Peach Blossoms in Atlanta

Belatedly posting this one (again) because this month has been absolutely NUTS with travel. So here are some photos from the last few days of my trip to the States, all from Atlanta. I quite like the area, but in the end I decided Atlanta and Emory were not the places for me. Beautiful scenery though. I think the aerial view is one of my favorite pictures ever...at least of photos that I have taken.

Letters from Across the Pond: Part 2

Dear Yas and IQ,

I'm heading for Atlanta tomorrow, so I'll close out my New York portion of this trip. The week has been pretty quiet so far, in large part to everyone else having....you know....a job. So I've been on my own a bit, which I don't mind at all. One of the big reasons I like coming to visit my Dad is that I can catch up on sleep and spend a couple of days just being comfortable and letting my brain catch up with me. I've not been a complete slugabed however, and have gone on a few forays into The City to catch up with friends (or rather just one, the other canceled on me. Twice ;p) and see some awesome art.
First there was dinner with Jen on Sunday night -
Complete with a very nice view of the City on the ferry ride back. I used to take the Ferry in every day when I did a summer internship in the Financial District. It's always pretty to look at, some days more than others. Particularly when it isn't raining (Ferry when it's raining = le crap).

On Monday I went into city to a little gallery in Chelsea to see...well...Legos. But not just *any* Legos. Legos by this guy; Nathan Sawaya. I know I've already raved to you guys in just about every imaginable electronic medium available about this exhibit...but, clearly I have to get this one as well. OH MY GOD, THAT WAS SO COOL! Seriously...beautiful stuff, and I wish I could have some of his art in my house. I never thought of LEGO bricks as being able to communicate emotion (other than frustration when you're missing that last piece in the 3,000 piece LEGO Star Destroyer kit...that was a dark day) but apparently I was wrong....have you ever wanted to hug a LEGO sculpture because it looks sad? Don't answer that...(YARR PHOTO BLIZZARD AHEAD!!!) ( See Flickr for better versions of these photos, it's not nice to kill the blog/people's internet connections by putting these full res, but a lot of them came out really well) .

















Of all the works, I think this one is probably my favorite....not to say the others weren't amazing...but I kept coming back to this one for some reason...If i ever get a spare 10,000 dollars (Lotto anyone) I could stare at this all day...


After that? Well....obviously I had to swing by Times Square. Not much has changed, but it's still nice to take a look at. If only to remind myself why I DON'T want to live here full time.



Tomorrow I'm heading for Atlanta to take a look at Emory....woohah.

Copping to it, or Too Stressed To Knit

So, when I first set out on this “one FO a week” idea, I knew there would be bumps, and that I probably wouldn’t stick to it very well. This was part of the reason why I started it as early in the fall as I did, and set the goal so high. The other reason is that, while I knew I was perfectly capable of knitting a hat/pair of gloves a week and could spread it out, taking plenty of time and not getting sick of knitting as I went along. Slow and steady wins the race.

Now if only my brain hadn’t gotten in the way. Remember those few posts about the hats a couple weeks ago? Yeah…trying to knit a hat a day…. I’m a moron. Though I did actually get one more out of the week (see below) things went south after that. I picked up some absolutely gorgeous yarn from a LYS and set to knitting myself An Unoriginal Hat only to realize as I neared the end of my first of 2 skeins, that I wasn’t going to have enough yarn, I was okay with this (this is why you can always go back for more, the store wasn’t going to shut down over night) until I realized one more problem…if I completed the pattern as planned…I was going to end up with a hat for Andre the Giant.

I didn't think to add something in for scale, but trust me....that's only the first of two repeats, not to mention the decreases...I'd have wound up with a skull cap for Andre..or maybe one of the statues they have littered around the city. Trust me.

Now, when I realize I’ve made a huge gaff like this, and I do it a lot, I tend to get somewhat despondent and lose interest in knitting for a while, eventually I come back to it, rip back the yarn and suffer through it. But the amount of time it takes is generally proportional to how frustrated I am with knitting in general at that time, how much time I’ve put in on the project, and how traumatic it was to realize I’d have to rip back the whole thing. For example, when I first moved to the UK I was working on a sweater, I took most of my sadness and homesickness from the time and used knitting as an outlet…until I realized I was going to have to rip out the ENTIRE sleeve I’d just knit (mostly while being utterly depressed)…that particular sleeve is still waiting to be undone 14 months later. Honestly…it may be there for another 14 months before I can bring myself to rip out all those freaking cables. (Seriously…that chart was a monster)

Okay, coming back from the tangent, the combination of overkill on the knitting and the realization of a necessary rip proved to be a bit much, so I took some time off, then started my intended project for the next week- a pair of Urban Necessity fingerless gloves/mittens for my brother Harry. Harry is an artist specializing in metalwork, so he spends most of is time working in his shop north of Denver….i don’t know if any of you have ever been to Denver, but it gets freaking cold in the winter, even if you ARE standing next to a forge. So the idea was to knit a thin pair of gloves he could wear under the shop gloves he sometimes wears. I chose the urban necessity pattern because they were fingerless gloves that still had fingers (just not closed) instead of stopping before that, like the Evangeline pattern (one of my all-time favourites). Just one problem with them – the cuff is K1P1 ribbing...my own personal form of knitting hell. Two-by-two ribbing I can just about tolerate, but one-by-one? Don’t even speak to me about it…I loath it. Plus, given that I’d decided I needed to knit up the XL size, there was A LOT of it to do.

Now here’s where I’ll cop to it…the combination of the K1P1 ribbing, and my own stressed out state due to academia made knitting an impossibility. Now seriously, anyone who knows me will know how much of a wreck I was, when I say that for the past two weeks I have been too stressed to knit. To knit! My ultimate stress reliever! So my dear readers (all 4 of you, Hi Mom) I’ll cop to it – I fell off the wagon and have barely knit a stitch. It’s like I’ve been in a coma….and I am now, unsurprisingly, a bit behind on my Christmas knitting.

However, I am happy to say that I now have a Masters Degree!!!!, (BOOYAH!) and am no longer Too Stressed To Knit. So I’m clambering back on that wagon, and working on catching up. The entry is getting rather long, so I’ll end it here and catch up with the rest tomorrow! Suffice to say I’m knitting again…or at least I was until it all went wrong.

Project Profile: Dad’s Black Cap (XL)

Yarn: Blue Sky Aplacas - Bulky (Black, don't remember the color #)

Details: knit to be massive on size 13 dpns

Pattern: Modified "Turn A Square" by Jared Flood

I've owed my dad a knit object for years, but I'd never gotten around to it. BAD DAUGHTER, VERY BAD DAUGHTER. So this year I finally did. The first "Turn-a-Square" hat I made was intended for him before I realized that a) it was way too light and b) it was probably too small. My Dad's got a big noggin, so accordingly, this hat is massive...honestly, i dunno that it's going to fit him, but if it doesn't it's only a matter of a few hours to rip and re-knit the thing, so no problem there.

Mr. Teddy Models....