Now....what I actually have been doing!

There are a few things that I actually did do so far this break, though they were not on my original list that I made. These things are: (1) attempt to recycle yarn from a thrifted sweater, (2) switch up part of my room, (3) make some sense of that darned closet!

First was the recycling of the yarn. Let me say that I was super excited to do this.....until I did it. Well, I didn't do it. I attempted. And stopped. And essentially failed. I think I was too ambitious. I told myself if I was going to do this, I wanted a nice sweater, not some dumb cotton blended crap. So I found a beautiful purple alpaca sweater. Eff my life. I could have sworn I did everything right; I made sure to look for that specific seam, and I thought things were going to be great! And they started great. Until I got supremely confused. At some point everything seemed to blend together, stitches and pieces and my fingers. Bad news bears. This is how it started :

Then I ended up with A LOT of this:

Then eventually, I ended up with this:

I got frustrated. It blew up in my face, and I am very sad, because I was looking so very forward to having my own yarn that I had recycled from an old sweater and I was very excited for a wonderful alpaca scarf. Now, I have chunks of sweater, and pieces of yarn. I'm sure I'll think of something, I always do....

Now, the second project. Fix up part of my room. For a while, I've had this plastic drawer thing. It sucked. Because it was plastic, it was crapping out, and because there was so much stuff in those three little drawers, they were heavy and barely moved and made me angry. It was also kinda ugly. I decided I wanted crates. I'm pretty sure I mentioned this before in another one of my blogs. Didn't think I'd get to it so soon, but I did!
it started like this: See purple plastic-y thing. See crates. See lots of mess.

Remember Hit Clips?!? Found This Gem

Now, See Organization and Cleanliness!

Ok, so the orange bin still has a ton of crap on top of it, I'm not perfect here! But each crate is organized. Bottom two hold cd's and electronic things, such as game boy games, receipt to my laptop, you know. Middle two hold my thank you cards and other paper items, the other holds lotions, lipglosses, that business. Top hold my creativity, all my needles, yarns, artwork things... essentially happiness. Feels good, looks better, I am content! My next goal is to get a few more crates, but turn them so they are like bookshelves (sooo many books, too many on my floor *sadface*)

Then there was my most recent project, my closet. The only pictures I took were of things that I found and felt were sentimental, like alll my Pound Puppies, my Tuggle, other things of that cutesy nature, and then the dresses, but there is a picture in the last blog.


And that ladies and gentlemen, is what I've been up to. I now plan on actually doing something on my original list before I start anything more....like making my own self striping yarn with Kool Aid....

Cheers!

I've Been Bad

Very, very bad. I have done nothing. Ok, not terribly bad, because I have been doing some things, (more blogs to come) but out of my huge list of seven, I have done one. 
This one: 2. Go through my T-shirts and decide which will become squares for my future quilt(s). 
But there is more to it, I promise. I redecorated part of my room, I cleaned the top section of my armoire (which had many of the aforementioned t-shirts) anddd dum-da-da-dum! My closet! 


Now, an interesting thing about my house. In the room in which I currently reside, I have NO CLOSET. Nope, no closet. Why is this you ask? Because where a closet would go is actually a staircase. Up this staircase is yet another room in our house. Fancy, fancy. So instead I have my armoire. It's huge, and takes up so much space. I wish I could get rid of it. But again, no closet. What it holds always changes.  


So now you're probably confused, "How could she clean a closet if she has no closet? Or is she simply switching back and forth on her vocabulary with the words 'closet' and 'amoire'?"  Well friends, when I was younger I decided I wanted to live in my dad's office, instead of in my room which shares a wall with the only bathroom on the floor (terrible, terrible phobia of vomit, no idea where it came from, but I'm thinking from sharing a wall with a bathroom...) Anywhoo. The closet in my old room was filled with STUFF. and I really didn't use it  or anything in it once I moved out, except to shove in a few prom dresses. 


SO I TACKLED THAT CLOSET!


Easiest thing to hoe out. All it had was toys, and bins of clothes from when i was ten. Now, it's hard for me to get rid of clothes now. I give lots of excuses, "I may wear it...someday!!" being the most common. But this, this was easy. I can't wear clothes from when I was ten. But then i saw those cute little tshirts, The San Diego zoo, One Fish Two Fish, VDub Beetles. what is a girl to do! Cut and Quilt, cut and quilt. 


