... until my eyes bleed.

When I went to Leeds one time, to visit Lovely Boyfriend Type Thing, I ended up in a shop of knitting materials with his mother. I left with my purse considerably lighter, and I had impulse-bought a Very Large ball of jade yarn, and a pattern for a ladies sweater.

I attempted the sweater pattern shortly after, and then gave up. I'm used to doing scarves and hats - you see progress much quicker with those. Each row took too long to knit, and the shaping was a bit confusing for me. In hindsight, it was a little too much for me to take on, given my attention span at all. However, I have retained the pattern (somewhere!) and I will dig it out one day.

Many moons after the Pattern Fail, I found a much simpler unisex pattern for a sweater vest on the blagoblag. Much less shaping, no sleeves and very little assembly afterwards. It looked good. I begun it.

Five weeks later, the end of term arrived. I'd done the back of the sweater vest. By this point, I'd realised that I could make this for my little brother, so I asked my mom for some measurements, which she gave me after two weeks of waiting.

Term ended less than a week ago. In those few days, I have achieved what it took nearly four weeks to do. I am eight inches, a neckline and some stitching away from pure and utter victory against this 400g behemoth ball of yarn.

However, as with all worthy challenges, there are obstacles. I'm going away on Friday until Sunday; I'll be in London. I'm also away next Monday until Wednesday; I'll be with Lovely Boyfriend. Chrimble Day is next Friday. So, there's not a great deal of time left.

I've been knitting for a very long time. It feels like a bit of a marathon. I've got so far though, it seems a shame to give up, which is why I cannot give up, and must keep going. I must keep knitting...

... until my eyes bleed.

(Well, maybe not that far.)

So, where have you been?

I've been... around. Busy. Very busy.

Third year is supposed to be less busy, at least in terms of lectures. With 15 and 18 CATS per one-term module, instead of 12, hitting the same number of CATS as I did last year (give or take a couple) should mean I actually have more free time?

Well, not exactly. If your timetable includes four 9am starts, two days of 9am-6pm, and one until 5pm, it doesn't bring the biggest grin on your face. Luckily, my body's easily adjusted to "get to bed at 11, wake at 7:15", and the only side effect is that I wake up at about 8:30 at the weekends, instead of enjoying a lie in. Oh no, more productive weekends! :p

I've been really getting into doing Pride things. I've been to most of the Monday/Wednesday socials at the Duck, going to the Welcome Buffet, attending the OGM, and even putting in motions. We now have an Ethnic Minorities rep, and I've become That Person Who Actually Reads The Constitution, and it's always good to have one of those.

While the kitten's away, however, it seems that the mice have been playing - and not nicely, either. Thankfully, the threat of returning to a broken home has pretty much subsided, and the process of healing the rifts begins. M, D and Brother all went to Paris, and as far as I can tell, it went quite well.

At uni, there are freshers! Masses of them. Any time I see a cute one, I always get a twinge of "They look REALLY jailbaity", because most of them are just 18. I have some Maths kids, and I teach them how to converge sequences. I also have Pride kids, one of whom is on the exec already. My families tend to be quite exec-oriented; my last husband was Campaigns, my current hubby is Secretary, and out of my first brood came the current Bi Rep. Weird!

Generally, life is good. I've taken to being incredibly optimistic about pretty much everything. Even the stuff that's unjustifiably awful. The only thing that really gets me is the speed of the bloody internet. How fucking slow can it be? I've had dial-up that was faster than this!

I've decided to knit a sweater. The idea is that it will fit my skinny 14-year old brother (although, by the time it's actually done, he'd probably be my skinny 15-year old brother). It's a pretty shade of deep turquoise.

I still have the same boyfriend. We went on holiday to London. We ate dinner together on the bed, and watched The Truman Show. At some point, I gained a tractor beam (don't ask). I still think he's wonderful.

What more is to be said? I could say more, but I'll leave that to another post. Until next time, faithful reader.

Blag blag, blag sheep, have you any wool?

[disjointed_post]

Yes, sir; an entire bag full of it.

I was tidying my room, and decided to make my mother's pink sports bag my knitting bag. [She doesn't use it anyway - if she did, she'd have asked for it back 4 months ago.] So, along with a few stray needles, I have more than 10 balls of wool; some small, some large, etc etc.

I threw away at least 10 that I knew I would never use. Heartbreaking, but necessary.

In other news, the dinner was fine! Didn't talk to her. Instead, played with the mind of my ex. We talked after about how he had no chance with me, ever. Full stop. And, he was a bit put out, but I told him the truth, so I did good. :p

I went to the hairdressers today. Meh. :)

I went shopping! Bought lots! There was a 20% discount in Peacocks for students, which pleased me greatly. And, I'm going to get my guitar strings changed for the first time in 25 years; it was my mom's guitar, she just abandoned it at her parents' place when she got married.

I got attacked by a fold out laundry basket. I wish that was a lie.

I beat my brother at chess, but it took far too long because he stole my rook when I was too focused on my queen, and I had to wait for ages to promote a pawn and avoid his plucky little rook. It was going to be my victory halfway through, but I was just really slow in actually getting on with it. I'm going to have to work on that.

I'm ending this post here; due to several things, I just feel quite low right now.

[/disjointed_post]

Current knitting status [writing it out is scary!]

Unfinished Projects:

• Matching beanie hat and skinny scarf, for myself. Thick yarn, big needles. So far, the hat's done. The scarf is growing quickly, and I plan to have that done before the end of next week.
• Matching beanie hat and skinny scarf, for Mother. This will be time consuming: thin yarn, tiny needles, and colour changes. She wants red, gold and green, so it's tough to put a timeline on this one. Probably Christmas, given that uni means I have less knitting time.
• Scarf for my brother: Not particularly thin yarn, but with the colour changes, still means it'll take a while. I've been "working" on this scarf for years. It's more accurate to say it was on hiatus. Now I'm back into knitting, I can really start again on it.

Planned projects with supplies on hand:

• Red hat for Daddy. He's been using a hat I wore when I was four as his gardening hat for the past 15 years. I think it's time he got a new one, don't you?
• Black hat for the brother. He just wanted a black hat.

Planned projects, no supplies yet:

• Jayne Hats. This is a "sometime in the future, no idea when, let's see how it goes." Those earflaps look tricky!

And... of course, I have about twenty other balls of yarn of varying sizes, colours, styles.

*sigh*

Maybe I should find a Knitters Anonymous in my area. They can help me through this tough period in my life.


EDIT: The first item in the list is complete! I rejoiced. I rejoiced a lot more than a girl should after knitting. Now, onto the second...

The obligatory first post.

*sigh* This is the part about blagging that I dislike. The First Post. It's never any good. It's never very informative, or interesting, or fun to write, for that matter.

But, it has to be done. Otherwise I'll never get onto the things I want to write about.

So, I guess I should say a few words. Hell, I've already said some! Let me say a few more.

1. I knit. I will talk about knitting.
2. I like maths, and numbers. I'm doing a degree.
3. I'm not as much of a nerd as I appear, sadly.

I guess you'll find out the rest as I go.