As of 9:23 this morning, my accounting class is complete. I managed a B for that one, and an A for Statistics. I'm just thanking my lucky stars that they are both over, behind me, and I can move on to bigger and better things.

Like the Ravelympics.

That's a picture of the progress I made in the first three days of the sweater challenge - day four only added two rows (the eyelet row and the row after), so I didn't take another picture. This yarn is the bomb diggity; when it first arrived, I was underwhelmed by the colors, but man, it sure showed me up in the knitting. It's a reddish-purple overall, but there are streaks of blue and some golden browns and such that are carried along with the rest of the yarn, and the garter stitch does wonders to show that off. Two more rows and I pull it all off onto waste yarn and start the sleeves.

What, you don't do the sleeves of your sweaters before you knit the body? I can't be the only person who does that! There's just something about getting the sleeves knit first that makes me feel like I've taken a huge chunk out of a project like this. Even when I'm in the middle of knitting hell, going down the body of the sweater, I can look up and see that once I'm done with that part, I'm done. I don't get as discouraged as I would if I had to then go back and knit the damn sleeves after I've slogged through an entire sweater body. I'm not great with big projects when it comes to knitting; I tend to stick with small things, like socks, I think it's because I have a very short attention span. Socks almost push me to my limit at times.

I'm hoping to get started on one sleeve tonight - if I can do a sleeve in two nights, I think that I might, maybe, possibly pull this off.

 I started this thing forever and a day ago; I began, decided to go up a needle size, ripped, and started again. The yarn was won in a contest; when I saw it, I knew that I had to do something gorgeous with it, something that put it somewhere that wasn't my feet. And the Woodland Shawl pattern fit the bill perfectly: easily memorized, portable, and perfect with the yarn. Speaking of the yarn, it is Fearless Fibers Superwash Merino Sock Yarn in Sublime, the perfect balance of gold, red, brown and greens. Fantastic for something called a "Woodland Shawl".

And that makes yet another finished object. If I keep this up, folks will start to get the wrong impression about me. 

I have FRACKIN' FINISHED SOMETHING: 

Self striping socks simply aren't my thing, normally, but thanks to the fantastic dye job of one indie dyer, I can make self striping socks that I actually like. These only took three weeks to complete, which is virtually a miracle dropped down from the heavens. I cannot explain why, but it takes me forever to finish anything (hence the worry over the upcoming Knitting Olympics, and thoughts about my level of sanity for signing up for an entire sweater (I AM STUPID)). I have enough yarn to keep me knitting for the next five years at the rate that I knit, but lucky for yarn stores, that sure as hell doesn't keep me from buying more. Regardless, these socks are THE BOMB, the color combinations are obnoxious, and I couldn't be more pleased that they are finished and ready for public view.

I'm pretty sure that I've gone insane. In about four weeks, the Knitting Olypmics starts up again, and I'm actually signed up to make a sweater.

A SWEATER. I can barely knit a pair of socks in two weeks. 

But it's not just any sweater; it's the grown up version of the February Baby Sweater (aptly named the February Lady Sweater). I have some experience with the pattern, as I made one for my daughter a while back, but still. TWO WEEKS? Thank God it's seamless, because otherwise I'm positive that this project would be a giant FAIL. I ordered some Dream In Color Classy in Gothic Rose, but I'm rethinking the color selection; Happy Forest is such a fantastic color, and I really love it to peices. Still, I can make this one in the red and then go back and make one in green, I guess. It's not like the world will fall apart because *gasp* I CHOSE A DIFFERENT COLOR. And even then, someone else has already done it in the Gothic Rose, and dude. DUDE. Totally stunning. 

Now all I have to do is finish up these two damn classes and I'll be set. Cast on actually starts before the semester is officially over, but I am LIVING ON THE EDGE. 

Life: 1 
Blog Updates: 0

Sarah's party went really, really well. We bought too much food, which is pretty normal for us (I seem to be in constant fear that we're going to run out of food for some reason, like everyone will swoop in and demolish the food and then be all, HEY, WE ARE LEAVING NOW, YOU LOSERS) which means that we ate hot dogs for two days afterwards. No matter. Sarah was gifted with mounds of clothes and plenty of toys, and everyone had a blast. The Wii Fit was put to good use in entertaining some of the older kids at the party.

