So I started on the leg warmers today with a little help from knitting.com’s video on knitting with double pointed needles (DPNs).

It was a little ackward trying to negotiate those thin metal needles without poking myself in the eye or the chest or wherever they were pointing to. Really scary. Seriously. No wonder heaps of knitters have this phobia about knitting with DPNs.

Anyway, I’m really glad I did this project - the yarn feels great even though it’s a substitute and I wasn’t exactly sure if the pattern would fit this Spanish yarn. I still have a bit of problems negotiating the needles but my hands have somewhat established a pattern to follow and it makes things so much easier.

Of course it didn’t help that by the end of the day, I totally succumbed to yarn fever and bought two balls of the most lucious-looking yarn. Am thinking of making some fingerless gloves with them but only when I finish this project and/or my lace scarf-shawl, whichever comes first.

In the meantime, it’s just knit, knit and knit!

;)

[UPDATE] I have taken this whole thing apart because I wasn’t too happy with the plain stockinette stitch. Am going to jazz it up with ribbing and…CABLES! BOOOOOYAH! :peace:

It’s amazing how the bored mind can come up with heaps of projects at one go if one has the willpower to do so.

Suddenly I’m bombarded with a myriad of knitting ideas and “wants”, eg that ultra gorgeous yarn at elann.com which I know I shouldn’t get but want to get just because it looks so delicious. Never mind that I still have a storage box full of yarn to de-stash and turn into useful garments. Never mind that I only have two hands and can concentrate on, at most, two projects at one go.

Bomboozilling to know how work is suddenly dead quiet and that it’s perfectly okay to knit compared to surfing the web aimlessly for days and hours, wasting bandwidth (or say as they always say).

So yeah, I have my little lace diamonds scarf-shawl AND a pair of leg warmers PLUS a soon-to-be-added pair of fingerless gloves. Hope to finish the latter two projects in time for my trip to France end of this year. Ooooo…chilly weather!

The morning started off with Mum making some bak chang - no, it’s not the time for them but she likes to make them whenever she feels like it. (I’ll put up the recipe once I get my hands on it another day and yes, it’s not halal.)

After that, it was the usual run of housechores - laundry, mopping the floor, cleaning up after Mum’s bak chang fiasco - before heading out and off to discuss some things with a close friend. I can’t say much…well, I actually don’t want to say much except that the money I’d get from this project is much needed. Am planning to start proper work on it tomorrow and throughout the week during my nights.

I managed to get some more knitting tools to add to my collection. Since I was in the mood, I spent the afternoon organizing my knitting stash, yarn and all, into two medium sized storage boxes. Must make a mental note to come up with some ideas on how to make use of one-skein yarns. Heh.

My “little diamonds in lace” scarf was up next…and it’s still on the needle. Very much a WIP*, really. It doesn’t help that the pattern is pretty complicated and my eyes keep going fuzzy on me. I kept dropping stitches and etc. Annoying, really.

So to make things easier, I used a “lifeline” (basically a thiner thread running through the loops of each stitch) and stitch markers, about 12 of them. I hope I have enough yarn though, otherwise I might have to get Nil to buy me some more skeins.

That scarf kept me up all night and right now, I’m totally out. Badminton is on at the moment and I’m hoping it’ll be it’s an English vs China match for the men’s doubles!!! Boo to Malaysia for losing (all?) their matches.

* Work-in-progress

Finally, it’s done - something other than a scarf!

What you need
1 x 45g ball Milon No 10
1 x 45g ball Milon No 46
1 pair of 3.25mm knitting needles
1 pair of 4.5mm knitting needles
Crochet hook
Ribbon

Gauge
20-22 sts to 10cm (4 inches)

Pattern can be found here. Meant for newborn babies and can be resized for premmies.

Now I’m off to work on my other projects. Can’t figure out what to start with though. Gah.

:sweat:

ps: It would appear that I’ve been knitting this the wrong way. Instead of ending up with a normal stockinette stitch, I got a twisted stockinettet stitch. Thank heavens for knitting forums and online knitting videos!

Since last week, I’ve been getting myself back into the jive of knitting. It has been a while since I last picked up those darn needles - I had gotten tired of knitting the same thing every single time - scarves. My knitting stash (I should take a snap shot of the yarn in my storage box) is hardly decreasing and well, I need to kill time and get those fuzzy balls moving!

After dropping off a warm brownish-cream scarf to Nil as a going-away gift, I decided to embark on a tiny project for two colleagues who are welcoming little bundles of joy. I tried to knit some booties at first but it didn’t really quite work out (am still trying to understand the damn pattern). So I decided to work on baby hats instead and found a rather easy pattern to start off.

The blue baby hat has been already “shipped” off to my colleague so here is a glimpse of its twin in pink:

I am hoping to finish it by tonight after my class and start on my other new projects.

