WIPs and Books: Sockses?

I should be done with Oh My Bear! by now, but I ran out of yarn. When I was about fifty rows away from finishing both arms. Unfortunate, but nothing I can do about it but order more yarn, something I have yet to do. I should really get a move on that, since I have set the personal goal of having the sweater finished by the end of May.

Since I haven't been able to work on my sweater, I've been focusing a lot of attention on Hermione's Everyday Socks. I've now finished one sock and have started the other, though I'm only a few rounds into it.

I also picked up several J.R.R. Tolkien audio books at the library. I got these a few years ago and listened to several discs of The Fellowship of the Ring, but the discs were so badly scratched that I quickly gave up. However, I'm a ways into the first disc of The Two Towers and it's been fine so far. I also got The Hobbit (which the library must have gotten more reccently, because the discs seem in perfectly good condition) and The Return of the King. 

That's all for me today- I'm off to listen to Lord of the Rings and knit my socks! Check out Tami's Amis for more WIP Wednesday posts! 

WIPs and Books: Halfway There (And Back Again)

Last night I finished two things. The first was the front of my Beorn sweater. It looked like my prediction came true: I told myself the other day that I would have the front of my sweater done for WIP Wednesday.

Isn't he sweet? My tension was horrible, especially on the sides of the face and on the ears, but I still love him. He looks like he's been stung by a few too many bees is all. 

When I finished the chart, it was such a relief to not have all those bobbins hanging off the back. It was such a tangled mess- but now that's done. I've started the back, but I'm only a few rows in. Thankfully it's almost all just straight stockinette, so I'll be able to speed through it. 

The second thing I finished was The Hobbit. I started the book in January or something, and it's a kid's book and pretty short so I should have finished it in no time. But I don't read as much as I should, so I finished it last night. I read it a few years ago for school, but I must have skimmed the whole part with the battle at the end because I barely remembered a thing. I particularly didn't remember Beorn conveniently saving Middle Earth, which makes my sweater even more special. 

That's it for me tonight! I have to go and find the Fellowship of the Ring before I lose interest in reading more Tolkien... (just kidding. If I do read more of Middle Earth, I'd skip the Fellowship since I've already read it.) 

P.S. 

You wanna see the back of my bear?

Ouch! 

The Hobbit Didn't Win?

I know, I know, this post is about two days late. Let's just say that the computer has been in use the last two nights. Forgive and forget, eh? (Or you could be slightly cooler and say, 'I will never forgive, and I will never forget.' I won't hold it against you if you want to be like Thorin or Mordred.)

So, the 85th Academy Awards were on Sunday. Which means, I was sitting in front of the TV from 4:30 till 11. Thankfully I had my knitting with me.

I always look forward to watching the Oscars, or at least, I have for the last three years or so. I love seeing all the pretty (or not so pretty) dresses, harshly judging the host, and groaning as the same commercial is shown over and over again. There are always a few categories that have a movie that I want to win, and often times it does.

This year's Oscars was great. I ate chocolate, was delighted when Anne Hathaway won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Les Mis, and wasn't at all surprised that Argo won Best Picture (after all, the newspaper's will win/should win column the morning of is usually correct in their predictions). But what I was surprised -and even angry- about, was that The Hobbit, and Unexpected Journey didn't win Best Hair and Makeup.

Don't think I wanted it to win just because I wanted The Hobbit to win something. I really did want it to win because it seriously deserved Best Hair and Makeup. Look at this thing I found... link. It shows all the characters before and after makeup, and after looking at it, it's impossible not to think they should've won Best Hair and Makeup.

So there you have it. My rant about the Oscars 2013. Apart from the Hobbit's loss, I'm very happy about the whole thing.

But if The Desolation of Smaug doesn't win Best Hair and Makeup....

Geeky Emails

13 email conversations between my friend Rose and I, with the subject titles of each of the dwarves. As you can see, some of them have been going on for longer than others (i.e. Kili and Bofur), but they're all genuine conversations. 

It's totally nerdy but kind of satisfying to see all the dwarves listed in my inbox. We'll see how long we can keep up with replying to thirteen emails almost every time one of us checks our email. 

And- notice the mountain background of my inbox? I like to think of those ones as the Misty Mountains. There's another one that's a solitary peak, and I call that one the Lonely Mountain. Every segment of my life seems to have some trace of Middle Earth or the Whoniverse in it. (There's even a reference to Artemis Fowl in one of the above emails.)

Beorn

I am knitting my first sweater. I'm following the pattern Oh My Bear! by Tiny Owl Knits. I started on February first but I didn't have the right needle size so my gauge was off, so I put it on hold till I got the right size. I started again yesterday, and I'm about 13 rows into the colorwork chart. I am loving this project, but the intarsia knitting gets incredibly tangled every single row. And I'm pretty sure my gauge is off for the bear face, but it'll all end up all right and if it doesn't, then I can rip it out and start again. 

I'm obviously going to name mine Beorn, for the giant person in The Hobbit who turns into a bear. Another thing I misremembered from the book, I thought Beorn was Radagast and that Beorn lived in Mirkwood. I was so confused. 

That's it for me tonight- I have to get to bed. Knowing me, that'll happen in an hour or so and not right now, but I'm not going to spend that time writing a novella of a post. 

WIP Wednesday: Productiveness

I've had a very productive day. I did three lessons of geometry (two of which were supposed to be done on Monday and Tuesday; but I couldn't do them then because I was busy doing Friday and Saturday's geometry), all my other schoolwork, got some knitting done, watched Arsenic and Old Lace, and dyed 7 mini skeins.

The highlight was definitely dyeing the mini skeins.

