Favorite Things Swap Package Received!

Holy Crap. I just participated in my first swap and the person who had me is a crafty genius. I can't believe the beautiful stuff I got! Amazing! She made the bowl, the doilie, the origami, the card and bookmark...B.E.A. YOOTIFUL! Yarn to make a hat, candles, rocks from Arizona and Brazil, tea, bodywash and lip balm, candy...So amazing. I tore into the package (tied up with string!) like it was Christmas in October. Since we're nearing the season of thanks, I just want to give thanks for sarah for caring enough about a total stranger to put together an amazing package that meshed both of our favorite things. You're awesome!

RHINEBECK!

This is the sight that Boyfriend and I walked into when we passed through the front gates of Rhinebeck. Had I actually taken the time to see him from the front, I'd have seen a little joey peeking out of his pouch. But no. I was in much too much of a hurry to buy yarn! And buy I did.

Boyfriend and I happened upon a stall where the colors were vivid and eyecatching, the colors blending with each other and I just knew I had to have some of them. The ones above and below are from www.creativelydyed.com, and let me tell you, this woman has a following. I had no idea until I came home and checked out her website; all I knew was that these colors were amazing and that I HADTOHAVETHEM for socks. I'm so proud of myself. I bought stuff that I loved and thought was beautiful--turns out it's kind of famous.

And these two below are for Boyfriend. He picked out the colors that he liked, and I, for some reason, bought two hanks. Maybe he'll get thigh high socks. Or two pair. Or one pair of socks and a hat. Well. We'll see.

And this...oh, my, and this. This is my favorite. I saw this and I had to have it, price be damned. She was coming home with me, dang it, she had to. It's from Great Adirondack and it's got some bamboo in there, which is why you see a little of the sheen happening. It's absolutely gorgeous, and it's going to be a pair of fingerless mitts and a neckwarmer. It's going to be the first thing I cast on for myself after holiday knitting has been completed. If that's not the carrot on the end of the stick that'll get me to finish holiday kntting, I don't know what is.

These are the buttons that Boyfriend spied. "Hon," he said, holding one out in the palm of his hand, "Doesn't this match the yarn you've got a death grip on?" And by golly friends, he was right. The picture doesn't do them justice; when you moved them they change color, to just about every color in that hank from Great Adironack up there. Now honestly. If a man can pick out buttons to match your yarn...you KNOW he's a keeper (Not that I didn't know before.)

Lastly, the mate to my finished sock is in the heel gusset stage. We're in the homestretch after a couple of whoopsies (thank goodness for Lisa at www.theyarngirl.com) and I can't wait to wear them! I think I love knitting socks a little, and when I get more proficient, it's bound to get quicker, and therefore, I will have tons of socks.

Dudes. Knitting rocks.

blargh...

Spectacularly little knitting going on lately. Between work and school I'm finding that I want any of my free time to go to sleeping instead of knitting, or you know, shaving my legs. I wholeheartedly want to cast on the mate for the sock I already knit, but I know I have such little time that I've been devoting what time I can to the holiday knitting I've already got on the needles. *Sigh*

I'm also wickedly ill. I came down with a cold Sunday night and managed to make it through work yesterday but today was a different story. Once I woke up and started moving around I got so incredibly nauseous I spent a good amount of time hugging the toilet. I feel bad about calling out of a job that I just started working at about a month ago, but what can you do? I didn't think vomiting over all the books in the store would be a good career move. Plus the thought of driving to work while dizzy and sweating didn't sound like a fun experience.

So I'm here, in one of my semi-lucid moments (thanks Dayquil! And mom, who brought tissues and chicken soup to a girl in need!) drinking tea and trying to not feel so guilty for being sick. Ironic, isn't it, since I didn't exactly have a say in the matter...

Alliance Ghost Hunters

Okay, get over your shock at having two posts in one day. This is important enough to warrant it:

http://www.southbergenite.com/NC/0/1719.html

It's an article on my brother's most recent investigation into the paranormal. He's the founder and lead investigator of Alliance Ghost Hunters (of which I'm an occasional investigator-in-training). It's an awesome article with an awesome slideshow to boot. Check it out. And if you're looking for someone to investigate some paranormal schtuff happening in the tri-state area, check out his website:

http://www.allianceghosthunters.com/


And it's pro bono, so there's nothing to worry about on your part.

Do you forgive me?

