November 10, 2013

I bought the owl hat pattern this morning and I spent most of my day figuring that out. The pattern itself really isn't that hard but I've never knit a hat before. Circular needles are a bitch and I don't like them. I tried several different techniques with short and long cables but I couldn't get anything to work for me. I think I just needed an even smaller cable but I don't know how small they go. So instead I switched to double pointed needles. And relearned how those things work. I eventually got it all worked out and made it about halfway through the pattern. Unfortunately I won't be able to actually wear the hat (although I didn't really plan to) or give it to someone because I only have one size of double pointed needles and they are much smaller than the ones required for the hat. So the hat is way too small. But I want to finish it so I can see what it actually looks like in person. Tomorrow after work I may run out to Hobby Lobby and see if I can get some bigger needles.

The most frustrating part, well, second most frustrating part after the circular needles, was the yarn. I prefer to pull it out of the center of the skein because it is much more manageable that way. When it works. It tends to be hit or miss, especially when the end of the yarn isn't obviously coming from the center. And when you're using cheaper yarn. Today was one of those misses. Every several inches I had to undo a knot, sometimes pulling out big chunks of yarn to find out where it was getting hung up. It was all a minor nightmare.

I had Terraria running in the background while knitting and watching YouTube videos and DVRed stuff. I would occasionally kill bad guys and take a break from knitting during a blood moon, and I managed to get quite a few goodie bags throughout the day. Unfortunately they were all filled with crap I already had. No luck with the Ninja Turtle costume. Or I guess it is a karate turtle costume, so as to avoid any copyright issues. I have put so much time in and it is a bit disappointing that I didn't get the costume but I am glad today was the last day of the Halloween event. I am very much burnt out on Terraria at the moment. And I haven't actually played it that much during the Halloween event. At least relative to the time Steam shows I have put into the game in the last couple of weeks. Most of it is idle time where I left the game running in the background to let mobs build up. But I'm tired of it and want to get back to Minecraft. Even if I can't breed animals because they keep disappearing.

Tonight I did laundry and made a bunch of chips. Hopefully enough to last me through the week. I ran out last week and wasn't in the mood to make more so I when with Triscuits. I liked the smaller wheat tortillas I was using because it was easy to count out how many I was going to have each day. Now I am using bigger tortillas and I cut them up a bunch more and I tend to just fill up my bag until it looks like enough. I could do the math and count out how many I need every day, and I did kind of do that, but I think I would rather be annoyed with my estimation.