With all my long hair I don't need a hat to wear...

I love cold weather.

I'm not kidding. When I left my apartment this morning, it was a wonderful 16 degrees. The entire day it hovered somewhere in the 20's. I wouldn't have minded if it was about 10 or so degrees colder. I was happy.

Maybe I should move to Maine... or somewhere like that. Somewhere where it's really cold, and peaks at at 60. 70 is permissible, but not preferable.

I don't understand how anyone can stand to live farther south than.... maybe Virginia.

I hate having to frog things, but sometimes you just have to. Two recent example for me:

The lovely Bellatrix, who's life wast short-lived for several reasons... The yarn was so pretty (It was Neighborhood Fiber Co. Studio Sock in Mount Pleasant) and I just couldn't deal with the way it was pooling all over the place. It fit beautifully and was crazy comfortable, but it was just too... colorful for a sock, especially for me. Too bad, Bellatrix. As lovely as your evil-ness was, you were doomed to die young.

I love these fingerless gloves. Hell, I love fingerless gloves period. Any kind, any time. Period. The Studio Sock will probably go into a pair of fingerless gloves or mitts after a little while. Now, this is a pair of Queen of Diamonds fingerless gloves. The yarn is Knit Picks' Gloss in Concord Grape. Like the yarn. Love the color. The shape of the damn thing is just sooo... awkward. Not to mention the strange mistake I made in the fingers:
If you can see that, the stitches on the marker are supposed to be the pinky stitches, which somehow ended up on the front of the glove. I didn't realize it until right now. Since finishing the thumb, had been debating whether or not to do away with it. Figuring out the mistake here was the clincher. I don't plan on trying this pattern again.

Now for a not-so-recent FO:This scarf was supposed to be a Lizard Ridge afghan. Turned into more of a lizard ridge scarf. I really really like it, and ended up giving it to my friend Sonya after she came back from Japan. It was at least 10 feet long at first, but she threw it into the washer and semi-felted it. Not quite so long anymore. I love Kureyon. Oh, and if you take a look at her hair, you might notice that she has dreadlocks, which are wrapped in yarn. She does that, and every few months changes it to a new one. This time around it's Malabrigo Worsted in Verde Esperanza. She ended up using a skein and a half, which is apparently much less that she usually uses. And than she offered me leftovers :D

When I get bored I draw on myself.....

In which Ficus promises to make no more promises

Ugh.

My mother is planning on visiting family in Romania next January, and I made the mistake of giving in to her request to knit various things for various households. She asked me if I could do a tablecloth. Without thinking, I answered that of course I could, why wouldn't I be able to? With Colourmart silk in mind, and visions of a wonderfully lacy tablecloth that would be vastly treasured, I made the mistake of assuming that the task was a simple one. Think again.

I'm having a problem. It's daunting, the type of things that makes me bite my nails, almost with the fervor to chew my fingertips off. The thing is, I can't seem to find anything to fit this image that I have in my head. I know what I want, but am horribly used to relying on the genius of others' patterns. For the first time I find myself in the position to design something more complicated than I've ever dared to. Well, at least bigger.

Now, I've designed things before, mostly through a process of trial, error, and various attempts that only spawned disaster. But I really really actually want to do this. I know I can, I'm just afraid to. Not sure why I am, but there's something huge and daunting about this prospect. Maybe I should just get over it, and quit dragging my feet. I'm sure that once I'm finished I'll be all more better for it. Well, not better. More knowledgeable, certainly. At this point it's all about finding the right stitch patterns and figuring out how to put them together. Hell, I have a year to do it, so why not, right?

Right?

