwards.

It's kind of the same with my Etsy shop. A couple of days will go by with decent sales and then nothing for weeks. It's really hard trying to run an online business.

I sound really down, don't I? I'm a bit upset at the moment and kicking myself for accidentally repeating a mistake. I guess I'm on the depressive spectrum of this manic depressive life that's going on right now.

I did manage to go outside for a little while to take some snow pics.

And the medal goes to...

2010-02-19T16:21:00.002-05:00

Me!!!!

I completed my first Ravelympics event, the Designer Original Dance, and so won a medal for the following design.

Jay Street Slouch

I named it the Jay Street Slouch as the inspiration for this hat came as I was standing on the Jay St-Borough Hall platform waiting for the F train.

When I write up this pattern it will be sized for the S/M head and the M/L head. It uses approx. 80 grams of Malabrigo Worsted yarn (colorway Rhodesian in photo) or any other worsted weight yarn.

Back view

Other views

Twist and Shout

2010-02-17T14:25:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I had day 2 of work at Gotham Fine Yarn. It was a busy day. We're looking to change the yarns carried by the shop so I spent a lot of the day on the phone talking to yarn suppliers to find out their policies and buy-ins. I suggested String Theory yarns to Rebecca. I saw their stuff at Stitches East and it's beautiful stuff. Rebecca loves it to so we're going to order a bit of the Caper sock and some of the silk laceweight. I can't wait!

I also managed to leave work at a deficit. The box of Malabrigo Twist arrived and I was like a kid in a candy store. OMG! The colors were so beautiful. I totally ended up leaving the store with a few new Malabrigo buddies in my Argyle Land's End tote. I love that tote so had to give it a bit of a big up (pic stolen from Land's End site). A skein of MadTosh also desperately needed a new home and I couldn't say no.

I arrived home and a new camera I ordered had arrived. I'm really excited about this. It's a Canon Rebel XS. My first DSLR.

It's pretty much a DSLR for beginners which is me to the T. I got mine from PrimoCameras which I must say is a disappointing online shop. The prices are a bit cheaper but the service is pretty horrible. I was a bit annoyed when they called to upsell me and tried to convince me I needed stuff which I didn't. Then I assumed the item had been shipped once I saw it was charged to my card. A week passed with no delivery so the next week I called and asked about it. They told me it had shipped from their warehouse the Monday before. They sent no email with shipping confirmation. I gave it another week. Then this past Monday I got a it's been shipped email. That's nearly 3 weeks after I placed the order. I recognize the camera isn't a life and death situation but the lack of communication etc was totally uncool. Also, their website states that when you buy a camera you receive free: tripod, camera case, lens cleaning kit, etc. Guess whose order arrived with none of that stuff. I just called them and it will be sent to me via USPS.

Well I'm a bit inspired to knit this hat so going to work on it now. I also want to work on my Ravelympics project.

Arsenal is playing Porto in the Champions League.

Go Arsenal!!! And its Arsenal,Arsenal FC !
We're by far the greatest team the world has ever seen!"

Paluk Mitts Pattern

2010-02-12T01:47:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I released another pattern. These are my Paluk Mitts. These lace mitts are knit using the Lingonberry pattern (pohlamarjakiri) from Haapsalu Ratik, New York 1972 (republished in Nancy Bush’s Knitted Lace of Estonia). Paluk is a common name for Lingonberry in Estonia. These mitts are inspired by the Regency period in England; I’m a great Jane Austen fan and I could see Elizabeth Bennett or many other Jane Austen characters wearing these feminine mitts.

The mitts pattern can be downloaded from Ravelry or from the sidebar (raverly and non-ravelry users).

Skill Level: Intermediate or adventurous beginner

Yarn: approx. 110-140 yards fingering weight yarn for main color (MC) and 35-40 yards fingering weight yarn for contrast color.
Used in photo: Louet Gems Fingering Yarn (MC: Aqua, CC: Paisley)

These mitts provide both written and charted instructions of the lace repeat.

Snowpocalype Now

2010-02-09T23:30:00.003-05:00

It's snowing outside and they're expecting a snowpocalype overnight (some are saying snowmageddon). Many companies have told workers to stay home and most skills have closed so my brother will be home all tomorrow. I have no outside obligations tomorrow so it will be hot chocolate, movies/TV and knitting. I have a crap load of knitting I need to get done. I'll be teaching a lace class at Gotham Fine Yarn from Feb 23 and I want to knit up some samples of the Swallowtail Shawl for my students to look at. If you're in NYC and want to do some lace knitting, please do sign up. Should be good fun.

In addition to my lace class, I've also managed to snag some part-time work at Gotham Fine Yarn. Today was my first day and it was good fun. I love knitting, I love yarn so it's a dream job really. The only downside is that I can't see myself making much money. I'm pretty much going to spend my pay immediately on the fine yarns :-).

Tomorrow I'll head out to take some fun pics in the snow. I do like a good snowstorm. :-)

Easy Money

2010-02-03T16:18:00.002-05:00

I’ve just made the easiest money I’ve ever made (or potentially will make). Being unemployed, I’ve signed up to do focus groups and the like and finally got invited to do one. It was for L’Oreal (though handled by a focus group company) and I was going to be paid $150 for 2 hours of focus grouping. I thought that was super easy money. I did have to do homework however. As a non-regular L’Oreal user (I tend to be buy whatever is on sale kind of girl), I had to buy something L’Oreal, use it for a few days, write a diary of how I felt using it and fill out a questionnaire. Nothing too too painful. Anyhow, I arrive 15 min early to the center as requested and sign in and wait. They then call all our names and ask if we did our homework. Then they started calling people’s names to enter the focus group room. At the end they called my name and another woman, Jennifer, and asked us to wait in the lobby. We were then informed that they always overbook these sessions just in case people don’t show up. We were asked to wait another 15 min in case someone was asked to leave from the group. Then we were called to the front desk, asked to initial the sign in sheet, and handed our checks for $150. I’m thinking that’s pretty easy money… :-)

Sweet November Shawl

2010-01-28T16:29:00.003-05:00

For 2010, I plan to release at least 4 patterns and here's the first one. This one isn't original in that I didn't come up with the look; however, I saw this shawl/scarf in the movie "Sweet November" and had to make it. Charlize Theron wore this shawl/scarf in various colors throughout the movie and while the movie was not really my cup of tea, I couldn’t take my eyes off the scarf. As soon as the movie ended, I wanted to knit the shawl but considered that others had probably thought the same. I googled ‘sweet november scarf’ and found a number of crocheted versions of the shawl. While I can crochet, I thought it would be cool to work out how to knit it. Thus, the ‘Sweet November Knit Shawl’.

Here's Charlize Theron in the shawl:

My Version:

A copy of the pattern is available from my sidebar or can be downloaded from ravelry (for those that want to be able to save the pattern to their rav library). It's a free pattern: download now

Sun and Wind

2010-01-26T19:01:00.003-05:00

After a day of storming yesterday, today has been absolutely beautiful. I woke up and went for a run. Then I convinced a friend to come out to take photos of my new FOs. It was so great outside. The wind was blowing furiously but the sun was shining and it was a great day to catch up on my vitamin D.

Anyhow here are some photos from my day out:

First, a new shawl I designed based on the shawl Charlize Theron wore throughout the movie Sweet November.

Then here's Damson designed by Ysolda Teague:

A Hat Fit for my Brother designed by Stephanie Nicole

And lots of mitten photos:

1. Original design which will be released soon: Paluk Mitts

2. Zephyr Mittens designed by Tracey Grzegorczyk

3. Spiraluscious Mitts by Anne Hanson

Steps

2010-01-16T19:39:00.002-05:00

So far I've been doing a decent job of getting my 10,000 steps. I haven't been perfect however, and a couple of days have gone by where I haven't reached my goal. But for me this isn't about perfection but about putting forth effort and there I'm doing well.

In other news, I'm feeling pretty proud of the US right now. It's amazing the effort that's being put forward to help Haiti. Ravelers have been absolutely amazing as well. Designers are giving between 50% and 100% of profits to charity and that's great selflessness. Especially when people like Ysolda Teague and Wooly Wormhead are doing it - that's going to be quite generous donations.

To do my part, I'm donating 50% of proceeds from my Cable Crush Cowl pattern (can be purchased through ravelry or just by clicking on the sidebar) as well as 20% of proceeds from my Etsy shop to Doctors without Borders.

A Sale!

2010-01-09T23:44:00.002-05:00

I got my first sale from my Etsy shop which was great. Humdrum day overall. Went to gym, crafted, watched America's Next Top Model marathon. C'est tout!

Steps today - 11,664

Knit, Wine and Etsy shop

2010-01-09T01:22:00.004-05:00

Well last night I did not figure out the RAW thing. I also found out that each picture is like 8mb. While they were great pics, I'd never be able to upload files that big to Etsy. So today we changed the settings on the camera and I re-photoed everything.

Then I had to rush off to Knit and Wine night at Gotham Fine Yarns. It was a good time. I chatted with Rebecca, the proprietor, about teaching a lace knitting class at the shop and it's tentatively scheduled for the beginning of Feb as we work out the details. I'm pretty excited about the opportunity to teach knitting classes and I'm hoping I'm fairly good at it.

I'm now home and I've put a bunch of stuff up on my Etsy: karako17.etsy.com

Here are some pics of the items:

Foldover Armwarmers

Lots of stitch markers

Steps today - 10,000 (had to do some marching to get up to the 10,000 steps as I didn't go to the gym today)

RAW

2010-01-07T23:46:00.002-05:00

Right now I'm trying to download software that reads RAW format photos. My Etsy shop is up and running but since my camera was stolen, I haven't really been able to take effective pictures. My aunt bought me a camera for xmas but it's just not that great for my needs. It's an Olympus point and shoot and I'm underimpressed.

A friend is currently visiting and she brought along her Canon DSLR and I've been taking tons of photos. I also bought myself a light tent which is awesome for my photo needs. Anyhow, now I'm trying to upload the photos to my computer only to realize that it doesn't read RAW format. So I went on the Canon website and they seem to have some software I can download. Hopefully all will be well. I hope I can upload it all to my flickr without issue. I really love the DSLR and once I'm employed I think I might have to treat myself to a decent camera.

Steps today - 11,150

Blah

2010-01-06T23:10:00.002-05:00

It's 11:10pm and I'm knackered. I had a good workout today - was at the gym around 2 hours. Then I spent the day doing some photography for my Etsy shop items. I'll update that soon.

Steps today - 17,243

Spin and Sculpt

2010-01-05T20:30:00.005-05:00

Today I joined my local gym and went on to do the class spin and sculpt. It was hard but not as hard as expected. It always surprises how I'm always just a little bit in shape and generally within about 2 weeks, I'm in shape again. My problem has always been diet not exercise.

Now I'm watching the Biggest Loser. It's the first time I've ever watched the show 'in real time'. I recognize it's not real time but I've only watched reruns of the shows, never as it is aired. It's weird I have lots of issues with the show:

1. way too much crying
2. setting unrealistic expectations - I think it reinforces that sense that you can lose weight overly quickly which is what has made the US the fattest nation in the first place.
3. way too much crying

However, in its way, it is inspiring. And as I'm unemployed at the moment, I might try to spend 2-3 hours in the gym per day like them to maximize the burn. I'm hoping I get chosen in the NY half marathon lottery which is in March and I want to be in shape for that. I don't want to be as out of shape as I was for the marathon.

ETA: Steps today - 13,377

Monday, Monday

2010-01-04T16:59:00.005-05:00

I know that when you decide to do something, you should listen to Nike and just do it but there's something about starting on a Monday. I did start getting in my steps right away but today I feel I've really started on my other goals.

I woke up at a very early 10:30 (I've kinda been staying up till 3am and waking up around noon or later) and went for a jog on the boardwalk. It was a bit pitiful (my pace) and my limbs weren't particularly in the mood (it was freezing) but I got a good 40 min jog in. The nice thing about the freezing weather is that any temptation to walk is quickly sidelined as you'd turn into an icicle.

Later during the day I went to check out gyms in the neighborhood. I feel a bit spoiled as I had the best gym in London (3 floors, pool, sauna, steam room, etc etc) for very cheap as part of my insurance. The gyms in my hood are pretty basic but that's really all I need and the one I think I'll join is close by so I have no excuses. They also have tons of spinning classes, I love spinning (on bikes that is, I've given up on trying to spin fiber).

Then I went to the grocery store and got ingredients to make some nice, healthy veggie chili which I just made and it turned out yummy.

I've managed 12,674 steps as well and it's only 5pm. I think I'll do some marching in front of the TV later to get an evening burn. The best part of this day is just feeling positive about making some changes and exercising again. Woot!

Black bean Chili Recipe (for anyone interested):

1 medium onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
coarse salt and ground pepper
2 zucchini, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
2 carrots, thinly sliced
1 tbl chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 cans (19 oz each) black beans, rinsed and drained
2 cans (19 oz each) crushed tomatoes

In a 5 quart Dutch oven or heavy pot, heat oil over medium-high. Add onion and garlic;season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally until beginning to soften, about 4 minutes.

Add zucchini, carrots, chili powder, and cumin. Cook, stirring occasionally until carrots are tender-crisp, 6 to 10 minutes. Add beans and tomatoes. Simmer until slightly thickened and carrots are soft, 8 to 10 minutes more.

My version of recipe provided by friend

ETA: Steps today - 14,332

Sooo cold!!!

2010-01-03T18:47:00.003-05:00

Today is absolutely freezing! I had intended to go to the Downtown NY Knitters group meeting today but just couldn't bare to be outside. It's soooo cold and living right next to the beach is not cool in the winter. The winds just cut right through you.

Thank you everyone so much for your support!

Lisa - I use my exercise as part of my 10,000 steps. When I lived in London and worked to and from work, I managed around 20,000 steps per day of pure walking.

Since I couldn't face the cold today, I've been doing aerobics on TV. We have this exercise on demand channel which I just discovered yesterday and there are all these crazy workouts. Today I tried out cardioke. It's Billy Blanks Jr (son of Billy Blanks of TaeBo fame) taking you through a cardio exercise where you sing along to the music - yes it is that cheesy!!! It was fun for about 5 minutes and then I was just like, I'm a running girl, aerobics ain't for me. I think I'll have to join a gym so that I can have a nice indoor treadmill to run on. I had no problems running outdoors during a London winter but a NY one is another story.

Well I still have around 4,000 steps to do today. I think I'll put on my marching shoes and get marching in front of the TV. Might try some more exercise on demand. The bollywood burn wasn't too bad :-).

ETA: Steps today - 10,165

Happy Palindrome Day!