The bakery did a fanastic job with the cake; I was very impressed that they were able to do all of that from the napkin that I handed them. She did the dantiest cake smash ever; I gave her a corner peice, and she picked the little pink edging parts off and stuck them in her mouth one at a time. She had a little icing on her mouth and her hands, and that's about it; it's like she knew we were giving her permission to be a total mess, and she decided to do the exact opposite. And she refused to eat any of the actual cake; she would only eat the icing.

The combination of school and work and kids and husband and...well, LIFE, is kicking my ass right now. Time is at a premium. I'm not sure what happened, but somehow I'm scheduled solid from the time I wake up until the time I collapse in bed at night. I just keep telling myself that I can get through these two classes; but there are days when I stop and think about how stupid I was to take them at the same time in a shortened semester. There is nothing I can do about it now but muddle through as best as I can, but next time I come up with some hairbrained scheme to "knock out those two classes", please pick up the nearest heavy object and wail on me thoroughly. With gusto.

I was a part of a fantastic stitch marker swap on Ravelry, and somehow I ended up with the greatest assortment of stitch markers ever. My girls did a FABULOUS job; each set was made by hand, and will be put to good use if I ever get out from under my life. 

There is one additional set that I can't show you here, because y'all, this is a FAMILY SHOW, and two of the stitch markers may be shaped like a part of the male anatomy that rhymes with SCHMENIS. And others are a little more gross than that. I had a picture of it up on Flickr, but I took it down for fear that it would violate their terms, as well it should. Dirty, dirty stitch markers that I'm not sure should ever see the light of day.

Next up: the BIG BIRTHDAY. Of which we do not speak. But I think I did just speak of it. Crap.

I tend to buy yarn in spurts. I'll go for months without purchasing or swapping anything, and then one day, I get that random itch (you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about), and three days later the house is buried under a mound of fiber. I also tend to obsess over the same colors or combination of colors, so one block of purchases will all be red, the next different shades of purple, so on and so forth. The latest color combinations have been pink and green together; I've gotten three skeins of sock yarn in the past two weeks with the same colors.

Not that I needed them, of course. The drawer that I stash all of my sock yarn in is getting a bit crowded, meaning that I better stop stashing and start KNITTING. 

This is the aforementioned Woodland Shawl in Fearless Fibers Superwash Sock, color Sublime; the skein looked brown at first glance, but the more I knit through it, the more I see the balance of gold and green, red and brown. I added two pattern repeats so that it was a bit wider than the original pattern. It has been the perfect travel project lately; I've memorized the pattern, the yarn is pretty sturdy and well behaved, and I can chunk the entire thing into my purse and not worry about how delicate it is. I'm hoping to finish it up soon and block it, but knowing me, it'll still be sitting around six months from now, probably only a few repeats short of being complete. I have knitting ADD lately, and I can't focus on one single thing at a time. Actually, that might be more of a symptom of my life, and not so much just limited to knitting.

We all have our Holy Grail of yarn. For some, it's the elusive Wollmeise; for others, it's the expensive cashmere sweater's worth of stash that they find at a great discount. My particular dream yarn is the Yarntini Self Striping Pure Breeze. It was only distributed through a sock club, and therefor was almost impossible to find.

UNTIL NOW.

I found it. I was stalking Ravelry one morning, saw a post for scads and scads of sock yarns, and I managed to finagle this one for myself (along with some Wollmeise and another skein of Yarntini). The problem: now that I have it, I don't want to knit it. I just want to stash it and know that I've got it there for that elusive day when I DO decide that I want to knit it up. I've got a couple of skeins in my stash that I do the same thing to - I buy them, stash them, and then just savor the fact that I've got them.

I've started a shawl with some yarn that I won through a Swap Partner Contest. Somehow, I managed to win the Most Offensive Swap Gift prize; I'm considering making myself a badge and putting it on the sidebar of my blog, just to assert my bragging rights. I won a skein of Fearless Fibers Superwash Merino Wool Sock Yarn in Sublime, which is a very pretty brown with short, subtle shots of gold and forest green through it. It fits perfectly with the Woodland Shawl that I started with it. Which reminds me, I need to add that to my Works In Progress list. Gah.