On the menu:
Ruffled baby hat
Leg warmers
Beanie
Drop-stitch twist shawl
A simple wrap

So he’s gone.

Never mind that we cuddled for the last time this morning. Just staying close to each other, arms and hands interlocking, my head cradled against his neck. I broke houserules just to be with the one I loved for perhaps the last time in the next few months. I know he’s not having a good time either - while I slept the night away after a bout of tears, he spent the whole night being awake. Being the man, he doesn’t give in easily to tears or any form of emotion that would give him away but I know him. Perhaps when I cry, I cry for him too.

I’m still adjusting, feeling a little under the weather. My colleagues think that I’m doing great; they think that I’ll have heaps of time now that he’s gone…but they don’t understand. Nil was never ever infringing on my space or my time. If anything, I enjoyed being with him, spending time with him, just being around him. I still do my stuff when he’s around - play games, bake muffins/cookies, knit, etc.

I suppose this is why I am finding it hard to adjust to him not being a close part of my everyday life. This isn’t about being needy, it is about being apart from someone you love dearly; someone who, as corny as this sounds, holds your heart in the palm of his hands.

Oh, how do I explain this? I suppose if you’ve never been in a LDR, you would never know.

Anyway, I’m closing comments to this entry because right now, I just want to let go, let out and NOT give a damn about what people have to say or what they think about my mental health at this very moment.

It feels weird knowing that your loved one will be going away for a long time. It’s like the days are slowing flying by and all you can think about is how much you’re going to miss him/her when they are gone.

Suddenly it feels like there is nothing else in the world but the both of you. More room for cuddles, more time for sharing kisses and somehow, you just seem to understand each other completely.

And at the end of it, you feel like you could never be more in love with this person than that very moment in time.

…

He’s leaving next Tuesday for home. My last day with him will be on Sunday since he’s flying off from Singapore. There is this strange feeling of foreboding and yet a little glimmer of excitement as he returns home to his family, friends and his home country. Nothing is as bad as it sounds and every experience is worth cherishing. If anything, I want him to be happy going home. Happy to be in the company of loved ones and friends again.

Now it’s really going to translate to a long distance relationship. Before it was just an eight-hour train ride. Now it’ll be a twenty-hour flight. I’d joke about how we have progressed; I’d talk about how this is the perfect opportunity to see if our love can withstand all odds, as cliche as it sounds. But you know how it is with long distance relationships and love. A lot don’t make it (like my previous relationship) and the some that do (think of a fellow blogger) would tell you that hard work and effort were some of the ingredients to their success.

O’well…at least we have come to this point in time where we have the Internet, MSN and all that to help us keep in touch, not to mention friends and side-projects (for me, at least). I have to finish up that whole storage box filled with yarn; am planning to finish the scarf I just started (will put pics of it soon) and I want to learn to knit sweaters!

Yes, I’ll admit, I’m going to cry like a baby for the first few days and look utterly miserable, but hey…it’s not like it’s gonna be forever. I hope not.

Je t’aime de tout mon coeur, pour toujours, cheri. Je t’attendrai.

I think when I was six, I wanted to be a doctor. I continued wanting to be that until I hit sixteen. Then it went from lawyer to economist to banker to chemical engineer to chemist to pharmacist to writer/journalist. I stuck to the final ambition and told myself that this was it. Went to school, went to uni and did everything that was necessary to become a writer.

Y’know…I thought I had everything worked out right until several months back when my life, upon examination, suddenly looked very different from what I had dreamt about as a child, as a girl and finally as a young woman.

I am nowhere near to being a writer and I am hardly living the life I had dreamt of - being a writer, buying my own property, etc. Sure, I’ve been doing some fair bit of travelling but my life is really mundane. Same routine nearly every day - go to work, go to class, go home, rest, watch some TV/play the current computer game I have installed, maybe meet some of my friends and sleep. My job is hardly glamorous - as a matter of fact, I don’t get to meet anyone at work other than my colleagues and I’m in front of the PC all day long.

And I like it. Odd.

In reality, my ambitions have sort of soften and become a little more down-to-earth. Somehow I no longer have room for instability in my life - you know, the whole setting out on your own to be a business owner or a well-known writer like Rowling perhaps. If marriage knocks, that in itself is already a big shift in priorities and I just don’t have room for more on my plate. Right now, I just want to get into a job that allows me to have a family and time for them. Work used to be everything to me as a young one but right now, it’s just some thing I enjoy doing which gets me paid too.

What I want is a home of my own and work will never ever get me that. Is it really that crazy for me to want to get married and have children of my own more than becoming a manager in some company? I’d still work but not climb the corporate ladder, y’know. Is it really awful if I did that instead of “making full use of my MA”? I would like to teach in a uni someday…does that count too?

Sometime I wonder if this is what all women go through in life or am I just another one of those oddballs out there?