2010-01-02T11:18:00.003-05:00

Seems today is a unique day in that the day (written American standard) forms a palindrome 01/02/2010. On this day I'm hoping to be somewhat productive. I need to organize my room. Moving all my stuff into one room in my mother's house is very challenging. There just doesn't to be space for anything. And our design aesthetics are very different. She likes everything to be very pretty and decorated whereas I like space for storage. I have a lifetime's worth of yarn to store plus my many knitting books and magazines and then there's my huge DVD collection and there just isn't any space for any of that in this room. I guess this should inspire me to get a job and find a place that can accommodate my crafterly stashes.

Happy Palindrome Day!

ETA: Steps today - 10,438

Hello 2010!

2010-01-01T18:13:00.005-05:00

I'm hoping this year will be a good year. Last year was pretty good but it didn't end on the best note.

I have so much I need to do this next year. The number one thing is finding a job and the number two thing is losing weight. I've really let myself go and this morning I weighed myself and it wasn't pretty: 220 lbs!!! When I look in the mirror I'm not too happy with what I see and I think that's really affected my knitting, among other things. While I want to knit garments, I don't want to knit anything that would fit this body so I don't bother.

So for next year I have the following resolutions:

1. Find a job - send out 4 applications a day
2. Lose weight - clock at least 10,000 steps each day
3. Run at least 1 marathon and 1 half marathon
4. Design and release 4 patterns
5. Raise at least $1500 for charity
6. Learn to sew competently
7. Improve beading skillz- make jewelry for Etsy shop
8. Get my drivers license

These are all things I need to work on daily. I have a pedometer and I plan to hold myself accountable on my blog to be active and meet the 10,000 steps minimum daily. It would definitely be nice to have a few cheerleaders pushing me along. :-)

ETA: Steps today - 10,040

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T13:51:00.006-05:00

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate it! Happy Holidays!

My Christmas so far has been very good. I wasn't expecting very much so I was very happy to receive so much. As many know, I was recently pickpocketed and my camera was stolen. For me that was a huge blow as I have my Etsy shop and had gotten used to taking pics of things I saw during my day. I felt almost naked without a camera. Imagine my great surprise when my aunt gave me a camera for xmas!!!

Another huge thing I've wanted is a Garmin Forerunner GPS watch. I'm planning to do another marathon this year (at least 1, maybe 2) and maybe some half marathons and so having this watch is great! I also got a portable external hard drive which I really need. My laptop is on its last legs and I'm slightly worried that it might die on me soon so having everything backed up will be a huge relief. I def can't afford a new computer right now so I'll keep with my 4-year old laptop till it dies on me.

In return, everyone received handknitted gifts. I need to photograph all the projects and upload them here. For my mother I made an Alhambra scarf, my aunt - Forest Canopy Shawl, other aunt - fingerless gloves, brother - knitted beanie and the first of the Septimus Heap series, and my cousin - the book 'The Hunger Games' and a crocheted bookmark. I think everyone was happy with their gifts. I ended up knitting till the last minute. I didn't manage to finish weaving in the ends of the fingerless gloves, so I wrapped them, gave them to my aunt and once she opened it, told her I'd weave in the ends and give them back to her later. Better than an IOU methinks. :-)

Thank goodness for friends with spare keys!

2009-12-20T00:47:00.007-05:00

Tonight was a crazy night and definitely the worst night ever to get locked out of your house. According to NY Times, around 9 inches of snow has fallen though it feels much worse. Expecting this storm, my mother came home and parked her car under a bridge hoping the car won't get too buried in snow. Despite the storms, Christmas is a coming and we are woefully behind in our shopping. So we decided we'd take the bus to Queens Center Mall for some shopping.

I was pretty disappointed with the mall. My xmas gifts consist of knitted items and books and can you believe it?!? there's not one bookstore in that mall. In my mind that makes it the worst mall ever. Also since my camera went walkies, I was hoping to take a look at some cameras at the mall to get an idea of what I will get myself. Not one decent electronics store there either.

I ended up buying no xmas gifts, just a winter coat for myself (a definite need! especially with all that snow coming down) and I also got some silver hoop earrings (60% off at JC Penneys). I'll have to schlep to Borders next week sometime to pick up the books necessary to complete my gifts.

So we get home and snow is everywhere.

My mother immediately gets the shovel to start shoveling and I go for my key. I have just the one key and I always keep it in the little front pocket of my jeans. The key was not there. I checked my coat pockets, not there. I throw everything out of my bag and go through it slowly - NO KEY!. My mother keeps plugging away with the shovel as I tell her I have no key. I'm trying to figure out what could have happened and then remembered that I'd stopped at The Gap and tried on some pants. I'm guessing the key fell out of my pocket.

As we hadn't taken the car, my mother had left her car keys in the house on which was her house key. She remembered that one of her friends had a spare key for the house so she called her and told her we were locked out and mentioned that she didn't even have her car keys (by this meaning that we couldn't go into the car to stay warm). Anyhow, the friend shows up 30 min later with her spare car keys thinking she was locked out of her car. While waiting for her, our pizza arrived. We had ordered pizza when we were around 10 min from home on the bus for dinner. So we were stuck standing in the cold, eating our pizza and watching cars stall in the drifts outside . When said friend showed up without the house keys, we all had to bundle into her car, drive back to her house for the house key and then come back home (we didn't take my mom's car as that would mean cleaning the car, shovels, etc). Our feet were wet and frozen and we were pretty miserable.

So that was my evening! Now I'm enjoying some Will Smith in Enemy of the State and I think I'm finally feeling warm enough.

Up to my knees in snow:

Outside the mall:

Knit, Wine and Mexican

2009-12-19T14:39:00.003-05:00

After a hum drum Friday, I bundled up and went to Gotham Fine Yarn for Knit and Wine night. I'm so not ready for this crazy cold. After years of mild London winters, this piercing cold is going to take lot of adjusting. I was bundled up in layers, coat, big worsted weight Clapotis and chunky weight mittens and I was still freezing.

Today we're experiencing the first snow storm of the season and I'm really excited. I haven't seen a proper snow storm in years and I'm looking forward to it.

Back to last night. Knit night was great! The people were really cool and very interesting. I'd tried out knit night at Yarntopia and I just wasn't feeling it. There were a couple of dominant personalities and they talked over everyone else and sadly what they were saying just wasn't that interesting. In this group, the chat was interesting, everyone was allowed to share and you were also able to have a chat with the person next to you without being talked over. I worked on my xmas knitting. I'm still a long way from finishing but my projects aren't too bad and I'm not working so I know I'll get it all done in time.

Gotham Fine Yarn is also pretty awesome. The prices are very reasonable (not so at Yarntopia) and Rebecca, who runs the shop, is really nice and approachable. I think I'll be adopting Gotham Fine Yarn as my LYS. Plus I love the location. Lots of cool stuff to do in that area.

After knitting, Angelique and I went in search of a Puerto Rican restaurant. It was so cold though that we gave up and ducked into a Mexican restaurant: El Maguey Y La Tuna (321 E. Houston St). This was my first Mexican since arriving back in the states and I was fairly excited. I went for a boring chili con carne burrito as I just wanted warming, comfort food.

My burrito:

Overall, the burrito was tasty but nothing special. Angelique's food was pretty disappointing. She got something adobo and the serving was fairly stingy. She was still hungry after finishing her meal which is fairly sad for a Mexican place. I then got some flan for dessert and got the stingiest dessert serving every. Also it wasn't that tasty. Check this out:

So, final analysis, Knit and Wine night awesome but skip El Maguey y La Tuna. We had wanted to go to Katz's deli but it's cash only and we were both cash poor.

Meet Oliver!

2009-12-17T11:50:00.003-05:00

Monday night I went to Etsy Craft night and we were taught how to make plush toys. I had brought my own crafting stuff thinking I could pass on the plush toys and do my own thing instead but everyone was making toys so I jumped in. We were given toy shaped paper; we place the paper over two layers of fabric (mainly old shirts) and cut out our toys. Then we had to add the eyes and nose and use embroidery thread to sew the mouth. I had to then learn to use a sewing machine to sew up my toy. I was a bit tense during the sewing - had the machine set to the slowest possible and managed it.

Here's a pic of the toy sewn up. Note that for sewing up, you sew the two pieces together inside out before turning it right side out for stuffing. However, before sewing up it’s necessary to add eyes, nose and mouth.

Then we stuffed our toys and sewed up the bit you left open for stuffing. I decided I'd name this little guy Oliver. Here's Oliver and Jay-Z:

The Amazing Race

2009-12-15T17:06:00.002-05:00

I spent most of last week feeling absolutely ill on account of The Amazing Race (TAR) finale party. Last week Sunday, a rav friend came to NY to go to the TAR finale party. She invited me along and despite the fact that I'd never seen the show, it sounded like good fun. The only thing is that this was an expensive party ($75 for 3 hours with open bar) so being the economist I am, I planned to get my money's worth. BAD BAD IDEA!!!

I met up with Duncks and we first completed knitting transactions, I had a traveling scarf to hand off to her plus a wee prezzie and of course knitted items to show off.

Me and Duncks:

Then I joined the cocktail ordering. Normally I'm a G & T girl but at $75, I thought I should try out what was on offer. Duncks had started off checking cocktails off the list as we order so I joined the fun. Our favorite from the evening was 'Lingerie', yum! We were happily throwing back cocktails and I was not feeling it so I thought I was handling it all fine; then it all hit me all at once; I think around the time they aired the finale of TAR I was pretty wasted.

You might think looking at that picture that those were drinks for like 10 people. Nope, just four of us. It was nearing the end of our 3-hr open bar so I started ordering multiple drinks so we'd have another hour of drinking (I did say I was an economist) ;-).

Moments of note:

1. Besides the drinking, I managed to make out with a girl. At the beginning of the evening I joked that I'd wasted my college years as I'd never even kissed a girl (cue Katy Perry in the background) and at a point of being wasted I did kiss one, tongues and all (I'm not naming names). I think I'm still very heterosexual but now I guess I'm not a complete square :-).

2. Random funny moment during the evening: Keisha (from the last season's TAR) was tossing back vodka red bulls and they were served in pint glasses. Anyhow, she asked Duncks and I to get her a napkin so she would wrap it around her glass cause it was cold. So Duncks whips out a cup cozy from her bag and says that’s what you get when you hang out with knitters. Keisha found it very funny but went on to use the cozy for the rest of the night.

3. By the time the finale of TAR came on I was already a number of sheets to the wind and had no clue what was going on. Then the finalists showed up at the party. I thought the winners were brother and sister so was totally throwing myself at the guy but he was like he’s been with the girl for 5 years. Way to make a fool of myself :-).

4. Sad moment: While being drunk and flirting inappropriately with the few straight guys around, kissing girls, oh and hanging outside chatting with a homeless guy (Jerome) for a while, I managed to get pickpocketed. My bag was hanging off the back of my chair (yes, I know...) and my camera and wallet were taken. The camera was especially sad as I had so many pics of the evening. Luckily, Duncks has tons of pics so all pics in this post is thanks to her.

Lots of pics of the evening:

(Have no clue who she is and she is not the girl I kissed. I think she's TAR related somehow)

NY times

2009-12-05T15:43:00.002-05:00

On Thursday I had one of those awesome NY evenings. I met up with Angelique, my new friend. I met her through ravelry when I started a thread saying I was looking for friends in NYC. She's here from Denver for a couple of months and so was also looking for friends and so we've been having fun exploring the crafterly side to NYC.

Knit Shops

First, we met up and hit a couple of knit shops. We stopped at Wool and the Gang. The yarns are gorgeous and the colors lush but the prices, way way way too high with very little yardage per skein. Also, the people at the shop were super trendy but weren't the most informed on knitting. Some of the yarn did not have the yardage on it and when we asked, one of the women was like, "yeah, people keep asking that..." imagine slightly clueless voice but with a British accent. She did look lovely and trendy though.

Then we hit Purl Soho, gorgeous place again though tiny and ridunkulously expensive. I found the prices a bit intimidating so while I admired, I quickly made an exit. We tried out Purl's fabric shop which was a couple of shops down. Again, gorgeous but wow, expensive!!! I considered buying some fat quarters but prices started around $40 for very few fat quarters, so I just said no.

Gallery

After checking out these lovely but expensive shops, we hit a gallery which was showcasing gorgeous plushies; the NY Holiday Plush show at gallery hanahou. There were some absolutely lovely plushies there.

Check out the lovely birds! (More pics on my flickr)

Bulgogi Hot Dog

After our crafterly activities, we met up with some of Angelique's friends at Blind Tiger on Bleecker. Can I just say what an amazing street Bleecker St is? OMG! The restaurants!!! We wanted to eat everything! There was pinkberry, Five Guys, Qdoba, and then tons of cafes, pizzerias, bars, etc. And of course, each place sold the best x in NY. On the way to the bar, Angelique and I saw this hot dog spot that sold the best hot dogs in NY and in their window, they had cool plastic models of their hot dogs and they sold bulgogi kim chi hot dogs. Angelique is half-Korean and we started fantasizing about the dogs.

We met up for drinks with people at the bar and could not stop talking about wanting to try these hot dogs. So when the idea of food came up, we HAD to go there. The others went to get pizza (at I'm sure the best place to get pizza in NY and we went to the hot dog place).

Bulgogi kim chi hot dog with fries:

Nom:

So I must say, the hot dogs lived up to the fantasy. They were delish! So it's a hot dog with bulgogi and kim chi on top. So so yummy!!!

Afterwards we went walking in search of a new venue. But, Angelique and I abandoned the search to head for dessert. Next door to the hot dogs was a dessert place and the cheesecake looked amazing. Plus cookies, cakes, etc etc. So we ran off from the ground and went back to the cafe. See above for picture of yummy desserts.

What a fun evening!

My Cup Runneths Over

2009-12-01T00:21:00.004-05:00

Tonight, I joined a new NYC friend for Etsy's craft night which takes place every Monday. For some reason I never considered that of course Etsy has a headquarters and how cool that it's in Brooklyn. Anyhow, despite a rainy day I headed out to the craft night and how fun was it. Tonight was just an open craft night so I brought my beads and made tons of stitch markers for my Etsy shop. I'll photo and upload them to my shop tomorrow: karako17.etsy.com.

Well I got home and both my Eat, Sleep, Knit and Malabrigo Swap package had arrived. I'm one of those who likes to save the best for last so first I opened my ESK package. All was as expected but there was a bonus. I scored $5 in credit from the ESK scratch card. Yippee!!!

Then on to my swap package: Oh my!!!

Here's a pic of all the items together:

And the details:

The theme of my package was in honor of my return to the US: Red, White and Blue. All items were wrapped in red, white or blue tissue paper.

