July happiness

So I'm back in SoCal, doing a little summer work. That doesn't necessarily make me happy. But the 4th of July sale at the Ann Taylor factory store sure did lift my mood. I added a cute summer dress to my wardrobe.

Sadly the tomato plant wasn't doing so well when I got back. My roommate was out of town for the weekend, so we wouldn't have anybody to water it. Plus, it gets pretty darn hot on our patio, which would probably dry out the plant even more. So her solution was to hang it in my bathroom. It's pretty light in there but not so hot.
Well, Mato, as I call the plant, did make it, but then we left it in my bathroom too long (too lazy to move such a heavy plant) and I guess there wasn't quiet enough light to keep Mato happy for an entire week. Good news, mato is not entirely dead, but after we trimmed it ... Mato looks very bald. However, it's still producing tasty tomatoes. So it counts as happy news.
Getting something pretty is always filled under happy news. Michelle made me this project bag. And I love it. She took me to a fabric store, part of her plan for pay back. I got her into knitting, now she will get me hooked on her latest addiction : sewing. Something tells me it will work. Especially when she teaches me to make this fun cute project bags.

And then there is lace knitting. I've finished the staircase socks, so my size 3 needles are free. Figured I'd put a little lace on there for a change.

First there is the triangle shawl I dubbed the barbie shawl. I decided to frog and start over again. It was hard at first, it hurt a little bit, but I am very happy with how it looks now. It is still barbie sized, but I'm more motived to make it human size.

Next is the box lace shawl. Haven't picked it up in a while, but I like working on it. Pretty colors, picked out by Michelle, with her impeccable taste. This time, there was something new about it though. Four new things to be exact. I don't know how, I don't know when, but if you look closely, you can see the offset in the pattern caused by my four extra stitches.
I still file this under happy news though. Just cause I enjoy knitting it.

And finally, I got a text yesterday from Michelle that Maya (who currently is experiencing the joy talking) mentioned my name. Now if that does not count as July happy news, I don't know what does.
Don't have a picture to go with that, so here's another sight that always makes me smile

Home, in the land of rain

This is my first of two trips to Belgium over the summer. (Hurray for cheap tickets.)
I decided to do some useful stuff during my trip. First off, give my blog a little sprucing up. So I know you gotta save all the extra stuff (links to other blogs and what not) and I opened up the old template (or so I thought) and copied and pasted into a word document. Feeling smart about my actions I picked a new template. I got ready to paste my old links back in though I had some problems finding them. I mean, I saw links to blogs, but they weren't mine... And then I realized I had copied the template of another blog I'm a member of. *Sigh* Bye bye links.

The other day, I decided to help my dad around the yard. Happy to say, nothing bad happened. Even though he let me use this:
That was fun. I just did a little bit of trimming, nothing major.
And then I got around to making a little progress on this project. I just need to do the toe decreases. Of course it has been so long, I gotta look at my other sock to figure our what I did last time. Note the water falling out of the sky in the background. Little bit dryer now. Wednesday should be awesome they say. We'll see.

And now the booboos affect my knitting

I feel pretty stupid. A little background as to how my booboo came about.
A while back, I decided to write my lace patterns into a little notebook. I've gotten several from the internet, printing them out is a hassle and to then keep track of it is an even bigger hassle. So writing them in one central location seemed rather genius to me. So far, I only have 2 patterns in my book, which makes my booboo even sillier.
Here's the story: almost 3 years ago, I started a lace shawl. I liked the pattern, don't know the name anymore, but I had some soft yarn and I cast on. The project went very very slow, so I started referring to it as the "barbie shawl" and soon after I put it down. For the longest time the pattern was written down on a random scrap paper. Earlier this year, when I was going through one of my cleaning frenzies, as I so often do, I found my barbie shawl and decided to write the pattern into the notebook. Because so much time had passed, I forgot all about how slow it used knit and I kept it close. Putting on a row here and there. This weekend, feeling euphoric over finishing my camo socks and getting rid of all the NCIS's on the DVR, I picked up my barbie shawl again. I don't know the pattern by heart, but I did know there were a few regular knit rows in there. Looking at my row count, I was happy to be at one of those rows. Even more euphoria. Until it dawned on me, that the pattern in front of me didn't tell me to increase one. Nor did the next row, or any other row... Which is not right when knitting a triangle shawl.
My smart ass was knitting the wrong pattern! Ugh! Well there went my euphoria. Thought about ways to fix it, undoing a row didn't seem like any fun, just continuing with the pattern would require me to think 2 minutes (no fun either), so I went with my favorite solution: F*** it. Add on one more row of stockinette and make it a rectangular scarf with one pointy end. We'll see how it turns out.

