I just wanted to let you all know that I'm not dead, it's just that time of the semester when all the research papers are due. SO, I do have a very exciting post regarding a bag in the works (I just need to get around to taking some pictures), and hopefully that will be finished soon. Until then, please remember that I love you all and that research papers are annoying.

yarn yarn yarn

Ahh! You wouldn't believe how windy, rainy, and gross it is here for April. Not very pleasant I tell you....

Yarn that you get through the mail always looks so squished and sad when you first take it out of the bag.

As you can well see, I went with the pink. Now, usually my first instinct is to go with green. Always always always go with green. Always. But then I thought about it, and realized that since I always go with green half my wardrobe is green, whereas I own nothing that is remotely pink. And so, we have Island Coral.

I also got this stuff, just for kicks.

Now I don't know what I'll do with this, seeing as it's only 50 grams, but we'll see. Something not very big I guess.

Also, my bag is done and it's lovely, but I think I'll talk about it in another post or else this one will turn out way long and no one will actually read it.

In other, more sad news, my computer crashed last weekend. It was a sad day, I must say, especially since this happened to me once before just about a year and half ago. It wasn't the end of the world because I make sure to back everything up once a semester, and I immediately back up all my pictures. The only thing I lost was some rather important research from this semester, but I think (hope) that most of the damage is repairable since I have a habit of writing everything down on paper (what can I say, I love computers dearly but I'm just the kind of person who needs things on real paper in my own handwriting).
Now I love Macs dearly, I really do, I have always been and always will be a Mac user, but this actually made me reconsider for a moment, especially since the last time I had to have my hard drive replaced it cost me $300.
But then I stopped reconsidering after my wonderful boyfriend reassured me he could fix my computer himself. So we headed out to Best Buy, bought a $70 hard drive that is TWICE the size of my broken one, and he put it in for me. He tells me that it's a much better hard drive than the last one and thus shouldn't break on me. We'll see....

I highly recommend dating an electronics major. They come in really useful sometimes.

Thanks in advance!

So i am planning on knitting this with this. Could someone who knows more about yarn substitution than me please tell me if this is a good idea or not?

And while you're at it, what color is better for this pattern? The Coral or the Green?

The sweater, it is finished. Well, not officially finished, there is no ribbon on the inside. But I think that’s alright, because after wearing the sweater I realized that you can’t see the inside of the zipper most of the time, so it’s not ugly. I was expecting for it to stick out like a sore thumb, not so much.

Can't see the inside of the zipper!

Installation itself was surprisingly easy. I was expecting some horrible horrible thing to happen from all the accounts I’ve heard and strong warnings telling me to make sure the zipper is in straight and etc. Basically, I pinned the zipper in where I thought it was straight, basted it in with lovely red thread and tried it on, and decided it was still straight, then consulted my mother who agreed with me, and then sewed it in. And it was straight.

Note the awesome red thread that you probably won't be able to see unless you are so inclined to make this bigger

I sewed it in by hand, quite honestly I don’t trust a sewing machine with my hand knit objects. Nor do I see how that would actually work – wouldn’t it stretch out the fabric (thus making it not straight)? I don’t know, people keep claiming that it works.

In other news:

My bag is going alright. Lots of basting. I’ve discovered that basting makes me hate the sewing machine less – less time involved in front of it, as I can baste somewhere else and then quick sew up what I need to. But it’s going slowly, and now that school is back in session don’t be expecting this to go very speedily.

using yellow thread this time instead of red thread.

I managed to break my first sewing machine needle last night (aww, significant events in a sewer’s life, we should scrapbook this). I couldn’t exactly ask mom how to fix this situation since it was quite late and she was asleep, so I’m proud to announce that I replaced the needle all by myself! Of course in the process I managed to do something (I have no idea what) that makes the thread break while sewing. This I could not figure out how to fix by myself, and will need to consult mom about tonight.

I’d also like to apologize for the sad looking pictures I post on here. I look at other people’s blogs and they take awesome pictures of their knitting. I can’t seem to create artful knitting photos so I apologize if they’re rather uninspiring.