Shout outs

Gradschoolknitter is having a contest for her 100th post - check it out!

Allison (of Supercrafty.com), who I've blogged about before, has some somewhat good news - Evan's surgery for his brain tumor has been bumped up to 2 weeks from now. This change is unfortunately because Evan is showing some decline - so please send some good thoughts their way. And maybe even buy some yarn :)

I'm relieved it's Thursday - it's been a week of minimal sleep so far. And even though I went to bed early, I was woken up by an earthquake this morning. Bringing my grand total of earthquakes felt to 3 :)

We have a winner!

Or 3 :) Congratulations to for gradschoolknitter winning the teapot! Ellen and Nonnahs are the lucky winners of yarny goodness. I'll email you all to get your addresses and get your prizes in the mail some time next week.

From it's humble beginnings as a mobile favorites bar, this blog has documented my knitting through all sorts of events. Going to my first SnB, learning to knit lace, the boyfriend sweater, the ensuing breakup and ACL surgery, learning to dye, the Knitting Olympics, nannying, leaving grad school, another breakup, a new relationship, moving, and most recently my brother's death.

More importantly than letting access my favorite links wherever I go, documenting my knitting, or recording the events of my life these last 3 years, this blog has served as a cheaper alternative to therapy.

No, just kidding! It's served as a place for me to meet people I may not otherwise have had the chance to meet (no matter how close they live to me) It's served as a place for me to share creativity and experiences and find support and ideas. Some of you I've known for years, some of you I've never met. Thanks for reading :)

Pictures!

A finally finished gift for a friend
Yarny prizes for the contest
More yarny prizes
And a very tiring but very worthwhile hike.

Contests and knitting

Knittinggal is having a contest - go check it out! And don't forget the contest here! For those of you who don't want to be entered for the teapot but rather the yarny goodness let me know. I'm planning on uploading some pictures tonight, including pictures of the other prizes. In addition to whatever else may be lurking on my camera.....

I'm still slowly chugging away at the manly sock, in hopes of finishing it this summer. Seriously - what happened to my knitting? Looking at my everpresent stash is causing a slight panic. I went to SnB in Santa Monica for the first time in over 2 months last night. It feels strange to go back after so long - you worry that things will be awkward when you haven't been there, especially for the reasons I stopped going anywhere. But I needn't have worried. Though only a few of the people I know were there, the group was still the same :) Mirkins, birthing, and of course knitting conversation still abounds. Unfortunately I won't be able to go back until my class ends :(

Time to get to work so I can leave early and do laundry and read Harry Potter. I have my priorities :)

What a weekend

Life has been busy on the weekends these last few months! The weekend before, M and I flew out to Chicago for the wedding of a friend of his. We left Thursday evening, rushing to the airport as fast as you can through LA traffic and arrived in Chicago early Friday morning. We picked up the rental and headed out into the city to search for food. Your best bet for finding something open at 2 am is to find out where all the bars are, so we identified a promising location and parked. Only to find that the passenger side door was broken - attempting to open it from the inside resulted in the interior door coming away from the frame! Exchanging the car was added to the list of things to do before leaving for Wisconsin. Fed, we drove to M's cousin's place and crashed (with the help of some Sudafed and Tylenol PM for my flare of allergies on the flight in) Friday we got up, got brunch, and took a little tour of the Wrigleyville area before exchanging the car. My parents tell me I've been to Chicago, but I was too young to remember it.

This time I certainly will. Not half an hour after we exchanged the rental, a truck hit us as it tried to scrape past us in traffic. It took us an hour to sort that all out, but we finally made it on our way to Wisconsin to meet up with some of M's family at the lake. After living in CA for so long, I miss how much you can get in terms of real estate (or food!) in the Midwest. We continued on to Sheboygan (the locale of the wedding), where we had brats before the wedding (when in Rome....) and danced (drank) the night away. I had a great time meeting all of M's fraternity brothers (from MIT, nonetheless) - they're definitely a fun group of guys. Another whirlwind tour of the lake and Chicago and we headed back for CA.

This weekend was the camping/company picnic/hiking weekend. A night hike in Pt. Mugu State Park, company festival, and a day hike in Circle X Ranch area have made for one exhausting weekend. I used to be much more of a hiker in my college days, but I'm enjoying getting back into (when M isn't picking the routes. He seems to think an 8 mile roundtrip hike is totally feasible in 3 hours. Right.) In addition to running up mountains, I also finally got around to going to see Harry Potter and exploring the local restaurants.