I'm so sorry for not updating regularly. I started a new job and went back to school and I consider it a good day if I have time to run to the bathroom and not have to jump right back up halfway through. I was having trouble sleeping there for awhile, but being exhausted from work and travelling and mentally exhausted from class has solved that problem quite quickly. I don't have any new pictures, but take that photo of me in the upper left hand corner of the page: picture the hair mussed, some light bags under the eyes, and an eyebrows badly in need of some maintenance. Then you've got me at 10:43 this morning :)

In honor of being gone for awhile, I thought I'd take a few minutes to fill out this meme that's been making its way around the blog-world; I'm such a big reader it'll be interesting to see how I do:

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

(I'm going to add a category where I tell you i actually own it and will, someday, read it)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina (own)
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude (own)
Wuthering Heights (own)
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote (own)
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey (parts of it, anyway)
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses (own)
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park (own)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables (own)
The Corrections (own)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (own)
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things (own)
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (own)
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud
Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: a true account . . .
White Teeth (own)
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Hm. according to this list, I haven't really read as much as I'd like. but i've read so much more that isn't included on this list i have a hard time feeling bad about that. all right, must go eat and get ready for work...

Inked

Boyfriend, Boyfriend's Friend and I all went and got tattoos today. I got a sunflower with some vines around it on my lower back. It looks absolutely gorgeous and when it heals I shall post some pictures. Tattoo number 4, painful, but gorgeous, and perfect as a shout out to my mom who's had a rough year: a heart attack, gave up smoking, and had a total hip replacement. You rock, mom.

FO! My first sock EVER!

Look at that baby! Jitterbug in Sweetdreams is beautiful and I'd knit with it again in a heartbeat (which is good, since I've got two feet...) I snapped a picture of her taking a nap on my bed after a long and arduous stay on my needles.

Here she is after a nap, simply reclining in bed and smiling for the camera. She looks well-rested and ready for a mate, doesn't she?

And this. Her best angle, taken on the couch as she gets ready to see if the Ravelry Logo totes are back in stock yet (they're not). Look at that toe (and what appears to be an awesome kitchener [from this angle], if i do say so myself)! What beauty! What pizzaz! Note: Yes, I'm pretty sure I'm smitten. And slightly off my rocker.

Things I've learned while knitting my first sock:

-I knit tight. Super tight. I broke two Sox Stix during the course of this sock. Not good. Those things ain't cheap.

-I cannot have a conversation, watch television or breathe while doing anything other than simple knit rounds. The lack of concentration led to numerous starts to the ribbing and several dropped (then picked up) stitches further along the sock.

-Kitchener only sounds complicated. In practice, it's actually quite easy and beautiful. 'Course, maybe that was knowing that there were less than ten stitches left to my first sock.

In other news, ordered some stuff from KnitPicks last night. I want to try their harmony DPN's...if they're good, they're a heck of a lot cheaper than Lantern Moon's Sox Stix. I love the Sox Stix, but 25 bucks is kind of pushing it, budget-wise. Especially when I know I can buy a skein of Jitterbug for that. I also got a pair of their metal DPN's, some wool wash, a small gift for my Favorite things swap partner (whoever that may be), and some brown sock yarn. I want to give their stuff a try; it's certainly more affordable for my money situation right now. I shall post a review when I receive the package.

Wow. This turned into an awfully long post. If you're still reading and not bored to tears...thanks!

HEYLO!

Sorry about the little hiatus I've been on, but when you've got that view, who doesn't get distracted?! (okay, to be fair, i was only looking at the view for a weekend, but still) anyway, spent a weekend up in Woodstock catching up with an old friend who's 8 mnths pregnant (and gloriously radiant, no less), shopping, and spending quality time with Boyfriend. Spent a lot of time sitting on the front porch reading and knitting and looking at that waterfall in the picture above. It was glorious. I also snapped a picture of this little guy on our railing.

Since I've come home from Woodstock I've actually had a couple of ideas for short stories for this semester (which is wonderful because the only thing I've written this summer are grocery lists), started a new job (yay bookstore!) and played Florence Nightengale to Boyfriend when his knee decided not to work anymore. After a trip to the Emergency Room, rest, and some awesome painkillers, he's back at work today.

In knitting news, I'm almost done with my first sock. I haven't taken a picture of it in awhile, but I promise I'll get one up here soon.

Ahh...

Another wonderful weekend. Boyfriend and I went up to Woodstock NY to shop and relax, both of which we did with a vengeance. I bought plenty of goodies-alas, no yarn, since the woodstock wool company has closed its retail doors :( But I did buy two pairs of shoes, candles and such. There was also a beautiful cool night spent out on our lovely little porch as the sun set, then fireworks a little later. It was a very awesome weekend. Pictures to come when I'm home and have my little camera usb cable :)

Weekend in Review

The heel of my sock. I can't believe I'm making socks. I was overwhelmed for a long time by the idea, but now that I've actually started making them, I have many more socks planned :)

Hello Mr. Sheep!

