Textbooks and Knitting

I will read textbooks and knit. That is my goal. I am already working on it. It would be easier if the knitting was not a knit 4, purl 1. This requires a little more attention then I should be giving the knitting. Because if I am to absorb any of the text book, I need to focus there.

The weather was BEAUTIFUL today. I think it was 75 at about 3:30pm. Sunny and warm and fantastic. I came home and got a little cleaning done. Read some more Harry Potter. I can't wait to finish the book because then I can (try to) force myself to do the reading that matters.

I spent over an hour on the computer working on a school project last night to have the computer crash without a save. ARGH!! So when I set back to working on it, I saved about every 1 minute. I may have been being paranoid, but I didn't want to do it three times. Here's hoping to another beautiful day tomorrow... back to reading I go.

Bad Day

I guess I am having a bad day. I feel kind of down and am not doing the things I need to do!!

Tara avert your eyes, I don't want your criticism. I just ate a bag of popcorn for my pre-dinner, then Kyle and I are going to go get something after I am done with school. I am having a day where the thought of cooking is too much to bear. I have a few too many of these days. I just can't think of ANYTHING to make and become crippled by the thought of food. So I called Kyle and told him I should be done with class early and we can go grab something after that.

I have a test tonight (hence getting out early) and have done everything BUT study for it. I keep meaning to, but here I am, continuing to not study. I have less than an hour (about 30 minutes until I have to leave) and have barely done any studying!! I have been preoccupied with my new gmail account. Email through Google, seems interesting. I have been setting up tags and filters and all kinds of nerdy computer stuff. At least it is the weekend, I WILL read my textbooks and get up to date on school what not. I am already feeling so tired by school. Bad since I am not very far into the semester!! Oh well, off I go for 20 minutes of studying!!

The above picture is how I feel.

Books, What, I LOVE Books!

While doing my usual browse of peoples blogs I saw RheLynn with this book meme. She linked to it from Chris'. I am interested!! So here I go...

Meme instructions: Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of.


The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling (Reading right now!!)
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
(The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini)
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
(Neuromancer - William Gibson)
(Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson)
(The Secret History - Donna Tartt)
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
(Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell)
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
(Atonement - Ian McEwan)
(The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert

I don't have much else going on. Today was my long day at school and I am now very tired. I think I will go to bed and get to reading some of that above mentioned Harry Potter. Of these books, I would highly recommend The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Middlsex, and The Life of Pi. They were all excellent books that doing this has made me want to reread them. I can't wait for summer, I am not taking any classes and plan to possible go back to Barnes and Noble as a second part time job. Oh the reading I will be able to do!!

The weekend is gone...

It was a good weekend, we had a lot of fun. Fishing, Bike Riding, Sewing, Making a bike rack for the van. Lots of stuff done. Not enough of other things done (school work).

So, I went to JoAnn's the other day for some fabric for a bag for myself and found this great orange canvas. I loved it and went to look for a good blue for the lining all the while thinking how familiar it looked. After about ten minutes it dawned on me, Tara made me an apron for X-Mas and it is the same fabric. I love it. And I have just now finished the bag. I also love it. I put pockets on the inside of this one. Great, I made a couple of little ones and one big one. Fantastic. Do I seem happy, because I am.

We also went fishing, I did not do too much, my back was hurting some so I quit after maybe a half hour. Kyle did not catch anything and I alternated between sleeping and reading up on economics while waiting for Kyle.

Today, we went to the park and went for a bike ride. It was great, I was exhausted by the end but had fun. We sat in the van thinking about ways of putting the bikes in there with camping gear. Kyle was inspired and we talked about ways of putting in a board with tracks that the bikes could lock down to. And then we made it happen. Okay Kyle (and my dad some) made it happen. In fact he is in the garage working on it right now. We will just have to plan a camping trip to make use of the bike rack.

No knitting, some fishing and a lot of Harry Potter.

That's right, I cast on for sock two and have knit very little for the past few days.

