The Moose is on the Loose

So, just under one month of straight knitting - knitting when home from work, before work, before bed, weekends .. basically until my fingers have all but given up on life, will get you this:

Man, it was fun to make. But by the time I got to the last sleeve, I was ready to call it quits. The first reaction I got from the first few people I showed it to went along the lines of "Wow, that's nice.. but can you make it a little longer?" Well, no I can't! I've casted off already! And, this was a 90's style pattern so I'm pretty sure (not that sure ..) that this was the style back then.

 

Like the problem with my slippers, when it came down to finding buttons, I just had to settle for ones that looked similar enough. Who knew there was fifty shades of brown that existed?

I made this cardigan out of that giant worsted weight red heart package my aunt bought me, if anyone recalls. I thought I'd have used up at least three of the four balls. But, nope. I didn't even use up one. There is a lot of yardage in one of those balls.

All the material needed to make this thing!

I feel like I still need to work on my colorwork. I'm actually not sure if I'm doing it right! In the picture below, you can see how some of the black is peeking out where it should be all white.



 

Regardless, I love the way it turned out.What drew me to this pattern is sort of cheesy. Something romantic about two moose coming out to eat on a chilly winter evening.

 

[Edit: I forgot to credit the pattern designer! Here it is!] 

Cherry Blossoms just make everything look beautiful, doesn't it?

The above picture was part of the beautiful scenery during my walk today. It was actually a gloomy cloudy morning, but as I got off work, the clouds parted, and in shone the bright blue sky! This sort of a lovely natural spectacle is what I imagine inspires people to write romantic poetry. Sadly, I am not gifted with literary talent, but at least I'm still able to appreciate these wonderful cherry blossoms!

When you add in my adorable pup, Ellie, then it just completes the picture! I can't stop looking at how pretty she is! It was one of those days where I actually felt a little guilty knitting for most of the day instead of spending time outdoors. But, I'm trying to rush the last portion of my project as I feel I can finish it up this weekend!! So stay tuned!

Solo Adventure

It's almost been a month since my boyfriend flew back to China, so I guess I just have to wait for four more months until he comes back! Meanwhile, I find myself watching a lot of my home videos of us two. It's nice to reminisce old adventures we went on, and I'm actually pretty jealous he's out on a solo adventure on his own (although he'd state the contrary; always saying he misses home).

Anyway, I apologize for whining like a lovesick schoolgirl! It's one of those nights where I wish my life was more exciting! I just wish something would happen! And I know, blah blah blah .. I should go out to find adventure and not expect it to find me, but wouldn't it be more fun if it came up from behind and surprised you (thanks to a dirty minded co-worker, I really want to insert a 'that's what she said joke here)?

Anyway, I want to put in something knitted related in this post, so here's a sneak peek of a sleeve of what's to come:

That's all I'll provide you with for now. I'll give full details when the project is completely finished, and my intuition says I should be done in at most 2 weeks!

A day in my life

I had one of those 3 hour gaps between clients at work, so I set up a little private station to pass the time.

You can't tell but I'm sitting on a bean bag while knitting, so I was as comfortable as I can at work. And yes, that's Host Club on Netflix (don't judge)! 

After a stressful day at work, I decided to go for a walk and give myself some room to think. That's when I encountered this beautiful scene!

Two little boys came up to talk to me. They called me 'lady' (I'm at that age already?) and were telling me how I should jump in the water with them, told me to watch them as they climbed on rocks and asked if I enjoyed the holidays. Did I get a lot of presents? They sure did. Bye they said, they hope to see me again! 

It was really refreshing, and I was frankly a bit flattered that I seem approachable and worthy enough for kids to take an interest in me. Now I'm back home, prepared to knit til sleep time, and I just feel like it's one of those days where I have a lot of thoughts in my head. 

I'd make bad tutorials

So a friend at work wanted to learn knitting, so of course (me being a tad arrogant I guess) jumped at the chance at teaching somebody. I had an extra US size 8 straight needles anyway that I could give her and a bunch of scrap yarn she could help take off my hands that she could practice with, so with that, I thought I was prepared.

... Well, it's a wonder any of my clients learn anything from me. I'm a terrible teacher. I forgot how difficult it was when I was first starting out. I just thought that if she saw me do it, then she'd just be able to magically copy me. Just like that. Well, from the tone this post is going, that clearly did not happen. My explanations were really choppy and unclear and my demonstrations were so quick she struggled to copy me. 

I decided to teach her the long tail cast-on rather than the standard cast-on because the basic one doesn't really have good elasticity, and I myself, haven't used the basic one since I learned long tail cast-on. I also taught her knit stitch and tried to give a crash course in casting off (although we didn't have enough time for her to really get it). 

At the end of the 'lesson' however, she told me she wanted to do it again next week too! And also she said she had a lot of fun! I guess that must mean I'm doing something right! Hope she's ready to learn purling next week!!

Weekends are the best

I just love doing nothing, sitting at home, with a sweater and sweat pants on, knitting and watching Netflix. What a great escape from reality! I can pretend that I don't have work the next day or that there aren't any stressors in my life. I can just totally be submersed into the world of what I'm watching (just finished Sword Art Online and now half way through Deadman Wonderland). The only guilt I feel is staying in on such a sunny day .. But hey, I can always take the dogs out for a walk later!

Not that I have any big things going on right now for me to feel any great pressure, but I'm in the midst of deciding if I really want to attempt at leaving my comfort zone and making a (hopefully better) change. I'm a naturally anxious person, so I keep imagining the worst. Normally, it's tough to get me to feel 'ready' to leave anything I've settled down on, (not that I feel ready now) but somebody might do it with me, and isn't it easy when there's somebody who's there supporting you? 

