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Misc

Meet Mooki

11.07.09 | Tags: Misc | Comments: (0)

He is a 1 yo male Maine Coon from Animal Care and Control of New York He reminds me of Baby when I first got her a few years ago. Doesn’t know quite how to settle down, always distracting me, getting in to places he shouldn’t be etc. Hes a pretty good cat so far minus his biting habit. 3 moreweeks before he meets my down who resides with my mom right now. I hope they will get along!

Yarny gifts

09.25.09 | Tags: Misc | Comments: Comments Off

So a couple weeks ago I won some yarn from Annmarie’s bloganniversary contest. Annmarie, being a very generous person, allowed me to decide on the yarn or books from her stash. I like surprises so I allowed her to choose my prize. She surprised me with enough lace yarn to make a huge stole and my first yarn from Sundara. Its a very pretty pink and it came with a lovely pattern too. Thank you Annmarie! You are awesome!

On dyeing yarn

09.20.09 | Tags: Fun with dyes, Misc | Comments: Comments Off

Labor day weekend I went to Ikea with my mom and aunt to purchase a new bookcase since my book and yarn collection was exploding. This Ikea was undergoing renovation so it was a complete mess, like their kitchen stuff was mixed in with the bedroom stuff. In midst of this mess, they had a whole stack for curtain rods on clearance for 99cents! My mom snatched up six of them for drying out laundry. I quickly realized that I could use one too but for the purposes of drying yarn on the balcony. One rod could hold a lot but I’m thinking I should have probably gotten another one considering it was only 99cents.

School was crazy busy for the last few weeks so I did not touch the 10 pounds of yarn that I had ordered until this weekend, which is a four day weekend for me. So I spent most of Friday dyeing yarn. I love dyeing yarn. I don’t plan out the colors ahead of time. I dye one skein at a time. When I’m done with one skein I decide on the color of the next skein. I haven’t dyed enough skeins to run out of color combos so I try not to repeat a color. But somehow this time out of the 13 skeins I dyed, two of them came out quite similar. I’m very happy with how they came out with the exception of one which I may end up overdyeing it.

I’ll be posting them to my Etsy store over the next week but if you like anyone of them, I’ll be happy to hold it for you, just email me at jane AT okayknits DOT COM.

What I’ve been doing

09.13.09 | Tags: Baby Fridays, Fun with dyes, Misc | Comments: (0)

August few by quickly. I had a month of school already. Its quite weird that this is my last year of learning in a classroom, next year its onto the hospitals. My school instituted this mandatory attendance policy with fingerprinting in which I spend an ungodly number of hours sitting in a darkened room learning about how to treat diseases before we learn what caused the disease. Its so backwards! So I’ve taken my knitting into school and knit during class. I knitted a cute little pullover for one of my classmate’s new baby boy. Though it may be a year before the baby can wear it. I knitted a 6mo-1 year old size but I think its more like a 1-2 year size. Oh well that’s what happens when you knit without a swatch.

I’m still dyeing yarn in my spare time on the weekends. Its expanding. I’ve got 12lbs of yarn in my possession waiting to be dyed when I get the chance.

My dog has gone to live with my mom until winter break. I don’t like walking her in the morning, in the dark, in the cold. I am missing our afternoon long walks looking for cats in the neighborhood and chasing squirrels. In the meantime I haven’t done any dog torture for a while. She has either forgotten how muzzle stacking works or that the cheezeits are so yummy that she just can’t help herself, she was horrible at muzzle stacking. I only managed to stack one for maybe 2 seconds before she knocked it down and ate it.

I actually wrote a majority of this post last week but never posted it. I am only doing it now cause I have a huge 4 hour exam tomorrow and so I am procrastinating it (the weekend before the last 4 hour exam I was procrastinating by dyeing yarn). No dyeing this weekend however I am doing more knitting in between cramming information on the heart.

I’m knitting my own version of Conwy from Knitting on the Road. My version meaning after an inch in the leg, I can’t find where I placed the pattern so I did the heel flap and turn and stuff on a whim. I’m using my own handdyed Mumbi II yarn on size 0 needles. I am knitting this for my self but I am getting close to two dozen working pairs of socks in my possession. Is it too much? I am already getting overwhelmed by yarn yarn collection. I fully realized that I have more yarn than I can possibly knit in the next few yarns at the rate that I am going. Maybe I’ll get overwhelmed by socks once I reach a point in which I have enough handknit socks to last a winter without repeating!

Oh I have a blog!

07.21.09 | Tags: Misc | Comments: (1)

My last post was nearly half a year ago, can’t believe it. So lets see what I’ve done in the past half year.

I’m done with my first year of med school. In the process I’ve also knitted 10 pairs of socks. Socks are really the only things that I can easily knit during the school year.

A week after classes ended I left for Kenya for four weeks. About 4 hours after we arrived in Nairobi, my classmate and I went on a 3 day/2 night safari to Masai Mara. We had a great driver who took us all over the park. I took so many photos that I ran out of batteries after the second day, so I’m still awaiting for the photos from the third day from my friend.

A week later we went up north of Nairobi to place called Shalom City where we had no running water, no flush toilets and only occasional electricity. If you ever watched those telethons for Africa, they show people fetching dirty brown water, guess what? I had to drink, bathe, wash in that water! Our water though was treated and boiled for drinking. But still that water was nasty!

So why did I got to Kenya to drink dirty brown water? Medical volunteering with two of my classmates. We saw a lot of interesting cases, got some house calls (more like tent calls since they all lived in tents), and a couple of emergency cases.

There were many people knitting and crocheting but many of them were so poor especially the kids they were crocheting using matchsticks. It really shows the creativity and resourcefulness of the people. I wish I took a picture of the balls they make out of plastic bags and string.

About a week before we left, I decided to make a hat a day for the kids after finding some really cheap acrylic yarn in a supermarket. I ended up finishing 5 hats and gave them all away to the kids.

I have a couple of weeks left before classes begin again. In the meantime, I’ve been dyeing up yarn to sell on my etsy store. So come and take a look, I want to make enough money to get a used digital SLR.