Lots of stuff

Oh, big update. I really am trying to get into the habit of updating this thing more frequently. Blogger just makes it SO DIFFICULT. But I've got quite a lot of stuff tonight:

So, I got around to joining Project Spectrum finally. I think I put it off for a while because it starts March with reds and pinks... which are colors I am generally unfond of and, well, I just don't have much yarn in either of these colors! But then I decided, what the hell. If nothing, it gives me an excuse to pimp mp3s. Yup. I am going to upload a couple of mp3s having to deal with the color for each month in my sidebar as the month comes up. That means that there are ones for March and April up.

March

• Dir en grey's RED ... [em] - A song off of their Vulgar album that was rather popular. Me, I particularily like the guitar solo... not to mention, I believe it was written by Die, who is well-known for always having bright red hair.
• Ben Folds Five's Your Redneck Past - Off of the Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. I find it especially amusing on the album how Army segues into this song and the bit in French in the middle.
• hide's Pink Spider - Just... every hide fan out there knows this song and the significance behind the title. You can't do a color-themed music compilation and come to pink without thinking 'hide'.
  
• Rose Tint my World from Rocky Horror Picture Show. A song that constantly gets stuck in my head.

April

• Merry's Yellow Girl - Oh, I love Merry's crazy eroguro music. Their guitar work always impresses me, and they sounded amazing even as an indies band.
• Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini - Oh, c'mon. Everyone knows this song! How could I not use it? 2 3 4, tell the people what she wore!
• Plastic Tree's Trance Orange - This song kind of confounds me. It really sounds far too mellow for Plastic Tree, especially considering it was on their Hide and Seek album. It's amazing how high pitched Ryutaro's voice sounds in comparison to recent stuff...
  
• Orange Range's Yuugu Red - LOOK! It's 2 fer one! Orange Range is awesome, and I do believe Yuugu red is probably one of my favorite of their songs.

And while I may not have done any red knitting in March, I did buy some lovely sock yarn off of elann.com that includes reds and pinks: Regia surf at 6.48 a skein. Awesome. So I got 4 skeins - I can't pass up a deal like that. The blue and purple yarn next to it is Lorna's Laces River for a scarf that a friend requested.

In addition to that, some yarn for a seeeekrit project is in the mail and due any day. After that, I have to say, I am not allowed to buy any more yarn until... May. I was good and managed to keep my self-inforced 'no yarn til March' rule 3 weeks past the deadline, I'm sure I can do it again!

I finished the following Granma's blanket well over a month ago now, but I've been terrible about putting pictures up. This was a modified version of the Cozy pattern at Knitty.com, with 25 repeats cast on instead of the 14 it asked for. In all, after blocking, it came out to being 36 inches wide by just over 48 long. It was certainly big enough to cover my lap, so it'll work fine for my granma's. Even though I sent it out over 2 weeks ago, I still haven't heard from my mom whether or not she recieved it. I'm sure she must have by now, but I am getting a bit nervous that it may have gotten lost in the mail. To the right, there, is a closeup on the stitches. I've said before that the light in my apartment is crap - well, you'd never guess from this picture what the actual yarn color looked like. No, it's not a mucky brown, but actually a nice green. The picture below of it blocking captures the color a lot better, even if you can't see much in the way of stitchwork. And hey, if you look hard enough, you can spot my knitted robot and an (at the time) incomplete Sockpal sock.




Bringing me next to what most people who probably actually bother to look at this post are here for: Sockpal socks. They're finished! Sockpal, should you be reading this, I want you to know that even though this picture was taken on my bathroom counter (amusingly enough, some of the better light in this place is in my bathroom... sigh) it was at the time mostly clean, and the socks got tossed into the washer shortly afterwards. They have since been blocked. These are probably the most complex socks I've made - I usually stick with boring old stockinette or 2x2 rib for mine.




Lastly, for the hell of it, first we have a picture of the first sleeve of a Dulaan children's sweater - almost finished. I hope to get it and at least one more finished before the deadline. And next to that? Well, that's my sock stash. Well, technically, not my entire sock stash. There's the 4 skeins of regia I bought which aren't in the picture, the 4 skeins that are currently on needles, the 2 skeins which need to be put into balls... yeah, I have a problem with sock yarn, I think.

So close

So close to having the second sockpal sock done. Here I am, sitting on it, finishing the last pattern repeat before starting the toe, and then JAB, and a horrible pain in my left index as I put another hole in my damn finger.

Fuck.

At least I didn't bleed on the yarn?

The second sock has not been without its difficulties. Really, I knitted and frogged the heel at least 3 times, being paranoid that I had either knit too many or too few rows in the heelflap. Luckily the yarn doesn't appear to be any worse for wear from my crazy time-wasting vacillations. Hell, I probably had it right the first time and was being paranoid.

Alas, no picture... not for any particular reason than I'm lazy and I know that at 12:30 at night I am not going to get decent light, even if I were to put on all the lamps in my room. Sadly - well, actually not, I kind of prefer it that way - my apartment doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight. Oh well, it can wait til they're both done.

Hole

So, I actually finished up the granma blanket last weekend. It's currently sitting folded up on the floor, waiting to have the edges blocked and the loose ends weaved in. That's what I plan to do this weekend.

I have the front and back of the Dulaan sweater finished and grafted together. That's sitting folded up on top of the granma blanket.

And I even have the first sockpaloooza sock finished except for kitchener on the toes.

HOWEVER-

there will be no knitting this weekend, as there was not any this entire week. The reason why?

Well, see, I have these stompy new neighbors upstairs. I mean, stomp stomp stomp, sounds like somebody dropped a bowling ball. And they have an extremely undisciplined little 3 year old who they apparently let run around at all hours, including up to 3 AM. Well, once they started their daily performance on Sunday around 10 AM (me, still asleep, considering I don't even get up for work on weekdays until after 11) they managed to stomp hard enough that MY floors shake. And they managed to upset the fans in my computer - and I've been having a bit of trouble with fans lately. I had 2 die in quick succession in October, and then the one on my video card crapped out a month later (and I had to buy a whole new video card). So, they upset my fans, I leap forth from bed and turn off the computer, yank off the side panel, etc etc etc... and as I'm trying to figure out which fan is making the ungodly death noise by stopping each one in turn, one of the fans on my motherboard BIT ME. Took a nice chunk out of my nosepicking finger (AKA, the index finger) on my left hand.

So, no knitting. I tried several days ago and the first time I pushed a needle against the chewed up spot - well, yeah, that hurt.

On the other hand, calling the rental office with my long list of complaints about my new upstairs neighbors and the magical words 'are you going to do something about this or am I going to have to call the cops' seems to have had some effect.