Customer Satisfaction

I love making people happy. This is the happy owner of that tricky Chanel scarf I finished the other day

These days make me happy…until I go to sell back my college textbooks. Thru fantastic grants and low-interest student loans, I haven’t had to put out the $1000, (give or take) in my college textbooks over the past four and a half years, however, I was only able to sell ONE textbook out of the three this semester. I was not pleased with that.

Now, back to business:

This is the Shalom Cardigan I’ve been working on. Not sure how I feel about it. The color is stunning, but I think it’s more than obvious that it may be a LITTLE too tight. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it. Don’t get me wrong, in not blessed in the chest by any means, so I’m hoping when I block it it may grow.

Like The Blob

Only more fashionable and cute.

Here’s hoping…

Challenge: Accepted

I live for a good challenge, especially when it cones to knitting techniques. I have so many projects laying around because I easily get bored and move on to the next shiny opportunity.

I also love challenging myself whenever someone orders a specific item from me. Nothing puts on the pressure like bringing an idea together that’s not your own. I am a very detail oriented person, so I always ask a lot of questions about what you want and exactly how you want it. I freak out inside when someone tells me, “Here’s is a very vague example of what I want, so just surprise me in everything else!”

This was not one of those instances. I’ll call her the Irish Lass, and she’s a lady who knows exactly what she wants, aka my kinda girl.

You’ll have to excuse the poor quality of my cellular device. This scarf bares the Chanel logo. And yes, the tell-tale gap between the Cs is there, I promise. The scarf end on the right also has the legendary logo, but it’s on the other side. Blissfully, I was able to embroider it on without it showing on the plain black side 👍

I haven’t done a simple, rectangular scarf like this in a while, but I’m very excited to have learned something new I the process!!

Sitting in Class

Thankfully these night classes are very generous in giving us breaks. With the grand exception of this peculiar Chinese girl sitting behind me with the worst spring-time cough, I’m just zoning out of the subject matter at the moment.

Now, I’m not discriminating here, it’s just that her belongings are one row lower than me and nine seats down and to the left, and i find it odd that she purposefully got up and moved across the room to sit behind me, probably leering over my shoulder. It wasn’t until I heard, (and felt) her hacking cough behind me did I realize she had moved. I don’t care who you are: GROSS.

I suspect she is a spy for her homeland government.

Speaking of annoying:

I’ve run out of yarn. Thankfully I have a third ball of this Picoboo bamboo and cotton blend at home, I was just wanting to be conservative and not have to use it. Plus I’m stuck in class until seven unless he decides to let us out early.

Now, I’d like to take a moment to let you all envision me doing a very juvenile and cartoonish Happy Dance. I have completed enough credits to earn my minor in psychology. I’m so relieved. At my university, a degree in Child and Family Development is a comprehensive major, so I technically don’t need a minor, but since my Emphasis in Child Life isn’t printed on my diploma, I figured that this would decorate my credentials a little more.

Well, that’s really all I’ve got for now.

Big Girl Problems

There are many reasons to be at a healthy weight. There’s better over-all health, the ability to squeeze into tight spaces when applicable, and looking relatively appealing in and out of clothes.

Many of those who know me know that I can budget my money pretty well. I can save, and boy-howdy can I spend it. I have crunched the numbers, I have crunched my flabby gut, and I have finally found a solution.

I can save SO much money on yarn if I lost just about 20 pounds.

I’m a big girl, I’m not ashamed of it. I weigh about 184 pounds, pretty much overweight even on my 5’11″ frame. Typically, depending on the yarn, pattern, needle size and all that jazz, some projects take a lot of yarn. Yarn prices also vary from $8 a skein for a nice cotton/alpaca blend all the way up to $30 for silk an cashmere. Now I personally have never paid more than $16 for one skein of yarn, but man is it possible around my birthday.

So, here’s my Shalom Cardigan I’ve been working on in this Knit-a-Long

It may possibly choke me before it’s over. I only had size 10 needles when it called for the very obscure size of 10.75. It’s very bizarre. So, I added two extra stitches, knit as loosely as I could, so hopefully I can stretch it with the first soaking. I’ve also decided to just make my own button for it. I have some black poly more clay wrapped up and ready to go, so here’s hoping.