Of shoes--and ships--and yarn for socks

What is it about sock yarn? The greater number of them are so vibrant and colorful, it seems a little strange to me.
That is skein of Dream in Color Smooshy sock yarn, in Deep Seaflower. Dream in Color carries some of the most beautiful colorways I have ever to behold, that I almost cannot believe that some people actually have the audacity to hide that beautiful thing in a pair of shoes. It deserves to be knit into something that everyone can SEE. Of course, I'm not one to wear multi-colored socks myself, so maybe that's where that comes from. I'm not really prone to wearing anything like this either:My latest WIP, Rainy Day Socks in Knit Pick's Swish SK, in Skyborne. This one's almost done, and I'm actually looking forward to the second one. Usually I dread having to do the second sock. That's most likely because it's DK weight sock, so it's a lot faster to knit than a regular fingering weight sock. That's a first to me, along with the whole magic loop thing. I find that I like the magic loop much more than dpns. I'll figure out why eventually. It's also the first time I've done a picot edge like that, and I think I've fallen in love with the effect. It's not for me, I'm not sure who will get these when I'm done. I have a few people in mind, but I'm not sure they're the sort to get any use out of them either.

Come to think of it, I've rarely knit anything that I've kept for myself. Which explains, with all the knitting that I do, why I only actually possess a few pieces here and there. The odd scarf, a stray hat. I only have one pair of socks knocking around, and that's only because I haven't given them to anyone yet. I'll get around to it.

Maybe this is just a phase. A strange quirk that I'll get over once I get it out of my system. A nice, simple, bare black sock. Take a breath, move on. Speaking of moving on...
I finished the Rangoli Hat. It is really much too small. Seriously. Alex (my roommate) was barely able to squeeze his head into it. If I knit another one, and I most likely will, I will be sure to knit it in a much larger gauge. It's the kind of rare thing I'd like to keep for myself. My hatred for cables is still present, but these aren't the gaudy overbearing cables that I actually hate. These are the more subtle kind, the kind I find I actually enjoy. The world needs more cables like that.

Exhaustion

Due the fact that I only have classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, I so far have a habit of sleeping in on Tuesdays, and end up staying awake very late indeed. This morning I was overtaken, sinking deep in to the stupor afforded me by an audio book and a knitting project, working together in perfect unison to drown any normal human impulses, including sleep. So as I sat there and listened and knitted and listened some more, the next thing I knew I was looking at my clock, which proudly read 5:19AM. Great. They had won again, the twin devils mind and hands. As has happened so many times before, I simply sighed, and resolved to finish Speaker for the Dead before it was time for me to roll out of the position I had taken up on my bed and prepare for the day ahead.

Today was an especially long one. I was the day of the involvement fair. Now, the involvement fair is an event that the Campus Activities Board (or is it the SGA?) puts on every semester. It's supposed to be a chance for new students to peruse the rows and rows of tables bearing information and friendly faces from all he various organizations on campus. What it usually turns into in a forum for people to gather around the tables of the organizations they already belonged to and gossip. This especially holds true for the spring involvement fair. I am the president of a student organization, and we had a table there with everyone else. This kind of thing, on my campus, usually turns into an excuse to do something outrageous, out of the ordinary, or just plain strange to quell my boredom. The theme of this semester's fair was pirates, so I found the appropriate activity for such an occasion.
I perused the aisles, walking up and down them, hiding my face behind the posterboard that my friend had scrawled on sloppily. Of course, she never expected that I would actually DO it. No one ever really does until I do. Everyone I passed seemed either highly amused or slightly disturbed. A few packs of sororities jumped every time I came around a corner. I silently polled the people at the tables, occasionally stopping to asking other random people by pointing to the question. It was really warm in the building, so obviously some sweat began to build up along the edge of the poster; you can see it in the picture. Eventually I turned the posterboard around and wrote on the other side: Looking for Pirates to Battle. Who will Challenge Me? and walked around a few times more. No one bothered to challenge me. All the people that moments ago had claimed to be pirates simply refused to regard that it was their duty to accept my challenge. No matter, in my own way my amusement won it all for me. One person throughout all of this kept stopping me to ask me questions. Right before it was over, he told me he was trying to help me. He didn't understand why I was doing what I was doing. It was, after all, only going to make me look very strange to other people. Why was I doing this if not for the simple desire to make people think I was strange? I didn't bother to explain it to him, I simply turned and walked away. I wasn't doing this for anyone, I wasn't doing it for any of the people he referred to when he gave me that look of complete non-understanding. I was doing it for myself, and for the amusement of the people who could understand that there was not point to it, that there shouldn't be a point to it at all. They simply chuckled and shared in my own amusements over the strange situation. Sure it was strange, but in a positive way. And if he did not understand that, he did not deserve to have it explained to him.