Kyle is trying to get me into fishing. So, we went and bought him a new reel so I can use the old one and a fishing license for me and we are going to try to go tomorrow. It has been on the cold side and raining, so we'll see. But he is very excited. We were planning to go camping, but I just could not stand the thought of being that cold. So it will just be a day trip. Then we are going to try to go for a nice long bike ride. I will be leaving the cruiser at home and taking my mountain bike. I don't want my cruiser to get jealous, because I love him and will think of his big comfy seat the whole time I am on the mountain bike.


When I first got the cruiser, I talked about wanting to name it. Something male and something French was what I was thinking. And then having the name painted on the bike in some great font, all curly-cues and embellishments. Mostly because I have a basket and then I knit the French Market Bag (link to my FMB - I realize this is a terrible picture, I guess I have never posted a finished pic of the bag I love and use all the time) and use it and feel so... Not Fresno!! I LOVE this bike. I told Kyle I think it is the BEST birthday present I have ever received (he got if for me 2 b-days ago).

And I am 3/4 of the way through Harry Potter 5. I can't stop reading. In fact that is all I am thinking about right now. I have been anxious to read it for over a month now. I started it in Alaska (my sister's copy) and intended to read my copy when I got home (that book is too big for airplane travel) but found out my brother was reading it. It would not have been a problem, because he finished what he thought was number 5 while I was in Alaska and was reading number 6. Well come to find out (in the car on the way home from the airport, he picked me up) he had accidentally read number 6 first and had just started number 5. He was asking me questions about what I had read so far and told me how the book seemed like it was missing important information. As we talked about it, I suggested maybe the version was missing pages, sometimes books come from the publisher with sections missing. We figured that was not the problem, but he does not know the difference between a 5 and a 6. Soooo... I had to wait for him to read all the way through 5 before I could pick up where I left off. He took a little while and I have had it back for about a week and have been at it every chance I get. That is where I am going next, into my warm bed with Harry!!

Above is a picture of Kyle getting some good use from my swift. He has to switch the good fishing line off of the pole I will be using to his new reel. So he transferred it to the swift and then will wind it onto his reel. I had to help him out, my hand is holding the reel at the bottom.

When Kyle was asked how he liked the swift he said "It's rad, I'm totally gonna do it with the other line here!"

Next words: "Oh Crap, I shouda..."

I guess I better see what the trouble is.

Here's the fishy fish...

I had to wait for some sun and the inspiration... but here is an (okay) picture of the fish on the sock. Hopefully it is visible and distinguishable. Kyle was concerned about extra bulk in his shoe, but seemed pleased after walking around a little last night.

Cuter Teagan...

Since Tara (and Kyle) did not like the previous picture of Teagan, here is a cuter one...

It is the night before our wedding during the rehearsal. She loves the water!!

One Fishy Fishing Sock!

There has been some remodeling going on 'round this place. (Picture to right is where bookcase used to be, I had just emptied it and was waiting for Kyle so we could move it----->) We moved a bookcase to move the music stuff. I like it. All of a sudden, it sort of does feel like a new place. I like moving furniture around for a fresh look, but when you have a little place and a lot of stuff, it can be hard. But this move is nice.

While I was doing some cleaning. Why am I always cleaning but it never seems clean here?? Does everyone have this problem, or just the messy group of us? Anyways, I had this little ugly blue pillow that did not match ANYTHING else in my house. That is because I bought it to cover it with woven ribbon. Never did, it was kind of harder then I thought it would be. So I suddenly thought, I have some of that fantastic canvas left from Jessica's bag, Hmmm, was there enough? And it was the perfect amount, I whipped up this cover and it looks better, much better! There is Trout checking out the newly moved items.

There is still much junk to be taken care of. I have this HUGE box of old knitting and crafty magazines. Old like from the 30's on. And I don't really want to get rid of them but they kind of take up space and I don't really have any where for them. They shouldn't be in the garage, but do I really want them in the house. It is so hard, I come from a line of collectors to the point of scary, so I don't want to end up with oodles of crap that I have some minor attachment to and can't bear to let go.

This makes me think of Kyle, he has this drawer unit thing full of stuff. Crap. That is all that is in there. Crazy things like old bank statements and yo-yo's and other toys, I think I even saw some candy in there once. But he refuses to go through it or get rid of any of it. I think it is his cling to life before me. A little tie to his reckless past. It is inside of his night stand, so I don't mind so much because I don't have to look at it (it is ugly plastic with rubbed off stickers, YUCK). So maybe we have bumped heads about it 5 times in the course of our relationship, but he persists on keeping it. So be it!

