Gifts and Such

So I dropped off Alethia’s gloves the other day, and she gave me malabrigo! It wasn’t a total surprise, since I had told her I wanted some, but it was certainly welcome.

*drools*

Our nanny, Renee (REE-nee (short for Lorene), not ri-NAY :P ), has worked for my parents since I was 6 months old, so at this point, she’s more of an adopted grandmother. Every year since I remember, we’ve slept over at her house sometime before Christmas and trimmed her tree. (Yes, even though we’re Jewish.) We went this past Sunday, and, Renee being Renee, she gave us gifts. I got to pick out a watch I wanted (mine’s falling apart), so this one’s on its way:

She also gave me some very cozy socks and a pair of pants.

Apologies for the horrible photo, my camera was dying.

Then, we went skiing on Christmas. Both my siblings forgot sweatshirts (how do you forget a sweatshirt when skiing?!), so we made a pitstop in the shop and my mom got them each one. While they were picking them out, I was trying on a very cozy one just for fun, but then she bought it for me! She said I shouldn’t be penalized for remembering my sweatshirt, but I think she just liked it and wants to steal it sometimes.

It’s very cozy. Quite.

On that same trip, I fell rather hard on my snowboard onto a locked wrist. OUCH. It still hurts today and my mom says I could’ve broken one of the teensy bones in my wrist, even though I can still move it and it only hurts a little when I’m not moving it, so I might get it X-rayed in a few days if it doesn’t stop hurting. At swim practice today, when I tried to explain to the assistant coach about it to imply that I might not be at 100% during practice, she was really obnoxious. She said, “I have no pity for you. You were doing another sport during swim season.” Come ON! If she thinks I’ll give up skiing/boarding for swimming, she’s got another think coming. And she and the head coach will probably both flip out, but if ski club conflicts with any swim meets, ski club comes first. I mean, a) skiing’s WAY more fun, and b) My parents already paid for it! Thanks to reason (b), my parents are on my side and will support me if coach gets really pissy. But gragh. I almost hope something is broken just so I can wave it in the assistant coach’s face!

And, after ripping out ears entirely too many times, the mutant 3-eared bunny hat is finally almost done! I’m definitely writing a pattern, but I’m pretty bad at explaining stuff, so I think I’ll include some videos of how the heck I’m doing it…

Ta ta for now!

Many things

I’ll start with the icky news, then if you read it, you get a reward with happy stuff.

To explain the icky news, I need to impart some good news, though. We finally went skiing today! Sort of. For the morning, I snowboarded, which I think I did a total of once last season, so I was pretty rusty. By lunchtime, I was finally getting the hang of turning again. Sorry, no pictures – you think I trust myself not to fall on a camera?! But on the lift up for our last run before lunch, I was fixing my helmet and had taken off my glasses. As I put them back on, one of the lenses popped out and fell down to the ground. We (my mom and I) spent about 15 minutes searching for it – I do have Transitions lenses, so it was dark-colored. But we didn’t find it. I wasn’t really comfortable snowboarding without good vision, but I’m a pretty competent skier, so I figured I would just ski for the afternoon – I had brought my skis as well.
However, when I went to put my skis on, it turned out that the people at the shop had adjusted the bindings entirely incorrectly. They were literally about 3 inches too far apart! And the irritating thing was, I didn’t even get new boots, so they shouldn’t have done anything at all to the bindings! I just left my skis for a tuneup.
Annoyed but not to be defeated after working so hard to convince Mother Dearest to take us, I put on my skiboards and had fun for the rest of the day. On the way home (1.2 hours or so), I could fortunately work on My So Called Scarf, which I don’t need to see too well for.
When I got home, I put on my old pair of glasses. Good news: I can see! Bad news: Old prescription now makes me dizzzzzy. Not so fun.

Anyway, done with my rant. On to cool stuff! With pictures! Which you’re not allowed to comment upon if you don’t prove that you read the above woes and misery. :P

My So Called Scarf goes.