But then there was another issue to tackle. What was hanging in that closet was dresses. Little girl dresses, the kind that my mother has a memory for each and every one. I must admit, in the ~20 hours (Harry Potter Books on CD, favorite cleaning tool), my mother wasn't there for any.  It was just easier. So I put the dresses into two piles : disgusting, and oooh that would make a nice square for a quilt. I also told my mom we could give them to other little girls we know, so that way we knew they would go to good use. 


But at the end of the day, many many bags went to Goodwill. And now we have come full circle, back to my armoire. Now that my closet is clean, I can rearrange what goes where. Before the cleaning, in my armoire was random tshirts and pyjamas on the top shelf, my nice but not prom dresses hanging, along with skirts, then some polos and a few button ups, and winter sweaters I brought from school for over break.  I moved all the dresses into my closet, moved my jeans into my armoire, got rid of the polos (jr /high school dress code, hate to even look at them now), left the skirts because I need a bigger bin to put all my summer clothes in, and the sweaters are still hanging. Phew! 

27 Dresses Anyone? Mmm, probs more like 35+

Slowly but surely, I will not be drowning in my room. 

Christmas!

It feels so good to be done with school! I am now on break until late January. Whatever will I do with my time? Oh right, my huge list of wonderful things to accomplish, such as knit something other than baby Peapods. Speaking of, I just finished number four. FOUR. Only two of those babies have been born, and I've only seen one in her little pod. Needless to say I am slightly exhausted with pea pods. I am ready for new challenges! Well, not necessarily challenges, but new projects. Found some great new tutorials online, so I'm eager to begin those.
   Also, i cleaned my room! Hurricane Bacall has finally passed, and I can see my floor! I also have a new project for my room. Right now, I have this plastic bin-thing that has a few drawers on it, and it has so much stuff that it is collapsing-sorta. Top drawer has makeup, middle has some art stuff in it, bottom has my cd collection. It is the middle drawer that is causing issues, because I am a very Scottish Pack rat who saves things in hopes that one day I will have a beautiful collage of all these little things that I love....except I've had this collection for a while....and nothing's happened. I really should go through it, because what was "Bacall" then, really isn't "Bacall" now. My idea is to get rid of that, but instead have 2x3 crates, each crate holds something different. Bottom two might have my cd's, then one for knitting and crochet supplies, another for all my yarn, et cetera and so forth. I think it will look neater, take up more room vertically and less room width wise, and simply be less of a hassle. So that is one more thing I would like to do this winter! Or spring...or sometime soon!

Finals and pictures

So I am originally writing this in a word document, because I have no internet L. I just finished putting the cute little buttons on the 3^rd baby peapod, and yesterday at my track meet I started number four. I should be studying for my finals, but for some reason I’m just not. I have two, both on Tuesday, aka in two days (writing this originally Sunday night). Which means by the time this is posted I’ll have even less….goodness. In all honesty, I guess it’s just because I feel like I know how I’m going to do, so studying is almost…futile. I think I’m going to do well on my Linguistics final, because it’s not cumulative, and morphology and syntax are super easy compared to phonetics and phonology. My Tuesday night test for Marketing will be rough. I did not do too well on the midterm, so I need to do well on this test, but it’s going to be hard. Mehh. Plus she didn’t even give us a study guide. There’s a phrase for this. Stabbing in the dark or something? Yeah, that’s me right now with Marketing. 

so precious, amirite?

also, now I have pictures to upload. well, a picture. Baby Pea Pod picture!!

