It All Falls Down

School is out again. Hoooooray! I've vowed to make the next term a less busy term. Too many full days of sitting doing homework. Blah!

My sweater is almost finished, I knit up all the pieces a while back and basted them, but have yet to do the final knit and single crochet. I'll have to look up videos on the crochet bit.

Today, however, I come with a problem. My hair doesn't seem to want to hold curl. It falls down much too easily and I mean from wet sets with concentrated setting lotion too!

The first one is not too long after the brush out. I was running late and so I didn't get to fully brush it, but it was sort of falling even then.

A couple hours later, post wind sweeping. My hair is falling down quite a bit more and getting some Charlie's Angels 70s sweep. The bottom bits have really fallen out.

Next morning, pre-brushing, a brush would only take it all out!

Suggestions anyone? I think my bottom layers are too long, but everything else falls out pretty fast too. These are done with pincurls at a relatively small size. I tried perm rods (maybe not small enough) but they didn't dry very fast. Can you use too much lottabody/setting lotion, which would cause your hair to become more heavy?

I should be studying but...

This post is dedicated to William Powell, oh, you are so handsome and full of wit and I'd rather watch you in films than study JavaScript right now.

Handsawing the night away

My partially finished canvas frame!

I love art classes, and working on art generally, but one of the big issues can be cost. I have a couple strays, but for our next project in class, we're going to need 3 canvases.

I'm not exactly swimming in money and I love a good project so I was searching Craigslist (online classifieds basically) and checking materials costs for stretching my own canvases. The most of expensive of these being canvas, but I found a great deal and bought an absolutely GIANT roll of it from a really lovely woman for very cheap because she was closing her studio. This meant, hoooooray, no worrying about canvas for a while!

I also sauntered down to the hardware store and picked up quite a few strips of 1x2's and quarter round.

There are these things called miter boxes which contain slots for a bunch of different angles, so you can saw within one of these slots and get, say, a 45 degree angle cut with much more ease than, how I'm doing it now! I am marking the angle and then just handsawing with wild abandon and I've definitely found there is some skill to the saw!

My frame looks a little Frankenstein's monster so far but I don't think anyone will notice once a canvas is stretched over it and I have the pride of having made it :)

Oh, and my knitting is coming along quite nicely too!

Painting Post

Slowly knitting through my sweater, well, actually I'm almost done with one side but, once again, school strikes terror in the heart of all my crafting.

In the mean time, I've been taking a painting course and it's been very challenging, but nice to have an allotted time in my schedule dedicated to art. I took oil painting lessons for quite a while when I was younger, probably from ages 10 - 13, somewhere in there and painted landscapes. I got sick of them and that's what my teacher specialized in, so at some point there came a very long stint without painting - I mean, until now!

I thought I'd share what I've made thus far! You can click on each to see them much larger:

This was in the first week, and it's my first time painting from observed forms, versus photographs.

And then this one is currently what I am working on, so it's still WIP (work in progress.) It's based on the idea of the word 'place' and mine is focused on a dream of a place once can just disappear into. The sky is still a bit funny, it got left behind for a while.

It's nice to get some stuff in the blog again and take a breather :)

-Nancy

1930s Three Hour Sweater Progress

I had been hesitant about my start with this sweater due to having a super busy week and being unsure of whether I should add on stitches to my sweater or not! The band was seeming kind of tight, and I ended up pulling it out and adding another four stitches for good measure. I think I tend to knit a little tight.

I'm about two hours in so, I don't see this being quite a three hour sweater - I think that's the consensus though anyway! I'm through the ribbing though and that took the longest.

Also, I already got oil paint on my knit cap! I get really messy when I'm painting, but I figure a little thinner will take it off?

Knitted Cap is Finished!

I finished my first knitted, wearable project! I'll be excited to try it out with a set in my hair as it doesn't cover too much of the head so it's more for style.

Anyway, I'm pile driving forward and onto my first sweater! I'm taking the worn path and going with the fan favorite of the Three Hour Sweater.

I'll be making it up in a green mistletoe colored yarn and I'm more than excited to start my first sweater! I could probably fill this post with SWEATER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and it'd get a little closer to my excitement.)

Oh yeah and if you're on Ravelry, add me! My user name is nancy-louise

Knitting Update!

So I've had about two knitting classes so far, and I have to say they've got me really excited! After the first class I practiced my stockinette stitch until I ran out of yarn and it all looked pretty uniform and, no numb fingers!!

There's my very first ribbing too! So many exclamations! I'm just very excited to be on the path to my first sweater :)

Right now I'm working on a grey wool hat that should be finished this Monday night. And then another project lurks around the corner...

It's really nice having handwork to do lately. I've been staring longingly at my sewing stuff, but I just don't seem to have the time. With knitting I can take it anywhere I go so it's inspired me to keep an eye out for portable sewing, etc. In fact, I have a 30s leather glove pattern I picked up just a while back and recently got the chamois to practice with (phew, it stinks and the box proudly proclaims it is tanned with 100% fish oil).

How is everyone's Winter going? I haven't even looked at blogs in what seems forever so I've got some catching up to do!

Back to School

Today will be the first day back to school for Winter term. I pretty much spent this break sleeping, counting patterns, being sick, and going to the gym.

I'll be taking more web development classes, painting, and a couple non-credit courses: KNITTING AND SWING DANCING!

I'm pretty excited for the painting and two aforementioned classes, but I hope I don't get lagged down by some of the web development courses, well, one in particular, Javascript.

I've been doing quite a bit of cardio lately, so I decided to make my phone useful and grab an app for working on running 10k. If that goes well I've got some half marathon training on my list. I've never been a runner, but I figure doesn't it just take training like anything else?

The only sewing I did over the break was sewing some patches on gi's (worn for Jiu Jitsu, looks similar to the karate gi for an idea of what I mean) for a friend's kids.