Finally the Weekend

After what felt to be the longest week ever in student teaching last week, I got to the weekend and relaxed it to the greatest extent I could possibly go. I crafted all Friday night after I took home all the grading for this weekend. I've decided to work on this super-blindingly bright crochet afghan made up of entirely granny squares. I've just learned how to make these little bastards...the granny square...and because they're so tiny I figured I'd just work them up in tiny bunches here and there and sew them up together for a weird patchwork afghan of colorful delight with this really-really-REALLY super bright yarn. It literally looks like a Kool-Aid acid trip of acrylic yarn that my sister got me for my birthday a month ago in the hopes I'd crochet up more dollies but I've actually grown so fascinated with all the colors that I decided to crochet them altogether. I really should post up pictures when I'm done.

Here's the website that I gathered the knowledge-know-how to making granny squares. Granny squares are these bite-sized little projects that takes minutes to make and just toss to the side so every so often when I'm done with a bunch then I sew in all the loose yarn ends and tuck away for sewing together later.


Tonight I took all the loose ends and sewed them all up into this length of fabric that, for now, covers up my keyboard. The best part of these granny squares is that they're instant gratification for me. I just crochet up a few rows in one color and then drop for another color and then another to build up an individually different technicolor rainbow. For now with the large variety of Caron Brite acrylic yarn, I've got just enough colors to literally make each granny square as unique as possible and so far not a single color pattern has repeated with what I've been working with. It sorta gives a clue to how many colors my sister gave me for my birthday. I've a total of eight different colors and to each granny square there are three rows of colors to work with so eventually I'll hit that mark where the exact color patterns start to repeat. So far I've got seven done. The cool thing about this project is it's really small too to work on the go so I just need to put three or four skeins in my bag and churn a few out over my lunch break. It'll be really cool when it's all done and sewn up. I want to take the afghan and throw it over my bed when it's done. My favorite type of blankets are quilts and patchwork blankets with a lot of bright colors so having this afghan thrown over my bed during the day leaves me something bright and cheery to come home to.

In other notes...I also used Friday to drink wine and work out a crochet Cthluhu doll. I worked one out and it was supposed to be palm sized but because I used an HDC stitch and not a SC stitch...it sorta blew up to a full doll size. It's sitting on Greg's desk right now as a welcome back present from his road trip. It has little wings and I threw on legs to it since the original palm-sized doll didn't have feet. I need to go shopping around for some red buttons for eyes. For Cthulhu, he's adorable as can be. ^_^;

Saturday was just chilling in coffee shops and tea shops with Greg. We finally went to the Ma-Cha tea shop on Monroe Street. It was relaxing but a part of me still prefers the Dobra Tea Shop for the sake of not just variety of teas but also overall Dobra seems more open to "public" people while the Ma-Cha is too private and it seems entirely too secluded. It would be neat to tabletop at the Ma-Cha teahouse though because of how separate the rooms are but overall if I'm going to work on papers or just talk then I'd rather go to the Dobra. It just feels that because everyone at Ma-Cha separates them off from each other so much that it almost discourages you from being comfortable to talk without feeling like you're "disrupting someone's zen" in that place.

Knitting Again!

I seriously had a much too long hiatus from my knitting blog. Student teaching can sort of do that to you but this doesn't mean that I stopped knitting altogether when I started my student teaching placement. Far from the truth! I got involved with my middle school's local after-school knitting club. One of the students from my class is in it. His grandmother, gasp-it's a boy knitter, runs the program and is also one of the special education aides in our school. She's a huge help to my second hour class which has a wide variety of students with various educational needs. I end up in return helping out at her after-school knitting club teaching and helping kids with their knitting.

Everyone is in their casting on and knitting stage as beginning knitters go but we had one male knitter actually cast-off a few weeks ago on his project. He was knitting a purple scarf for the past few weeks and then suddently two weeks ago he decided that purple wasn't a manly enough color for him so he opted out with a cast-off and now he's got a potholder. In the end it worked out for him although with his potholder made of acrylic he may consider using it as just a very large coaster.

We have a surprisingly large number of young male knitters at the knitting club. Even though most of the members are girls, there are about 6 girls and about 3-4 regular boys and they all are very fast learners. I hate to say this but the boy knitters are probably better knitters as a whole than the girls but that's only because they've already got on their side a boy who has mastered casting off among his other mates...which for all their knitting prowess between boys and girls combined that is saying quite a bit. I've also had to correct more times than naught the mistakes of the girl knitters than the boys. If those boys stay with knitting as a hobby I think it could change the gender knitting dynamic of the school.

Most of the kids are knitting scarves except for the two boys I managed to snag to knit up wallets. They're really just knitting rectangles and when they're done I'll show them how to fold and sew or crochet them together in half for a make-shift wallet but it's a lot like the girls' scarf projects but smaller. The weather is getting warmer and with warmer weather comes shorter student attention so having them knit up a smaller project might keep them interested in knitting longer than the girls. You can already see in some girls their eyes glazing over at their projects' progress because they only come in once a week to knit for forty minutes.

I end up bringing in my current knitting projects to the club to show the girls what they can work themselves up to beyond scarves. I've got my cabled Relm hat from the winter Knit.1 mag along with the ever-slowly growing Muir shawl. Well, the second growing Muir shawl. The first was a Mother's Day present that is lost somewhere in my mom's closets either in Florida or Wisconsin. The Mother's Day shawl serves to the girls as a reminder of being careful who they gift projects to if their recepient isn't very knit-friendly. I'm just glad she didn't throw the shawl into the wash for a good felting by accident like my last boyfriend did with his hat.

Other updates...I'm working on compiling a pattern book for the middle school before I leave for student teaching at the high school. I'm trying to find all these quick to knit patterns on straight needles because none of my students are really apt to knit with more than two needles. One girl was going to faint when she saw how many needles I worked on my cabled Relm hat and my socks. It was as if she thought I was going to stab myself any minute! In any case, I want to give the young knitters patterns to whip up other than the staple garter stitch pattern. It may include purls to open up to a world of knitting ribbing and wonder but if there is a knitter in there who wants to expand their repetoire then I've provided an answer. I've got in there already one tiny dpn knit heart to knit up quick, a ribbed headband, a straight knit hat with a pompom, a basic scarf, and a straight knit teddy bear with some sewing involved. Over the next week or so I hope to expand this pattern book with more freebie patterns I've printed off the web for them. :)

PS...the knitty.com has just released their new spring edition. While this winter wasn't all that thrilling for me I managed to wet my knitting appetite with the Knit.1 magazine with their cute projects along with buying up a few new knitting books like "French Girl Knits" but this recent knitty spring edition actually has a lot of different things for me to knit with. I love the spring shawls and the fingerless gloves patterns in this edition.

One unconventional pattern (at least unconvention for me) that I fell in love with is the old baby bonnet pattern. Just looking at that pattern makes me yearn for one of my friends to pop out a baby ASAP for me to knit that bonnet for. The bonnet is just so perfectly cute and cozy looking but I know if I start knitting it up right now for no reason then my boyfriend may think there may be a bun in the oven. Let's be honest...while the joy of knitting this bonnet for fun would be a blast...giving the bf a bit of a heart attack to see me swooning over the baby pattern may give the boy chills.

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEspring09/FEATspr09SIT.php