In the month since I last posted I have in no particular order: helped organize a small naginata seminar, driven to and from Washington DC for a naginata tournament, drove in Washington DC, watched Doctor Who, finished my mystery knitting which was my grandmother's birthday present, visited New Jersey, mostly finished Mom's xmas present, started on a present for a friend, decided on some other relatives xmas presents, spent more time on computers then is probably safe, taken lots of random pictures, grafted stitches mostly successfully, debated if I have enough time to attempt to write a book.
Naginata and related things first. On the 22 of September I helped to lead an one day seminar/extended practice for my naginata club with a visiting sensei from our regional federation. It was fun and many people learned lots of new things. The bigger thing that happen was in October. On the weekend of October the 7th 9 members of the naginata club drove to DC to take part in a seminar, taikai, and shinsa. It took us two cars, three drivers, and ten hours to drive down. I ended up driving the entire way down in a rental vehicle due to a SNAFU situation with the transport plans. After we arrived in the early evening (yes we went on the Jersey Turnpike, no we didn't die) we went and got some food before we got to the house that we were staying at. The old captain of the team had us stay in her house and her parents were wonderful hosts. The seminar was fun and I learned lots, as did the rest of the club who went down, I hope. The taikai went well, I got third in both of the events I competed in, most of the rest of the club did really well in their events and enjoyed themselves immensely. The shinsa went pretty well, we had a range of ranks earned from 4kyu up to 2kyu. The same day as the shinsa there was also a section on bogu training, it was fun and informative.
The HMS Toaster
The participants
After the events we went into Washington DC to go to the Smithsonian and the monuments. I went to both the Air and Space museum and the Natural history museum. Then we went to the monuments in the dark, we went to the war memorials, they were indescribable.
On the knitting front I have gotten a fair amount done. I made a mini-Cthulhu for a gift, someone else made him a mini-naginata. I have almost finished Mom's xmas present, I just need to weave in the ends and decide if I want to put fringe on it. Also finished was my mystery knitting, aka Grandma's birthday present. It was a lace shawl in a forest green, I am pretty happy with how it turned out, even if I did spend a couple of days acting like I was crazy. Currently I am working on a gift for a friend who likes the Legend of Zelda games.
Cthulhu will get you in your sleep
Grandma and her shawl
My hat model is a lion
Apparently when I need to finish knitting something in a rush I turn to excessive watching of the Lord of the Rings movies. It's rather fun, if a little strange that I was knitting lace while watching them.
The Link hat that I made involved grafting stitches together in the band, I managed to graft them mostly correctly.
I have started to work again on the pair of gloves that I started over a year ago. Not sure why I stopped working on them at all. Wait I know why, I hate doing the fingers.
I HATE FINGERS
When I visited New Jersey it was the weekend after the naginata event, I spent most of it rushing to finish Grandma's birthday present. I did spend some time with my relatives too, just not a lot of sleep.
In Doctor Who news, I watched the last Pond episode, there was crying and funny noises involved. Baby weeping angels are terrifying, absolutely terrifying.
Also for more random things I have been taking lots of pictures of things around campus.
Me and my roommate M finally got around to decorating our common door as a TARDIS. We used some wrapping paper to cover the door, blue of course, and printed everything else out.
We are using the windows as our locators. There was a fair amount of photoshop going onto edit some of the pictures into what we needed, more specifically the lantern on top. Also a good amount of masking tape was used to secure the pieces.
To increase the geeky-ness of the room I made a decimal point and taped it to our room number.
My roommate is officially known as M from now on, that is M as in James Bond's boss.
In knitting news, I have started to attend my college knitting groups, there are two, a community one and a student org one. The christmas present I am making for Mom is going well. It has been dubbed my class knitting as it is an easy pattern to work, and is the only project that I have going right now that that can be said of. Sadly I have no new pictures of knitted items, but I will fix that soonish.
Lately there has been a heron hanging out in the lower lake and surroundings. It is a nice addition to the Canadian Geese and Jorge. Jorge is the domestic goose who hangs out at the college and stalks the Prospect dining hall for food.
I have been watching the new season of Doctor Who as it is being shown, my favorite character of the season so far is Oswin Oswald.
OK, I'm done with confusing people, still like Oswin, she was cool.
I got back to college last Sunday, after much packing, and moved in with my roommate. We actually live in a suite, have separate rooms with one door to the hallway. I am in the same dorm as last year, on the north side and the third floor.
My Dorm, from the hill.
Once I got everything in the room, I started to unpack, that was the easy part. The hard part was the decorating. It is mostly done, just the entry way needs to be decorated. Above my bed I strung some multi-colored christmas lights, only half the string works, and it looks so cool.
My bed with lights and posters
Other neat things found on campus include: lots of turtles, two types even, and pretty plants, also a paper mache and duct tape Kermit head.
Plants by Prospect
Turtles on a log
Baby Snapper
Kermit
In semi good news, my orchid is growing two mini orchid of course this is because the main plant is a little dead; but we're all good. My jade plant seems to be very happy on his window sill. My roommate gave me a mostly dead rose plant that I managed to finish off.
The mystery knitting is going along quite well, I have stated on the next phase of it. I crocheted myself a new soap bag after my old one was retired, it is a fairly simple pattern that takes no time to make.
Other than that I have been going to class, drinking large amounts of peppermint tea, doing homework, watching Doctor Who, and practicing getting on my bed without a running jump. I lofted my bed up high enough for my fridge to fit under the bed. That was so that I had enough room in the room as one of my closets is taken up by a wardrobe that I named Narnia.
Lately at my house we have been having issues with our internet. If you can connect at all it is slow and spotty at best and there are periods where any attempt to connect fails. At one point we also had some issues with the phone. Not being able to get on the internet makes getting in contact with the rest of the world rather difficult, also watching Doctor Who is rather difficult when the internet is down and you don't get BBC on the tv. Course we haven't gotten any worth while channels on the tv in a while, 2 channels only. Also my email has issues.
Today when I went into town to pick up my paycheck the power for the area went out. The store where my dad works was roasting coffee at the time and the coffee roaster filled the store with smoke when the fans in it stopped working. Burnt coffee is a rather interesting smell. Also the traffic lights went out, that made crossing the intersection an exercise in nerves, it was rather fun. I think I might need to replace my sanity, it seems to have stopped working properly.
After power was restored I went and bought some tea, and a bamboo whisk.
I have been working slowly on my project that shall not be shared or named. It is going pretty well. Of course it is the only knitting that is getting done.
I apparently have a talent for making the internet not work. Seriously it is getting ridiculous how not working the internet is. I give up, will get a better post up later when the internet works.
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.
