I just finished my first felting project. I took a pattern from knitty.com for a french market bag and made a few adjustments.

Firstly, I used Malabrigo yarn. This stuff is awesome to work with not only because of its incredible softness, but also, when felted, the muted variation of color in the hand-dyed yarn added depth to the project.

Because I used Malabrigo, and the pattern called for #7s and I used #8s, the gauge was off. This resulted in me having to adjust the 11/8/9 pre-felting measurements to 15/11/13. Now I thought that because of this, I would need to put it in the washer for extra long, but my co-workers said that I'd actually need to keep a close eye on the project because the gauge was so tight. They were right. It felted up extra quick and was in the wash for only about 7 minutes.

Another problem I had was that I created a diagonal stripe visual pattern around the body of the bag, but when I carried the unused yarn over on the wrong side, I didn't leave enough extra to account for the shrinkage that occurs in felting. Therefore, the middle of the body is slightly smaller in circumfrence than the rest, even though I did stretch it out as much as I could when I took it out of the wash. I didn't take finished measurements before I gave it to my mom, but here's a picture.

(http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter03/PATTfrenchmarket.html)

It's the perfect cheer! As interpreted by Virb and Susan. The first of many, if all goes according to plan.

Last night while spending some quality time with some quality people at Pier street, I decided it would probably not be a bad idea to allow everyone to sharpie all over me. Fear not, I kept this activity confined to my 'core', aware of the fact that I would undoubtedly by questioned about any visible writing at work. A few minutes ago I noticed some writing on my hand, which reminded me of the canvas that is my abdomen. Virb and I were discussing rewriting notes and I turned to her and said something like "Speaking of writing, do you remember this?" I then proceeded to dramatically pull up my shirt, pulling it so far upward that I may have flashed Virb most of my boob. Awesome.

Pictures to come as available..not of my boob..of the graffiti.

Top 5 reasons to have a car on campus:
5. You can drive home in time for sweet parties at Penn before they all scatter for break.
4. You can drive to the grocery store whenever you want, and get all the groceries you want.
3. You can drive to and from late-night practices in the Cost Center.
2. You can drive TallE home at 5:45 in the morning when you finish watching "Stick It" (after being awake since 7:45am the previous day).
1. You can sleep in your car when you get back at 6am and realize your housekey was in your jeans that you took off when you put your comfy fleece pants on and the door is locked. And NONE of the 6 people sleeping in your house wake up when you ring the doorbell about 10 times.

I'll finish this post in a bit (or write another post later). With the full story, probably.

So, about four minutes ago while I was sitting on the couch with Virb and Kayla (who was sexiled from her room) we heard Susan making noises from underneath our homemade nest tent in the living room. All of a sudden she burst out into fits of violent laughter. Half wanting to know what was so amusing and half fearing for Susan's mental and physical health we asked her what was so funny. After about thirty seconds of more laughter she replied. "I think it's really funny when I accidently put on caps lock."
Ummm. Alright Susan.