At the top was a huge ziploc bag of homemade choc chip cookies. I’d confessed that I’d never had homemade cookies and so Eva made all these for me. I then got some gorgeous red and white PJ pants. I also got the Knitted Lace of Estonia book which I’ve been hankering for for ages.

Then I saw the most beautiful tote. I love Totes and Eva had her mother make me this lovely Tote (these bags are sold on Eva’s mom’s Etsy shop; her Etsy name is 1000pinesneedlearts). Then Eva ingeniously packed a number of awesome surprises in the bag. There are these awesome pockets inside the tote and each pocket had a surprise for moi :-)!!!

Inside the tote was:

- the yarn: Two skeins of Mal worsted in Tuareg and 1 skein MadTosh worsted in Baltic.
- Buttons: Blue, red and some ecru-ey, creamy colored ones
- Red journal and blue post-it notes with cutey birds
- Green and Blacks white chocolate
- Bing Cherry chocolates (w/ real fruit inside)
- 500ml bottle of Eucalan w/ eucalyptus oil
- And if all of the above wasn’t enough, I received an IOU for a knitted item which I’ll receive soon.

Bigger pics can be found on my flickr.

What an awesome way to end my day!!! :-)

Luck of the Draw

2009-11-27T10:55:00.003-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving all!!! (a day late...)

This was my first Thanksgiving celebration in years as I've been abroad for so long. It was nice. My mom cooked the turkey and then we headed over to my aunt's house. We had tons of food as per custom though our meal was very non-traditional. Being Caribbean folk, we add some homecooking. We had the requisite turkey but also oxtails, ribs, and fish. Then we had mac n cheese, veggie lasagna, rice and peas and mashed potatoes - all a bit strange. We are so non-traditional that we didn't even have cranberry sauce or gravy. There was dressing however. We stuffed our faces then sat and chatted, watched some TV.

Then dessert - lemon meringue pie, apple pie plus some Caribbean style fruit cake. Plus ice cream. There's this place in NY called Taste the Tropics and the ice cream is amazing - you have to show ID to get the rum raisin. The rum raisin was perfect alongside my fruit cake. Then a lovely game of scrabble. My aunt and I are scrabble obsessed so that was fun!

So my crazy mother is a shopaholic and at 10pm had packed bedding in the car and was off to the Black Friday sales. Her plan was to park outside Walmart and then sleep until the sales began to get in first. However, due to last year's tragedy, they had everyone go inside immediately and then stand in lines for the ticket for the items they want (so she stood in line from around 10:30 until 5am when they could actually get the sale). Luckily my mother had a sidekick. Her excuse for shopping was that I needed a TV for my room (though I've told her it's unnecessary). She accidentally ended up in a laptop line and so her sidekick had to go in the TV line. So now I have a new 32" LCD TV and I'm hoping to talk her into giving me the laptop as mine is 5 years old and on the fritz.

Today I wanted to partake in the Black Friday mania and Eat Sleep Knit had the following sale (info provided for any knitters reading this before the end of today):

How it works: Starting at 10 AM ET, visit the store and fill up your cart. You’ll go through the checkout process as usual, enter your billing information, and click on “Complete Order.” Your order confirmation page will then display your personal surprise discount and your order total will be adjusted accordingly! All orders will receive a discount of at least 10%, all the way up to 100% (that means your order could be free!). You could win half off, 30% off, 75% off, but no matter what, you will receive at least 10% off, and the odds of getting more are quite good! The sale ends at 5 PM (Eastern US time), and all orders transmitted after that time will be charged at regular prices. Gift certificates and club memberships are excluded from the sale and will not be available for purchase on the website during this time frame.

I only got 10% off, so my luck wasn't strong. However, the other people I chat with on rav got 15% or 25% off so I was just unlucky; not necessarily that it's a hoax sale.

Anyhow, Happy Thanksgiving all!

Goodbye 20s!

2009-11-16T11:23:00.005-05:00

Today is my last day as a twenty-something. Tomorrow I officially join another decade. I'm actually excited. I feel like it's a new beginning. My 20s were long and I faced many challenges. I had lots of fun but at the same time my stress levels were always very high. I feel more in control of my life now. And while I'm in a strange place at this moment: just moved countries, living with my mother, unemployed and single - I know in about 6 months things will be different and better. This is my blank slate for the moment and I can determine the next steps.

In January I made a huge list of things I wanted to get done by 30 and I didn't get most of them done. But I'm completely ok with that because I got some of the most important things done.

- I got out of a job that made me really unhappy
- I got out of a somewhat unhappy relationship
- I ran a marathon
- I raised a goodly amount of money for charity
- I designed my first knit pattern
- I taught myself a new craft (beading) and hope to start selling stitch markers on my etsy shop soon

And now I still have lots of other things to do but I'm hopeful and I look forward to my 30s.

My Marathon Experience

2009-11-08T15:10:00.002-05:00

It's weird to think that this time last week, I was still running. Well I'll go back to the beginning...

It took me a while to fall asleep Saturday night but after about an hour I fell asleep. I woke up promptly at 5am though my alarm was set for 5:30 (it was nice and convenient that the clocks changed that night as we all got an extra hour's sleep). The night before I had readied everything I needed for the morning and put it in a corner. Check me out in my gear. I loved those arm warmers. Even when I no longer needed them to keep warm, it was great having them on. There was something cozy and comfy about having them on. It felt like a hug the whole time.

My mother nicely drove me to the Staten Island Ferry which I would take over to the start line; ferry left at 7:30. Once we arrived in Staten Island, there were these buses waiting for us to take us to the village until the race where we would hang out until the race start. I was in the 3rd wave which didn't start until 10:20 so there was a lot of waiting around to do.

Luckily, I was meeting up with a friend there. I actually ran my first half-marathon with her on the Isle of Wight in 2004, we were housemates back then (living in London). She's an American who was living in London and now lives in Geneva. At the marathon expo, we were both asked where we were from as I guess we have a British overtone to our American accents. It's a bit funny.

That's the two of us. I wore a million layers and my Arsenal FC scarf. All clothes that you leave behind is picked up and given to charity so I went through my mother's pile of clothes to give away and found some things to wear. Susan wasn't as well prepared but luckily she had a big garbage bag which was the uber fashion of the day and Dunkin Donuts was giving out free hats to the runners so she was set.

Also check out suitman in his Dunkin Donuts hat. He goes around running marathons wearing his powder blue polyester suit. I hope he never runs wearing that in summer. Ouch!

Finally around 10 or so, we went to our corral. Though, just prior to that, this guy had missed getting into the corral for his wave so decided to jump the fence. Anyhow, some NYPD SWAT guy goes running after him and yelling at him. The guy explained that his race was about to start and the SWAT guy was having none of it. He tore off the guy's number and we all gasped as we thought he wasn't going to be able to run. It was so OTT and sad because the guy had on his vest showing that he was running for autism and all he did was jump over the fence to try to get to the race. He wasn't a threat to security or anything. It also freaked everyone out as by this time around 4 other SWAT members had shown up. I mean, really?!? I guess they were desperate for some action but it was too much. They finally let the guy go to the race, he was visibly shaken though, and they didn't let him have his number back. When you think of how far and wide people travel for the race and the training necessary, it was pretty sad behavior on the part of the SWAT guys.

Blurry photo of the incident (runner in trouble is in blue):

We managed to put the incident behind us and get ready to start. The start was amazing! They had Frank Sinatra on the speakers blaring New York, New York and it was just a blast. I was so excited!!! Susan was pretty stoked too. Best start to a race I've ever had. Then slow jog to start line and then off we went. As you can see, we didn't start until around 43 minutes after the first wave had gone.

Crossing the Verazano Bridge was not fun. One of my many quirks is that I love walking across bridges. But with London bridges, a quick skip and hop and you're on the other side. Not so with NYC bridges. They are long! And also, the designers were concerned with function and function only. No pretty bridges here. And finally, the wind. Oh the wind was terrible. It was freezing across that and every other bridge we had to cross.

Once over the bridge, we were in Brooklyn and the spectators and support were amazing. I wasn't out to break any time records so I high-fived every young child, I even hugged this guy who had a sign saying he was giving hugs to the runners. It was great, and I thought, this is going to be easy. I was lovin' it.

Then mile 8 hit. Every single race I've ever done has been hilly. But big steep hills. You see it ahead, you run up and you run down and it's over. Not so in NYC. Here it's the gradual incline that goes on for over a mile. I was halfway through mile 8 and I was just like, this is going slowly. Then I realized that I was running up a gradual incline the whole way. But with every incline comes a decline? dis-incline? Usually with steep hills you have to be really careful not to do in your knees going down but here with such a gradual decline(?) I could run happily.

And so the race progressed well. I reached the halfway point and things were still OK.

Here I have to make a confession. I trained quite poorly for this marathon and so reaching the halfway point for me was huge as I'd never run longer than that before. During the summer with Ghana, moving around, planning to move back to NYC (lots of excuses I know), etc, my training suffered and during training my longest run was 12 miles. I'd done a couple of half-marathons in the past so I knew I could run 13.1 miles but could I run 26.2? One thing I knew with running is that it is 90% mental and I knew I was strong enough mentally, but physically?

I kept going. At this point I had to run/walk. Running to the water stations, then walking to the next mile marker. Running again until next water station and so on. I was doing fine until mile 15-16. The whole time we were on the Queensboro bridge. No spectators and it's one of those bridges where the cars are below and the trains run above. We were below and it felt cramped and dark, horrible and never-ending with trains going overhead every once in a while. It was probably my worst mile.

But after that I was OK again. I had this thing about getting to mile 18. I felt that if I made it to mile 18, everything would be OK. Mile 18 to 19 was fairly jubilant. The only bad thing about mile 18 is that they hand out the energy gels there. OMG how horrible are those!!! Taking it down wasn't horrible but the aftertaste! I'd brought Clif Shot Bloks with me and those were yummy. Very tasty stuff and I'd recommend it for all future long runs. Gels - yuck!

Then I got to mile 20 and I thought, now this will be cake. I'm nearly there. And I was WRONG! The last 6 miles were horrible! At one point I thought I was nearly to mile 24 only to see it was mile 23. That really took the stuffing out of me and I could no longer run. I just kept thinking that I had nothing left. I kept walking though. By this time, my legs were killing me. Around mile 10 the toes on my right foot had started hurting. I think my shoes were a tad small on the right foot and with the swelling that occurs from all the running, there wasn't enough toe space and two of my toes seemed to be falling asleep/becoming paralyzed or some such (not fun!). Then around mile 15 my knees started to ache a bit. Luckily that went away. At no time was I out of breath but I could feel my body abandoning me a bit.

I made it through mile 23 and then mile 24. At this point, there weren't too many spectators but there were still people cheering us on; telling us we're nearly there. At mile 25, I got about my 5th wind and started running again. Then I saw the sign saying 1/2 mile and mentally I just told myself, this is 2 laps around a track, you can do it. Then a sign saying 400 yards, and I was like one lap left. Then I saw 200 yards and I was like, I used to sprint this in high school. I was surprised with my finishing group that many were content to walk across the finish line. I decided I'd power through and I sprint that last 100-200 yards. And then, yay!, I'd done it. I'd crossed the finish line. 6 hours, 15 min and 11 sec later. I almost burst into tears. I couldn't believe I'd actually done it.

Here's a fuzzy finish line photo. I was too tired to be able to hold my phone still (remember I started around 43 minutes late).

Now I'm pretty excited at the prospect of running another marathon but this time I'll train properly. It was an amazing experience and all the support you get from people. I don't know what inspires so many people to stand out in the cold just to cheer us on but it's so amazing and it's true, during those points when there were lots of people cheering you on, you forget that you're running and you just run on the force of the applause and the cheers. :-)

One really cool thing was that my friends could track my run the entire time online because of this cool orange thingy on my shoes called a D-tag.

Every time I ran through a mile marker it would record where I was. It was awesome to go on ravelry the next day and see that I had an online cheering squad on one of the forums. A couple of people kept track of my movements and shared it with the group and everyone said the loveliest things. It was cool having my phone on me as well. As it was a blackberry, whenever I was in a really bad spot, I would open it up and there would be a few emails or facebook messages with people cheering me on. Isn't technology just amazing sometimes?!?

Prizes!

2009-11-04T13:55:00.004-05:00

Hi guys,

I just did the drawing using a random number generator to determine the winners. All sponsors' names were placed in an excel spreadsheet in order of donations.

Winners are as follows (Name in bold):

- Antonio of Malabrigo yarns has generously donated 1 bag (10 skeins Malabrigo worsted) mistake color as a prize. Jacquelyn Ridzy aka jacqui722

- An item knitted by moi (within reason) - we'll chat though various options and I'll both knit the item and provide yarn (no cashmere or outrageous yarns though) ;-). zzwhitejd - Jenny Raymond

- Handknitted socks by moi - again we'll chat to see what socks you like and I'll again provide the yarn. The socks below are just an example. I also happily knit men's socks as well. Archergal5219

- Ulmus Shawl (worn in the photo as a scarf): Many have admired this item I have knitted and I've loved wearing it. I think it will make a lovely prize for someone. Michaela Chatman

- Audiobook from recordedbooks.com: Kathy (Woolybelle on Ravelry)will donate to one lucky winner his/her choice of audiobook (15 CDs or less) from Recorded Books. iraknitwit

- $50 gift certificate to Yarn Company in NYC. This was generously donated by Patti (pattiblaine on ravelry). dknit52

- Cable Crush Cowl. This cowl was designed by yours truly this summer and it's knit in Malabrigo Merino Worsted. Colorway: Rhodesian. Lauren Koestner aka libra276

- Skein of yarn (fingering weight). This is a lovely plum color. 364 yards/100 grams; 50% Superwash Merino 50% Tencel. Dee Brown aka Blackrayne

- Skein of yarn (fingering weight). For the yellow lover in you. 100% BLF / 100g / 420 yards. warpedntwisted

- Skein of yarn (light fingering). Malabrigo sock. 1 skein = 440.0 yards. Colorway = Turner. ninja8tofu

- Statue bought during my summer volunteer trip to Ghana. Diana Samour

- 5 copies of the Cable Crush Cowl pattern.

Elizabeth Webber AKA PictureandBook
JinnyJ
Lachesis77
havnknitlover
Riverpoet

Congratulations to all the winners! I'll be in contact through various means shortly to let you know.

Disaster/Knitting Tragedy

2009-11-03T19:16:00.002-05:00

We have this housekeeper (more of a live-in nanny/housekeeper as my mom is on her own with my little brother) who did my laundry and felted my Swallowtail shawl knitted in Malabrigo Dos (still a test yarn). I’ve cried. I've drunk wine. I've eaten buffalo wings. And now I think I might need a scoop of Haagen Dazs. I kept meaning to tell her not to touch my handknits but I hadn’t noticed that she’d picked up the shawl as it was hanging with my coat on the door. I hadn’t noticed it was missing until way way too late (when she dropped my laundry off in my room). My heart stopped for a moment.

