You win some, you lose some...

This newest semester at University has been less that enjoyable, to say the least. My French professor has a personal problem with me, and so I find myself in 3 of 4 classes that I can't stand. Also I have so much French homework that the rest of my grades are slipping. And I'm getting at most six hours of sleep a night.

Ravelry Links follow!!!

BUT through it all, my knitting preservers! In fact I've done more knitting in the last few months than I have hooking. However, all of my HPKCHC projects this month that I've turned in have been crocheted!

So for your viewing pleasure!!!:

My dad's Christmas gift, because we tease him about being Mr. Peanut!



















And I'm most pleased with this little guy! I took this pattern (non-Ravelry link), and modified it, which you can read following the picture!

Here's what it should look like:





















But here's what mine does!




















Modification Notes

I really wanted an oak sproutling to emerge from an acorn, like they do in real life, so I took some liberties with this pattern!

First I went outside for a live reference and pulled up a young acorn sprout that the squirrels felt belonged in the flower beds. They’re mistaken.

After I made the acorn and it’s cap, I began to think about how best to add the sproutling. I decided to have it pull out from the center of the cap. When you finish the cap, DON’T cut the yarn off or finish it up. Leave your last loop there, stick a paper clip in it so that it doesn’t rip out your work and leave it all attached to the skein, you will come back to it to use it!

Since I crocheted this project, I think my cap was longer than it would have been if I’d knit it, so I folded my cap under a little and stitched it around, to give it a nice rim! Then I moved on to the leaves.

Leaves: I used a size smaller hook on these. These were pretty much just free-styled, as I wanted them to look random, like they do in real life. I chained about 14 for the first leaf, and crocheted down one side for half of the blade. Since I started at the top of leaf I just sc-ed into the first look from my hook, then sc-ed and chained 2, then sc back into it, then sc-ed into the next. The stitch after that I sc-ed, then ch 2, sc into the same hole, ch 2 again, sc back into the same one, then sc a few down, then slipped over to the other side and worked my way back to the top of the blade replicating what I’d done on the first side.

There were a few gaps, so when I finished it off at the tip, I left a length of yarn, and sewed the blade together down the back along the rib, and this made them fold slightly, which was a perfect look!

The second leaf went a little different, but once you understand the basic idea it’s not that hard to variate it. Join the two, or more (doubt anything over 3 would fit tho), and make sure you have a stem of about ch 20 in green.

The Brown Part of the Stem:
This part starts at the cap, I just chained 10, then joined it to the bottom of the green stem, and chained into it, covering the green tail as I went. This goes for about 10 chains, so you actually end up with 20 visible in brown, and 10 visible in green, the opposite of what it was before assembling! Just weave the end of the brown. I put a needle on it and whipped around the stem some more to mostly cover the green, then I pulled my end down thru that, pulled it SUPER tight, cut it, and then when I eased it out it disappeared! Tada! Magic.

Assembly:
I stuffed the acorn bottom with some tangled up leftovers of the brown wool (this is a great use for yarn scraps, fyi), and sewed a few strings over it thru the rim of the acorn, to keep it held in.

Then I made sure the sprout was pulled to the outside of the cap, and sewed the cap onto my acorn body. Very easy.

How It Works
You stuff the leaves first into the hole in the cap, then the rest of the stem, except for the 10 sc part of the brown that is skinny/narrow. This is your dongle/loop. You can hang this on a Christmas tree if you wanted, and then surprise people with what it can do!

I wish I’d used a lighter brown on the acorn body, but I didn’t have another brown, so I used what I had, overall I’m VERY pleased with it!

There are more pictures if you follow the Ravelry link to my project!

I'm bringing blogging back!

So who wants to hear about my day? No one? Tough. So I went to a football game last night. Worst. Game. Ever. Except for the weather which was a huge shocker. My team had no defense, and one of the worst human beings ever was 2 rows up and to my right. I wish someone had pushed him, nobody would have ratted them out. The worst part is he was cheering for my team!

After the game we went to leave the parking garage and the city police decided they weren't going to dedicate as many officers to the game as they used to due to "budget issues" (even though the games bring in more money to the local economy than pretty much anything else in this town) so we couldn't leave the parking garage for over an HOUR. Which is ridiculous and has never happened before. We moved about 200 feet every 30 minutes.

Additionally the game was an 8pm Monday game, who does that? We finally got home around 2am, and I didn't go to bed until about 3am. I had to get up at 6.30a for work and classes, which sucks! I'm such a zombie today. Which brings me to my real news. Someone decided it would be funny I guess to release pepper spray or something similar in my first class about 5-10 minutes before it started. I'm in the back row of the lower section of that auditorium, and we all thought the people hacking in the front were being funny about H1N1, until about a minute later it hit us in the back of the room. My prof dismissed class, but the damage was already done. Between cheering at the game last night and the pepper spray my throat is shot. I'd like to know who released the spray, I'm okay with tazing them!

On a more fiber related news I forgot my knitting today. Guess that's probably a good thing, I'm currently working on a hat, and I'd hate for that to have gotten pepper spray particles in the yarn!

That's all for now but I hope to be back to updating my blog more regularly from now on, especially since the Harry Potter Knit/Crochet House Cup is back in full swing for the Fall semester! Don't know what I'm talking about? Step 1, get a Ravelry Account. If you already have one, proceed to Step 2. Step 2, search for the HPKCHC group and sign up as a Not Quite First Year! Inevitably people will drop out and they will sub in NQFY's! Step 3, have a blast!

SOAR RAVENCLAW!

If at first you don't succeed....

It's unheard of. Impossible. Beyond belief. I, am knitting. I KNOW RIGHT!? We all though it couldn't be done, I'd given up on the possibility. But a miracle has occurred! 

My biggest problem with knitting has always been that I didn't know what to do with all of the needles! So I went to Jo-Ann's, bought myself some #3, 7" DPNs, and gave it one more try. AND IT WORKED! So I've been practicing knitting like a fiend. I knit in the car between classes, in lecture, at home while watching TV, the doctors office, etc.

I'd low to show you visual proof of said knitting, however I can't find my camera atm. I cleaned up around here quite a bit too, but I still can't find it. I think it's hiding. But nonetheless, I've gotten fairly proficient at knitting. 

I can now cast on two different ways, knit, purl, knit increase two different ways, purl increase, knit decrease, cast off, but the one thing I can't do is purl decrease, so I'm going to look in another book I have when I find some more time and see if I can figure out a new way to do it. Oh, I can also rib, but I'm having issues doing the 1x1 rib, I've tried it at least 10 different times but it gets all messed up, I think I just need to pay it more attention. And I can't knit w/the DPN's for a sock, I think it's mostly because I don't know what I'm really doing, so I just need to spend more time with it. I figure I'll youtube some videos on it or something, see what I'm doing wrong. Maybe this weekend I'll have more time, but probably not. I have a "field trip" on Saturday, and a test and lab on Tuesday that I need to study for.

Happy Fibering!

I have a dream!

Sure it's a day late, but I still have a dream! I have a dream that I will actually post to this thing at least once a week! I'm currently admining at two different forums, and at University full-time right now, so I consider that ambitious! 

Plan on seeing some fiber on here soon, I've started up a lot of projects again, especially since yarn keeps me sane, and I'm going crazy!

Side note: newest word I've learned, Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. It's actually a rather depressing word, but if somebody ever got it in Boggle, I'd call them Boggle champion of the world! Mostly because I think it would be impossible, even if playing Big Boggle. That has been the bright star in my Linguistics class however, so now I leave you to return to the boredom.