brown paper packages tied up with string

My mailman always makes me smile. He rings the buzzer at the door, telling me that there's a package. More often than not, that package is not for me, but for my roommate. But I still enjoy it. I open my door on the top floor, and hear "Mailman is heeere!" His voice is friendly and booming, with a small and slippery accent that reminds me of a few of my more likable family members. There's a warmness about him that I love, and as he tosses two parcels to me, I jump with joy realizing that they are both for me. One is from Knit Picks, and the other one from Colourmart, which confuses me for a moment. I had forgotten that I had placed that order. This was the first time I had ordered from both, and both of them were discoveries of the Stumbling Process. Not recent discoveries, it's just that not until recently had I considering trying them out. I am perfectly satisfied with the shipping part of the deal, and the price part as well.

From Knit Picks I picks up:
1 Gloss in Concord Grape
2 Swish DK in Skyborne
1 Swish Worsted in Bordeaux
2 Swish Worsted in Black
60" Circular Cable
#4 Nickel-Plated Interchangeable Needle Tips
Nickel-Plated DPNs in 2.0, 2.5, 2.75, and 3.omm
From Colourmart I received one come of 2/28 NM lace weight silk in "aqua mari," which I promptly wound, washed, dried, and twisted into a skein. It's not quite the color I expected, or that it comes up as in the pictures. It's really more gray than blue, but I'll certainly come up with some use for it.

Both Knit Picks and Colourmart are really cheap. Like, insanely. So no matter how much I hate the color of that silk (and that's really my only complaint), it was totally and completely worth it.

Amazing.

Oh, and here's a WIP for ya:
It's desiknitter's Rangoli Hat. The yarn is Paton's Classic Merino Wool in Royal Purple, on #6 DPNs and circs. It's a bit sloppy. For one thing, I hate cables. Detest them. I think most of them tend to look frumpy, but this time they appealed to me in such a way as to make actually want to attempt cables again, after having sworn I never would again. I made a few mistakes early on that I was too lazy to tink back, but whatever. I'm sure the finished product will be pretty no matter what :P

Wire Bracelets

The other day, I was digging randomly through JoAnn's when I inadvertantly walked down the jewelry-making aisle. Rows and rows of huge colorful beads and pretty copper wire seemed to be calling out to me. I've done some jewelry making before, a few months ago after making a random investment in a kit that happened to be on clearance, and was itching to start again. So I picked up these:

Now, the original idea was to make little bracelets and whatnot, and present them to friends randomly when the mood struck (as so often happens with me), but I seem to have misplaced everything I had in terms of jewelry making. And then it dawned on me. Why not knit the wire?

I'd seen articles on knitting with wire before, this one being my favorite. I had not, however, ever actually thought to try it for myself. I wondered at the possibilities before me. I contemplated patterns of beads, and even, just for a second, wire lace. Finally, after confirming that a friend of mine did, in fact, like the color green, I decided to just go for it. With a lot of patience and my trusty #8 bamboo needles, I bound off my first wire project a few hours later.

Not quite finished yet. It was too wide. After a few moments of contemplation, angling, stretching, and stitching, I gave birth to this:
I heard reports that my friend loved it. I wasn't actually the one who ended up giving it to her, she's such a difficult person to find, and the one time I knew where she was going to be, I couldn't make it. So my roommate was giving the task of delivering it to her. I think I might make more. And more. And more.

Hello, World

Hi. I'm Ficus. I'm a 21-year-old college student, and I knit. A lot. That's all I can really say right now. So why start a blog about it? Well, there are several reasons.

Being who I am, I don't really know any other knitters around here. Sure, everyone I know wants me too teach them, but that never lasts very long. So there's no one around that I can tell about my exploits. When I start to yammer on about having to frog the sock I just finished because it was too tight around my calf, my friends tend to look at me like an alien that's outwardly contemplating assassinating Smokey the Bear.

There's a lot of other things that I plan to elaborate on later.

Ficus is not my real name. I hate my real name. And yes, everybody I know actually does call me Ficus. Hence the name of this blog.

That's really all for now. Maybe later I'll post some of my more recent FO's. Get this party off to a decent start :D