A Eulogy for my Shawl

I so loved you shawl,
you were squishy and warm,
and though I'm not a huge fan of purple,
you were just the right color that I could enjoy.
Oh goodbye my beautiful shawl.
You are now a lovely, soft bit of felt and I'll try to make
a lovely purse or other felted item with you so that
you would have not lost your lustrous shawl life in vain.
Goodbye!

Marathon update coming soon...

2009-11-02T12:54:00.002-05:00

Probably tomorrow I'll post a full brief of my marathon experience with pictures, etc, but today I'm too tired to write anything coherent. It was great: loved the first 8 miles, the crowd was awesome, I high fived anyone with there hand out and I was like, 'what are these people talking about, this is going to be easy'. The second half of the race was tough. Mile 15-16 was torture. Ran out of gas around mile 23. Could barely move. Pulled it together on mile 25 and finished strong; managed to sprint the last 100 yards - wanted to end in style. Overall, not a great time: 6:25:11. But I'm super happy! I've completed a marathon! Yay!!!!

The crowd cheers... :-)

Marathon Expo, Getting ready for the marathon and life's small emergencies

2009-10-31T18:22:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I met up with an old friend to pick up all my marathon paraphernalia at the Jacob Javits Center. The two of us were in a bit of a frivolous mood, she was just off a plane from Geneva and well I'm always frivolous. Anyhow, I bought practical stuff like cliff shot bloks, long sleeved running shirt which was half off and wicks moisture, running socks that don’t slip and help prevent blisters, expandable running belt to hold ipod, etc… then slightly less necessary, arm warmers, anti-fog sunglasses, and the most frivolous: Halo Headphones - these are practical in that I always listen to my ipod while running and I hate that I’m constantly having to push my headphones in (especially when the ears start getting sweaty) but not something you’d call a need.

So today, I had a game plan of stretching, drinking lots of water and resting my soon to be weary legs. After some morning stretches, I thought I'd take a morning bath to get myself even more relaxed. I'm not a bath person as I just tend to get really bored. So I had the bright idea that I'd listen to an audio book on my ipod. BIG MISTAKE! Yours truly somehow manages to drop ipod into bath. On any other day, I would have looked at all the internet 'how to repair submerged ipod' links and tried my best to figure this out. BUT I have the marathon tomorrow and the idea of 26.2 miles without music or audio book could not be faced. So my poor mother who'd been working all night volunteered to drive me to the nearest apple store (40 min drive away) to see if they could repair it. As you can guess, they couldn't and it was out of warranty. They then suggested that I could recycle said submerged ipod an get 10% off a new one. Now of course I could have gotten a cheaper ipod on Amazon but as I mentioned this was a marathon emergency. So I sucked it up and got this new baby:

I've been out of the ipod loop since I got my last one two years ago so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my new baby has FM radio - super cool and a video camera - xtra super cool!

So now I'm home and want to relax but not sure on that one as my lil bro is desperate to go to a haunted house. My mother has to work tonight and can't take him and I want to relax after my 'harrowing' day and marathon tomorrow but I feel bad that he can't go. We'll see how that pans out.

Anyhow, I'm crazily promoting my charity that I'm running for. You can donate at www.firstgiving.com/carylpierre and there are lots of awesome prizes to be won: Check it out here. I'd really appreciate the support and I think it's a pretty great cause especially after my summer as a volunteer in Ghana.

Yarn Gluttony AKA Stitches East

2009-10-27T13:09:00.003-04:00

Despite just arriving in NYC, first on my agenda was heading off to Hartford, CT for Stitches East to hang with my fellow Malabrigo junkie ravelers. As I'm unemployed, the plan was to socialize more and spend less. Hmmm... See the above picture and you can see that I did an amazing job of multitasking...

Here's the group of us at the Malabrigo booth:

It was supertastically fun to meet up with the Mal Gals and become inducted as an NJ Mal Gal. It also seems that I've taken on a bit of a British accent though mainly I've just picked up British vocab. I shocked myself when I yelled 'Oh crikey' on seeing the large volume of DIC Stardust on offer. I don't even remember saying crikey when I lived in England. Maybe I did and never noticed it... The Mal gals found my Britishisms quite fun so at least it provided entertainment :-). For me it was interesting putting voices to the posts I've been reading for nearly a year. Especially the NJ accents. :-)

It was also lovely meeting the people behind the Malabrigo yarns of which I'm obsessed and getting a wee treat as well.

A quick sum of what I purchased:
- Dream in Color Stardust (2 skeins of marooned)
- Madeline Tosh Lace (1 skein of Oxblood)
- Madeline Tosh Worsted (2 skeins of Lepidoptra)
- Cascade Eco + (3 skeins of a plum red color)
- 1 mini skein of Habu
- 3 mini skeins Planet Earth Fibers to make masks in camel, sandstorm and a plum color
- Shibui Knits Baby Alpaca DK (2 skeins)
- Tess Superwash Lace (2 skeins)
- 1 pair of Sassafras hoop earrings made of recycled knitting needles
- Gail Hughes buttons
- Beads (1 tube of 6/0s)

Gifts/Trade
-Traded 1 skein Mal Worsted Polar Morn for 1 skein of Jacinta
- Gifted a skein of wounded yarn by Cupcake Jenny
- Gifted a skein of MerinoCash laceweight in Bobby Blue (1180 yards) by Malabrigo and a skein of MerinoCash Fingering weight in Velvet Grapes(450 yards) by Malalabrigo

OMG!!! I am a yarn glutton!

Official First Family Photo

2009-10-23T17:06:00.002-04:00

Just saw this pic on a forum I follow. What a beautiful family!

Goodbye London

2009-10-21T06:46:00.002-04:00

My cab should be arriving in about 10 min to carry me off to Heathrow. I'm packed and ready to go which is a complete shocker as I'm usually packing till I have to head out the door. I managed to wind some mal sock for some airplane knitting and just went out to say goodbye to the Thames and the Southbank. It's a perfect London day, spitting rain. Almost too little for an umbrella but if you choose the path of no umbrella, you'll arrive at your destination soaking wet. :-)

It's weird to be leaving after so long living here. It's been the best of times and the worst of times as they say...

GOODBYE LONDON!!!

Crafting Mojo

2009-10-03T11:35:00.003-04:00

For the last month or so, crafting has seemed a bit of a chore. It would seem that my mojo left me there for a while. I kept at it but something that would have taken me no more than a week to knit has taken me around a month. I think it's my current state of limbo that killed my mojo. HOWEVER, in two weeks I'm moving home to NY and I'm feeling really stoked. I also completed a fairly complicated FO but can't reveal it yet as it's going to my swap partner and it must stay top secret until she receives it.

The last few weeks though I've been walking around London and just enjoying the sites and sounds. I live around a 10 min walk from Covent Garden and today while I meant only to go and pick up some crimps from The Bead Shop, I ended up just enjoying the ambiance.

Ghana Retrospective: Some videos

2009-08-31T12:51:00.002-04:00

I've been going through my Ghana photos and videos today and uploaded some of my videos to YouTube.

1. A typical morning. The students say their prayers, sing the national anthem and then say the pledge of allegiance. Then they sing and march off to class. Here's the upper grades marching off to class. It didn't occur to me to record this until after the little ones had also marched off. :-)

2. The kids had to practice for a cultural day. First here are the drummers:

3. Still the cultural day practice - this time some dancing:

4. It's the last day of school and the kids get to party all day. The music is playing and they dance. There was a competition and each class had to show off their skillz. Here's the BS (Basic School) 3 class - kids from around 9-10.

5. This one is my favorite. It's still the last day of school and the nursery kids are getting down. The little girl at the end is Monica. She was one of my faves.

Milestone

2009-08-28T17:18:00.003-04:00

Today I've released my first pattern which I'm pretty excited about. Now I just need to discipline myself to get working on some other ideas floating through my head.

Running the NY Marathon: Sponsor me/win prizes

2009-08-24T14:09:00.010-04:00

Hi all,

[Edited on Sept 4 to include more prizes]

[Edited on Aug 28 to include more prizes]

I haven't written a post in a while. My life has been all over the place though I've been fairly stationery. My plans have changed; I had been planning to move to Madison, WI this coming weekend. However, based on life changes, I'm now going to move back to NYC and in with my family. We'll see how that goes. One of my before 30 to dos was to reconnect with my family and I think moving home should definitely (hopefully) play a part in achieving this goal.

Anyhow, besides ruminating on life, I have been training for the NY marathon though I have a long way to go before I'll be ready. I will be ready though and I'm looking forward to it. I'll be running this marathon for charity; the organization is called Campaign for Female Education (Camfed). I think this is an amazing charity as I'm very pro-woman and pro-education especially in places like Africa where education is difficult to access for women. On the top right sidebar of this blog, there is a link to my fundraising page and I'd appreciate any donations made.

Also, to sweeten the deal, I've come up with a number of prizes that could be won. Each $10 donation results in one entry into the raffle, so for example, if you donate $50 you get five entries and so on.

Prizes:

- Antonio of Malabrigo yarns has generously donated 1 bag (10 skeins Malabrigo worsted) mistake color as a prize.

- An item knitted by moi (within reason) - we'll chat though various options and I'll both knit the item and provide yarn (no cashmere or outrageous yarns though) ;-).

- Handknitted socks by moi - again we'll chat to see what socks you like and I'll again provide the yarn. The socks below are just an example. I also happily knit men's socks as well.

- Ulmus Shawl (worn in the photo as a scarf): Many have admired this item I have knitted and I've loved wearing it. I think it will make a lovely prize for someone.

- Audiobook from recordedbooks.com: Kathy (Woolybelle on Ravelry)will donate to one lucky winner his/her choice of audiobook (15 CDs or less) from Recorded Books.

- $50 gift certificate to Yarn Company in NYC. This was generously donated by Patti (pattiblaine on ravelry).

- Cable Crush Cowl. This cowl was designed by yours truly this summer and it's knit in Malabrigo Merino Worsted. Colorway: Rhodesian.

- 5 copies of the Cable Crush Cowl pattern.

- Skein of yarn (fingering weight). This is a lovely plum color. 364 yards/100 grams; 50% Superwash Merino 50% Tencel.

- Skein of yarn (fingering weight). For the yellow lover in you. 100% BLF / 100g / 420 yards.

- Skein of yarn (light fingering). Malabrigo sock. 1 skein = 440.0 yards. Colorway = Turner.

- Statue bought during my summer volunteer trip to Ghana.

I hope these prizes help induce you to sponsor me for the race. I think it's a great charity and one that we can all get behind. Just click here.

I'd also appreciate if people reading this could link up or plug this on their blogs.

Feeling Better

2009-07-31T15:42:00.002-04:00

Just a quick update to say that I'm feeling better. I'll be flying back to London on Monday so now I'm just buying last minute gifts and getting stuff together.

Yesterday was the last day of school and it was tons of fun. The kids didn't have to wear their uniform and they had fun dancing and such. I've really loved working with the kids at the school. They're so amazing!!! That's definitely been the highlight of my trip and I'm going to miss them tons.

Homesickness...

2009-07-28T12:27:00.005-04:00

I've found my Ghana stay a bit stressful of late. I think the many inconveniences are getting to me a bit. I'm also a bit lonely. I'm pretty much on my own here except for when I go to the school where I volunteer. I see Barry once in a while but he's traveling around doing his research. While I've made friends with the other teachers, I find it difficult to really communicate. Most people speak English in formal situations like school but they speak Twi at home. What that means is that they can have a very basic conversation in English and for me that means difficulty in communication. Hence the loneliness. I can't really express myself as they don't understand me, especially my pronunciation and I barely understand them. Also, I feel a bit as though I'm being seen as 'Miss Moneybags.' Any time one of the teachers sees me with this or that item, they say that I need to leave it for them when I leave Ghana. That includes things like my digital camera or some of my knitting notions or even my earrings. I brought many gifts to give away as I knew this was expected, but I didn't expect the envy with which each of my possessions is greeted. That includes innocuous things that you wouldn't think twice about. It gets a bit annoying as I keep having to scrutinize what I wear or carry as I don't want to be asked for it.

I'm definitely going through a homesick phase at the moment. Actually, I've been so homesick that I've changed my flight so that I'll be leaving Ghana next Monday rather than in another 2 weeks. The school is closing for summer vacation this Friday and with no job at the moment, it made sense for me to leave now rather than travel around more. Also I might be able to find some temp work on my return to London until I head back to the states.

A few other things have gotten to me:

- Caning

I am definitely not a fan of caning students and even more so after the past week. I think on some of the days, the teachers were moody and hitting kids for no reason. They had exams last week and I kid you not, after the exams were graded some of the teachers said you should have gotten at least 90% to all the students and then pulled out the cane to lash the students the difference between the percentage they got and 90%. So if you got 80%, you got 10 lashes. I was disgusted by this and went and complained to the headmaster. I think that the caning makes teachers a bit lazy in creatively getting the students' attention. Do this or I'll cane you seems to be the general motto and I nearly cried at times for the reasons that some students were caned. Especially the really little ones. Even though the school is middle class, the nursery kids do nothing most days. Today, we did some coloring and I had to break each crayon into 5 pieces so that each kid had a small piece to color with. And then I cut up pieces of paper and drew some basic triangular sorts of things for them to color. The thing is though, with nothing to do, the kids get bored and start playing or running around and then they're caned for it. It's all a vicious cycle and really hard for me to take.

- Sanitation and Hygiene

Things just aren't really clean here. I literally walk around with anti-bac and handy wipes and I don't think I'm that 'precious' a person. The nursery kids have a bucket outside of the classroom and that's what they pee in. This occurs at many local businesses as well. There are no toilet facilities so they use a bucket and empty it at the end of the day. There are no facilities for them to wash their hands and the whole thing is just a little gross. I think one thing I really appreciate after my Ghana experience is running water. I visited a teacher's house and while there was a toilet, there was no running water so you had to use a bucket of water to flush the toilet and then wash your hands in another bowl of water. And I think to shower they have to use buckets of water too. This works ok if you have running water nearby but lots of people have to travel a bit to get water and then take it back home. Some of the people living near the guesthouse where I stay come over and get water from there. I can't imagine having to live life without water whenever I needed it. The thing is, these are middle class folks. I shudder to think how much harder it is for the poor folks.

Sorry about such a negative post but everything has really been getting to me recently. And the funny thing is that Ghana is an African success story. They're doing really well compared to other countries in Southern Africa.