And speaking of Kyle, one sock down. He was very excited! He tried it on and then gave it a shoe test. First put on his work shoe and walked around in it. Then got out his hiking boots (what he would most likely wear with the sock) and walked around some more. Did some weird shaking/dancing around thing, expressing that it was cushiony.

Then the dilemma came over me... do I make number two OR start on something else!! Something big and brown and cabled!! Well I already cast on for number two. It will be easier to make a partner while making the first is still fresh in my mind. I tried to write down everything I did, but I'm sure those notes would not make sense in 6 months. Probably not even in one month. We are going camping this weekend... No school or work on Monday. Well, I have not told my work yet, but no problem!! So maybe I can make some major progress on Partner. I am debating on another fish or nothing or a fishing pole... Hmmm!

Super Motivated... Just on the wrong things.

So I loved making the cross bag thing. It was a good time. I was diligent and ironed seams along the way and really thought it out. Not my strong suit, I usually rush through.

Then Jessica's reaction was great. She LOVED the bag. With someone gushing over it so much, I had to come home and make her bag number two. It was much easier since I had already done one. But we were talking and I said a bigger one would be nice and she agreed, in her mind she wanted a beach bag. So essentially I made the same bag, just wider. It is FANTASTIC. I am making one for me. Kyle loved the material (Jessica's choice) and was sad when I said it was not for me.

Unfortunately, I was so excited to give, I forgot to photograph. Not such a big deal, I can get it back for a photo shoot anytime. However I do have this lovely photo of the material.

Things I should have done instead of sewing... Study for upcoming tests. Study in general. Make meals at home instead of being lazy and eating out. Plan food for the week so I can make meals at home instead of eating out. Clean. Clean some more. File. State taxes.

Hmmm, I have a lot of thing I should have done. And what am I doing now... Typing about the bag I should not have made. At least I withheld until I get a coupon to go buy the fabric for my own FANTASTIC bag!!

I love it!

After just spell checking my blog (I apologize for misspelled words, I am a bad speller) they did not recognize Jessica's and said it should be cheesecake instead. Now I want some cheesecake. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!

Target inspired me...

Yesterday Kyle had jury duty. It was in Clovis very far away from our house. More then he wanted to ride. So he checked the bus schedule. He would have had to get there at 7 in the morning which would probably entail catching a bus near 6am. Kyle is NOT a morning person. So I told him I would take him and then go to work. It messed me up a little, but not too bad.

Then in the morning, we were eating our oatmeal when I saw a note he wrote that said Jessica was working from 9 - 11am. Jessica is my coffee dealer. So I was very excited, I wanted to go get some, I don't normally make it by in the mornings because I have to be at work and the two locations are by no means close.

BUT... The drive from the courthouse to work would take me VERY near Barnes and Noble. Unfortunately... just a little too early. About 45 minutes too early. Shucks!! But wait, I could go to JoAnn's on the way and kill a little time. So I swung through the parking lot. NO - they also open at 9am.

So the choice... do I skip (cheap) coffee and go to work or find another place to go. (At this point I wished I had my school books, I could read them in the parking lot) So I went to Target, it was hard, I kept thinking, go to work, you need to go to work, but I drove to Target (just across the street).

Once inside I found this:

They call it a cross bag... or something like that. I really liked it. But thought how easy it would be to make. So I was studying it to try to memorize it for making a pattern at home. And realized I could just buy it and then return it after I made a pattern (is this stealing??)

Next, of coarse, it was time to go to Barnes and Noble for my fix.

I bring the bag in because Jessica appreciates a good bag as much as I do. She LOVED it, as was to be expected and asked that I make her one.

What a great idea. I have way too many bags for myself. WAY TOO MANY!! So I get to make the bag but give it to someone. And she said she would buy the material. Even better. I get to do the crafty fun without the crafty cost!!