Only 6 are pictured here, and the colors aren't completely accurate, but I wanted to take some pictures before I started knitting hexiflats out of them. I'm giving all of them colorways, and I'm naming the colorways nerdy names, so from left to right: The Shire, Mirkwood, Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey, Rainbow Pumpkin Pie (not nerdy, but my sister insisted. It's actually a rose color but it shows up brown in the picture), Smaug, and The Shire 2. There's also a bright red one that wasn't quite dry so I couldn't twist it up.

Beekeepers (not actual beekeepers, but knitters who are making a beekeeper's quilt), I highly recommend this. What I did was buy a 100gm hank of bare KnitPick's Palette. I'm winding it into 30 yard mini skeins and dyeing them with food coloring. It's super cheap and it's possibly the most rewarding thing in the world. 

I think my favorites are Mirkwood and Smaug:

Smaug is actually more like a short-striping yarn with half coral and half yellow-orange/white. It's the first one I dyed and I love it. 

I was really trying to get a Mirkwood-like yarn here. Mirkwood is described in The Hobbit as dark, with a few patches of sunshine every once and a while that grow more and more infrequent as the forest grows deeper. I managed to get a murky gray-green, a few bits of brown, and some greenish-blue, but I don't think I'll really be able to get proper dark colors without black dye. 

While watching Arsenic and Old Lace, I knit a hexiflat in The Shire 2. As I had the lights off I couldn't see how it was turning out until the movie was over. I was gleeful at the result. 

Another terrible picture, sorry. The blues are more sky-colored, the oranges are lighter and brigher, and those brown stripes are actually pink. 

WIP Wednesday: Waiting for Inspiration

As I said in yesterday's post, my big order from KnitPicks arrived, and one of the wonderful items in the huge box was a pair of US6 nickel-plated needle tips and some 40" cables. It was my first pair of interchangeable needles, and I was eagerly anticipating trying them out. I had a project in mind when I purchased the needles: Holden Shawlette by Mindy Wilkes. I was planning on using the blue fingering weight yarn I spun, written about here. As the first yarn I'd spun that had enough yardage for a big project, I needed the perfect project, and this shawlette fit the bill. 

I cast on last night and have made quite a lot of progress on the stockinette portion. This part is completely mindless, especially with the help of stitch markers, and I got a lot of knitting while watching a movie last night and a Doctor Who today with my sister. 

As I knit, I'm trying to get the shawl to make me think of something from Doctor Who, Merlin, The Hobbit, or some other thing I'm obsessed with, but it really isn't working. This shawl is utterly un-geeky. But I'm sure I'll think of something nerdy to call it when I get to the lace section.  

The yarn is absolutely amazing, if I do say so myself. It's quite uneven in places, but the overall weight is fingering. While it was in the skein and ball I thought it was all blue, but it has clear hints of purple, red, green, and yellow. No matter if the end result is nerdy or not, this shawl is going to be gorgeous.

Blue Bofurs

This evening I went to see The Hobbit again. This time, I was able to pick up on each of the dwarves' characters since I could focus more on the characters than the plot. So, I suppose Peter Jackson did do a pretty good job developing their characters. Though there are still a few who I couldn't say much about, and some who I could say lots and lots about. Namely Thorin, Balin, Bofur, and Kili.

Watching the movie again inspired me to knit another pair of Bofur's Fingerless Gloves, because the ones I made last month have gotten very fuzzy from lots of use and don't really look like seed stitch any more.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any gray yarn, so I'm having to make do with navy blue. I'm also making a few modifications, namely going up to size 10 needles for a looser fabric and adding a thumb gusset. From watching the movie again I could see that the real deal does actually have a small thumb, so might as well tack it on there. I'm also using Red Heart yarn held double, which is awful and scratchy. But I had to use it sometime, right?

I'm pretty tired (three hours in a movie theater really is quite exhausting) so I think I'll just go to bed, maybe finish a hexipuff first (it'll be the twentieth), and read a bit more of The Hobbit. In the book, I'm right at the place where the movie ends, so I might just have to start the book over to really get the movie fully. I bet that reading it right after seeing it will really help the plot develop in my mind.

(By the way, I'm just kidding about all that. I'm going to finish the next two thirds of the book and probably not read it again for several years. See how tired I am, making random lies? Better go to bed.)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

When I heard that they were making three films out of the Hobbit, all interest in seeing the movie left me. I mean, three movies out of one book? But then my best friend saw it and told me it was great... and told me a few of the funnier parts of the movie... and said that the dwarves are really, really cool... and slowly I got more and more excited to see it. Not that slowly, considering it only came out last Friday and I've already seen it and love it. 

At about three hours in length, the movie does get a little dull at moments, but in general it is action packed and enjoyable. Though it's true that most of the dwarves' characters are underdeveloped, this is entirely understandable when you have fourteen new characters to introduce and almost all of them are dwarves. So they did a good job developing the characters of Bilbo (well obviously), Thorin, Kili, Bofur, Balin, and sort of Fili. 

I couldn't help but notice that several of the dwarves wore some rather fetching knitted things... and I've already knit up some of Bofur's moss stitch fingerless gloves. 

Bofur is my third favorite dwarf, after Kili and Thorin. Firstly, because he has pigtails like Pippi Longstocking, topped off with a fantastic hat. Secondly because he has fingerless gloves that I can so easily copy. I've also noticed that he has a nice garter stitch scarf in long stripes of dark orange and browns and grays that I may be replicating someday...

But here are the gloves I made to copy his. They obviously aren't exact, but how far can you stray when you're given a picture of simple moss stitch fingerless gloves?