What does this all have to do with knitting? It means I haven't gotten much done :) I'm still working on the 2nd manly sock and trying to be more project monogamous in order to start getting things done. It may be a good time to revise my summer knitting goals.....

Hope you all had a good weekend - don't forget to enter the contest by Friday!

Contest!

My 3 year blogiversary is the 27th of this month - and as promised I'm holding a contest. Submit a comment to this post answering 1 of the following (or all if you like!):

1. Favorite knitting tutorial/pattern, with link.
   
2. Favorite book - and for those Harry Potter fans, what are your plans when the final book comes out?
3. Favorite way to unwind after a stressful day.
4. Favorite vacation memory
   

What's the prize? As you may have read, my friend recently sent me the perfect teapot. So perfect, I'd already bought it for myself! So I'm offering up the duplicate:


I'll use a random number generator to choose 3 winners - one will receive this teapot and 2 others will receive yarn-related goodness. And because Blogger doesn't give me your email address (unless you've set it up to make it public), please either leave me your address or email it to me so I can get in touch with you! Contest ends July 27th, noon, PST.

Spread the word - if someone mentions they were referred by you you'll get another entry!

Bleh

My knitting mojo is totally gone - I had a whole week off last week and only managed to finish a couple of hats! I took a look at my summer knitting goals....hmm. Nothing. Took a look at my queue on Ravelry. Nothing. I've joined Summer of Socks and Mystery Stole 3 and haven't started either.

It's times like these when I look at my stash of yarn, books, and WIPs and start to panic slightly. Will I ever get it all done?

Right now the priority is to finish the knits for other people (who are thankfully flexible about the idea of receiving birthday gifts post-birthday). Next, WIPs for me. It will be a day of ruthless evaluation of WIPs and frogging those I don't think I'll ever finish. Blinders to new projects!

On my drive home Monday, my friendly voicemail voice informed me my mailbox was full and I had to clear out some of the old messages in order to keep the new ones coming in. Yes, I had about 18 saved voicemails. I do that from time to time - but most of these were from when my brother died. Many calls saying, "I'm sorry, call if you want, but you don't have to." I've come some way from 2 months ago when he died. I happened to catch Veronica Mars last night, the episode where her boyfriend breaks up with her and she holds it all in until she gets in the shower and just breaks down. Apparently I'm not the only one :) I wouldn't say I'm totally happy now or that I never think about it. I think about it every day. But it doesn't feel like it's controlling my life anymore. And that's huge.

On a happier note, my 3 year blogiversary is coming up on the 27th. Keep your eye out for a contest - I'm working on coming up with a fabulous prize :)

And the winner is....

Kami - who guessed 728. Only 5 away from the actual number of 723. Can I say how eerie that is? Have you been watching all the movies I've been watching? That's just crazy.

Honorable mentions:

Most creative guess - textual bulldog, who included a fraction. I have a thing about finishing movies I start and not including movies I didn't finish on my list, but there are certainly more and more movies I don't finish.

Guess highlighting my ideal life of knitting and watching movies: elspeth, who guess 889. I'm so close...

Guess generously downplaying the number of movies I've seen: gradschool knitter, with only 250. I feel like I'm approaching that number in a year at the rate I'm going :)

So, winners and honorable mentions, send me your snail mail addresses and something will be arriving shortly :)

Contest

When I was an intern, a friend of mine introduced me to IMDb, and the My Movies feature. A few days were spent entering in movies I've seen, and today I did some catching up. And, well, I'm a little shocked at how many movies I've actually seen....

Inspired by Wendy, who is giving away books when she's finished with them and is actually the reason I have this book, I'm offering up my copy of Friday Night Knitting Club. To enter, leave me a comment with your guess as to how many movies I've seen, along with your email address (alternately, you can send me an email telling me which comment was yours if you're not comfortable with that). I'll leave it open until April 6th, the winner being whoever guesses correctly or closest. Multiple close guesses will bring in a handy random number generator to pick the winner.

A few clues:

• I watch all sorts of movies
• TV shows I've rented on DVD are included
• The list covers whatever movies I can remember seeing as a kid
• The number is in the triple digits
  

Still plugging away on the WIPs I've got going and trying very hard to resist breaking the stash diet. It's going to be a busy week both at work and at home, before a 2 day camping trip at Sequoia! Send warm thoughts, because there might be snow....