Obama Mania

2009-07-11T10:59:00.002-04:00

I thought I'd include a quick note on the absolute Obama hysteria over here. I'm not joking, it's absolutely insane. Obama is visiting Ghana for the next 24 hours and from the moment of my arrival two weeks ago, there's been Obama signs everywhere. There are pictures of Barack and Michelle everywhere saying 'Welcome Home'. Also, there are pictures of President Mills with another of Obama photoshopped in saying 'Partnership for Change'. I'm pretty sure Barack Obama had no idea that he had signed any partnership for change with President Mills.

Today, there is 24/7 coverage of Obama in town. It's pretty sad as there isn't too much to report. So there's been specials on the Obama's car and Air Force One. Also, the coverage is just a bit ridiculous. Lots of people are lined up outside of Cape Coast castle in order to get a glimpse of Obama. Anyhow, some Americans studying abroad have joined in the mill and have been interviewed. The news spent quite a bit of time discussing how these Americans weren't able to see Obama in person in their own country but now can in Ghana - as I said, ridiculous! Do they really think all Americans can just rock up to the White House and have a chat with the president???

Last night there was also a story about a teenage boy who bears a remarkable resemblance to Obama and how his looks affect his life. There are a number of Obama songs as well. It's a bit scary all the hysteria and hero worship. For the Ghanaians, Obama's visit is a great coup as Ghana is the first country in Southern Africa that Obama is visiting. I think the Kenyan gov't is pretty pissed off that they weren't the first. However, it's a bit crazy how much the Ghanaian gov't is expecting from this short visit. I think they expect the trajectory of Ghana to change over night because of this one visit. There have been a number of news chat shows discussing how this visit will impact the country. They're expecting preferential trade with the US, more money from the international financial institutions, etc etc. It's all a bit much.

I'm not going to lie, if I had the opportunity, I'd love to meet Obama; I've even decided to wear my Obama T-shirt today. But I wish that Ghana didn't feel the need to prostrate itself at the feet of Barack Obama. It's all a bit to obsequious and undignified.

Volunteering - I love my new kids!

2009-07-10T12:18:00.005-04:00

One of the school kids. She is so cute!!!

On Wednesday, I finally started volunteering. There was a slight hiccup in my plans as the school the owners of the guesthouse had assured me would like my services proved to be disinterested. From what I can gather, a contact of the guesthouse owner’s son assured him that I could work at the school; they then told me that everything was confirmed as though they had set it up with the school headmaster themselves and then it all fell through. So on Tuesday, Earl, the guesthouse owner’s son who is running the place while she is abroad, went to find me some volunteer work for me. They found a school that was happy to procure my services and on Wednesday it all began.

The school is lovely and I think caters to the middle classes though I think on viewing my pictures, many might be surprised at the facilities at the school. There is a roof and walls but then just open space instead of windows and concrete floors and ramshackle desks. However, this doesn’t take away from the fact that the students are amazing: very welcoming, extremely well behaved and interested in learning. It's quite funny that they call be obruni or white person. To the Ghanaians, all foreigners are white, even little old me that's never been considered white in my lifetime thus far.

Corporal punishment is still the norm over here but despite the threat of canings, the students are very happy and precocious. The threat of canings also keeps them very well behaved. Another amazing factor is that all these kids speak Twi at home; however, for school purposes, they speak English and study in English and on school premises are not allowed to speak their native language. They study French as well and they do have classes in Twi though they’re only allowed to speak that language during the allotted class time. Can you imagine American or British kids having to live bilingually?

The school currently caters to kids from nursery school to upper primary (ages 1.5 to 14). According to Earl, schools are good businesses in Ghana. This school is quite good in providing breakfast and lunch for the students which is important as they can’t monitor what the kids would eat at home or if they might have breakfast at all. However, the kids do have to pay for it; daily, weekly or monthly. I’d think it should just be part of the school fees. I haven’t sussed it out yet but I worry that maybe some kids couldn’t afford lunch one day and so would just have to do without. It’s difficult to tell though as the teachers eat apart from the kids.

So far I’ve had very Ghanaian foods for lunch. Day before yesterday was jolof rice and a boiled egg. That was a bit weird. The jolof rice is normal rice, made spicy and red somehow. Then there’s a boiled egg plopped in for protein I guess. I think, meat or fish is too expensive so instead of just having plain rice, you have an egg with it. Yesterday, I had kenke which is maize mashed up and placed in a corn husk. You then eat it with your hands, dipping it in a pepper sauce. And you have a little smoked fish to go with it. Again very tasty though I need to work on eating with my hands a bit better. Today I had kenke which is fried plantains with beans.Very yummy and probably m favorite Ghanaian food so far.

After lunch, the students had cultural activity and they were performing some dances. A bunch of the boys drummed while some other boys and girls danced. It was quite fun and the drums were thrumming.

[I have tons of pictures of everything (the Ghanaians seem to love posing for pictures but sadly the internet connection is so slow that it's difficult to upload any of the pictures. It's currently taking me about 1 hour to upload 4 pictures. I'll need to go home and choose top three pictures for posting and add them to the blog at a later date.)

In other news, I’ve finished writing up the pattern for my cowl and have knitted a second prototype which I love. I asked one of the students to model it for me. Isn't she gorgeous? The pattern will go out to be test knit and hopefully soon I will have published my first knitting pattern; yet another of my ‘to do before I’m 30’ activities checked off.

Knitted in Malabrigo Merino Worsted - Sapphire Green.

I also got another student to model the first prototype of this cowl. It looks absolutely beautiful against her skin color.

Accra - Kumasi

2009-07-06T08:22:00.006-04:00

Yesterday, I left my cushy lifestyle in Accra at the British High Commission to move to Kumasi, Ghana's second city and its historical capital, where I'll be spending the rest of my time in Ghana. What should have been a straightforward 5-hour bus ride changed when our bus broke down and we were stuck on the side of the road for nearly two hours. I saw a bit of local color as we stopped near a family home. There were the cutest kid goats. I was going to take some pictures but sadly my camera battery ran out as I was taking pictures.

Home outside which we broke down:

Baby goats had run away but here's their mama:

I'm actually staying outside Kumasi, near Ejisu, at a guesthouse called Villa Sankofa (http://www.villasankofa.com/). Earl who runs the place with his mother is lovely and very helpful. I'd call the place shabby chic. It all looks absolutely lovely but then you realize that things don't quite work as it should. It's still a complete luxury compared to what I'd expected when I first decided to come to Ghana. Also, my room, which is actually an apartment, is about double the size of the studio I lived in in London at a fraction of the price.

Today I'm getting my bearings. I've made my way to an internet cafe and I have to go buy groceries. Tomorrow, I'll go to the school where I will volunteer and get that set up. I can't wait to have a bit more 'purpose' to my stay. I guess I'm not one of those people than can just vacation. I need a schedule and I need to feel like I'm doing something.

Designing - Cable Crush Cowl - Prototype I

2009-07-03T11:17:00.004-04:00

I’ve always had a crush on cables. I love their construction and so for my first attempt at a design, I used the interlocking crosses from the Harmony Guides as my center piece. Then I got cabley happy and added more and more. I lurve it though and it looks great in Malabrigo Worsted Rhodesian.

This is my first prototype of this cowl there’s still room for improvement. I've named this 'Cable Crush Cowl'. In naming this cowl, I went for my love of cables coupled with my love of alliteration. :-)

Hangin with the Animals

2009-07-01T13:34:00.002-04:00

Today, myself and a number of others joined Cathy, a zoologist, at a Primate Conservation Center. These poor monkeys are endangered and we went to see the breeding center. It was a bit sad as they were all caged up. I hate seeing animals in cages. I know it's necessary but...

Besides the monkeys, the mini zoo had some other animals hanging out.

This cute camel was one of a number given as a present to the Ghanaian government as a present from Colonel Gaddafi. It's a bit of a sad story though. There were four camels at the center and one day some workers cutting down some trees decided to be nice and feed the camels what they had cut down. Sadly, these were poisonous trees and all the camels died. This one survived because it had been sick and been separate from the other camels while receiving treatment. Now she is all alone.

There were ostriches:

And warthogs (yes, I did break out in a rendition of Hakuna Matata!):

Also, I managed to finish this lovely shawl while here in Ghana.

Pattern: Springtime Bandit by Kate Gagnon

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Merino Worsted (Burgundy) 2 skeins

Needles: US 9 / 5.5 mm

Accra Arrival

2009-06-28T04:41:00.002-04:00

I arrived in Accra, Ghana's capital, last night. It is so humid here. I generally have quite dry skin but I'm sensing moisturiser won't be much of an issue here.

I'm staying with Barry's friend at the British High Commission compound and it's really quite lovely - internet access, air conditioning, panic buttons should we need help immediately (but the fear that you'll accidentally hit one; there's one right over the headboard of the bed), bomb checks of the car in and out of the compound - good stuff. Barry's friend is absolutely lovely.

We had our first meal at this Italian place called Mamma Mia. Pizza and some lovely chianti. I'm looking forward to trying some traditional Ghanaian food - watch this space for photos and reviews ;-).

My last week in London, I was trying to sort out volunteer work over here and thankfully my ex-boss (before the new boss who came to revolutionize the team arrived and hastened my departure) knew someone in Ghana and gave me her information. She has been a godsend. She owns a guesthouse in Kumasi, another big city in Ghana, and has given me a great deal to stay there for the duration of my stay: www.villasankofa.com. There's even a swimming pool - I can't wait to start swimming again while training for the marathon. She also talked to a school situated a few minutes from the guesthouse and I can volunteer there. Everything is set - I'm so happy it's worked out so easily.

Anyhow, I should be a bit more social and not sit obsessively on the internet.

Akwaaba (welcome in Twi) Accra!

Crazy Caryl Strikes Again

2009-06-24T18:52:00.003-04:00

So, last September I had to have surgery on my left leg and my running had to come to an end. I'm pretty much healed now but I've just not been able to get back to my running. So with all the million life changes I'm undergoing, I thought why not another. I've just signed up for the NY marathon. I'm going to run it for CAMFED - Campaign for Female Education. I'll need to raise at least $3,500 so any blog lurkers - I'm counting on your help. I do plan to come up with some prizes. I just need to think some up - feel free to make suggestions.

As a training run, I've signed up for the Quad Cities Half-Marathon in Moline, IL. I'll be doing that with a close friend and I'm really excited to connect with her again and do something we both love.

Cheers to me and running and finally conquering the marathon!

I've just created my fundraising page. I'd appreciate your support: http://www.firstgiving.com/carylpierre.

Catching up

2009-06-22T09:54:00.005-04:00

I haven't blogged in a while...but I have a good excuse, I promise!

I'm getting ready to wrap up the UK portion of my life and start afresh. The plan is solid now (and should be since it comes into action on Saturday), go to Ghana for 7 weeks and then move to Madison, WI. I've been trying to pack this past weekend and crikey I have accumulated lots - lots of yarn that is. I can't bare to give up any of my stash... I've started mailing myself stuff but there's still so much...

Obviously my brain isn't fully functional as I can't seem to finish a sentence. I've been knitting as always and following will be an array of recent FOs.

Scarf-sized clapotis - knitted in Malabrigo Silky (2 skeins)

Minimalist Cardigan - knitted in 100% merino wool I got in Estonia. It was from a huge cone and a lot of that cone still remains.

Swallowtail Shawl - knitted in Malabrigo Dos (3 skeins)

I've also been doing a lot of charity knitting but I'll upload those pics another day.

Knitters' Day Out

2009-06-08T04:46:00.005-04:00

6 June 2009 was the first annual UK Ravelry Day and I must say I was ridiculously happy to be there. I woke up at 6:30am (very early for me - I generally don't wake up until about 8am most days) to get myself ready and head off to Euston station to get the train to Coventry - a place I'd never visited or even considered visiting. The weather in true English style was rainy, windy and altogether crappy.

Vendors set up at UK rav day:

But the weather did not deter us knitters. There were workshops to be worked, yarn to be stashed and Meg Swansen to be adored.

My friend and I hopped on the train and chattered happily while knitting our way to Coventry to the annoyance of probably many in our carriage. But who cares about them, how often do knitters' get to have a day out to simply revel in our craft!

We arrived at the venue at 10am and you might think we went into the hall, had a cup of coffee, surveyed the goings on and you would have been wrong. No! First thing, to the yarn stalls, batman! (play batman music) Actually first to the cash machine. London-liver that I am, I didn't think to carry cash so after a first abortive attempt at some yarn purchasing, it was to the cash machine and then up up and away, to shop our hearts out. I had an introduction to spinning class from 11-1, then Meg Swansen talk from 2-3:30 and I wanted to get my yarn before all the good stuff was gone.

It was quite nice to have so many locally-sourced vendors and I made sure to buy British all day.

I had my spinning class and I should add that I suck at spinning.

Points for trying?

Diane - our awesome spin sensei.

Here's a pic of my first bit of spinning. Eek! Don't quit my day job, right?

I plan to persevere though and even bought some tasty fiber to keep me inspired. Or one might argue that I'm just a shopaholic and I've found yet more crafty things to purchase...

Then we had the talk with Meg Swansen. That's her at the book signing afterwards. She was absolutely lovely to everyone.

I found it a bit weird that she read excerpts from her mother's book for her talk (I mean we could do that for ourselves) but I enjoyed the Q&A section. I kept asking myself though how she could enjoy being a representative for her mother when I think she is quite the knitter in her own right. I would have liked to know a bit more about Meg Swansen; I wasn't there to revive Elizabeth Zimmerman in the guise of her daughter.

I did have a quick chat with Meg Swansen though. She heard my American accent during the book signing and then she started asking questions (what was I doing in England? Where I was from in the states? etc etc). Seems she lives in Wisconsin and often visits the Madison guild and seeing as I may move to Madison, it would be cool to hang out with Meg and even get an invite to see her sweater and stash warehouse. How amazing would that be!?!

Pic of myself and Meg. Eeep! I'm touching her...

And after that, more shopping... ;-). I got this lovely yarn to knit Maplewing by Anne Hanson. Can't wait to cast on!

Bring Your Children to Work Day

2009-05-27T09:36:00.002-04:00

Today is 'Bring Your Children to Work Day' at work and so there are tons of toddlers running around the office and young singletons enjoying the time to play with kids that they don't have to take home. The parents are loving the free baby-sitting (it's half-term this week and kids are out of school). The Company hired a clown who did face painting and me, channeling my inner child, got in on the face painting action.

Other than that, it's a rainy and very windy day today. I went outside to get some photos of my new knitted FO and it was a bit crazy.

Pattern: Sexy Vesty by CanarySanctuary

Yarn: Cascade Yarns 220 Wool 2.6 skeins

Needles: US 5 / 3.75 mm

Greatest Day

2009-05-20T10:40:00.003-04:00

After all the craziness in my life of late, this day so far has just been absolutely fantabulous!!!