Alpacas! They were so soft! I wanted to hug them, but they looked as if they'd been rolling around on the ground for most of the day. And they wouldn't eat my crackers, so no hug for thems!

This was one of those weekends. One of those weekends that would go down in the history books as perfect. Boyfriend came over Friday night and spent the weekend. There were eggs for breakfast, cool nights spent sleeping with the window open, sock lessons, and a visit to the zoo. I am a very happy woman.

Ahhhh...finally! Ribbing! I finally have the ribbing done for my first sock, as you can see (you can probably also see ladders on the right hand side too, but I'm just so thrilled tofinally be done with the knitting I just can't seem to mind. I figure my second sock will be better and I can use this one to kind of the show the "before" and "after" as my sock knitting skills progress. I absolutely love this yarn, Colinette's Jitterbug in Sweetdreams. It reminds me of summer, cotton candy, grass and blue skies. And though I'm still trying to get used to working with such a small strand (and uber tiny needles!), i really like the way the yarn works up. So I ordered a different colorway that I will *hopefully* be able to knit up as Christmas gift for someone special.

I wish I didn't have to work. It takes away so much time from my knitting.

::Heavy Sigh::

I'm having one of those days. I seem to be all thumbs and I'm irritating myself beyond belief. I was almost done with the ribbing on my sock (three more rows to go) when I realized I had somewhere along the line, added a stitch. Probably not a big deal for most knitters, but as I have no idea how to fix my mistakes (picking up dropped stitches, etc.) I had to tear the whole thing out. The second go around I screwed up again, and just now I dropped two stitches at the end of the first round (!!) because I was making the stitches so tight the two left on my left needle just flew off. ::growl:: i can't even take a break and come back to it because I have work until 11pm tonight. At least tomorrow I have a day off and can hopefully make some headway through the leg; I think I might have my second sock lesson this friday morning and I need to be done with my 12 rows of ribbing and 40 rounds of the knit stitch (which I foresee to be slightly less traumatizing than my ribbing experience thus far).

(PS, no call back on the arts & crafts store, so i must not have gotten the job. ::sigh:: back to the drawing board)

(PPS, i must be nearing that time of the month, because everything Boyfriend says is irritating the crap outta me:

as i'm typing this blog entry:
boyfriend: what the heck are you doing over there (note, i type fast)
me: uhhh, typing? duh.

Sorry honey. Let me get some chocolate (of which there's none in this house!!) and I'll be fine. Promise.)

almost august...

still no word on crafts store job. i was told they'd be making a decision on by the end of the week, so there's a still a little time left for hope.

in other news, i'm teaching myself how to knit socks and have got the leg part down pat. i can make a nice tube (perhaps coffee cup cosies as gifts for christmas?) but when i get to the heel, i'm just completely and utterly lost. i'm probably going to take a trip to a LYS tomorrow to see if they can set up an appointment to help me figure out what i'm doing (or need to be doing, lol).

in other christmas related news, i've started working on some christmas gifts early. last christmas i was knitting my father's scarf literally until christmas morning. ask Boyfriend. i made him load up the car while i bound (binded?) off and tucked the ends.

Interview!

Interview today with a crafts store! Cross your fingers for me; I'm going for a managerial position (more hours & more money? yes please!) While I'm there, I'm going to pick up some DPN's and sock yarn. I'm going to try to teach myself how to knit socks, or at the very least, maybe I'll get used to working with all those crazy needles.

In general, I do support LYS's, but sometimes the big chains have cheaper deals on stuff I like using, like Lion's Brand & Patton's. Plus it's awesome to be able to pick up yarn, candles, glue, and gift wrap, all in the same spot.

Wish me luck!

Ah, the first post...

Hi. I'm Jen, a Jersey Girl (or Jersey Purl. Get it? because Jersey Girl was taken...). Simply put, I'm a complicated woman.

• I'm a graduate student getting my MFA in Creative Writing
• I'm 26, but feel much older (I'm a widow, my husband died in a car accident three years ago and am still dealing with issues related to said accident)
• I'm dating a wonderful man who shall be named "Boyfriend" in any following posts. I heart him very much
• To keep myself out of trouble, I knit, read copiously, paint with acrylics, play World of Warcraft, and clean
• I have a very strong bond with my mother, who is my best friend, and who is at times, the person I most butt heads with
• I have dealt with, and still deal with, panic attacks and bouts of depression

And there you have it. That's me, or at least the highly summarized me. More to come.