Bunnies and Ball-Joints

School started Monday and I was NOT ready. :P I have managed to make it day by day, but I'm not ready for next week or for the rest of the year. So much work to do! So much school left! Ugh! Case in point: I started this post Saturday to schedule for Monday. I'm only just now getting back to it on Wednesday. :P

Let's do what I do best and ignore the stress and talk about something fun, eh? I'm picking up a new hobby. It's terrible timing, but what is life but terrible timing? It's also sort of a strange hobby, definitely one I've gotten a few polite "Ooooh...?"s about. It won't take over my knitting time (in fact, it'll add to it!) and I'll only post about it a few Mondays a month if/as I actually accomplish things.

If you follow me on Pinterest, I apologize for spamming your feed with kind of creepy photos all weekend. All part of the new hobby. :) It'll combine knitting, sewing, and art, so I'm really excited. Perhaps most exciting: I can't spend endless hours on it like I can knitting for myself, so if I get sucking into something, I'll have to put it down after a little bit of work while I wait between steps and get back to my school stuff, which definitely needs loads of attention this semester, but is getting much less painful to work on.

What is this newfangled hobby? Asian ball-jointed dolls. I told you, strange. Even I think dolls are creepy, but I think you'll understand better when I actually get the doll. The first doll. I've already bought a second without even knowing if this is really my cup of tea, lol. If it isn't, I'll find someone else to buy them. :)

School has kept me either incredibly busy or napping because I am incredibly busy, so there has been zero knitting this week. {Insert the giantest of giant sad faces here} The long weekend should give me the opportunity to finish up at least one of my three working sweaters, then HPKCHC starts up again and I will be casting on All!The!Things! again. I'm sticking to small things this time. Too many sweaters in recent months. To many sweaters still to finish between the little things. Which is not to say that there won't be new sweaters! Just...fewer. :)

How are you?! Tell me your excitement or woes. I hope excitement!

Since I have managed not to talk about anything photogenic, here are some bunnies.

Spike and Sweetpea cuddling (as usual).

Teddy emptied his hay box so he could sit in it and eat hay. :)

I think John must have interrupted Ophelia and T-Rex's nap to get this picture. It's a wonder he made it out alive, judging by those looks!

Sleeves, Sleeves, and More Sleeves

School is starting, which means all sorts of craziness for me. No time to acclimate to being back home after my trip Home, a dissertation prospectus that's due (again), an office move (and nowhere near enough space for my books), class planning (that I haven't had time to start yet), and of course five bunnies! They are the least of the crazy, though. After some amazing climbing, water bottle rejection, litter box amnesia, and food weirdness (and that's just Teddy! :D), I think everybun is settled and happy. As happy as a bunny can be (tolerant is a better word).

Still knitting. I promise. Though you wouldn't know it from visiting here, eh? I'm stuck in a sleeve rut. Three sweaters, all in the sleeve phase. I'm down from six to four and a half, though, so there's progress. Would you like to meet the sleeves? Let's!

Here's the half, which is a bit tighter than is necessary, even though I knit it a size larger than the rest of the sweater. Couldn't get my hand through the cuff of my size. :S

And the whole sleeve, which is actually a 3/4 sleeve. I knit the thing inside-out sort of accidentally and had zero laddering, which has never happened when I magic looped a sleeve (or two at a time). I think I'm going to just do that every time. By knitting it inside-out, I mean I had the wrong side (the knit side for this cardigan) facing me and worked the right side (the purl side) on the inside of the sleeve. I had intended to knit the whole sleeve because I hate to purl, but I couldn't get it to work and still pick up stitches prettily in the underarm. That didn't make any sense, did it? Please refer to paragraph one of this post and forgive me.

I haven't started the other sweater's sleeves. Let me rephrase that: I haven't restarted the other sweater's sleeves yet. They were all but done and I tried on the sweater and ripped them out, ripped out the band, ripped out the shoulder seams, and added short-rows to the shoulders. I've done this before to add an inch to the back. I'm hoping I don't have to do it again. It's pretty and I love it and the sleeves will be better this time (if the back is finally behaving), so I'm not bummed yet, but I'm not convinced that the whole thing won't end in frustration.

Once I'm finished with these three sweaters, I'm going to pick up one I partially frogged this time last year. Guess what it needs?! SLEEVES!!! Please help me make sleeve bearable! What do you like to do when you knit sleeves? Movies? Audiobooks? Daydreaming? Wearing the first finished sleeve? ;)

I'm going to cast on a million socks when the SSKAL is over, lol. Too many sleeves!

Change of Scenery

I'm back home in Idaho for about a week. As I walked to the front door of our house last night, I thought, "Gosh that tree looks weird....Did they replace it?" It wasn't until this morning that I realized it's because it has leaves on it that it looks weird. :) I haven't been home in a green season (there are fewer than normal in Idaho!) for four years.

Trip = new project, in my book, so here it is:

Ginny's Cardigan from the Unofficial Harry Potter Knits magazine released last year. I'm loving it! The yarn is Frog Tree Alpaca Sport. It knits up rather unevenly, but I suspect a good steaming will set the stitches right. Maybe plump them a bit too. It's an awfully light sport.

I'm three chapters from the end of Deathly Hallows and that makes me really sad. I'll have to do a Harry Potter movie marathon when I'm done. And then maybe listen to all the books all over again. ;)

It's incredibly, uncharacteristically (I live in the desert) stormy here! How's the weather in your neck of the woods? Hopefully as knitting-friendly as here!