Last night I finished another Ulmus shawl and it's just gorgeous! I love everything about it!

Pattern: Ulmus by Kirsten Kapur

Yarn: Louet Gems Fingering Wt. (Aqua) 1.7 skeins and (Paisley) 1.2 skeins

Needles: US 5 / 3.75 mm
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Anyhow, I get to work and I'm pretty stoked because finishing a project that you're in love with is pretty much enough to have you walking on air for at least 24 hours. But my day had more happiness in store for me. I got my malabrigo swap package and oh my god is it amazing!!!

I've been so giddy about this package that I've lost my appetite. I couldn't even get through a salad for lunch. I've just been super happy!

Package arrives:

Awesometastic tissue wrapping; I didn’t even want to open it.

Handmade Item 1: Felted Nalgene bottle holder with Nalgene bottle inside

Inside Nalgene bottle, yummy choccies, tea and hot chocolate . I can’t wait to try it but I’m so happy I’ve lost my ability to eat.

Yarn: 3 skeins of Ravelry Red worsted. OMG!!! I’m in love!!! Caked so that I don’t have to go to my LYS and buy something so that I can use the winder :-)

Not the best pic but a mini skein of 100% silk with beads yarn from Planet Earth Fibers:

THE KNIT KIT (Need I say more!)

Here you can see handmade item 2, an ipod cozy with the most amazing detailing of iphone icons and a $15 itunes gift card. Also, interweave knits spring 2008 which i need for many projects in my queue.

And last but not least, this awesome tote:

This whole package has been so amazing. Thank you Thank you stashmore for such a happy day!!!

Knitting - the Ultimate Coping Mechanism

2009-05-19T06:56:00.006-04:00

I seemed to have opened a can of worms when I quit my job recently. I know that I made the right decision. Life is just so much more worth living now that I see an end in sight. However, by making this one decision about my life, I'm finding myself doing a lot of thinking about other aspects of my life. My brain is a turmoil of this and that and overthinking. Thank God for yarn and knitting! How amazing it is to knit, purl, yarn over, k2tog and so forth (I'm making lots of shawls lately so lots of yo, k2tog, ssk). I feel like this is a monumental year for me (not just because I'm turning the big 30) but because I feel like a lot of my short-term future will be set by this year. That worries me a bit. I have so many decisions to make and paths to forge and I have no clue what the road not taken is. I don't know if the conventional path is actually the unconventional one because I've never been conventional and doing something conventional might actually blow my mind. Now I'm just blabbing but it's my blog and I can blab if I want to :-).

Ok - here are the projects I've completed since my last post. I seemed to have become shawl obsessed somewhere along the way.

I test knitted another shawl for Kirsten Kapur.

Pattern: Jeanne by Kirsten Kapur

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Sock (Botticelli) 0.8 skein

Needles: US 5 / 3.75 mm

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I also finally paid off my library fines and found some nice knitting, beading and crochet books there. I've also checked out a couple of audio books which is a lovely crafting companion.

Anyhow, in one of the crochet books I checked out, I found this pattern for a Jagged Stripe Scarf which I thought would be perfect to use up a lot of my Malabrigo Worsted leftovers.

Pattern: Want Not Waste Not Scarf (Jagged Stripe Scarf by Gayle Bunn)

Yarn: Various Malabrigo Merino Worsted (see ravelry project page for details)

Needles: 5 mm hook / H

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I also made some granny squares which I sent off to the malabrigo swap ravelry group mods in charge of making wedding blankets. After making these squares I'm thinking I need to work on collecting squares to make an afghan for moi.

Pattern: Granny Square by Purl Bee

Yarn: Various Malabrigo Merino Worsted (see ravelry project page for details)

Needles: 5 mm hook / H

8. Make a bold career move

2009-05-14T12:55:00.001-04:00

If you keep up with my blog, you might have sensed that I was desperately fed up with my job. After the long weekend (ended 5 May), I felt refreshed and was willing to let myself believe that maybe I was over-exaggerating how bad things were. Barely an hour into being back at work, my manager confronted me in an unreasonable manner and in less than a minute my entire joie de vivre disappeared. I felt sick and I knew that I couldn't put up with my job any longer. So I wrote my letter of resignation, went to speak with HR and then later in the day to my manager. For the next two days, I just felt completely and utterly drained. Then all of a sudden I felt like this weight had fallen off of my shoulders and I could see opportunities that I hadn't been able to see before.

I've since decided to head off to Ghana for a couple of months to do some voluntary work before I'll probably head back to the US. I don't know what life holds in the US for me but my 30th birthday is approaching and I'm tired of this itinerant lifestyle I lead. It's time to settle somewhere and while I'm not sure what my next step is, I know that Britain is not somewhere I can settle.

I bought my tickets today and I'll be heading to Ghana on 27 June returning on 17 August. I'm mainly following Barry who will be doing field study over there but now that I have my dates I'm going to look into volunteer opportunities. I feel a bit now like I'm taking control of my life. Other moves need to be made but for now I'm happy with where I am.

Long Work Days and Some Fun Test Knitting

2009-04-29T15:46:00.007-04:00

Work has been ridiculously busy of late and I've been working until 9 or 10pm. I generally get home completely exhausted but I insist on having some time to wind down which pretty much means time to knit. I don't want to complain about work because really, what's the point??? Work sucks. I wish I could be knitting full-time.

Today has been nice - its Friday!!! And Monday is a bank holiday and I can actually enjoy the day off. I had to work both Easter bank holidays but after killing myself this week, I can finally have a long break.

The past few weeks, I've had the pleasure of test knitting new designs. It's been tres fun and I'm really happy with the results. Lots of pics to follow.

This is the most recent item that I finished. The pattern has been released and can be downloaded either on ravelry or Kirsten's blog.

Pattern: Ulmus by Kirsten Kapur

Yarn: Pagewood Farm Alyeska Hand Dyed Sock Yarn (Fabulous Fall) and Handmaiden Fine Yarn Casbah Sock (Moss) 1.5 skeins

Needles: US 5 / 3.75 mm

This hat is super cute. I call it my rasta chic tamarack. The pattern is by a fellow malabrigo yarn lover - Amy AKA Duncks. This pattern has not yet been released.

Pattern: Tamarack by Amy (AKA Duncks)

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Worsted (Melilla) 1 skein

Needles: US 5 / 3.75 mm and US 8 / 5.0 mm

Finally, some weeks ago, I test knitted these mittens for Nina. I did one with 5 cables (Polar Morn/gray color) and another with 4 cables (Emeraly/blue color).

Pattern: Dean Street Mitts by Nina Machlin Dayton

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Worsted (Polar Morn and Emerald) approx. 1 skein for each

Needles: US 5 / 3.75 mm

Working on Good Friday

2009-04-10T07:04:00.004-04:00

Life sucks! Instead of sitting at home knitting, I'm stuck working. That is absolutely sucktacular! I've worked till 10pm Wed night and 9pm last night. I need sleep!!!

I did manage to get a little knitting done despite all the work. Who needs sleep right?

Pattern: Darkside Cowl by Sarah Fama; I refer to mine as Ms Brightside Cowl (homage to The Killers)

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Worsted (Pollen) approx. 0.5 skein with edgings in Emerald, Sunset and Burgundy

Needles: US 7 / 4.5 mm

Faberge Cowl Deux

2009-04-03T11:19:00.002-04:00

Pattern: Faberge Cowl by Nina Machlin Dayton

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Worsted (Applewood) approx. 0.7 skein

Needles: US 7 / 4.5 mm and 0.6 mm crochet hook

I just completed another Faberge Cowl and I'm loving it. This one I made slightly larger, I cast on 108 sts rather than the 102 sts that I did in my first one. Also I used 5/0 beads which made knitting this one an absolute pleasure. I also went down to a size 0.6mm crochet hook and that made beading easier as well.

I decided to make a second Faberge Cowl as I just really didn't know what to do with the applewood colorway. As anyone might have noticed, I've been loving really brightly colored yarns. The applewood was just a bit bleh for me. I'm not one to let yarn go to waste however and especially not lovely, luscious malabrigo. So I thought that adding some beads might really make this yarn pop. I wanted a deeper sort of bright, maroon-colored beads but I couldn't get them in size 5/0. After the horror of using 6/0 for my last cowl, I decided that I'd go with the more subtle copper-colored beads that came in size 5/0. I'm actually quite happy that I made that choice because I think the cowl as is is just very classy and beautiful.

G20 Mania and Bankers in Jeans

2009-04-01T04:56:00.007-04:00

"With threats of G20-related violence, denim is the order of the day for bankers in the City, with its blue-collar credentials" - Times Online

Today is one of those days when I’m annoyed with myself for not carrying my camera. I've had no choice then but to pilfer pics from BBC and Sky News websites. This morning, I turned on the news while trying to coax myself out of bed and the first images to pop up were that of President Obama and Michelle arriving at 10 Downing St to breakfast with Gordon Brown and Sarah. Gordon looked his normal dire self while Obama waved to the press and smiled. Gordi tried to get in on the smiling action but it failed miserably. Michelle looked glam and Adam Boulton, my fave political correspondent, tried to get Obama to answer some questions. Obama seemed keen to but dour Gordi advised a photo op and then they went inside.

I then got ready for work and it was quite surreal walking on Liverpool St. First, everyone was wearing jeans as advised. I and I assume all other City workers received the following advice: “Workers in the City are being advised to dress down and postpone non-essential meetings amid fears that they will be forced to run the gauntlet of protesters.” Cops were everywhere though it seems the protestors seem to prefer a lie-in and so nothing had yet begun. The streets were fairly sparse as I think many were advised to work from home. I’m sort of hating being stuck in an office right now rather than being outside in the melee.

One of my co-workers, Tom, seems particularly exemplary of bankers in jeans. He’s an older gentleman and obviously does not make much use of his casual wear. He’s wearing some stonewashed-type jeans circa 1980s with a checked flannel shirt circa early 1990s. Oh, what chaos these protestors have already routed.

A Quick Night's Work

2009-03-31T10:11:00.002-04:00

Last night I managed to get some instant gratification knitting done by using up some of my leftover lace yarn from my Ishbel and some beads that I had acquired during my bead shopping this weekend.

Pattern: Perdita (Lily of the Valley) by Elizabeth Klett

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Lace (Apple Green) approx. 0.1 skein

Needles: US 1 / 2.25 mm and 2.25 mm crochet hook

A Potential Mini Business Venture and Ishbel

2009-03-30T12:18:00.002-04:00

I'm having such a grrr day at work. With every passing minute I'm considering the feasibility of quitting. I have to keep reminding myself that these are crippling economic times and I should be grateful to have a job. Sadly, that argument is wearing thin. Watch this space for an announcement that I finally gave in/gave up. The fact that I'm even publishing my sentiments in this public forum shows how dire the situation has gotten.

Anyhow, enough of my moping. This weekend, I spent both Saturday and Sunday in the environs of Covent Garden and its bead shops. I also did a bit of shopping for a black spring jacket but had no luck. I want it to be black as I intend to turn out some spectacularly colored lace shawls/scarflettes and I want a jacket that will match it all.

So while enjoying the fat-free indulgence that is pick'n mix bead shopping, I decided that the art that I'll teach myself before my 30th is jewelry-making. And as I'm a huge fan of instant gratification, it occurred to me that starting an Etsy shop selling stitch markers might be fun. I recognize that selling stitch markers on Etsy in no way provides a viable alternative to my current job but selling my wares on Etsy might keep me in beads and maybe a few skeins of yarn...

Anyhow, my weekend was not completely spent wondering the streets of Covent Garden. I did manage to get some knitting done. I finished Ishbel, my first time working with laceweight yarn and it's absolutely lovely. It's apple green in color though one might call it lime. You can see now why I will need a black spring jacket :-).

Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda Teague

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Lace (Apple Green) approx. 0.8 skein

Needles: US 5 / 3.75 mm

Fun Listy Activity

2009-03-27T11:23:00.003-04:00

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Look at the list and put an 'x' next those you have read.

x 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
x 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
x 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
x 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
x 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
x 6 The Bible
x 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
x 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwel
x 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
x 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
x 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
x 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
x 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
x 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
x 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
x 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
x 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
x 34 Emma - Jane Austen
x 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (seen the movie)
x 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (seen the movie)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (love the cartoon!)
x 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
x 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
x 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (used to watch this on PBS religiously)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
x 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
x 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (seen the movie)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
x 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
x 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
x 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebol
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
x 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
x 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (seen the movie)
x 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (seen many versions of this movie plus the use of it in sitcoms)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (seen the movie)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (seen the movie)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
x 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
x 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (seen both movie versions)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (seen the show)

I guess I've read more than 6 but it seems I have a lot of reading to do. I have seen a lot of the movies though, does that count?

Rockin’ Socks, Cookie A and A bit of Kinnearing

2009-03-26T11:52:00.003-04:00

Rockin’ Socks

Today I was very excited to receive my Rockin’ Sock Club package. It was shipped out last Friday but it had taken the first shipment in January nearly a month to arrive, therefore, I hadn’t got my hopes up waiting for the package. So what a lovely surprise that it arrived only six days from shipping! This time around I hadn’t read any of the spoilers on ravelry and it was nice to see my March package with virgin eyes.

I love the colorway! I can’t make these yet though; I feel bad that I haven’t even start my January socks. Good thing I had the Cookie A sock design workshop at Socktopus this past weekend because now I’m very inspired to knit socks again.

Cookie A

Speaking of Cookie A, I absolutely loved the workshop last Saturday and I can’t wait to have some time to sit down with my graph paper to design some Caryl socks. The design I have in my head is somewhat similar to Kai-Mei in Cookie’s new book, Sock Innovation. I can’t wait to get a copy of the book. I’ll be at Loop on 5 April for the book launch and signing.

A Bit of Kinnearing

I was just in the kitchen at work and saw one of my colleagues wearing a very nice sweater (store-bought of course). I liked the look of it and now that I’m into designing, I thought it might make some good inspiration for a future design.
Anyhow, I took a sly picture of her.

Why did I have a camera in the office kitchen you ask? I happened to be in the kitchen to photograph my new sock club package (above). I get my mail at work and the work camera is way better than mine (10.1 megapixels vs mine which is 4 megapixels) and the kitchen faces the docks (I work near Tower Bridge) and gets lots of natural light.

