Summer fun!

Well, I have finally returned to the blogosphere! Really, I have no good excuses for being away for so long. Perhaps it is that I find blogging a fun form of stress-relief when I'm very busy, so that I forget to do it when I'm unbusy. Anyhow, here's a brief list of what the past couple months have looked like for me:

• visited Ontario for 3 weeks, saw lots of my favourite people, as well as Star Trek on IMAX, opening weekend, with a fellow blogger and good friend (by the way, if you're not hungry, you should see her strawberry shortcake and cinnamon roll pictures this week and I guarantee you'll be starving!)
• Moved into my new house in East Vancouver, complete with fluffy kitty, shaggy dog, and gorgeous view
• Got a library card and read lots of books
• Explored some of the local trails and mountains (I'd say that 2:15 is not bad for a first attempt at the Grouse Grind)
  
• Discovered Wednesday Night Cheap Wings and Music Bingo at the pub near my house
• My guild in Guild Wars had their 3rd Anniversary, and good times were had by all
  
• Spent a lot of time job searching and ended up applying for a second Masters degree, this time at UBC
• Got accepted into the Mechanical Engineering program and started research
• Found a really fantastic local church and began the process of membership there

Yes, I realized that knitting didn't make it onto the condensed list of activities. However, neither did DDR, and I've been putting time into that too! Just not a lot of time. Indeed, knitting has been suffering in neglect lately, and my poor yarn stash is crying out from the closet to be used. I started a knitted t-shirt pattern from a book I borrowed at the library, but the gauge is frustrating me and I've already frogged 3 balls of yarn worth of it. I'm a bit apprehensive because I'm knitting it in cotton, and I've heard that cotton stretches a lot over time. We shall see.

Back when I was in Ontario, I did finish my version of Sartje's Booties. The Presto Change-o however is *cringe* still not finished. At the rate the twins are growing, they may be too big for it by the time I get it finished. But, that just means I'll have an excuse to knit other cute baby clothes in bigger sizes. The twins were absolutely adorable, by the way (although a ridiculous amount of work as well). How adorable? Well, here's a picture of them having a nap with their Mama, as she gets in some long-awaited knitting time.

And the booties:
I also finished the Zelda Toboggan, so here it is modelled by my brother before I mailed it off.



In anime news, I highly recommend you check out Guin Saga, which is airing right now. The premise of a guy with a leopard head might seem kinda weird, but honestly, there are a lot weirder anime premises than that. This series is shaping up to be quite epic, and the highlight for me is that the music is composed by Nobuo Uematsu, who composed most of the music for the Final Fantasy games. A few years back I had the opportunity to attend a concert by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra playing music from Final Fantasy, and it was magnificent.

And now, I shall leave you with some pictures of the cute fluffy creatures at my house.






Plus the 4th of July cupcakes I made with my brother and sister-in-law, and the view from my window :) Till next time, dear readers!

The end of a chapter

Well, it is with my heart full of joy with all the blessings of this past year, and yet full of sorrow that it is all coming to an end that I write this post. I will have a knitting update for you soon, but I thought perhaps it was about time I wrote about all the crazy goings-on of Real Life.

Tonight, I graduated (well, not technically - I still have to write my graduating essay - but close enough). Two years of studying, of homework, of writing reports and assignments, of reading textbooks and papers, of living half my life in the CanIL computer lab, all this has come to an end tonight. And it has been marvellous. My CanIL friends, you have no idea how much I have been blessed by your friendship and your smiling faces. Going to school has been full of so much joy from getting to know all of you. For those that are leaving, you will be dearly missed. The lab is full of the echoes of your laughter, and all the crazy adventures that we had there. Please do keep in touch! Know that wherever I am in the world, there will always be a place for you in my home if ever you come by.

Also, to my beautiful and amazing knit night girls, I shall miss you so very much. When I was brand new to Langley and didn't know anyone, you adopted me and made me feel like I was part of the group even though I had only just arrived. I know that Vancouver isn't THAT far away, and that we'll still be able to knit together, but I'll miss being a regular at knit night and getting to see all your projects and hear about your lives from week to week. No matter what other knitting groups I may join, you will always be my knit night family.

Now, when one chapter ends, that always means that a new chapter is beginning. I'm kickstarting this chapter with a visit to Ontario. VERY excited to go home and see some friends and family there. I have a little under 3 weeks and it's going to be packed full of visiting, knitting, and all manner of fun things.

I have also begun to apply for jobs. It is rather daunting, but Vancouver is a great place to be if you're in the market to find a job. Ideally, I'd love to work at a job where I could use my engineering background or some of my lab experience. I like a job to be interesting and challenging. I've been keeping an eye on job postings for now, but the real job hunt will begin in earnest when I return to Vancouver.

I know that this upcoming year will be wonderful and exciting and full of all manner of adventures that I haven't yet begun to imagine. So even as I say goodbye to my life as a student, there is so much more that God has in store for my life that I have yet to experience. This will be my first time living in a 'big city' and I'm glad to be able to experience living in Vancouver when the Olympics come here next year. I love global events that bring people together from all over the world. Also, my new housemate (technically my landlady, but that's such a cold and impersonal word) has wonderful plans for us to grow vegetables in the garden and keep some laying hens for eggs and create a little craft nook for us to all be creative! She is so sweet, and I'm really looking forward to all the fun and creative things that we're starting to plan. Sometimes I feel like this is one of the best places to be, with your whole future open to endless possibilities and full of so many opportunities.

