Somebody To Love

I’ve got all of the orange ones done and most of the olive green ones. I’m halfway there! Unfortunately I’m working on a MySQL assignment at the moment and I was on a field trip to Delaware with my weaving class earlier so blocking and pictures will have to wait until tomorrow.

BUT! I might have finished a few more by then. It will be worth it, I promise. At least, it will if you’re as obsessed with cute little knitted leaves like I am.

ETA:

One of the normal-sized leaves being blocked:

One of the smaller leaves for the toe insert being blocked:

A gods-eye-view of my blocking setup:

I didn’t notice until afterwards that the towel I was using is the same colour as the main yarn for the socks.

So far so good. It’s been taking me roughly an hour to knit each leaf so far, so I’ve only got 8 of them done. I did one of the green ones for the toe and 7 of the orange ones so far. Once I finish the 8th orange one I’ll block them and take pictures.

These socks are going to be so great when they are done. I’m still at a loss when it comes to how to wear them though. It was brought up at the Knit London meetup this week and I still haven’t decided. I don’t want to wear them without shoes because I’m pretty sure the carpet in here would wear them out super-quick. But at the same time, shoes would do a lot of damage (my boots ripped a huge hole in my angora socks) and I still want to be able to show them off. I think I need to get used to the idea of wearing them around the apartment, or getting clear shoes for the summer.

I had a pretty laid-back week off. The first weekend I went to Cambridge. On Friday I finished my homework while Dean was at work, and tried to keep Sierra somewhat amused since she was sick but not sick enough to let me be until I was done. Saturday we went wandering off to find the Region of Waterloo’s library headquarters in Philipsburg, since there was a library job posted and it would be a good place for me to work when I’m done here.

It’s too small a place to be on Google maps. It’s more of a village than a town, I think, if that. Unless there’s a pocket of people hidden somewhere. We saw one intersection, with a few houses and a corner store. Except for a gated community next to a country club there was nothing else around. We drove around in there since the guard shack was empty. All of the houses were really nice looking, with nice looking yards. To the point where it was a little creepy. You can tell they have to keep things that way. It doesn’t look as if originality is permitted at all in the way you outwardly present your house. It made me want to see some of the crazy things those people must have done to the interior to liven things up some.

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While waiting for the bus last week I saw a Mack truck go by with Big Mouth Billy Bass attached to the grille. It’s too bad the batteries were dead. Can’t you just picture the thing going off every time it detects oncoming traffic?

omg omg omg! I checked the mail on my way back in from the doctor, and look what I found:

Even the kit is a thing of beauty. The pattern is incredibly detailed and includes colour photos of some of the harder-to-explain steps. I’m so excited!

I’m not going to start it until later today when I finish setting up my loom for weaving class, but I think it’s safe to assume that half the things I was going to do tonight are pushed to tomorrow.

ETA: The yarn came wound into hanks, so before bed I took the time to wind them all into centre-pull balls. At first I was using my thumb, but there was too much of the purple to do that comfortably so I used my spindle as a nostepinne.

Before:

After:

I finally watched the Notebook last month. It should have come with a warning or something. After watching several people I loved go through that I lose it every time I think about it.

I thought maybe my Rock-Band-obsessed neighbours had moved out since it had been almost two whole weeks since I’ve had to listen to their drunk off-key singing and horrible playing skills. No such luck.

They’ve been playing the game, yelling, laughing hysterically, and in general being assholes for about 4 hours now. I know London has a 24-hour no noise policy, but at the same time I tend to give these guys until 11:30pm to give it up because I’m generally up at least until then. So far I’ve yet to hear them play longer than that, at which point the drunken yelling also calms down and most people leave.

I feel sorry for whoever lives next to them downstairs though since they’ve been banging on the wall for an hour and been ignored.

Today me and Dean went for a 3-hour walk up through school, around on Richmond, and all the way back again. It was nice, but it really made me wish my orthotics would come in so I wouldn’t end up limping by the time we got home. I feel old.

I was proud that I went over multiple bridges without freaking out and freezing up. The last time we walked in those particular places was a couple of summers ago when we stayed at Western for a weekend so I could get my bearings. Those things freaked me out pretty good the first time. I still have trouble with the one on Oxford though, since I walked back from downtown once last term and had to stare at my feet and force myself to keep moving.

This time around we didn’t see any furniture in the river, but we did see a construction sign sitting there for all the world like it belonged. See?

We also saw a helicopter coming in for a landing on the pad in front of University Hospital. If we’d have walked slower we might still have been on the other side of the river and got a close-up.

Today was a good day. We need more nice days like this so I can wander around more.

I’ve had the flu since Saturday and it’s really pissing me off. I can’t get much homework done because of it, and when I take medicine that makes my head so funny that it’s even more impossible. Gah!

Today my textbook for 558 arrived in the mail. It was a bit funny, since I was on my way back from picking up my hold at the library when the mail truck pulled in and when he buzzed and didn’t get an answer I kinda wondered and asked if there was mail for me. Turns out there was, and he was buzzing my apartment.

This wouldn’t normally mean much, since it’s just a boring old textbook. But the text for this course is an older edition. It’s either out-of-print or very nearly there since Chapters and Amazon have it listed but “temporarily unavailable to order” so you have to get it used. The bookstore doesn’t have them since the prof didn’t tell them to buy the new edition. It’s $150 and we don’t need any of the new stuff so we’re supposed to find a copy of this older one.

So, I get home after the first class and check the used listings to see what I can find. Turns out there’s a used copy of this book on Chapters’ website for $8 because it “may include highlighting/writing, some completed exercises, missing dustcover, crease and/or overall wear.” I’m thinking the book might be crap, but at that price I was willing to risk it. So I go for it anyway.

Today, I opened the package and see no evidence of any writing or highlighting in the book at all. If there are completed exercises I can’t find them. It even still came with the discs with the files needed for the exercises. It’s true, the spine is a little weak, but damn. I got myself a book in better shape than some of the stuff you can get used at the bookstore and for unbelievably cheap.

Like a good student, I started reading it right away. But then after about 3 pages of reading up on how awesome databases are and how they are the greatest invention of modern times I decided to read Confessor instead.