In which things get done

So, in the past few days, I have been extraordinarily productive.

First off, I FINALLY finished knitting the Man Scarf, seen below as modeled by my stuffed monkey, Stanley:

It was long and boring and generally blegh to knit (34 stitches a row! In size eight needles! On a SCARF! I hate knitting scarves with small needles!) but I really like the scarf. And it's so worth it to be able to own a pink "Man Scarf".

I also successfully learned how to crochet (thank you, Marshall) and am now attempting to crochet this adorable little owl. Unfortunately I am having MASSIVE PROBLEMS trying to crochet a circle, and this does not bode well for the project. Currently all I have managed of the pattern is "chain two". However, I shall prevail.

I finished my eighth book for the book challenge! It was Love Over Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith, and it took me almost as long to read as it took me to read all of the other seven books combined. It was interesting and well written and all--but although it held my attention while I was reading it, the second I put it down it was hard to pick back up. It was also freakishly long - you wouldn't think so to look at it, but I swear that that book took AGES to read. That being said, it was enjoyable.

(By the way, I am just now starting on book number 9: The Truth by Terry Pratchett. It's the first re-read I've done all year, but I couldn't help it--Terry Pratchett is amazing, and The Truth is my favorite book of his.)

I also just hit the 40,000 word mark in my January nanowrimo yesterday. I haven't written any yet today, but I plan on doing that once I finish this post... It's looking pretty good (suprisingly). I haven't had the urge to start massacaring characters yet, at any rate.

Aaand I also just finished watching the audio commentary of "Ghostbusters" (best - movie - ever), which does not SOUND like an accomplishment, except that I've been trying to finish it for ages and was never able to get around to it. It's a good commentary. Watch it.

Well, I'm off to nano then--I just hit a major turning point in the story, it's fantastic. I still have lots of stuff planned, which is great, because it means I don't have to streeeetch out the ending. In fact, it looks like it's going to be a bit of a squeeze--I'll have to start writing scenes more briefly from here on out.

Ciao!

Holy crap, things just happened

...In my otherwise currently boring life.

I made my account on Ravelry! Woohoo! If you happen to be on Ravelry, I'm "StaciMCL". I wrote a very non-interesting About Me section. Ick. But I haven't had time to really check out the site yet because I'm suuuper busy.

Sarita lent me her USB drive so I could put my audio from the last episode of the MAD Podcast on it. Holy crap, it's been taking me WAY too long to get this audio to her (and it is an extraordinarily fantastical episode, and I want to LISTEN to it for heaven's sake) so I am excited to finally be done with it.

Speaking of the Podcast, our episode about the Series of Unfortunate Events books v. movie discussion is coming up, and I haven't read the books in ages. So I'm borrowing them from Marshall--currently I have the first three. I finished reading the first one a while ago--I started reading on the bus, and it takes like, an hour and a half to read one of them, which is amazing. It goes very quickly. I still think the movie is better, though, but I'll save that discussion for the podcast.

Annnnd... Okay, so actually like nothing happened, but I'm grabbing at straws here. For whatever reason my life has been incredibly boring lately. Gah.

Ravelry lies

Like a week ago it told me my invitation would come in four days.

Liars.

Super big, value-size post

Soooo, I have loooots of stuff to talk about and none of it really relates, so I'm going to pull a Deborah and just talk about a bunch of stuff in segments.






First off, my parents and my older sister went to a concert last night, leaving me to babysit my little sister. Now, don't get me wrong, we fight all the time (in the inevitable manner of siblings), but in the end Kelsey's pretty cool, and whenever I have to babysit her we have waaay too much fun for our own good. We set up a picnic in her bedroom and had a Disney movie marathon. I should point out that - I don't care how old you are - it is healthy to have Disney movie marathons. In fact, it is necessary to remain sane while in your junior year at high school. Also, it doesn't count if it isn't a sing-along.


So anyway, Kelsey and I were watching "Quest for Camelot" (which, come to think of it, isn't actually a Disney movie - but you know what I mean, one of those animated musicals) and having Oreo-eating competitions (I am ashamed to say that Kelsey, despite only being nine, totally kicked my butt). She's a green belt and was teaching me how to karate chop the straw off a juice box... Which is ridiculously fun, by the way. And then we watched like eight Mickey Mouse cartoons. I'm not kidding, I actually love it when my parents leave me behind with Kelsey when they go out.





On a completely unrelated but equally awesome note, we recently bought some snails! We have two goldfish and we're lazy and we don't like cleaning the tank, so we just keep buying snails and letting them do it. Anyway, our goldfish are HUGE and we found out that they were eating the snails, which was why they kept dying off so quickly, so we went to PetSmart and bought these huge blue snails that they can't eat... Kelsey named her's Willie and I named mine Icky Steve III (Yes I have had two other snails named Icky Steve in the past.)

On a third and even MORE awesome note, guess what I knitted?

Super Funky Fingerless Gloves! (At any rate I think that's what Marshall called them, but I don't feel like going back to the original post to check).

That's right, they're the gloves that Marshall put the pattern up for on her blog (The Knit Gangsta, over on the sidebar). Well, they're sort of those gloves, only I'm super lazy and super cheap and so I modified them to make them... lazier and less awesome?

I didn't have the right needles, but I was like, SCREW THAT. So I just knitted with realllly thick yarn and took out like a bunch of rows, but I did something weird and ended up knitting them sort of upside down... But they turned out okay, I think. Also there was no way on EARTH I was going to stripe them - I hate weaving in ends - so I just picked a really colorful yarn and went for it. Also, I swear they look better in person than they do in that photo. And also my hands don't look that fat in real life, either.

As I was telling Marshall, I knit these specifically for Nanowrimo this November. There's something about fingerless gloves that sets... I don't know, an atmosphere. A writer-y atmosphere. And there's something about the cheapness and odd coffee-colored bits of that yarn that is very Nanowrimo-y. They're perfect!