Knitting and Horses

I have been busy with classes, western riding team, and some knitting. Classes have been going well with the occasional lack of sleep but that is life. Beowulf is interesting as I am slowly learning Old English.

My computer has decided that now is the time to start a slow slide to death. This makes doing some of my homework a little interesting as the speakers have decided that they don't always want to work.

The riding team is fun. I will post some pictures eventually.

The team, jumping off a wall.

Progress continues on the hat, I am on my second chart about half way through it. A friend let me borrow her hand cards so I am working on processing some of my raw alpaca fiber.

The hat

M was in a play called "Summer at Yasnaya Polyana" it was a student directed and created work. The play was about Tolstoy, his wife and a piano player. M was the piano player and she had a beard.

It was worth going to and seeing, I do not feel bad for skipping the other two plays as I had a free ticket due to being a student.
The weather has turned and now there is mud everywhere.
ON that note, the Doctor is coming and with him comes soufflé girl.

On a positive note Kilgharrah(my bike) now has lights, not just the reflectors. And yes that requires a dancing Ood.

Ending one month, beginning another

Ending October is a bittersweet experience. October had its good and bad points. For the good points: we had mountain day, the changing leaves were beautiful, I went to Rocky Horror picture show for the first time, knit, took lots of photos the heron that hangs out at my college.

Let's not go into the bad points as they are kind of sucky, suffice to say that parts of October were horrible.

In happier news, I have been making progress on my brother's hat, except I am now running out of yarn (pretty sure that I have more at home).

Yes, I have Star Wars sheets

It really doesn't look like a fish yet.

I went to a Halloween concert and there was someone dressed as Loki from the Avengers, so I got him to hold the hat! Not sure why all my friends weren't really impressed that I managed to get a boy to hold my knitting (I go to a women's college, not many men).

Other then that I have started on a hat that I will give as a xmas gift (Grandma) and I have started to make dishcloths.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show was fun and rather amusing. I did wear a mini-skirt however it was accompanied by leggings as it was a little cold to be wearing just a mini-skirt. M wore a red dress I have (I don't really wear it) and her really big boots, which are beyond awesome.

When Hurricane Sandy came through thankfully all we had was some wind and rain, the college kept power the entire time and we had a day off. Of course a portion of the day was used to text back and forth with my family to make sure everyone was ok. My only prep for the storm was setting up contact plans in case of no power, making coffee, and bringing my bike in. My bike lived the entirety of Sandy in my closet, I have also finally named my bike it is now officially known as Kilgharrah, the dragon from Merlin.

I have also on occasion been attempting to drink obscene amounts of teas, in some very interesting combos. Trying to remember to drink non-caffeinated things before bed can be a little hard when you have black teas that you like.

Next up, November, the month of Thanksgiving and the bus ride to home and the cat (dogs too). In November I will be trying to blog every day for the entire month.

Also if you haven't seen this you should watch it now!

Ravellenic Games are Done!

The Ravellenic Games are finished and I completed both of my planned projects with about 30 minutes to spare.

I managed to finish with in the time limit by spending most of the day holed up in my room working and watching tv on my laptop. However I did not watch any parts of the Olympics due to not having NBC. 

My two projects were a tea cosy and a doll thing.

The tea cosy was in spired by Sherlock and was felted, when it was felted much of the pattern definition was lost. Also, hand felting takes a very long time; I got to smell like clean laundry for a while though. The yarn I used was as close as I could get to Sherlock's purple shirt, the pattern was based off of John's jumper. Sadly I have not taken pictures of the cosy in use, yet.

before felting

after felting

closer to the cosy

The doll thing is a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who. It tops out at almost 10" when the pattern that I modified from makes an angel of about 4". Making the angel was the easy part as it was just scaling the head and body up (stuffing was another issue) the arms and the wings took quite a bit of time as they had to be scaled up and made differently, the wings I used a pattern for but I still had to change that one to get the wings large enough.

For Comparison

I think that I shall name the Queen of the Angels Bob. Warning this next gif may cause seizures or terror.

On a happier note Jazz turned 2!

Jazz enjoying the sun and warm deck, not today

Also my bike came back from the shop on Saturday, it is fine, the handlebar grips got replaced and now I have some sweet grips that are much more comfortable than the old ones.

Why weather is evil

Weather is evil, on the first 2 days of classes we had rain and then Friday and now today we have sunny warm weather. It is so much easier to do homework when the weather is crummy. Weather aside the homework objective for today has been met and now other business can be taken care of, like blogging and the other random things that need doing.

On the knitting front the gauntlets are continuing to progress and are for now my in class knitting which may change at a latter date to another project, also a Cthulu has been started on, he will be a kind of minty green in color.

In some very good news my bike is in full working trim after I had to bend the kickstand away from the wheel where it was rubbing and creating a horrible vibration. I now have my primary form of distance transportation back which will also help with getting to class faster, or meals.

On a random note the first official meeting of the naginata club is tonight and also I am having an enjoyable time playing with some figures and rubber ducks, the top of my printer was empty and looked lonely.