And lastly to my blog readers, I'm glad that you're with me on this journey. A journey is always sweeter when you have people to share it with, and I'm honoured that you choose to come here every week to share mine. Your comments have been like little beams of sunshine on some of my most dreary assignment-filled days. You are such thoughtful and creative people, and I'm glad that many of you blog yourselves so that I can see what astonishingly wonderful things you have been crafting. It inspires me to keep at this blog thing myself and continue posting up pictures of all my knitting creations.

Yes, I know, it's been one of those sappy sentimental kind of evenings. If you just skimmed this post cause it was way long and didn't have any knitting pictures, then I shall leave you with a closing summary: I love you guys!

Disaster averted

It is very important to read the washing instructions on a ball of yarn. In fact, it is critically and crucially important, in order to save oneself from a terrible fate of weeping and agony over an item which represents hours of work. And while we're on the topic, who makes sock yarn that isn't superwash? That's like making an indoor-use only bulldozer, or a car that can't be used on rainy days - oh wait, that's a convertible - but my point is, handwashing a pair of socks is a silly silly thing. As such, it never even occured to me that I should check my yarn label prior to tossing my newly knitted socks in the wash.

When they came out of the washing machine, they looked like misshapen midget socks. A feeling of pure horror pierced this little knitter's soul. Still wet from the wash, I managed to fit them only my feet and allowed them to 'block' dry there, taking them off every hour or so to give them a good tug. Luckily, the size I'd made had been a tad on the large side, so the result is that my socks still fit! They just barely fit, and they're not as stretchy as before owing to the felting that took place, but I shall convince myself that this felting only made them softer, and more sturdy. Here they are, post disaster, looking quite innocent, as if they hadn't tried to felt into oblivion and cause me a heart attack.


Otherwise, this week has been quite busy (all those end-of-semester papers and upcoming exams were sooner than I thought) but really good. I found a couple of unbelievably cheap plane tickets, so I'm going to be spending three weeks home in Ontario. I CAN'T WAIT to see Jenn's little babies, and she says that she's been telling them about Auntie Sarah :D

Also, in a crazy impetuous whirlwind of a decision, I'm now moving to Vancouver! More details on that later, but suffice it to say that the resident cat in the house is a cute and fluffy Scottish Fold (looks like this - and was in this pose waiting for tummy rubs when I visited) *beams with happiness*

Between writing papers and studying for exams and lounging on my porch swing in the gloriously beautiful weather we've been having, I also made some progress on the Zelda Toboggan. Behold, the triforce is taking shape!

The Day of the Cardigan

It all started back in September. I decided I was going to knit a cardigan. My Very First Knitted Sweater. You may recall this cardigan, and my crazy decision to knit it in lace weight yarn. Well, it sat in pieces in my yarn nook for months and months, however this week there was a new and exciting development for this little UFO.

You see, my sister-in-law is in the theatre department, and happened to be in a play. Not only that, but my brother is the musical director of that same play, and they had managed to get me a complementary ticket to opening night! Now, the tradition at my school is that opening night of a performance is a Fancy Thing. People come looking all Lovely and Sophisticated in their most elegant clothes. I had decided that I would wear this cardigan to opening night, so the day before I brought it back from exile and dumped all the pieces on the floor.

Luckily for me, I had learned mattress stitch and good seaming practices not long before, so I felt confident enough to tackle this project, with the hope that I wouldn't inadvertantly ruin all the hours of work I'd already put into it. What I didn't count on was how horrifically long seaming takes, and how much of it I had ahead of me.

If there is a place of divine punishment for knitters, I am certain that it is full of endless amounts of mattress stitch. I tell you, I did nothing but work on the finishing of this cardigan all day long today. I had my DDR out so that I could play a song or two between seams to shake out my hands and get the crick out of my neck from staring so intently at the rows of tiny lace-weight v's. I almost gave up. There was just too much to do, and not enough time. I was on the point of choosing something else to wear, but decided to try on the half-finished cardigan, just to see what it would look like. This was my undoing, because it looked too cute, and I knew I HAD to wear it that evening. My roommate arrived home and made me delicious dinner, which I hurriedly ate between weaving in ends. The angel that she is, she ironed my skirt for me, while I set about making myself presentable. Time was tight. I went from the shower to the bus stop in 5 minutes. I'm still not sure how I managed that, but I did! I also wore my recently completed Blackrose Socks, since they matched my cardigan, and what knitter can pass up the chance to wear two coordinating FO's simultaneously!

The play was lovely, however I only knew two other people in the whole building, and since one was in the cast, I didn't even get a chance to talk to her after the play before having to rush off to catch the bus home. It was actually a rather anti-climactic end to my day of furiously knitting and seaming like a madwoman. Wearing your new knitwear isn't half as fun when there isn't anyone else there to share it with. So, dear blog readers, I shall just imagine that you were all at the play as well. "Oh this? Yes, I did knit it myself! Let me tell you, the first seam was the neatest, and they got progressively messier as the day went on."

Have a lovely night all! Catch you next time :)