You might also be wondering why this colleague is holding hands with another. Well, they happen to be enjoying a bit of an office romance. Tea break and hand holding anyone… I prefer cookies with my tea personally ;-)

Paddy's Day

2009-03-23T10:01:00.006-04:00

I've finally recovered more or less from Paddy's Day. What a day of boozing!!! I spent my Saturday detoxing from a week of extravagant eating and drinking; my allergies were horrendous and I felt nauseous. Luckily I recovered on Sunday and now I'm back at work (for better or worse). The bf was visiting for the week and I broke pretty much every Lenten resolution. I've decided that I'll add an extra week to Lent to make up for my badness.

I also got very little knitting done. I spent Paddy's Day working on my minimalist cardigan. I think that knitting throughout the 12-hour + drinking session kept me fairly sober. I never got very drunk and I'm happy to say that there were no drunken mistakes upon inspection the next day. :-)

I thought I'd get so much completed on my week off but except for a hat that ended up too small for my big hair, I did nothing really. I gifted the hat to the bf's friend, Melanie, as it fit her well.

Pattern: Star Crossed Slouchy Beret by Natalie Larson

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Merino Worsted (Chestnut) approx. 0.5 skein

Needles: US 8 / 5.0 mm and US 11 / 8.0 mm

To a fun St. Paddy's Day!!!

Worst Nachos Ever!!!

UFO week

2009-03-13T12:06:00.004-04:00

I'm taking this coming week off from work as my boyfriend is coming over from the states (It's Spring Break at U of Wisconsin!). Anyhow, while I plan to spend lots of time with him, I plan to add a bit of knitting into the mix :-).

I have a bunch of UFOs that I want to work on. I'll probably manage a few things for malabrigo march but I want to get my minimalist cardi done. Also I don't want to be stuck with an orphan sock so I'm going to finish up my second hourglass sock. Then there's Hey Teach. I've been stuck at about 75% progress for months now. It's time to get that done done and done.

For malabrigo march I want to do Ishbel and Star Crossed Beret and maybe if I somehow have any extra time, I'll cast on groovy cable tuque hat and darkside cowl.

That's a week filled with knitting. I hope I have some time to hang out with the boyfriend ;-).

Floral Headband

2009-03-11T10:40:00.005-04:00

Pattern: Urban Outfitters Floral Earwarmer by Shalyn McFaul

Yarn: Rowan Calmer (White) Leftover yarn (0.1 skein at most)

Needles: 4.5 mm / US 7 circular and 5 mm crochet hook for flower

This was a great quick knit. I used the crochet flower pattern from Lion Brand. I’ll definitely make more of these with leftover yarn from projects. It makes me feel very glam.

Faberge Cowl

2009-03-10T12:30:00.003-04:00

Pattern: Faberge Cowl by Nina Machlin Dayton

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Worsted (Sunset) 0.8 skein

Needles: 4.5 mm / US 7 circular and 0.75 mm crochet hook

I had a very productive weekend and managed to finish this cowl. I did it over 102 sts (120 sts according to pattern) as I saw some of the FOs and wanted a smaller cowl; also I’m a loose knitter so I thought that my looseness would make up for size. I might have made it a little too small but I like a cozy cowl fit.

The beading with 6/0 beads was a bit painful, especially for the first beading row (I would suggest if possible that 5/0 beads are used). I think it might have popped a bit more with larger beads as well. This is my first project with beads and I hadn’t realized that beads weren’t made equal. I seemed to bead about 2X no problem and then the third would be ridiculously painful. However I noticed that some beads had wider diameters than others and became more discriminating with my bead choices (I used a 0.75mm crochet hook).

Now I’m going to see if I can manage some faberge mini mitts with my leftover yarn and beads.

Talk About A Bad Dream

2009-03-09T09:51:00.003-04:00

This is one of the cutest clips I've seen in a while. Poor dog! I love at the end when he/she comes to and realizes that it was all a dream.

http://www.cuteoverload.com/2009/03/bad-dream-bad-d.html

Forest & Frill

2009-03-06T08:54:00.002-05:00

Pattern: Forest & Frill by tiny owl knits

Yarn: Rowan Cocoon (Tundra) 5 skeins

Needles: 9 mm / US 13 circular and size 7 mm crochet hook

I just finished this pattern this morning. I'm pretty happy with this. It's a bit slouchier than I would have preferred but the end result is overall great. I had to learn crochet in order to do the edging which was really cool and resulted in my fabulous crochet clutch.

Cherry Garcia and other meanderings

2009-03-05T13:00:00.005-05:00

Today I had a meeting near Hyde Park which is a slight trek from where I work (Tower Bridge) at 3pm. Therefore, I got to go home early as the meeting finished after 4pm. Yeah! So I went to Oxford St for a quick stop at John Lewis. I needed thread and a tiny crochet hook for beading. I ended up buying a lot more stuff of course. I'm planning to use my worsted scrap yarn to make pot holders. I'll knit squares and then put a layer of batting and then sew some fabric on the other side. I bought half a meter each of two Cath Kidston designs. Both designs are super cute! At least I think so...

In other news, I've completed a couple of projects.

Pattern: Cherry Garcia by Adrian Bizilia

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Silky Merino (Velvet Grapes) 0.5 skein

Needles: 5.5 mm / US 9 circular

Pattern: Patty by Jenny Raymond

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Silky Merino (Little Lovely) 0.1 skein

Needles: 4.5 mm / US 7 circular

Bead and Fabric Shopping on the West-End

2009-03-02T10:47:00.005-05:00

I had quite a fun crafty weekend. After spending 45 minutes spinning at the gym (my workout for the weekend), I met up with my friend Rebecca and we headed to the West End for some bead and fabric shopping. We had a map to The Bead Shop which was recommended to me. However, on the way there we took a few detours. We first detoured to Bead Aura. I'd been there a few times hoping that they sold crafty things other than beads and each time I realized, nope, beads only (visits were few and far between and I kept forgetting that they really only sold beads).

Actually going to Bead Aura for beads was a treat! The place is packed in with beads and I'd have to say my favorite bead shop in London. We first browsed Bead Aura as we didn't want to purchase anything as cooler wares may still have been in the offing. Anyhow, every shop was a disappointment after Bead Aura. The London Bead Shop was overly pretentious, had few supplies and had lousy music. We pretty much ran out. The Bead Shop was ok and would have been great had we not first experienced Bead Aura. It was your bog standard bead shop but it was more expensive, had less variety and did not seem to make good use of space.

So we decided that we'd return to Bead Aura at the end of our shopping trip. I'd also mentioned to Rebecca that Bead Aura was only a stone's throw away from Rock and Sole Plaice, the best fish and chipper in London (based on my limited experience) and so we decided we'd end our afternoon with beads and fish and chips - yumtastic!!!

So we headed off to Regent's Street/Oxford Circus to hit Liberty's and John Lewis for fabric and other sundries. I ended up purchasing the most beautiful Liberty fabric to line a crocheted clutch that I had just finished. Also, Rebecca with her artist's eye did not like the button I had chosen for the clutch and so we did some button shopping (pictures below). I think the purse turned out very glam.

At Liberty's, this one guy helped me and little did I know that he was famous for his inefficiency. He insisted that I get a Liberty loyalty card and then badgered me for my age as for some reason I looked about 16 or 17 to him. You must be at least 18 to get the loyalty card. I assured him that I was indeed of age and that I would be turning 30 in about 8 months. I'm getting to that age now where it's pretty cool when people think you're younger than you are :-).

I kid you not though, this guy took like half an hour to try to get me this loyalty card and ring up my sale. In the end, there was something wrong with his computer and so I wasted all this time not getting a loyalty card that I hadn't even wanted. I was just being polite to the guy since he was so convinced that I needed to have one. Luckily I was in a relaxed mood and so the long wait and complete inefficiency didn't drive me up the wall.

From Liberty's we headed to John Lewis. There I needed to purchase thread and some fabric stiffener for my clutch as it was a bit floppy. In the end, we purchased some foam that children use for cutting out shapes and that worked a treat (again thanks to Rebecca's ingenuity).

By the time we finished at Liberty's and had to fight our way through Oxford Circus on a Saturday, we were pooped! So instead of heading to Berwick St and other great fabric shops - especially The Cloth House, we headed back to Covent Garden to eat Fish and Chips. Yum Yum!!!

Then to Bead Aura where we purchased beads then back to John Lewis to buy the foam to line the clutch (we thought the foam might be good but wanted to see if we could find something better and in the end went back to John Lewis to get the foam as we found nothing better). The only advice I'd give on Bead Aura is go early because by the afternoon it's overrun with young teenagers and others and it's just not as peaceful a browse.

Recent Finished Objects (FOs):

Pattern: Crocheted Clutch by Datura547

Yarn: Igea Merino (purchased in Estonia)

Needles: 5 mm/H crochet hook

This is my first crochet project and I’m very happy with the result. Thank you so much Tahra for your crochet lessons and guidance.

Pattern: Textured Shawl by Orlane

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Silky Merino (Camote) 2 skeins

Needles: 5 mm / US 8 circular

I seem to be going through an orange period. I’m just absolutely in love with orange these days and that’s been reflected in my yarn purchases.

Resolutions Revisited AKA Lent

2009-02-20T07:56:00.003-05:00

Lent is on its way and while I’m not overly religious, I like to get into the giving up aspect of things. It’s sort of like resolutions revisited.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to give up yarn shopping and use up my stash. Well, First 4 Yarns just got in a new shipment of malabrigo worsted and I just couldn’t resist. It’s done, I’ve purchased and now I forgive myself and will move on. The yarn diet still stands, I just had a blip. A yummy, tasty malabrigo blip! Check out my stash on ravelry if you're interested to find out the individual colorways, etc.

So for lent, I’m giving up:

1. Online shopping – an absolute must as it’s just too expensive and I’m tired of accumulating stuff. I’ll knit up my stash instead.
2. Meat (chicken, pork and red meat; fish stays) – I was a vegetarian for 9 years and I’ve been eating meat again for about 3 years now. I think this will be a good time to revisit my vegetarian days somewhat (I’m still eating fish so it won’t be as strict). Also, it will get my creative cooking juices flowing. (I hope!)
3. Bread – Mainly sandwiches. I’m tired of going to Pret or Eat or even Waitrose at lunchtime and getting horrible sandwiches. Wheat-free for 40 days. A detox of sorts.
4. The four Cs: Cookies, Cakes, Chocolate and Chips (UK – Crisps) – These four Cs are my downfall and I just want them out of my life for the next 40 days. If Jesus was able to survive in the dessert for 40 days, I can live without the four Cs. Also, it’s not like they’re going to run out of cookies and chocolates.

Tweet Tweet

2009-02-19T12:35:00.005-05:00

I have joined the rank and file and prove yet again that I am a follower of the herd. Yes, I've joined twitter. My username is karako17 and it would really help my self esteem if some people would follow the mundane updates that make up my life.

I was very happy to see that Will Smith is on twitter though it seems that it might be 'his people' doing the updates rather than him. I was a bit disappointed that Christina Ricci doesn't tweet. I happen to be a huge fan of everything Christina.

Other news...

The Knit Kit

The bf was supposed to have brought the knit kit to me when he came over to London for his spring break BUT the shops won't get them till the end of March. He's coming over on the 13th. Woe is me! No new gadget! Check it out. Isn't it the coolest ever? (Click on picture for a larger view)

Peace Out!

London-Berlin-Tallinn

2009-02-09T12:22:00.002-05:00

I just got back from a long weekend in Tallinn, Estonia. I had the best time ever and over the next couple of days I'll share my experiences. The start of my vacation was slightly ominous but things went so well that it ended up being just the fun of travelling.

I was a bit worried about my flight as bad weather in London during the week had meant that many flights were cancelled or delayed so I had my fingers crossed that things would go well. And things started out well. My flight took off on time (Friday, 6:45am). I was pretty knackered as I'd had to take the Terravision Bus to Stansted Airport leaving at 4:20am. Instead of knitting, I was napping. Then about an hour into the flight, a very friendly pilot warned us that we would have to land in Berlin as the plane was experiencing technical problems. He tried to assure us that it was not an emergency landing but as easyJet did not have engineers in Tallinn, we had to land in Berlin. As you can imagine, most tried to put on a brave face but no one wants to hear that the plane you're flying in is experiencing technical problems.

Things went well, and we landed in Berlin without a problem. When the plane was landed it was making a very funny noise and we figured that's why the engineers were called. We then sat on the plane for around half an hour and then the pilot informed us that the engineers had taken pictures of the problem and taken it back to headquarters to check the manual. Hmmm... we thought, the engineers need to check the manual? Then the pilot informed us that he was in talks with easyJet headquarters to discuss our 'rescue package'. So we sat and sat... It was freaking hot on the plane. The door was at least opened so we got a little air.

I marvelled at the fact that few people had things to do - so of course they fretted. I had heard that Tallinn was a popular location for stag parties and that was pretty obvious at the number of men travelling in groups on the plane. They of course had begun drinking and were very annoyed that drinks were not being served while we were stuck waiting. Happily for some of them, a few had brought The Sun to read and discuss; I got to listen to which of the glamour models were good looking and who weren't all that.

I was no longer sleepy so I pulled out my knitting and started Breathe Deep. A couple of hours later, the pilot told us that our plane could not be serviced but luckily there was an empty plane in Berlin so we were able to take that plane. We were then put on buses while the other plane was serviced and readied by the cabin crew. The buses meandered a bit on the runway, I guess to keep us entertained. We then boarded the plane and landed safely in Tallinn. What a way to start a vacation!!!

I managed to nearly finish one of the mittens and completed the second one in the few hours I wasn't sightseeing, shopping, dancing, drinking.

Pattern: Breathe Deep by Kirsten Kapur

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Merino Worsted (Glazed Carrot) approx. 0.8 skein

Needles: 4 mm / US 6 circular

I gifted these mittens to my friend (and host) as a thank you for putting me up and entertaining me in Tallinn.

Rockin' Sock Club

2009-02-05T11:44:00.003-05:00

Finally, I received my Rockin' Sock Club kit yesterday. Yippee!!! I was starting to worry that it would never arrive. I love all the contents. I especially love the worksheet where you can keep track of your gauge. That's something I should probably have already been keeping track of since I tend to use many fave yarns over and over.

The package included: sock yarn, key ring with emergency yarn, beads, pattern, dyer's notes, Sock Club key ring, Sock club button (now proudly hanging out with my other buttons on my ravelry bag), NSK sticker and 8" x 11" NSK poster. I need to wind up the yarn to check if I have many knots as others have complained of finding knots in their yarn. I probably won't having time to do this though as I'm heading to Estonia tomorrow. My flight is at 6am meaning I'll have to get to the airport around 5am. I can't wait to get there but not looking forward to waking up at the butt crack of dawn! My fingers are crossed that the impending snow doesn't affect my ability to fly because I will not be a happy Caryl.

