Winter Knitting 09/10 - Scarf Frenzy!

Given the fantastically frightful winds here in Chicago, I've been on a scarf hunt lately. But I figured, rather than buying simple scarves that I could make myself, why not go ahead and make them? So here's four scarves, two of which are for myself, and two of which are for my lovely Lolita mentor.

I've been trying to incorporate more pastels into my winter wardrobe, so I made two long ruffly scarves for myself in pink and baby blue:



Of course the two scarves for my Loli mentor are going to be presents, so I won't post them here until after she's gotten them ^.^

All of the scarves were made with one skein of Red Heart Baby Clouds yarn. The pink skein was 2 ounces larger than the blue skein, so the scarf came out super long, but I love it!

Hope you enjoy!

Winter Knitting 08/09 – Part 2.2: Hat Lined with Fleece!

Well... It's really not winter 08/09 anymore... In fact, it's already pretty much winter 09/10, but life got in the way of actually lining that hat. However, in order to make it truly functional for my boyfriend, I have finally finished putting in a fleece lining for it!

(See part one here).

Not only does the lining make the hat longer by about 1 inch, it also makes it that much warmer now that there are two layers between his skull and the elements.

Onto the one picture I remembered to take before he carted it off to Boston with him!


So, the tiny ribbed portion of the original hat got eaten in the seams, but overall the hat is definitely longer, and now double-layered. Apparently I miscalculated and the hat was a bit tight and the seam for the bottom band fell right on the ears, but my boyfriend says the hat's now loosened up from wearing, and it's all good now, so yay!!

So there ya go!!

<3

Winter Knitting 08/09 – Part 2: Herringbone Scarf Done!

I finally finished that scarf!! (And yes, I know it's not winter anymore).  I actually finished sometime in March, but didn't have time to write up a post about it.  I had just enough yarn left afterwards to knit a matching hat.  However, the hat's just the tiniest bit shorter than I think it really should be for a normal-sized adult head.  And it's only single-layered, so I have doubts about it's warmth-keeping properties.  I'm thinking I'll get some matching charcoal fleece and make a lining for it (as well as make it just a bit longer for better ear coverage ^o^)

But pictures!!
[caption id="attachment_93" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The whole scarf"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_91" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Edge detail (moss stitch border, herringbone main body)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_92" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Matching hat! It has some ribbing at the very edge, the rest is just straight stockinette stitch)"][/caption]

So yeah, the hat may or may not reappear again with fleece lining ^.^ I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, considering both the scarf and the hat were done without a pattern (the hat was very much improvised :-P)

I can haz tofu!!

One of my friends has spent the last year or so in Japan, and he came back to visit this weekend ^o^ Not only was it awesome to see him again, but he also gave me the cutest Hannari Tofu cellphone/keychain charm!! ^.^






Yay Ume Plum Blossom Tofu!!! <3<3

Imma going to Anime Expo!!!!!!!!!!

Wooh!! I'm so excited XD I've been considering going to AX for quite awhile now, basically as soon as I found out Momusu was going to be performing there :-P But it was kind of like... ehh... do I have money? And then, my flight home from visiting Northwestern got overbooked, which in retrospect was awesome, because I gave up my seat, flew into Manchester instead of Boston, and now have a free round-trip voucher that I can use to fly to LA! Plus, my boyfriend's got family in Orange County, and he wanted to visit them sometime in the summer anyways, so housing is free too!!

AND TO UP THE EXCITEMENT, the all-awesome Miri is applying for booth + performance space/time at AX for Sekai no Melody!!!!! Yes... that's exactly what really pushed me over the edge to motivate myself to figure out logistics for getting to AX... I MIGHT GET TO ACTUALLY PERFORM!!! In real life with the awesome people from SnM!!!

That combined with seeing Momusu in real life... I'm waaaaay too excited about AX now XD I finally registered me and my boyfriend both, and bought tickets to the Momusu concert. Now he gets to deal with me being super-hyper the rest of the weekend. I've been getting about 4-5 hours of sleep a night for the past 3 nights, soooo.... I'm soooo very hyper!!!!

Now I have motivation to actually do my Amulet Spade cosplay :-P I already have the socks, the boots, and the hair, I just have to make the actual clothes ^.^

WHEEEEE!!!

Northwestern vs. UPenn

It's that time of year... when I get to hear back from all the grad schools that rejected me... TT.TT And indeed almost all the schools I applied to rejected me... *sigh* oh well.

