knitting – Imaginary Sunshine

It’s the little things in life

Michelle — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 03:21:44 +0000

On the new laptop front:

I’m loving it. I need to do a virus scan on my HP before I go and copy files over and make my Asus my primary computer, but I love it.
It turns on (after being shut down) in 16 seconds, it’ll ‘wake up’ from being in sleep mode in 3 seconds. It’s amazing.
I have all the programs that I love and adore on there right now.
I love having a shut down button (yes, I’m repeating myself from my last post) – that’s how much I adore it.
It’s super light-weight. My HP is well over 7lbs (it has a 12-cell/extended battery instead of a 6-cell battery). My Asus is under 5lbs (2kg!). You wouldn’t think a scant few pounds would make a difference, but my shoulders can tell.
My biggest problem so far is that despite being the same in screen size (technically), it doesn’t fit into the laptop sleeve in my backpack (woe), but it can fit in, if I pop it into a laptop sleeve first and have it in the main area of my bag.

I started school last week and it’s been go-go-go ever since January 7th. It’s term 2 for me. I have some one new-to-me class and the rest are just a level up from last term, which is nice. I’m really making an effort in my class where the students do the teaching by participating and whatnot – it’s hard though, for me, as I’m not a chatty, talkative type (with people that I don’t know well). And as it’s a group (11 students, 1 instructor), and not a small group (2-3), it’s even harder for me. But I’m making an effort, really trying to anyways.

So far classes are going well… I think. There hasn’t been too much for me to be evaluated on yet, I don’t think, so my grades are still in tip-top shape! I think I’m going to enjoy clinical this term. I’m on a general surgery ward (primarily post-op patients). Last term I was on an acute general medicine ward, so it’s pretty interesting to compare and contrast the differences. One of my instructors for clinical skills is my clinical instructor, so he quizzed me a lot in lab today – nice thing to know that I can (hopefully?) make a good impression outside of the hospital! I get my first patient assignment of the term tomorrow afternoon and I’m trying to be proactive in making drug cards for the ‘common’ drugs from the list he had provided (but there’s probably like 50, so I will not be making them all in one go…)

In other news though, I’ve made things! Like socks…

And laminated notes for clinical…

And lastly, I got an all-metal construction 3-hole punch (the only plastic is in the tray that holds all the punched out paper). It may be the best investment I’ve ever made for school. Not only is it fantastic, but it’s so much better than the $2 3-hole punch that I previously had (it was metal and plastic and had holes to fit in a 3-ring binder) and it doesn’t hurt my hands when I try to punch holes into papers. Best thing ever.

Baking, Christmas, Boxing Day

Michelle — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 02:48:40 +0000

I did some more baking recently (sugar cookies and chocolate chip & oatmeal cookies). I made another batch of sugar cookies, but because I used smaller cookie cutters (the dinosaur ones are about double the size of my Christmas-themed cutters), I got almost 11 dozen cookies out of one batch of dough. The recipe is really for half of that (if you use cutters in the size it calls for). Nom nom, cookies are delicious. Too bad I don’t get to eat as much as I’d like – nobody in my family helps with baking or decorating, but they insist on giving them away. “Oh, Michelle baked cookies. Good, I need to bring cookies for a pot luck” or “Oh good! You baked! I need to give something to someone for Christmas!”.

I also did some knitting. I’ve been spending some time watching some favourite movies that I hadn’t seen in a while (the entire trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of Black Pearl, The Princess Bride) and then some tv shows (The Big Bang Theory, Grey’s Anatomy). Good fun all around. I’m getting quite a bit of knitting done – here’s what I did on the 18th:

And here is what I had on December 25th (yesterday):

Christmas was primarily uneventful in my house! My family isn’t the kind to go all out. Yes, we generally have an artificial tree up (this year we didn’t because I was the only one willing to put it up!), and I do a all the baking. Which is fitting as I was the one who received baking goodies for Christmas this year! I got 2 Wilton cookie sheets (or pans, whatever you want to call them) and 2 Wilton mini muffin/cupcake tins (in total I can made 2 dozen mini muffins). I am going to have to buy mini muffin liners, but I’m excited for that. I also got the Wilton 3-in-1 cake caddy. Which was great fun!