As does the bunny hat! I really like how this is coming out, so I think I’ll write up the pattern. By the way, mine’s out of Blizzard and pink malabrigo (held double to match the gauge of the Blizzard). Here’s an incipient ear (one out of three…). It’s double-sided, so the back of this is the brownyblackgrey color, as you can kinda see in the next picture.

It’s a very soft hat, and I’ve told my sister that she must wear it every day. She looked a little worried…

Fun in the SNOW!

We’re right in the middle of the blizzard that’s still blowing through! So Alethia came over and we sledded yesterday night and this morning. I have a veritable potpourri of pictures thereof, to be followed by some knitting-related schpiel…

Here we see my beloved brother trying to fit into a toddler sled and going over the skateboard jump we set up on the hill next door. This, as you can probably tell, was last night.

And here I am going over the jump as well, with a very strange look on my face. Now for some from today, with actual light…

And Alethia, seeming to defy the laws of physics…

A surreal, but pretty neat picture of me.
And now come some cool pictures of my sister.

She always asks why I randomly take pictures of her…isn’t it obvious? She’s so photogenic! And by the way, she’s wearing a beret I made a few years ago out of a kit from Morehouse Merino.

My multiple WIPs plod along. I’ve nearly finished the heel on the socks made out of that green yarn from Chanukkah. My So Called Scarf is more or less on hold. I’m working on Alethia’s Almost Fingerless Gloves (a birthday present, which was not done by her birthday…), and then I’ll do Addie’s (the sister) mutant bunny hat – a Chanukkah present, which wasn’t done by Chanukah either. It’ll be my first time using malabrigo, and I’m SO excited. I’m pretty much in love with that yarn. It also includes Blizzard, which, even though it contains acrylic, I really like. I promise some pictures of all this knitty goodness…at some point. Ta ta for now!

Life, Loot, Love

Life goes fairly well. Our school gets 2+ weeks of holiday break, which means 4.5 more days! Half day this coming Friday, then FREEDOM! Boy, am I ready. Except there’ll still be 2.5 hours of swim practice almost every day through break. Except now there’s a purpose. Our past two meets, the girls team won 48-46, and BOY was it intense. They both came down to the last relay, in which I anchored the B-team. The first one, the whole meet came down to the B-team relay, which basically meant down to me. No stress, right? I was so scared of screwing it up for everyone, I beat my time trial time for 100yd freestyle by 10 seconds and nearly puked afterwards. Which was good, I guess. The time, not the puking.

Anyway, getting some sweet loot for Chanukkah, including:
-$25 iTunes card, with which I bought Flood by They Might be Giants, Surprise by Paul Simon, and a few other songs.
-A knit commission from my mom – I said I wanted a new pair of mittens from Anna Zilboorg’s Magnificent Mittens, with angora linings. She made me a pair of these several years ago, but I outgrew them.
-A Ripstik (above)- which is like a skateboard, but more dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. I’ve been ogling them for a few years now:
Nifty, no?
-An amazing bag that my mom and grandma collaborated on to make for me. My mom picked out the fabric and cut it, and my grandma did most of the sewing. It also included a new set of doodads (complete with Altoids tin to hold them) and some sock yarn! See more pictures below.

I WON!

That is right, folks. I finished NaNoWriMo! On the last day. Check out my little icon to the left (actually on a different page now since moving to WordPress). :D

In addition, my mystery project (which katherine correctly guessed was wristwarmer-thingies and so is no longer a mystery) is coming aong quite well, despite my having ripped it out at least partway about five times by now. I am nearly done with the first one, and once I have figured out how that goes, the second one will be much faster. When I finish, the pattern shall be posted.

You also may have noticed that my grammar in this post has been somewhat formal-sounding. This is because, for some odd reason, I am unable to use contractions at the moment, due to the fact that the apostrophe key on my keyboard keeps taking me to quick search instead of creating an apostrophe in the window. The same is true for the slash. It is like Firefox does not want to acknowledge that I am typing or something…I do not know. It is most irritating.

EDIT: Apostrophe problem seems to have fixed itself. Now I’ll be able to use words like ‘I’ll’ again! :P