Long time

For whatever reason I've been neglecting /putting off writing in the blog for a while (I guess thats what happens when you fix your wheel). I've been preocuping myself with more knitting than spinning, I don't have a whole lot of roving or tops in my room so I've been making myself spin less because I know I'll end up using it all and then get sad because I have nothing left. Never fear though - the magnificent Fee has put a ton of roving in the mail for me (I gave her money to pick some stuff up and send it with the candy Ant brought me) so I should be getting it by mid-week.

I also finally finished Bartholomew's Tantalizing Socks this past Monday. Sadly I didn't have enough yarn to finish the toe so I used some left over Zen String

Then Tuesday morning I found the Cobblestone Pullover pattern on sale on Interweave Press' website, so I bought that along with the pattern for the Koolhaas Hat and proceeded to go to the yarn store I go to the most often here and pick up the yarn for the sweater and start that day.

Body and six or so inches of the first sleeve

This is what happens when I start something and I'm on a break from school and have no other projects....I knit like crazy. I finished the body tonight and am about six or so inches (I'm eyeballing it) into the first sleeve. After that I have the second sleeve and then the yoke and I'm done.

Snow and Coffee

Here is the picture post of the week, possibly of the month. I would have posted these yesterday but I posted from Milinda's house as I didn't leave until 12:13am. We watched the entire first season of Weeds, such a good show :)

This is my part of my daily walk to the U-Bahn looks like when its snowed the day/night before

And here is the obligatory pretty snow covered trees in Vienna picture. Also taken on my daily journey to school.

My melange

Milinda's...cappuccino I think

In knitting news - I'm not super far along on the sleeves of Avast but I am doing them at the same time on a long circular needle as to not have the sleeve version of SSS (actually, it would be the same acronym wouldn't it).

Body - Finished!

Thats right, I finally finished the [lower] body of Avast! Sadly there are no pictures as of yet (though really, right now it looks almost the same as the pictures in the last post, just longer). So now the goal is to finish the sleeves this week - I'm going to cast them on right after I finish this post.

I also in the process of teaching my friend Milinda how to knit. Well ok, she knows how to knit, but I taught her the long-tail cast on (which she picked up really quickly) and how to purl (which she's still working out). She's making a ribbed at the moment so by the end of it she will be able to purl amazingly I'm sure. She also totally didn't have any problems with circular needles, not at all.

Also, by this time next week I a. will be in England and b. will have a wheel! A Lendrum most likely. The store that I'm buying it from emailed me back yesterday and told me that they do have them in stock and that they will be open on the 23rd. I also will be in the midsts of teaching another one of my friends how to knit, or at least thats what the plan is. We'll see how that goes as next week I will be very preocupied with the wheel.

I took pictures of the snow today but, sadly they won't be up until tomorrow because I am at Milinda's apt using her computer and haven't had a chance to upload them to flickr yet. Oh and yay for addi circs being super cheap in Europe - Portland people, you know what you're getting for Christmas!

Halfway through

We're at the halfway mark of NaBloPoMo and things, blog wise, have been going amazingly well.

Avast is also going well as can be seen in the picture below

Apparently I can take pictures when I'm somewhat tired

I only have four more inches of the [lower] body to knit which should be finished tomorrow and then 18 more inches of stockinette! Thank god I'm small and can knit the smallest size of men's sweaters.

I had a concert tonight - I played in two trios. They both went relatively well with the main annoyance being that the stage crew put the stands for the Berlioz way too far apart and I just couldn't hear Ann so we would get off even though we were trying to listen to each other and we were making a lot of eye contact. That being said, it was only like that for the first min or so of the piece (so the first eighth). I'm just glad its over.

Its snowing - I think I can get behind the snow here though. The city actually keeps its streets clear so it'll snow, but its not super slushy on the sidewalk and there is basically no snow on the road. I also don't find it very cold when its snowing so I can walk around (assuming that I have enough clothing on) and not be freezing. Oh and I got another package from my mom, no yarn, but candy, two new pairs of pants (and I like them!) and some clothes that I left at home.

Snow?!

I woke up this morning to rain, which quickly turned to rain mixed with snow and then snow! Normally I would be unhappy about the whole thing as I generally hate the idea of snow, but snow that stays for a short while and then melts. I can get behind that. Really its just that I hate looking at brown dirty snow and I hate walking through it. That being said, I had to walk through the falling snow to go out to coffee with Melinda this morning. It was really nice just sitting drinking coffee and eating scones watching it snow outside and chatting.

Yarn and the edge of a very tasty scone

We stayed at the coffee shop (ok it was Starbucks - we needed a break from the smoke filled coffee shops of Vienna, and it was one of the only coffee shops open at 10am on a Sunday) for about three hours and then proceeded back to our respective homes (by that time the snow had turned back to rain). Then, because you can never have too much coffee shop goodness, I went to my Sunday knitting group at...Starbucks. Again, we meet there because its the only coffee shop thats no smoking and the seats are comfy.

This is the mural that I see every time I walk up to Mariahilferstrasse on my way to Sunday knitting

I worked on Avast and finally am done with the cable band! I picked up the 177 stitches and am now on my way to 15" of mindless knitting :) Right now its small enough to fit into my bag with school stuff so I can work on it between classes. I'll take pictures of it soon.

A big day for a little sock

On Wednesday morning I had three rows of the second Jaywalker done and now look what I have!

Oh how its grown :)

The "wing" stitches (as K. Bordhi would call them) are still not all worked but its getting there and they will be worked by the time I go to bed tonight. Sadly because of this Avast has been a bit neglected but not completely. I worked on it before school this morning and am in the beginning of the fourth repeat of the bottom cable band thing, which is going amazingly slowly. After the Jaywalker sock is done then I'll be able to focus the majority of my knitting attention to Avast (and start a new sock of course).

As it turns out, Vienna falls are amazingly like Portland falls. The only difference is that its a little colder (though late next week its supposed to be getting a lot colder) and the rain is lighter. We still have those glorious cloudy wet days though - today was one of them. Its also a lot more windy here which I'm not a fan of. Even though I'm not on the top floor of my dorm, I can still hear the rain fall because of some sort of landing that is right next to my window. I love it.

I also was well enough to force myself to go to school this morning for my one class, German. Of course once class started I realized that actually, I still am sick and with in 10 minutes I had a headache (I only get them if I'm sick or really dehydrated) and was hoarse. Thankfully my teacher realized this and only "made" me talk once (though when we would go over things and say them as a group aloud I would talk - which is how my voice got so hoarse so quickly). Other than that and my general tiredness I am feeling much better physically though still an anxious mess (hence why I had to force myself to go to school). As one of my friends jokingly said - Freud would have loved me.