Thermis

2009-02-05T11:39:00.003-05:00

Pattern: Thermis cowl by Kristen Patay

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Merino Worsted (Paris Night) approx. 0.8 skein

Needles: 4.5 mm / US 7 circular

Thank you to everyone at SnB London for your button suggestions! I'm very happy with the choice.

Depressed Snow

2009-02-03T10:55:00.004-05:00

One of my boyfriends back in high school told me once that he thought slush looked like depressed snow. Today, it's depressed snow and ice everywhere. I'm taking another 'work at home' day as I can't face walking through the madness and I can just as easily work from home as in the office. It's also nice to be in my PJs, watching music videos while working than being in the office.

I did venture out of my comfy home to head to the gym; check out the icy sidewalks.

It was surprisingly busy there. I expected to have the place to myself but bad weather can't keep City folk away from their daily workout.

Of course one of the nice things with working at home is that I can take many knitting breaks (smiles evilly!). I'm nearly done with my thermis cowl. The only problem is that I'm not sure which buttons I should use. Suggestions welcome!

Tonight I'm off to the Hoxton knitting group. Stitch n Bitch London was cancelled. I was a bit torn between which one to go to. SnB was meant to be at the LSE tonight which would have been a bit strange. It's been a year and a half since I finished my master's there; it would have been interesting to check out the old digs though.

Gotta love DeadlyKnitshade's SnB logo in honor of these snowy days in London:

Snow Day!

2009-02-02T11:00:00.004-05:00

Well, miracle of miracles, there's a bit of a snow storm here in London (emphasis on bit!). Compared with what I grew up with in the states, this is hardly anything but for London it's a lot. Buses are not running today and the tube and trains are working with severe delays. Some lines aren't even running. I leave only a half hour from work so I didn't think I could indulge in a snow day. However, as the city of London neglected to sand/salt the sidewalks, my usual half hour work took over an hour as I had to carefully slip/slide my way to work. Then I arrived and hardly anyone had made it in to work due to transport failures. Around lunchtime, most people decided to head home. As I couldn't face that treacherous walk home, I got a cab. Now I'm at home in my comfy wear and some thick socks. It looks like snow day might last a couple of days.

Over the weekend, I managed to complete another set of mitts.

Pattern: Evangeline by Michelle Szeghalmi

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Merino Worsted (Little Lovely) approx. 0.7 skein

Needles: 4 mm / US 6 circular

The yarn is great but that color really isn't great to show off any pattern.

I made quite a few mods. I made a size in between the wristlets and the elbow length mitts for a total of 5 pattern repeats. In addition, I added a thumb gusset (instructions below). On the 10th row of the 2nd repeat I started the gusset. I knitted this magic loop so I had 20 sts on each needle. I added the p2 at the beginning and end of the pattern stitching and then just k20 on the palm side.

Thumb gusset:

Right glove - palm side, k1, pm, m1, pm, k19
next round - K all sts
round 1 - k1, sl m, m1, knit to next marker, m1, sl m, k19
round 2 - work even
Repeat rounds 1 and 2 until there are 15 sts

Left glove - palm side, k19, pm, m1, k1
next round - K all sts
round 1 - k19, sl m, m1, knit to next marker, m1, sl m, k1
round 2 - work even
Repeat rounds 1 and 2 until there are 15 sts

For the rest of the snow day I'll be 'working from home' and maybe working on a bit of knitting. :-)

Coffee Cup Sleeve

2009-01-28T08:13:00.003-05:00

Pattern: Knit Coffee Sleeve by MissKnittyPants

Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn Merino Worsted (Burgundy) approx. 0.1 skein

Needles: 4 mm / US 6 circular

I knitted to 8 inches before grafting together. Like many I did a provisional cast-on and then grafted using kitchener stitch.

This was a great quick knit. I'll probably make quite a few of these as my scrap yarn pile is growing. For anyone who needs a 1-2 hour break from a big project and have some worsted weight scrap yarn lying about, this is great for instant gratification. And it helps with the environment - what else can you ask for?!?

Cranford Mitts

2009-01-26T09:05:00.002-05:00

Pattern: Cranford Mitts by Jane Lithgow

Yarn: Crystal Palace Yarns Panda Wool Solid (Vine Green) and
Handmaiden Fine Yarn Camelspin (Rose Garden)

Needles: 2mm / US 0 circular (Magic loop method used)

This pattern is a repeat of a horse shoe lace pattern. The patterns call for four repeats before the increases for the thumb. However, I have quite long hands/arms and decided to do seven repeats before the thumb.

These mitts are quite lovely and make me feel very ladylike.

The Fun of British Place Names

2009-01-23T10:35:00.002-05:00

This article was forwarded to me today and I must say I more than chuckled. Slightly 5th grade humor but why knock it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/world/europe/23crapstone.html?ref=world

Am I Cheating on my Yarn Diet?

2009-01-21T17:10:00.003-05:00

After organizing my yarn and also wishing to save some money during these hard times, I decided to put myself on a yarn diet: No yarn purchases until the summer sales. There are a few provisos: 1) I can buy yarn on holiday (I'm in Estonia next month and can't wait to check out the yarn wares!); 2) I can buy yarn from gift vouchers (I received a knit picks voucher for xmas); and 3) I have some refund money on my paypal account from yarn that was shipped but never arrived so that money can be used as technically it was already spent.

Anyhow, I got jealous reading the socktopod thread where everyone was excited about getting/receiving their sock club packages. I hadn't joined the club in time and it's now too late to join. So I decided I wanted to join a sock club and went on the Blue Moon Fiber Arts website and decided to spend some hard dosh on the Rockin' Sock Club. So the question is: Have I cheated on my yarn diet? Is joining a sock club technically buying yarn?

I'm a bit excited about it all. I've never worked with Blue Moon Fiber Arts yarns before so I'm pretty keen to knit with it. I also adore receiving packages. Who doesn't, right? This is my first knitting club of this sort and I can't wait to receive my packages!!!

Rev Joseph Lowery's Benediction - I found it!

2009-01-20T19:28:00.004-05:00

I so loved the way he ended his benediction and I found it funny. On some blogs, people found it a bit racist but I think it was overall humorous and important to remember.

Lowery gives sole inaugural note of racial caution

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid the outpouring of inaugural joy over the racial progress represented by President Barack Obama, there was a single, humorous mention of work still to be done.

After the first black president had been sworn in, Rev. Joseph Lowery' ended his benediction with a rhyme familiar to black churchgoers:

"We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around..."

There was laughter from the enormous crowd. The 87-year-old civil rights pioneer continued:

"When yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen."

The crowd thundered, "Amen!"

--------

Me: I shouted 'Amen' from my couch as well. :-)

Post-Inauguration Random Musings

2009-01-20T13:18:00.002-05:00

"We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."

- A very sobering speech by Obama but truthful. I would have loved a bit of his musicality but I think the speech was right for the period we're in. I loved that he spoke directly to muslims and asserted that muslim/West relations would be handled with respect. It was great too that he mentioned global warming a couple of times. A very dense speech, one that says he knows what a basket case the world is currently but still that we should hope and that we should work hard to rebuild.

- I absolutely loved Rev. Joseph Lowery's benediction at the end. His gravelly voice and his bent towards rhythmic poetry was great to listen to. I especially liked his last words hearkening to "Black, Brown And White" by Big Bill Broonzy:

"If you was white, should be all right,
if you was brown, stick around,
but as you's black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back"

I've tried to find Rev. Lowery's exact words but youtube, etc. is letting me down. I guess they just don't work fast enough :-)

- Malia and Sasha looked cute throughout; Cutest first kids ever?

- I thought it was a bit endearing that Obama stumbled through his oath. It showed his nervousness and excitement and showed him to be human. Of course I'm biased.

- Aretha's singing made me cry. I don't know why but it really really touched me.

- The only bad note was the poet. She was very stilted and I might need to read her poem to get the message she was trying to get across.

The inauguration was a beautiful thing. I think the US is often criticized for overdoing things but I think such circumstances merit pomp.

Happy Inauguration Day!

2009-01-20T11:19:00.002-05:00

Happy Inauguration Day everyone! I've taken the day off work and I'm sitting at home watching sky news and enjoying the pomp and circumstance. I don't know if this day can match Nov. 2nd but we'll see if I can go without waterworks during Obama's speech. What an amazing day! How I would love to be freezing in the crowds watching this live...

To Obama - the 44th President of the United States!!!!

In-house Yarn shop

2009-01-14T10:21:00.005-05:00

Last night I was searching desperately for yarn to knit the forest & frill shrug. So I pulled out all my bags and was searching through when the bf suggested: Why don't you set up your yarns like in a yarn shop? Hmmm... I thought. What a brilliant idea! We then considered how we would get this done. Buy those closet shoe holders from Argos that have nice box-like receptacles for yarn? Then the bf had another lightbulb moment and we decided to move around my books and DVDs that align the shelves in my flat and create mini yarn cubbie holes in between. This was actually a really good idea as it forced me to go through a lot of crap that I had on my shelves. I finished my masters at the LSE over a year ago and I still had lecture notes and other sundries on the shelves.

The bf then went on to do an excellent job stacking my yarns and now I can see exactly what I have. For example, I notice that I buy way too many yarns in the beige to orange pallet. It looks a bit chaotic with all my other stuff but I live in a studio and so space is to a minimum. Now I can use my basket which previously held some of my stash to keep my wips.

For the next six months at least I'm trying to only knit with yarns I already own. The only proviso is that I'm allowed to buy yarn on holiday. During my holiday in La Rochelle, I found a great phildar sale and was able to indulge a bit. :-)

Gallus Mittens

2009-01-13T08:25:00.003-05:00

Pattern: Gallus by Kirsten Kapur

Yarn: Handmaiden Fine Yarn Sea Silk in Paris

Needles: 2mm / US 0 circular (Magic loop method used)

These mittens are the first mittens I've ever knitted. I was never sure if I'd like wearing mittens. I generally prefer the separation of fingers afforded by gloves. But I wanted to try something new and there are so many fun mittens patterns out there that I wanted to indulge in some mitten knitting. Also, mittens are near instant gratification.

I knitted these for the most part while I was on holiday in La Rochelle, France. These lovely mittens enjoyed the ambiance of many a cafe. I sipped tea (I'm not a fan of coffee but I love cafes) while the boyfriend enjoyed his cafe au lait. It was a magical holiday and these mittens will always remind me of that experience.

Knitted Christmas Presents

2009-01-05T11:39:00.008-05:00

This year I knitted all my Christmas presents which actually presented some time management issues. I thought I had all the time in the world until I found myself watching the music channel and they were playing Christmas videos. In the right hand corner was a small avatar of sorts displaying that there were only 20 days to Christmas. I cried in alarm as I realized I had approximately 20 days to knit 5 presents plus a small number of commissions from my colleagues. I stretched my fingers and then proceeded to marathon knit. I pretty much got everything done around the time necessary. Sleep and I were not friends but I was happy to accomplish my goals.

My xmas presents were as follows:

1. Dr G Memory Vest for the bf

2. Hot Water Bottle Sweater for the Bf's mom

3. Noro Striped Scarf for the Bf's Dad

4. Crofter's Cowl for the Bf's sister

5. Noro Striped Scarf for the Bf's brother-in-law

My Irish Christmas

2009-01-05T10:48:00.013-05:00

After a number of years spending Christmas by myself, this year I was off to the West Coast of Ireland (Galway) to spend xmas with the bf's family. I have yet to recover from my many days of gluttony and tomorrow I'm off to France to continue on my path of sloth and indulgence. But before heading off to beautiful La Rochelle, I knew that I must first divulge my Irish experiences.

Somewhere around 2am, I heard Santa's bells ring. I thought this required me to rush out and see the happenings but I was warned by the bf that I must instead go to sleep and wait till sun up to enjoy Santa's wares. Being a very good girl, I happily drifted off...

On Christmas morning, still in our PJ's, the bf AKA Barry and I went downstairs to open our presents. Santa had been very generous with the two of us. Barry was the only child home (the other 3 were spending Christmas in other cities). My presents had a definite Obama theme - Obama T-shirt, both his books, a pin and a mug. Then we moved onto silver - lots and lots of silver earrings. After a tiring 1-2 hours of present opening, Papa Driscoll prepared a pancake breakfast (American-style pancakes) while the younger Driscoll prepared bacon, eggs and sausage.

After generously breakfasting, the young Driscoll and I took the dog for a walk. Along the way, we fed the family donkeys and thanked them for their deeds for young Jesus.

We then went home and relaxed while the Christmas meal was prepared. Turkey and all the trimmings.

We partook of a delicious repast, only to find approximately 9 desserts in the offing.

We ate and ate and in the end collapsed.

Oh the joys of Christmas!

To Do Before I'm 30

2008-12-31T22:52:00.005-05:00

It's 3:47am on New Years Day and I'm currently in Drogheda, Ireland. I can't sleep. I've eaten so much that sleep is simply impossible. So I'm up alone, watching the fire and surfing the web. Sadly there's not much to surf right now and I'm not particularly in the mood for bad news. Anyhow, one of the guests at tonight's New Years festivities will be turning 30 next week and made herself a list of things to do before then. I turn 30 on Nov 17, 2009 and I thought it might make things a bit more interesting if I had goals along the way. I don't really care that much about turning 30, it doesn't stress me out by any means. 20-29 for me has been long. I don't feel at all as though it has flown by.

So I guess it would be good to have 30 things to do by the time I turn 30. I have no clue what those things might be and I wasn't privy to the list of the guest at the party. Should anyone in the cyberweb see this, it would be nice to have some suggestions :-).

Things off the top of my head:
1. Reach my goal weight
2. Run two half-marathons
3. Design a knit pattern
4. Read both of Obama's books
5. Travel to Estonia
6. Run at least six 10Ks
7. Adopt a pet
8. Make a bold career move
9. Write a short story
10. Start a pension fund
11. Develop a stock portfolio
12. Teach myself a new art from scratch
13. Raise at least $2,000 for charity
14. Start volunteering regularly
15. Knit myself 15 pairs of socks
16. Maintain my goal weight
17. Make peace with where I'm settled
18. Reconnect with my family
19. Pay off student loan
20. Take up yoga
21. Read the Chronicles of Narnia
22. Visit Dominica
23. Piece a quilt from knitted squares
24. Be OK with not achieving all 30 goals
25. Work on doing things for my satisfaction rather than to impress others
26. Learn to shuffle cards
27. Go to a casino
28. Take salsa or other dance lessons
29. Learn how to sew
30. Knit at least 30 hats for pre-mature babies
31. Finish Spanish bolero

So far this isn't written in stone. I really just wanted to jot down some thoughts. Maybe the list will grow and change as I think of things I would like to do.

To turning 30! Cheers!