Monthly Archives: January 2011

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The Post-Holiday Rambling Rundown: Part 3, All I Want for Christmas is KNITWEAR!

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you probably don’t know that approximately 78.536% of my Tweets are about knitting. I’m kind of addicted to knitting – if you were to become a creeptastic stalker and spy on me at around 8:00 PM on nearly any weeknight, you’d find me sitting on my couch or on my bed, watching something on DVD (more than likely Doctor Who), and knitting away. I swear I have a social life; I just cherish (and, truthfully, need) lots of alone time – I’m an introvert; what can I say. Watching nerdy TV shows while knitting is a little slice of heaven; if I could figure out how to read and knit simultaneously, I’d probably go into throes of ecstasy a la Saint Theresa (pardon my blasphemy).

Oh Bernini, you slay me.

Anyway, despite this mad knitting, I rarely ever knit anything for myself – I’ve always got tons of projects lined up for friends and family, for holidays and birthdays and just because they’re worth it. Case in point: Christmas. I decided to knit everyone in my immediate family something, and I was so gratified and happy when they all opened their gifts on Christmas morning and enjoyed and appreciated the articles I’d made especially for them. I know some of you are knitters or crafters, so I thought I’d share my Christmas knitting with y’all. :) If you’re on Ravelry, the links take you to the patterns there. And if you’re a Raveler, you should add me as a friend!

First up: My sister goes to school in Syracuse, so she and I both require lots of winterwear. Because she’s the bees’ knees, I made her the Entwined scarf, which is a garter stitch scarf with BUILT-IN FINGERLESS MITTS – how awesome is that?! I used Tatamy Tweed Worsted in Jungle Vine, and I loooved the yarn and the pattern both. Here’s me being silly in my pre-Christmas photoshoot for Ravelry (I’m not really this yellow… ick):

Goober.

And here’s my oh-so-gangsta gangsta sissy on Christmas (dunno why this photo is all squished):

Raisinet.

Next, I used this Basic Men’s Mittens pattern to work up two pairs of mittens, one for my dad and one for my brother, using Vanna’s Choice yarn (don’t judge). For my dad, I went for simple, classic heather grey:

Manly mittens?

He seemed to like them:

Mooseman?

For my brother’s pair, I used the official colors of his fraternity – I knit the mittens in purple, and used double-stitching to add the Greek letters of his fraternity in gold. I had a little trouble deciding on the placement of the letters – should someone looking at them be able to read them? Should he be able to read them while looking down at his hands?! This is what I came up with:

This is a little dark... :(

And then, for my mommy dearest, I made a scarflet – she’s always cold, but who wants to wear a full-on scarf all day long? Enter the Mustard Scarf! I also used Tatamy Tweed for this project, this time in the lovely Sea Blue. I made the button from bronze polymer clay, too. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of this one on Christmas morning, so I only have the Ravelry photo of this one:

Why do I look so glum?!

Finally, I just have to share one of my most favorite things I’ve made in the past year - Rose’s Wrist Warmers, based on the wrist warmers Rose wears in the ridiculously heart-wrenching Doomsday episode of Doctor Who. I made these for my bestest friend (though I’m modeling them here):

Purply prettiness.

ISN’T THAT A FREAKIN’ GORGEOUS PATTERN?! It was a bit of a pain (lots of cables, so it’s not mindless knitting), but totally worth it. :)

Yeah! Knitting! This is by no means an exhaustive compilation of the knitted items I’ve given away in the past year (dishcloths are sorta boring, y’know?), but these are definitely some of my favorites. Hope you’ve enjoyed this mini-tour of my FOs… I love seeing what other people are working on, so I figured it was time I shared, too. :)

Do you knit? If so, what’ve you knit lately? What’s on your needles now? I’m working on a belated gift for my BFF – I’ll show you when I’m finished!

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The Post-Holiday Rambling Rundown: Part 2, A Christmas Retrospective

Confession: I’m losing my bloggy steam. My motivation to post is pretty low, and I’m even having difficulty mustering up the energy to comment on others’ posts. And Twitter’s been getting on my nerves lately – for those of you who Tweet, how do you keep up with people? It seems like 50% of the people I follow (and whose Tweets I actually want to read!) Tweet all day long. What’s up with that, people?! Do y’all have really relaxed jobs? Or is it that you all have those newfangled smart phones? I hear tell that you can access the internetzzz with them thar things! In any case, you’re makin’ it hard for me to keep up! SIGH.

Okay, I’m done whining. :)

Hey, remember when Christmas happened? Yeah, I know it was like three weeks ago… whatever. Remember how I had all these grand plans for an internationally-themed dinner? Well. Let’s just say that my big plans turned into us having three main dishes, only one of which was vegan, and all of which were Portuguese. Some major fail happened there, but I won’t point fingers at Certain Family Members who dropped the foodie ball. Cough. I won’t lie, either – I had my one and only Petulant!Kelly moment of my trip home at that point, when I realized that all my plans had basically culminated in a table full o’ meat. But after imbibing one [or two... maybe three... definitely too many] vegan White Russians, I let go of my petulance and became my ol’ cheery self again. Plus, there was dessert.