So later that day, we were hanging out and decided to go to JoAnn's to pick out some material she liked. Jessica had the great idea of having two fabrics, one for the front and one for the back and then the lining would be the same material but opposite on the inside. She wanted something in the grey family and found a nice purple flower print. And she fell in love with this funky canvas. We bought all the material. For both bags the total was $20 - the same price as this one from Target. Now of course mine has no embroidery, but great material!!

So I got home from class last night and began whipping this baby up. Lo and Behold... it is complete!! I am so excited because I am mooching Chinese food dinner off her dad tonight so I will be seeing her and can present her with one complete bag. And number two will come quicker because I will have done it already once. I was so good I even ironed my seams to make it perfect. (It is not perfect because I am not the best sewer, but it is GOOD!)

I want to move!

I so badly want to move. I went to a friends house this weekend and saw her big two bedroom with an attached laundry room and small backyard. And TWO bedrooms. I keep looking around thinking how I wanted to move there. We could use our own washer and dryer (which I love) again instead of storing them in the garage and sharing with other people. We could have a whole second room for stuff, like a music room, or a craft room, or a game room, or a guest room. Okay, I would not really make it a guest room, all the other options seem much more appealing!!

BUT... it costs $125 more per month then we are paying here. And is it REALLY worth it. Probably not. So I am trying to clean things up today. Maybe reorganize. Or rearrange. That would give me a fresh perspective. Kyle and I just have so much STUFF. We recently got a piano that we squeezed into the dining room. All his music equipment that used to have its own closet, but I took the closet for my huge tubs of knitting stuff. We also got a second couch not too long ago. And we can't go back to one, because we now have his and hers couches. I like to have my own, no more uncomfortable couch wars over who gets to lay down and who has to sit up. Plus, mine is always covered in school stuff and knitting stuff. And Kyle's get the spillover from mine. Poor guy!

So, I want to move. I need to stay here. If I want to keep working less, we can't move. Oh well... rant over.

IT CAME!!

It was late on Friday evening. Kyle was home sick. I thought nothing good was going to happen. And then, the doorbell rang. Kyle asked if I was expecting anyone and I said no. It was about 6pm, maybe later, so I was not expecting the mailwomen. Mostly because I know our mail is delivered about 1 to 2pm. But there she was. She had my box. It was big and beautiful! Then I opened it. YEAH... all there! Woo-Hoo!

I caressed it. I fondled it. I tossed it around. If Kyle had not have been home sick in bed, I would have dumped it out and rolled around in it. I am so excited!! Now it is shoved in the closet as to not tempt me into casting on for that big boy I am anxious to get going on.

I did however throw the ballet t-shirt back on the needles, knit like crazy all weekend (when I should have been studying) and bound off last night. No pictures yet, because I am not too happy with it. I may have to tear back some inches and make some adjustments, mostly I made it too long. I was afraid of it being to short so I just kept going and going!

We watched the Super Bowl yesterday. It was good. In the middle we decided we wanted a dart board and went to Big 5 and bought one. We figured a sporting goods store would be pleasantly empty on a day such as SuperBowl Sunday! We were right. And we had a sad game last night. I did terrible. But I practiced a little a few minutes ago and will beat Kyle within one year. He is A LOT better than me!!
Kyle and I were laying on the couch together the other night and he started picking at lint balls on my slippers which I told him to stop doing. He then told me how much he HATES lint balls and picks at the particular pair of socks he was wearing all the time. And pointed out the ball-less patch. I told him I had a shaver and got it out. We took turns shaving lint balls off each other's feet. It was romantic!!

Still no yarn, but I've got carrot's!

That's right carrot's. Kyle had to thin out his garden because he had to many carrot's. He described them as carrot tooth picks or carrot slivers. So I took a picture. Can you tell how tiny they are, they are laying on a 2X4. I also took a picture of our garden. This is the ultimate urban garden. A flower box with a makeover.

It's been a pretty good day. Two netflix came, I'm almost healthy, I filed federal tax return yesterday, applied for financial aid for next semester, got more free financial aid for this semester and it has been really nice warm (for Feb) weather. Still no knitting going on, I've been busy and overwhelmed with work. But I have plans this weekend, homework, textbook reading and then a little knitting. I need to get going, I am going to (finally) make chili for dinner!!