There were a lot of great sales today. My personal favourite purchases from today included a Monster High doll (Venus McFlytrap) that was 50% off ($14.99) and some adorable prints ($3.99 for the cupcakes and $2.79 for the castle). Oh! Also the four-pack of Kinder Surprise – $2.67 for the 4 when it was also $0.89/ea. (Did you know there’s pink Kinder Surprise eggs now? Pink because all the toys inside are “Just for girls!”)

My online Boxing “Day” shopping was taken care of on December 24th. My parents paid for a new laptop for me (!) as mine (a 5 year old HP DV6000-series laptop) is currently dying… I’ve experienced Blue Screens lately that haven’t entirely rendered me unable to restart the computer, but still – Blue Screens (of Death) are not good when I haven’t made any hardware or software changes (and my anti-virus isn’t being triggered by anything). I’ll be getting an ASUS S series ultrabook (running Windows 8) – it’s only 2 kg – 4.4lbs. My current laptop is ~7.5lbs (it has an extended battery – 12 cells). I also ordered myself a 16gb micro SD card for my phone as I currently have a 2gb card in there. The great thing about shopping online is that they can send it directly from the warehouse to the closest store and you just go and pick it up! Overall it’s been a good couple of days.

I want sunshine!

Michelle — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 01:59:53 +0000

It’s been busy in my world lately, what with a midterm (Wednesday), working on a few new patterns for Chelle-Chelle.com (and I’m working on opening up a pattern store!), life in general. So it’s felt busy, at least to me! It’s still winter and the weather’s been utter crap. There was snow. And then there was hurricane-strength winds hitting the entire coastline of British Columbia on Wednesday. Power went out everywhere (and briefly out for me!). And then it’s been raining on and off, fantastic. I look outside and it’ll be absolutely pouring rain. A few minutes later there will be sunshine and no rain. Mother Nature, please make up your mind (and stick with the sunshine!)

I still have… 2 midterms left until the end of the term (I’ve finished 5 so far – I only have 4 classes, by the way). I have a handful of assignments left, one stats lab report to do (haven’t done the lab yet), one ecology lab report (haven’t done the lab yet) and then, you know, 4 finals before I’m done for the term. I’ve decided against taking summer classes mostly because I’ve done a summer course before and I’m just not fond of it (time constraints) and I only have 7 (seven!!!!) courses left between after this term and graduation, so I’ll be taking 4 in term 1 and 3 in term 2. 7 classes, zomfg. Heh, of course I’m applying for programs for after graduation, but still.

I’ll be done, briefly.

I picked up a vintage (ish) needlecrafts book last week that I’m so excited about. It was only $2 (from the thrift store) but in such amazing condition and has such great instructions for some fun stitch patterns (knit and crochet) and has a huge in-depth section on embroidery, cross-stitching, punch-needle, how to make rugs and so much more stuff. It’s amazing and has been a great inspiration for me lately as I’ve taken to sketching out more stuff that I want to make and have the inspiration to make. So I’ve just been drawing everything. I sketched out a crochet lace shawl that I want to make. Not that I wear shawls, of course, but I just enjoy a challenge!

But in the mean time, I’ve made these two outfits (knitted headband + knitted dress & crocheted hat + crocheted dress) as donation sets for 4alissia.com! Please check out the website if you haven’t already yet!

9 to 10 Calculus

Michelle — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:06:28 +0000

I hit 2000 non-spam comments today! Thank you so much to everyone. Comment #2000 was from Cody. Many thanks to everyone who’ve commented over the last year and a bit.

In regards to my name, I answer to both ‘Muh-chelle/Ma-chelle” and “Me-chelle”. I mean, as long as I can recognize what someone is saying, I’m pretty good with answering to it. I generally do not answer to things such as “Hey you” or “You there”… Just out of principle.

Today was one of the more stressful days that I’ve undergone since… I can remember. I’m sure after I’m done writing this, I can come up with a whole bucketful of stressful situations that I have undergone (involving small flimsy-looking bridges, heights, turbulence in planes and waiting to see if I failed a course or not… Apparently I don’t need to wait until I’m done writing!). I had course registration today at 9am.

At 8:45am, I checked my draft course schedule and one of my labs (which is a nice 3 hour block of time!) was full. So I spent 10 minutes rearranging things so I could fit in the lab (somewhere) and still manage to get all my other classes. I put in two math courses into my draft schedule (two different ones) so when I hit ‘Register All’, I could attempt to get into at least one of the courses. There was a social science/commerce calculus class and an engineering calculus class. Guess which one I snagged the last seat in? Of course, the engineering calculus. Why? Because someone out there has a faster trigger finger than I’ve got. I hated people for approximately 2 and a half hours.