Anyway, whatever happens, or whatever I decide on, I just want to relish the moment right now. Not thinking of anything besides some plot line and my knitting!

I leveled up!

After I made my Game of Thrones blanket, I feel like I was always trying to find ways to get rid of the scrap yarn leftover from that project. Thankfully, I found this project pattern that seemed like a good way to say goodbye to these guys:

I chose crochet on purpose because I want to improve on that skill, and what better way to do it than to practice on yarn I don't really care about?

 

Well, first I learned the magic circle (pictured below):

And then I got treble crochet and half treble crochet drilled into my brain, and learned how to attach multiple colors, as my project soon became this:

To this (Left: back, right: front):

To finally, this:

 

I'm aware of how it looks not like a flower and sort of ragged looking compared to the Ravelry projects of this cushion. I'm also quite aware of how the colors don't really match, but I just used what I have! However it turned out, I'm still proud of it because I feel like my crochet level went up! Not to mention it was my first time reading a crochet written pattern (that wasn't only single chain this square a billion times). Hopefully it will catch up with my knitting skills!

This project is actually very fast - people were right, crocheting is much quicker than knitting (once you get the hang of it anyway). So why did it take me such a long time to finish? Well, notice how its a circular cushion? Yeah. Apparently those are impossible to find anymore. I went to every store that would potentially sell cushions, but they all just had only square cushions (squares are totally overrated). However, this realization only came about after I've already finished half the project, and I didn't want to frog it so I desperately looked even harder for a circle. Luckily for me, my mom, the expert seamstress, made a cushion for me after days of begging her to help me.

Maybe I'm an eensie bit biased, but the cushion was worth the wait. It was better than any cushion I could've found in the store since it was exactly how I wanted it to be- plain white, round, and stuffed to the exact amount that it is (well, and also that it's free)!

The last thing I learned, was seaming up two crochet pieces together with a simple slip stitch.

In conclusion, my mission was accomplished. I'm better at crochet than I was before, and I got rid of a ton of scrap yarn. And now I even have a cute cushion!

Another type of art

I've been trying to keep busy lately, so when I came across this, I knew it had to be my new project! In case you're wondering why I haven't been keeping myself busy with yarn work .. Well that's another story for another blog post. But I have a perfectly good reason!!

Anyway, I went out to buy materials to make the DIY paw print art. I decided to keep it simple and just use black paint.

There's my doggies with Yuna, the doodle looking particularly concerned about what's going on. 

We set up newspapers on the ground, and with treats in hand, we were ready to begin! None of the dogs seemed to like having their paws painted, but Yuna was more tolerant than Ellie. I really wanted to do this though, because I know dogs don't live very long and this will be something that will last forever. 

That's the finished product! I put my hand print on too. I know it all doesn't fit together very well since my hand was a bit too big but I think that way really captures our characters and interactions with one another- unstructured messy fun! 

Warning: Cheesy post ahead! My Golden 10 Year anniversary!

So yesterday was my 10th anniversary with my boyfriend! I'm so glad that I got to spend it with him before he jets off to China, and I won't be able to see him for 5 months, which is the longest we would ever be away from one another since we started dating in gr. 8. I think before that, the longest was only one month which felt long enough already.

Anyway, to celebrate, I dug up lots of old pictures of every year we were together.

2005: Back when taking photos in photo booths were all the rage

2006: Trip to Disneyland with my family (Oh my God, his hair.)

2007: That time in Playland where we won all those toys

2008: When we tried to look fancy for my birthday dinner!

2009: The prom! Our last year of high school

2010: Celebrating the Vancouver Olympics

2011: Tandem biking around Stanley Park

2012: Handmade Mario cake for his birthday!

2013: We started getting into pumpkin carving on Halloween

2014: The year we brought Ellie home [edit: found a better family photo of us three :) ]

That brings us to this year!

 2015: Marks 10 years! We dressed up all nicely to celebrate! 

I love making cards! I was pretty proud of how cute it turned out and so I had to share. Although I drew it myself, I copied images from the internet.

We walked around Granville Island where there are so many arts and craft stores. Sadly, no yarn stores (they even had a store dedicated to people who beaded as a hobby, which I would've thought was less popular than knitting/crocheting).

We topped off the night with dinner at Kobe where they offered Teppenyaki! The chef really put on a good show. The picture in the middle is a cocktail drink we ordered just because they allowed you to take the cup home, which I thought would make a great memento.

Anyways, if 10 years passed by just like that, then I'm sure 5 months will be gone in a flash (trying to make myself feel better haha). I am excited about having more time to myself to knit though! Happy knitting guys!



Love is in the Air

Happy Valentine's Day! And it's all about love. Let me spell it out for you!

Yeah, I totally saw another knit blogger spell things out of yarn during Christmas (like 'joy', 'snow' etc.) so I was inspired to try to write words out of yarn too! I thought it would be tough to get the yarn to stay in the right place, but it all just stayed put :)

Despite people's complaints about Valentine's Day being heavily commercialized, I love Valentine's Day! Especially the Valentine's Day cards! 

Those are cards I've collected from the kids at work! Isn't it sweet?

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my boyfriend today though. He usually makes me plan things, but I can't think of a thing! Maybe dinner, or spend the day with our dog? Whatever we end up doing, I hope it'll be fun! We're not really a romantic kind of couple, but we're usually pretty good at making special days special (I mean that in a good way.. usually!)!