Mid-term time!!

Ok, so, sorry in advance for the lack of posts in the next few weeks. Anyone else somehow involved with university students will know - it's midterm time!! Whoo!
Pictured above is my favourite new knitting tool - and the exam I'm supposed to be studying for and can't quite drag myself to.
But the bobby pin - I discovered it by accident, I found myself in class without a cable needle, and am doing a cable like the one on my sweater on a baby blanket square. What I came up with was what I had in my purse - a bobby pin. I've never really been a fan of using a cable needle, but I don't like cabling without one either, it doesn't look as nice to me. But with the bobby pin, I slide the stitches off onto it, and then when it's time, slide them back onto the left needle, that way, I'm not fiddling with a cable needle, the stitches aren't going to unravel (as they often did with my other method, just sliding the stitches off the needle and coming back to them), and they're kept safe clipped in the bobby pin. The bobby pin is also very slim, making it easy to slide the stitches on and off.
This is working great with the cotton I'm knitting the blanket with, but I'm not sure how well it would work with other yarns. I guess I'll find out, because I love this!

(sorry for the crappy photo, I was too lazy to get out my real camera...)

So Close!!

Well, ripping that couple inches out sure paid off, finished the yoke up, bound off and tried it on, and IT FITS! I'm so excited and happy! Wow! Now I'm just going to knit an inch or so in ribbing on the bottom, and then I have to seam up the armpits, but look, it's a real sweater!!!

Sweater blues...

Well, the sweater is finally at the stage where the yoke would be done, and it looks great. However, the key words in that sentence being "would be"... I took it off the needles to try it on, and the length is great, but I think it would fit better if the decreases were worked more frequently and the top was about 2" smaller around. I did leave in the string from last time I tried it on, so I could just rip it out back to there - but that makes me really nervous - I don't know how that will go, I can just see my sweater coming completely apart in front of my eyes.
But the 2 1/2" is just way to much for me to consider tinking, although I have done very long sections in the past. I think I will have a drink with supper tonight to help this along a bit...


EDIT: Well, I got up the courage to rip it all back, it wasn't as bad as it could have been, thank goodness I had that string in there!

Knitting is taking over...

Well, exams are creeping up and the work is piling up, but I can't seem to stop knitting...
The sweater is all in one piece, but doesn't seem to be ending.

I've also picked up all the stitches along the bottom to knit ribbing, it's a really short sweater, and I'm hating the way the stockinette is rolling up, so hopefully putting ribbing along the bottom will help. Design-wise I think it will be alright because the sleeves are cuffed with ribbing so it will match.

Otherwise I've cast on for a baby blanket that I'm designing on the fly for my aunt's brand new little girl, she's so cute, but unfortunately living in Bermuda where I can't just pop over and visit. I'm knitting the blanket in Coolspun Cotton so that it won't be too warm for the climate there and so that it will wash nicely.

(bear with my Paint skills, they're not that great, but it kind of gives you an idea of what I hope it will look like)
It's is going to be made up of squares in different stitch patterns, so I can take those to class and hopefully they'll be simple enough to stay in pattern with.

This is the first one I've been working on - yes it's the same pattern as my Icehouse socks, but it took some figuring out to make the pattern work flat, some figuring which I did during stats class and ended up frogging my first attempt - hey maybe this is why I'm totally unprepared for the midterm that's less than two weeks away, huh.
The centre panel though is going to have the name of the baby - Gwendolyn Jane - yes it's one heck of a name for a tiny little baby. This is my first time knitting with more than one colour, and after researching intarsia and stranding techniques, I decided that neither of them would really work for this project and so I've combined the two weirdly, but fingers crossed that it works because the name strip is 127 sts long, and going to be ~40 rows, I've already done 12 and I would REALLY not want to frog it and start over.

Stupid, stupid me

So I said last night that I had finally finished my blog assignment about emerging technologies, I was feeling good about it, I gave myself a break from homework to knit, I did eventually finish my other homework.

BUT - I just realized this morning that even though I had finished posting the assignment on my blog I had completely forgotten to submit it online, and now I'm feeling stupid and crappy.
Luckily I'm under the 24 hour cut-off period, but still the penalty for late submission is 50% and that's a lot of marks - hence the feeling really crappy about it, because I did finish it under the deadline, I just completely forgot about the submitting part.
I do understand the penalty and the need for it, it was explained and written in the assignment, I just feel incredibly dumb.

But hey, at least I remembered this morning, any marks I may get are better than none at all.