And then, on a whim, I checked courses again. And there were 3 spots available at an earlier math course – the one for social sciences too! I registered for that class first and then once I saw that I had registered into it, I dropped the (harder) engineering math class. So now for second term, I end at noon for Mondays and Fridays. I’m still trying to get a different time for a (mandatory) tutorial. So crossing fingers for that.

And, like I said, course registration is stressful. Especially when (stupid smarter) people keep on filling up the courses that you want!

But in other news… Today is Tuesday! Monday just seemed to drag on forever for me. One of my coworkers was moving office spaces (there’s a lot of rearranging going on at Buildings A and B at the moment) and she set me up with a small fan because her new space is a lot larger (with it’s own air conditioning) and thinks I’m going to die in the heat. So I now have a small fan that clips onto a small shelf and it’s aimed directly at me. It is a bit slow when it starts off spinning, so it takes a good 5 to 10 minutes for it to actually start spinning fast enough to generate any form of breeze in my general direction. But still, pretty spiffy. Especially since the weather’s been getting nicer lately too.

I need to buy some fray check… Eventually… Soonish… I was reading up on sewing tutorials (it’s been ages since I’ve sewn a thing, and they were specific to sewing dolly clothing) and it was suggested to use fray check (or some variation of it) rather than trying to surge or fold over and hem the seams since the article will be so small and it’ll just add unnecessary bulk. Which I can see happening. So… I need to find fray check. Eventually. If I want to ever do anything involving fabric, haha. But right now I’ve got another sweater on the needles. I’m trying out a different stitch pattern (following the same general amount of stitches and the decreases and increases for shaping, but different stitch pattern), not sure if I like it yet though, so not photos of my badly stitch work.

How was your Tuesday? To my fellow post secondary students… Good luck with course registration if you haven’t done it yet!

I talk about yarn… Like a lot…

Michelle — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 05:02:17 +0000

@ Heather – Learning how to crochet or knit isn’t a problem. There are a lot of resources online (photos, tutorials, video tutorials, etc.) on how to do both. They’ll take you through the basics, they’ll teach you the basic abbreviations for the stitches, how to hold the yarn with the needles or hook (although, while I do hold knitting needles the ‘correct’ way, I hold my crochet hook differently than most people do, it seems). That’s not a problem. Once you know how to knit and purl (for knitting) and once you get the chain stitch and single crochet (for crochet, obviously), the rest is really straight forward. But there are pros and cons to both.

Scroll down now if you don’t want to read about me going on and on about knitting, crocheting and yarn purchasing.

I personally like crocheting better only because it’s easier for me. But there are some downsides to it. Like… Crocheting takes more yarn than knitting does, which makes it more expensive for for a comparable project. But dropping a stitch in crochet is no problem because you can pick it up straight away, if you drop a stitch in knitting, you either have to ‘unknit’ until that spot or try to figure out how to get it hook back up again. It’s easier to make something circular (I’ve found) with crochet than knitting. This just may be because I absolutely loathe using double-pointed knitting needles. I’ve done it once, I’m probably never going to do it again. Of course, the most important thing to consider is cost. Basic things that you’ll need (a hook to start of with, a set of knitting needles, either straights or circulars) is pretty inexpensive. You can probably find dozens and dozens of needles and hooks at your local thrift store and they’ll wash pretty easily.

The cost comes in the yarn. I started off with yarn given to me and my sister by my mom. She used to knit a lot and I ended up with so much yarn. Like really nice stuff: wool, alpaca, camel, merino. All really nice, natural yarn. All really nice expensive yarn. I knew next to nothing about yarn types when I started out. Imagine my surprise when I headed to a local crafts store and discovered that they didn’t have anything that felt nearly as nice as the gorgeous ball of pink (100% merino) yarn that I had at home.

