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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Bad Penny (badly photographed...sorry)

Bad Penny in my bathroom


Voila!
As promised here is a picture of what I've been working on all summer. Yeah, it took me all summer long to knit this. And yeah, the pics kinda suck because I took them on my phone, at night, in my bathroom. I really was going to try to take some really nice pics. I was going to stage it all up and maybe figure out how to work the timer on the "good" camera. Well... I was gonna do a lot of things. But I'm finally starting to realize that if I wait for the perfect opportunity, or if I wait until I have time to do it perfectly, it just doesn't happen at all. So this is what you get.

Bad Penny

Above is a close-up of the stitch definition. This is my first top-down raglan sweater and I'm particularly stoked with the way these things knit up. I love the little pattern created by working in the round and increasing twice in one place in the same place every other row and how that eventually makes the front, back, and two arms for a sweater. That is just the freakin' coolest thing ever.

Front Bad Penny

Here's a pic of me, braless, no make-up, in sweatpants. (But we're just going with it. Remember the important thing here is that I actually finally posted the pics. We're not judging. Right? And to be fair, this is how I look probably about 80% of the time anyway.)
I have no idea why I decided to make the sweater this short. The pattern itself is a bit short, but not quite this short I don't think. I just really have no explanation for this. I'm not a belly-showing kind of girl. Never have been, even before I had a child. Even when it was the "cool" thing to do and "everyone" did it. Even when I took dance classes every day and had pretty nice abs. I just don't understand. Anyway, when I wear it in public I wear a camisole underneath.

Side View Bad Penny

Here's the side view. Still with no bra and sweatpants. (This is character building. That's what this is.)

The pattern is Bad Penny from knitty.com.
I didn't do the cute little lace design thingy in the bottom ribbed section. I just didn't have the patience for knitting from a chart, but I may someday make this sweater again and I will make it longer and I might even do the lacey thing because I do think it's cute.

I used two different yarns because I ran out of one and it's discontinued. So the ribbing and a small portion of the bottom of the sweater are totally different colors, but I'm pretty pleased to see how well they worked together. (The one that's not discontinued is Katia Degrade.) Both were dk weight cotton so I went down to a size 5US needle for the body and a size 3US for the ribbing and knitted the pattern in the largest size to make up for the difference in gauge.

The Katia is a really nice yarn with a velvety feel and is surprisingly light weight for a 100% cotton yarn and BONUS: it washes and dries in the dryer beautifully.



Thursday, October 14, 2010

Yes, I have been knitting... among other things.

Once again, I'm falling behind on my blogging. The funny thing is, I've actually been doing stuff. I knitted a super cute short-sleeved cotton summer sweater, and I'm working on a long-sleeved winter sweater. I just haven't had time to actually take pictures and post anything about them. I promise. Soon!

What I've been doing is fighting a low-grade, constant, panic attack.
I've been having GI issues for awhile now and I finally went to a doctor and they have been poking and prodding at me for the last couple of weeks.

Here's what I've learned about this:

1. Even though I was really scared of having a tube camera shoved down my throat, endoscopy procedures are no big deal. The anesthesiologist gave me something called twilight anesthesia which means you are awake for the procedure, but you have absolutely no memory of it. So if you ever have to do this, don't sweat it.

2. Colonoscopy procedures are torture from hell. Not the actual procedure, because of that handy twilight thingy, but the prep for it. Whoever came up with that should work for the government. If they gave those they suspected of terrorism that Golightly stuff, I'm absolutely positive they would reveal all manner of sins to make it stop.
When I read the directions and it said, "Drink 8 oz every 15 minutes until entire contents have been taken." I thought to myself. "Okay, I can do that. No big deal." But by about the 3rd serving of this stuff I was like, "Oh dear, I don't know if I can do this..." I mean we're talking a gallon of liquid people. And once the stuff starts taking effect... Well, let's just say that I have spent few nights in my life in that kind of discomfort/agony.

I wont go into anymore detail here. I don't want to scare off my 2 blog followers. The results that came after the colonoscopy? They found a rather large polyp that has been making my life miserable for some time now. They think it might possibly be cancer (! Yes I am a little terrified about this) and/or Crohn's disease. So now I have a 2 week wait to see just how much more misery awaits me. Tomorrow I have a CT scan that I get to drink a big helping of Barium for.

Bottoms up!

PS- We also moved Mr Boy into a Big Boy Bed and so far that has been going fairly well! YAY! Next hurdle is potty training...