Knithacking in Brighton

The boys spotted this in Brighton last weekend and took a photo for me. So many different types of love for it.

No knitting done this week. Project is going at full speed, and I can't even go to KnitSoc tonight. Le Sigh. I'm also feeling all sorts of hungover right now. Someone decided it was a brilliant idea to make me have the biggest shot of vodka I've ever had last night. I feel sick just thinking about it.

Reepicheep and all

I went to see "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" with the boys last week. They both loved Reepicheep, so I decided to give them each a little token. The pattern was really easy to follow, found here, and it took about an hour to make each mouse. I only have a photo of the first half-complete, bear with me while I try get more sorted out. And yes, he was made using stash yarn. Hurrah!

Half-done Reepicheep

I brought most of my crafty stuff home this weekend (I'm currently in my parents kitchen writing up lecture notes), so I only have knitting and unicycling to keep me going in London. I will have to learn to cope with it!

New Years Resolution Part 1

My New Years resolution this year was to only knit using my stash, and buy no more yarn until I have reduced the amount I already have. To do this, I rearranged my stash into a set of canvas pockets which I bought a few months ago. Observe:

Enough yarn to last a lifetime. Or a year, at least.

I've got so many plans for what I'm going to knit that I'm on the verge of casting on about twenty projects at a time. For now, just the gloves still going. To make it a million times more exciting, Simon gave me my Christmas present yesterday. I'm so excited that I might just go crazy.

SQUEEEEEAL

My exam was on Wednesday. It went OK. Afterwards, I went to Hamley's and bought some stuff for the tutoring job I started last week - a six year old who needs to learn piano and maths. I've got some plans which will hopefully go really well and her parents will love me. That's the idea, anyway.
 

I'm going back to basics. Who says engineers are good at maths?

I'm now on full speed ahead for my final project, and as this weekend is the only one I've really got this term to fully let my hair down (which, by the way, I got cut on Wednesday and nobody noticed), I'm keen to do something fun. We will see what happens.

Shorter hair and all.

More revision and a delivery

I've spent the last two days revising hard with Carlos and Saj, and the results can be seen below. Carlos bought coloured chalk, and it INSPIRED me. 

Apart from that, my beads for the scarves I'm planning to make arrived today. They were ordered off Ebay, and the last time we tried it, it took a month for the product (800 buttons!) to arrive.

Short, but sweet - back to revising! Exam is tomorrow, then I will be all set to relax and recover.

Glovepdate

My exam is in three days and I'm finding it INCREDIBLY hard to focus. I spent about six hours last night knitting, and have done quite well with this lace-weight yarn. My biggest problem has been tension - it is going to be misshapen at the arm-hole end, because it was a lot more loose when I started. I don't really know how to correct this - I think it's my method of casting on. I will check out some YouTube videos and try sort it out for the next one.

Right side of the first glove.

I also dropped a stitch which I then picked up over about five centimetres of knitting, messing up the rib pattern and just generally making a mess. I don't think anybody except me will be able to see it, but I'm a perfectionist, what can I say?

Close-up of the section that I messed up really badly.

The gloves have a companion scarf from "Beautiful Knits for Heads, Hands and Toes", and I ordered the beads required last night. I actually have the yarn in green and red as well, so I ordered beads in those colours as well, in case I decide to make that scarf. I'm not sure I will, but you can never have enough beads, right? They should arrive on Wednesday (I've ordered SIX HUNDRED! Thank God for Ebay and cheap resources), just in time for the end of this batch of revision. Yay!

Tom's mum gave me a new Edward Monkton coaster for Christmas (The POWER of CAKE) and it insinuates that I'm mad. I'm not mad. Really.

My (rather small) collection of Edward Monkton coasters

I can't figure out this Blogger template. I hate the one I have at the moment, but I don't think anybody is reading this, so it doesn't matter so much. I will work it out at some point post-exam. John is coming round on Tuesday to make dinner pre-exam, and we are going out for drinky-poos on Wednesday. I also start a piano-and-maths tutoring thing tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.

New books!

John recommended that I reward myself for the amount of revision that I've done, so I made a trip to Foyles this afternoon. I bought this, so now I just need patterns and I'm all set!

On my way back from South Ken after picking up a prescription (I have bilharzia, and have found out after five years of ignorance. Lovely.) I popped into Book Thrift on my way back and they had a massive sale on! So I got these three books for £5 total. They're worth £20 each. Score!