For some things, the content of the yarn doesn’t really matter. I mean, no one’s going to be constantly hugging or snuggling up with Gwen and Albert – they were made with 100% acrylic yarn that was dirt cheap, but crocheted up nicely and did what I wanted it to do. However, you wouldn’t want to use the same type of yarn for say… a scarf. Why? Because it’d probably give you a rash because it’s not a soft yarn, it’s scratchy and slightly abrasive against your skin. I’ve made scarves in both acrylic yarn and in nicer, natural fibres. I don’t wear the one that’s made out of acrylic yarn, it’s in my closet. I spent a lot of time on it, sure, but it’s just not… nice because I end up scratching at wherever it’s touching my skin. And, well, nice yarn costs money. And I’m a student, so it’s not like I have a tree that drops off fifty dollar bills whenever I need some. So I rely on sales… and my sister. Who has more of a yarn fetish than I do. For instance, the last time that there was a really nice sale at Michaels, she dropped an amount that I’m not going to disclose on the internet for (I hope I can remember this correctly): 10 skeins of 100% merino in two colours, 5 skeins of 100% cotton, 4 skeins of novelty eyelash yarn (it’s a bitch to knit or crochet with unless you’re using it with something else, just to let you know), 5 skeins of alpaca-wool mix (really gorgeous stuff) and 6 skeins of soy-bamboo mix (dead serious: soy and bamboo, in the softest non-animal yarn possible). She calculated how much it would have cost if none of it was on sale. The total? $248 (that’s Canadian dollars, not American).

So while crocheting and knitting is an awesome hobby, I do highly enjoy it and I like making cute things and assorted things that I can wear (because, really, who wants to go cold in the winter? Or autumn… Or spring…?), it is a pricey hobby (however – not as pricey as making jewelry!). I do encourage everyone to learn one or the other (or both?). It makes you a little it more appreciative of handmade gifts that you get. Plus, you’ll end up with awesome projects that you can show off with a smile. As long as you don’t go crazy and spend everything you have on yarn. You do not want to know how much yarn is currently in my house. Or how many work-in-progress projects are lying around the house with needles and hooks and stitch markers. Because then you’d just think that my sister and I are absolutely insane. If we are, it’s probably genetic.

Start of non-knitting, crocheting and yarn purchasing topics.

Wow, I just went on and on there, didn’t I? Hah. Umm… So Thursday. My Thursday went well. I woke up, argued with my father, left the house in a huff (ended up going back home before I caught my bus because I’d left my cell phone at home – I’m such a smart cookie sometimes). But I did catch my bus, where I spent the duration of my trip to school listening to Lily Allen in my ears. School went well today… Sort of…? I got my biology midterm back. I did worse than my previous tests in that class, so I was frankly, rather disappointed in myself. But… it’s not a bad mark. It’s just ‘not as good’ as it could have been. Then again, I wasn’t feeling very well that day (and after that, I spent a weekend in bed because I was sick) so I’m going to factor that in when I’m convincing myself that I’m not nearly as stupid as I think that I am sometimes.

Chemistry’s going well. J was sitting in the back of the lecture hall today with her boyfriend. The one who stole her iPod and cheated on her? Yeah, she’s a smart cookie, eh? Apparently they’re together again. He’s managed to convince her that the girl that he slept with ‘tricked’ him into having sex with her. When I heard this, my eyes went wide and my jaw dropped and it was just like “…. Are you stupid?” although I didn’t say that out loud, because that would not be very nice. Instead, my eyes went wide and my jaw dropped, I recovered (relatively quickly, I might add) and went “Have fun with whatever STIs he’s going to give you!” and I even added in a bright, cheery, sarcastic smile. She had the nerve to ask me for my chem notes (again) because she was “busy” during the time of our last class. Sometimes I wonder about people.

Oh! And I’m going to volunteering tomorrow! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). It’s been a while since I’ve gone. I missed the last… three weeks. Which makes me feel bad, because I love volunteering and it made me sad that I couldn’t go in (but I’m not selfish enough to go and spend time with people with not-so-good immune systems when I’ve got the flu). But I’m going to be going in tomorrow since I am: no longer coughing, no longer have a fever and haven’t had a flu-like symptom for about a week now. So I think I’m good to go. And I’m quite happy and excited about that since it’s been so damn long! Plus, you know, it’s nice to spend time with people who don’t care how well I do on my biology midterm and just listen to someone tell me a story about “my life”. I wonder what kind of animal I’ll get referred to as tomorrow?

And if you read the entire entry, you deserve a cookie! Or 1495 cookies – which is the total word count for this entry. Wow, I talk a lot about yarn! I hope you had a wonderful Thursday and that your Friday is even better! And go buy yarn.