Marvelous

It is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day! I can’t think of any better weather for May Day! And I can’t think of any better project for this yarn than this Shalom Cardigan, it’s a free download on Ravelry

It looks relatively simple. I did finally finish the Simplest Sweated that I made in the March Knit-Along, which I was originally using this yarn for if you remember:

Now, it is going to be the Shalom Cardigan. Even more exciting, I’m hosting this Knit-Along myself 😃 I’m very excited to see what my other crafters come up with when they finish! I will be babysitting tonight, so hopefully I won’t be so distracted and make good progress, ha!

Plans

Plans change. I’m a planner. I’m always making lists, plans, and backup plans. I planned to leave high school, go to college for a few years to do radiography, and then make a quick slide into med school.

That changed one day in chemistry, when this voice in my head perked up and said, “Rachel, this job will have you on your feet all day, in a windowless clinic pushing buttons for the rest of your life. This isn’t really serving a greater purpose is it?“

So, I entered the field of Child Life. Working with children in the hospital setting was something I quickly came to love. I planned to sail right through it and graduate this upcoming May.

Plans change. I missed out on an opportunity to do a practicum, (or mini internship), only to have the same program miraculously fall into my lap one year later. I planned to apply for an out of town internship for this spring.

Plans change. And change again. I applied to four hospitals. I was interviewed at those four hospitals, and still came up short. So I planned to extend my practicum and try again. I applied to thirteen hospitals in the summer. Interviewed by only two of those hospitals. The plus side is they were both my favorites.

I found out I had fallen short yet again the night my grandfather died, so I had to put aside my own heartbreak to support my dad and deal with all the family issues that followed.

One hospital very strongly suggested I re-apply for an internship with them in the fall, and suggest it so strongly that I have even been in contact with them since they turned me down last fall. But the truth is, I’m so used to things falling apart that I can’t even muster the energy to be excited for the possibility of a second chance. I’m almost more excited about cooking up another backup plan than I am about the possibility of finally getting one step closer to the dream job I’ve been struggling for for the past three years. I don’t want to fail, but I’m just so ready to move on with my life.

I want to move on to this city to complete this internship. But I want to move on to planning the next step before I get my hopes crushed.

Plan A only works for people who have to have other people run their lives for them. I am now in the middle of Plan D, encompassing everything that has failed since I first applied for a basic practicum. Some things could work out in my favor, but history has a way of reoccurring. I’ve lost so much faith in myself it’s sometimes a struggle just to have enthusiasm to answer people when they ask what I’m going to school for. And it sucks.

Perhaps another reason my enthusiasm is just loneliness. All of my friends in this field either got their internships right away and are happily doing what I love, or we’re in a similar situation of not getting an internship like me and simply gave up.

Eh, all I can do is try. And fail. And try something else. Goodness knows if something actually ever goes the way I plan I may not know what to do with myself

Machine

One of the girls I used to swim with in high school once called me ‘The Machine’. I’m not sure if it was because I was the long-distance swimmer or because I was big and noisy. But today, I happily re-claim my old adolescent nickname:

I am The Machine

…the Cardigan Knitting Machine…

I am less than thirty rounds And fifteen minutes of sewing in ends away from completing my first pullover sweater, the Simplest Sweater KAL I joined back in March. It. Is. Gorgeous!!! I will definitely cast on this pattern in the future!!

Now, you obviously know there is a difference between a pullover sweater and a cardigan, so here is why the name has been reclaimed:

I had a vision of a wine colored yarn I had bought years ago before the first yarn shop here in town closed down. For some reason, I was filled with this Uncontrollable urge to tear my house apart until I found it. And I found all seven skeins of it.

Since then, I have gone about scouring my books and Ravelry, debating and crying, and finally taking on organizing a lot of my yarn. Those who know me would definitely say my organizational style is ‘chaotic’, at best; not in the since of organizing my life,(despite that one day this past week when I somehow managed to get all the way across town to work before I realized I had forgotten to put on a bra), just in the since of organizing my physical belongings.

There are now at least five brown paper or old Victorias Secret bags filled with yarn and the corresponding pattern with which I will use to make various cardigans and one shell/cowl neck tank-top. I’ve never been this organized! Now, if only I could just power thru all these other pesky little projects holding my back from full-bodied greatness, then I would truly be in business.

Well, here’s looking at a summer full of warm cardigans!!

Rach