Nom nom nommity nom.

I know that photo is godawful, but… three White Russians, people. We had three vegan desserts! Reppin’ our English heritage, my momma made a yummy figgy pudding (hidden in the dish, d’oh), which was a hybrid of traditional figgy pudding and rice pudding, and my sissy made some super decadent sesame-cranberry-dark chocolate scones. Oh yeah. I put together a really fantastic Russian poppy seed roll – I highly recommend that recipe! So, hey, yummy desserts totally made up for the lackluster dinner.

Plus, who needs dinner when you’ve had cinnamon rolls for breakfast?! Just like last year, my mommy made vegan cinnamon buns for our traditional Christmas morning breakfast of cinnamon rolls and grapefruit.

Stomachache-inducingly good.

They were just as perfect and sugary as they look. I really love that my family is so adaptable and willing to eat vegan. It doesn’t hurt that my mom is 95% vegan, too. ;) My parents both felt so bad about our dinner!fail, which made me feel quite guilty for having a moment of teenager-like petulance. Ah well.

So – that was my Christmas, from a food perspective! And you know what? Writing this post has totally rejuvenated my bloggy mojo. It probably doesn’t hurt that I’m also listening to crazy energetic/embarrassing dance music. Enrique, I’m lookin’ at you.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with this loverly photo of my siblings and me on Christmas Eve, just because. Man, my family is the bestest.

Yeah, we *might* be related...

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The Post-Holiday Rambling Rundown: Part I, New Year’s Edition

HELLO MY FRIENDS! HAPPY 2011!

I was all excited about posting from RI, but when I was actually there, sitting on the couch in my parents’ living room and enjoying the Christmas ambiance, I realized that I had much, much better things to do – things like catching up with friends over tea or brunch, and spoiling my doggies with love, and visiting my sweet grandmother in her nursing home, and playing really cheesy LAN games with my family, and being generally inane and ridiculous with my sister. So I’m not sorry for not posting – I see my RI family and friends so rarely that I wasn’t about to squander my time with them by putzing around on the internet and reading blogs when I could be enjoying their company – no offense. ;)

And when I finally got back to Madison, a day and a half later than expected thanks to some major travel!fails*, I was tired and stressed, and blogging was sort of beyond my comprehension. Then I had a quick two days of work before taking off for a New Year’s Eve celebration with some of my best friends from college. I did bake cookies for our celebration:

Flat Stanleys.

Oh, they look a little flat, you say? Oddly thin and grotesquely large, you think? Well… yeah. I won’t argue with you. I had a little baking!fail with these Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies from 500 Vegan Recipes – had to keep the travel!fail company, y’know? I suspect I must’ve added a bit too much EB – I was a little sloppy while measuring. But they still tasted rich and delicious despite their dubious appearance.

And, while making them, I got to use the brand new sifter and cooling rack my wonderful parents gave me for Christmas, which was very exciting for me!

Sifty sifty!

I think cooking or foodie-related gifts made up half of my Christmas haul this year – my family knows me so well. As for me, I felt all filled with Christmas cheer when I watched my family open the plethora of handknitted gifts I spent months creating – look out for them in an upcoming post. :)

Now, though, I’m thinking ahead to 2011. I never made an official resolution until two years ago, when I made a very deliberate decision to improve my outlook on life and to replace my characteristic pessimism and negativity with optimism and positivity. Despite my skepticism, I succeeded, and last year I extended that resolution with what I called my “Positivity Plus!” goal, which was essentially just keeping up a [mostly] positive attitude.

This year, though, I’m focusing on a few other things. I definitely will maintain my newfound optimism, difficult though it can be at times, but I also want to extend it to my shyness and social anxiety – half the reason I get nervous about various situations is because I always think about them in negative terms; I’m convinced that they’ll be terrible and awkward, and I set myself up for failure. No more! I will consciously try to not do that anymore.

At my NYE gathering, my friends all issued 2011 challenges for one another. For example, my physics major friend is tasked with reading 4 books this year. What a terrible challenge, right?! Oy. Anyway, my challenge is to try one new fitness DVD/YouTube video a month and to write a review of it for my friends. So – anybody have a suggestion for that? It can be serious or otherwise! :)

Those are my two serious goals for 2011, but I also have some general thoughts about other things I hope to achieve. For example:

* Continuing to buy mostly used/upcycled/thrifted clothes and other household items
* Trying out new crafts, like crocheting and embroidering
* Making time to volunteer with the Humane Society
* Taking risks!
* Being more active in general
* Focusing more on really learning Italian and ASL (instead of dabbling in multiple languages)
* …a few other personal things :)

Whew! Those are my thoughts for 2011… what are yours? Do you make resolutions? Set goals? Issue challenges? I’m so excited for this year! Are you?

* Things that are good about travel!fails: Extra time with your family, the possibility of compensation by the airline for their screw-ups, an extra day of vacation
Things that are bad about travel!fails: Being too tired to enjoy extra family time because you had to wake at 4:30 to catch the flight that failed you, needing to take 1.5 more days out of work than anticipated, not getting compensated because everybody’s blaming everybody else for the fail
…overall, though, I didn’t mind the extra time with la famiglia. :)