Update and some December Plans

SO, the third baby pea pod is complete!! I finished Wednesday night I believe, but I had no buttons, so it's finished but the final touches are not. That will happen Sunday, along with an update with pictures. Ah it is so cute.
     Now, I have many great adventures planned for this long and extensive Christmas Break!! I will be home after my two finals on this coming Tuesday are done, woo! Then I can start all things amazing! I have already begun some of my Giant 3D Snow Flakes, which are fabulous decorations for around the holiday/Winter season (another post for a later day). As well as making those to hopefully sell, there are a bunch of other things I want to do, mostly because I will have both time and materials. I can do things here on campus and at school, but I feel very limited because I can't bring everything here with me. So, here is a mini (aka incomplete) list of things I am going to be doing once I am home bound and freeee:

In no specific order,
1. Go through my collection of Barbies (yes, I know). Even as a child I knew some would be worth something, so many of them are left in their boxes. Talk about self control!
2. Go through my T-shirts and decide which will become squares for my future quilt(s).
3. Knit something from a new book I picked up recently (thrifted ) : Knitting for Peace by Betty Christiansen. Such an amazing book, gives so many great ideas for charities and other organizations to knit for and donate to, including "Project Linus" and "afghans for Afghans." I've been knitting so many baby pea pods that I really haven't had time to be doing a second project.
4. Spend some time with Big Baby and learn a new song. Big Baby is my guitar, (Taylor Big Baby!). I am so uncreative in the worst way when it comes to naming things, such as blogs and guitars.
5. Bake! I love finding recipes online, and when I was "stumbling," I found a great recipe for pancakes made with cake batter! So that will be a definite must.
6. Try other homemade remedies, such as this coffee grinds facial scrub (didn't realize it was from PETA until I posted the link haha). I use all natural face rinse right now as it is from my local Natural Food Store, but new things are always worth a try!
7. Learn how to actually use the Hello Kitty sewing machine I bought at Savers. I want to make beautiful dresses!!!!!!
That's all I have at the moment, but as always, I will be updating :-)
Cheers, Bacall

Baby Peapod 3

I am almost done with baby pea pod numero tres! Exciting! I got a lot of work done last night, mostly because I was staying up and watching The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with others in the lounge. It was a great background for knitting. I feel proud of what I have accomplished in such little time. I did a good six inches of knitting, talk about hauling ass! My sister will be pleased. Right now I am trying to finish the decreases while I'm waiting to register for classes for next semester.....whoever gave me a 12:01 time didn't care that I have an 8 am....ah well. So now I'm up a smidgen later than I really wanted to be.
    As midnight comes along, I realize that the reason I can't sign in.....is because my time is actually 7 am....this is a face palm moment. Quite embarrassed. So I'm off to bed now....I will update later on.

My Saturday -My Current Project

Hello There!

Today was a busy day. First indoor meet of the season at Boston, exciting! Yes I brought my knitting with me. I didn't work on it a whole lot; The way down I just wanted to get into my competition state of mind, plus my wrist has been aching a bit, so i just listened to the iPod. I did work on it a little bit on the way back, but I ran out of yarn, and I needed to measure the length anyways. Right now I'm working on yet another "baby pea pod." I found this pattern in a quaint little North Carolina yarn shop when I was visiting my grandfather with the family (I'll post the website at the bottom, since i didn't create the pattern). It is a little pea pod, the baby being the peas, with a little stem hat. I have since made three, one as a tester, and two as baby shower gifts . It seems that so many people are pregnant right now! So I'm currently on my third. Won't lie, it's becoming slightly tedious since it's all in stockinette stitch, but it looks so good, and I absolutely love the reactions it gets. Debating about selling them since they're easy and absolutely adorable. 

    Right now, I would say I'm about...a quarter of the way done with the body of the pea pod, then I still have the little hat to do. I've been procrastinating on it a bit, mostly because I wanted to finish the blanket for my bestie, but also because it's getting slightly tedious. But now that the blanket is done ( pictures below), i can continue on with the pea pods. These next two are for my sister's friends (well, they've all been my sister's friends who are pregnant....) She wants two more for her future sister-in-law and then for another friend. All for Christmas. So I have definitely have some work cut out for me. Finals are coming up within the next week, so I will need some down time. It's great past time for de-stressing. 

    Well, now I am off to figure out what classes I'm going to be taking next semester, and possibly continue on with the current pea pod. 

- Bacall


 Website for the Pea Pod

Up close shot of the blanket

full size 55"L x 32" W. bottom is a little wider because it's looser (starting point). Character, eh?

Halfway through Pea Pod numero tres. This yarn, bought from Walmart, is so soft and perfect for baby things.