The two that didn't are Northwestern and UPenn, which I visited on two consecutive weekends. Yay travel fun! And it was indeed fun (other than coming down with some awesome coughing ailment following the UPenn visit >.<).

It's going to be a pretty hard choice to make, since both schools have awesome programs with a good balance between theoretical, experimental, and computational research. And the funding packages they're offering me are pretty similar as well... *ponder ponder* Northwestern is located nicely NOT next to a "bad" part of the city, but then again that didn't stop me from coming to MIT... So yeah... decision time... -.-

But instead of continuing to whine and sigh, I shall offer some amusement by displaying the pictures I took during my visit to Northwestern. A couple of the current grad students were awesome and led an expedition into Chicago, which included a stop at the Chicago Cultural Center to look at their pretty stained-glass and mosaic domes, Millenium Park to visit "The Bean" and the spitting face fountain that was not spitting, the Art Institute of Chicago, and dinner.


Pretty picture of Chicago from the lake-shore next to Northwestern. Apparently there's a tradition for couples at Northwestern to draw/write something in chalk or paint (hard to tell under all that snow and ice) on the rocks lining this shore. We found a heart drawn by one of the other prospective students' high school music teacher.


Me standing in the middle of a street somewhere in Chicago... Look there's even a bright red sign saying Chicago on it!


Look! A giant stained-glass dome! But it's so huge you can't really see any details in this picture -.- Luckily I also zoomed in on one of the panels and the center rosette ^.^





Here's a picture from the mosaic dome. I actually couldn't get many good pictures of this dome... everything came out kind of blurry like my hand was shaking or something... oh well...


Whee! Millenium Park!!!


Shiny crazy-looking thing... Apparently it's an outdoor theater of some sort?


Aaaand there's the Bean! It's very very shiny... much more shiny than I thought it would be... O.O Shininess results in awesome pictures!



Yes I'm a dork...


Me and two of the other prospective students taking a picture of ourselves taking picture of ourselves reflected in the Bean... ^w^


All the snow that day made the park really pretty to look at. This picture totally doesn't do it justice, but it's the best I had apparently...


The face is actually kind of scary... but it wasn't spitting since it was so cold out.


Yay pretty river view!

All in all, Chicago was a really nice city! XD Too bad I forgot my camera when I visited UPenn. Although it was kind of a dreary day... rainy and cloudy... so maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all :-P

Oh noes! This sucks!! >.

Totoro can haz dust ball?

My collection of Studio Ghibli stuffies has grown!!! About a year ago, one of my best friends got me an awesome Totoro stuffie while he was interning in Beijing ^_^ And I thought that was awesome, but then a couple weeks ago my Totoro found a dust ball friend (courtesy of my now boyfriend's trip to Japan)!!!



I also got some other interesting presents, including the cutest toe-socks I've ever seen! SQUEE!



And this bag, which he thought was really funny (and then K-Snow and I explained that "Chu" means kiss... and hence the XXX are probably kisses... -.-)



WHEE PRESENTS ^o^ But Totoro's new dust ball buddy definitely wins the prize for most awesome ^_^

Winter Knitting 08/09 - Part 1: Herringbone Scarf!

This is one of the two knitting projects I've been working on this winter. Originally I wanted to do the "Henry" scarf from knitty.com, but I really suck at knitting scarves sideways because I just lose count of all the stitches way too easily. Not to mention the tubular edge thing didn't work out to great when I did a test swatch...

So instead I decided, well I've never done a herringbone texture before, so why not! And my attempt to keep it from curling quite as much involved putting a seed-stitch edge on it, but that doesn't seem to be working as well as I thought. I think I'll just have to try to block the living daylights out of this guy when I'm done...

It's also the first time I've done a scarf using sock yarn... It takes much longer than any other scarf I've done T.T

But enough talk! here's some pictures!


All crumpled up...


Seed stitch border...


The herringbone texture...

It's not visible from the pictures, but the herringbone isn't very even, mainly because it took me awhile to get a hang of the whole knitting through the back loops thing... But I think it'll turn out decent ^.^

YAY!! Yeah, this one is the one I worked on all winter break (3 weeks) and it's not even halfway done yet. I reminds me of the anime "Maria-sama ga Miteru" though because I watched the whole first season of it while knitting this.

Being sick sux, but Spongebob makes it better!

Well, I've been sick since yesterday with who-knows-what. Fever, sore throat, and now cough... meh, hopefully it will pass soon...

But! My awesome friend Niv went and got me a Spongebob thermometer!!!

It even plays music when it's done taking your temperature!!!

I <3 you, Niv!! ^.^