In tomato news, can't deny the existence of this one :)

And I leave you with a picture of the mighty "thunder cat" Thor...

Mato

I'm so happy I'm not the only one that is affected by infomercials (and those regular late night commercials for the most awesome stuff) My roommate is also very susceptable and so she came home with some upside down plant growing bag and two tomato plants. I've nicknamed them Mato.
It took some time, but yesterday we saw this beautiful sight. I'm super impatient, it already took way too long for this to happen. Think I'll have fresh tomato before I leave to Belgium in exactly a week?(Ok, so they are still very small and kinda hard to see in the picture. But we have three tomatoes there.) And speaking of impatient, I applied for a teaching job Golden West College last week (little less than a week). I'm already wondering when they're gonna offer me the job, or at least let me know ... anything. Sigh. As if job limbo doesn't suck enough, I got a parking ticket today. For being only 2 minutes late. Very peeved about that one.

In happier news, I finished a project. Oh yes I did!!! Except for the end by the cuff that I need to weave in (I don't care about the one by the toes, nobody sees those) Ophie is still my main model, the other one trying to show off in the background is Thor.

Spinning booboo

Because I don't already have enough hobbies and enough way to procrastinate from doing things I should do, Michelle has giving me a new addiction : spinning yarn. She was nice enough to supply me with some tools too and off I was. Crazed look and all. I was spinning some lovely light blue and orange fiber. She had dyed it with easter egg paint. Love it! Off course, guess who else was digging it.
And it actually went pretty well. And then came the part where I had to double the yarn... Michelle had giving me some tips on how it could be done in a very casual way. And I paid attention to what she said. It's just, I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. Apparently I'm not good enough to watch something a little more then semi interesting on tv and double yarn. Because this is what happened : I'm not ready to totally give up on this ... (fill in whatever word you find appropriate) ... Although up to this point, any attempt to fix has made it look worse. Good thing I'm more stubborn then the yarn right now. And when (see, didn't say "if") I detangle this pile of lovely, I can give it another shot with this : I will let you know how it goes.

April

I suppose it has been a pretty good month. I got to to home to Belgium for spring break. Only a week, not long enough. The weather was great. You never know what you might get over there at that time of month. So I was pretty lucky I got to play all my rounds in warm sunshine beaming down :)
Then after being home for week it was of to Arizona for some rugby. Two games, bummed we didn't win either but we did play pretty well. We have one more game this season. A game we should win. I hope we do.
And today, last day in April, is Koninginnedag or Queen's day. And this year she is visiting the town where I was born. So I feel a little bit proud. And then some crazy guy had to go and do this. Yep, he took his car and drove into the royal family's bus. So much for a happy celebration.

I'm just enjoying these random moments this month. Because in 4 months I have to take my qualifying exam to get my master's degree. One month for each subject. Yes, random moments, I will miss you.

Day of revelations

Well, it took me only 10 days to finish sock #1. For me, that is a record time. Size 3 needles, it just goes to slow for me and my attention span. But because I put a little lace pattern in the sock, it helped to keep me ... interested. (I know, it sounds so bad, I have a such a short attention span, I got bored with thinking of a comparison)
But I'm pretty happy with sock 1. Now for sock 2. We'll see how long it takes.

On a different note, parking my car. I have a tiny little golf and I consider to be pretty good at parking. Just give me an inch on each side and I'll get my car in. However, I'm finding out, the bigger the spot, apparently the harder it is for me to park it. Very weird, if I got room for 1.5 times my car, I find myself backing up and forward and repeat like 5 times. Kind of embarrassing...

And my final revelation, I might actually go through the effort of making the 'Barefoot Contesa's ' sticky buns. They look soo yummy and I think I can spare 10 min to bake a made from scratch sugar overload.