I'm still here

Just thought I'd post a little something to let you all know that I'm still alive :) I just finished taking notes from a really long chapter about eukaryotic cells, and I thought I'd take a small break before I start doing the exercises. *sigh* I read through the chapter last week, but for some reason I didn't take notes. Don't ask why... Next week I plan to start on the math. I haven't done it sooner because I need to borrow a fancy calculator from a friend who won't arrive in town before Sunday :/ Hope I have time to do it all. I figure that if I don't spend more than two weeks on each chapter, I'll get through the whole book by the end of November. Fingers crossed :)

Though I really need to focus on my studying this fall, I hope I'll be able to get some crafting done as well (I have to do something, or I'll probably go insane). I'm almost done with a new Great Big Bug - a firefly - and I have another one started. Plus I'd like to make another firefly as a mate to the first one. I have only four legs left to make! I'll do my best to finish it by this week :) For the body I've used glow-in-the-dark yarn (yellow Bernat) for the first time! I ordered it from here, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to people ouside of US or Canada, the shipping cost was insane compared to the price of the yarn :/ I tried ordering another brand (white Nightlights) from another site, but they had problems with overseas shipping, so I didn't really have a choice. Of course I could have waited until they had their issues fixed, but you know me :p Anyway, here's a sneak peek at the firefly:

She's quite large, and the back end really does glow! I'm pretty pleased with this one :)

Oh, another thing... I've managed to get tangled up in a craft project with a deadline of  August 31st, so that naturally has priority right now. Not sure how much I can talk about it yet, so if you feel like I haven't posted much craftyness lately it's not because I haven't done anything :) I promise I'll tell you more about it when I know how it turns out!

And then there's the tatting :) I'm hooked! On the bus here I started a new project, and during the next two or three days I finished my first "big" item, a crocodile bookmark :) Thought it would be cool to put in my biology book. The pattern is called "Alligator bookmark" from the book Animal Bookmarks - A Tatted Zoo by Dianna Stevens, but I think it looks more like a crocodile than an alligator. I like crocodiles better :)

Bookmarks are both practical and fun to make, and I think it's becoming a new obsession :) I'm not at all a fast tatter, so I can only make a few rings and chains every night, but I've just finished a thistle bookmark from this pattern. It doesn't say how many colors to use, but I made mine in green and pink. Pictures will probably be up on Flickr and Facebook tonight or tomorrow :)

The beginning of my summer holiday :)

I know I've been ranting a lot about how busy I've been the past week, so I thought I'd make a little post about it :)

On Thursday last week my mother came to visit me and my boyfriend in Bergen. The next day I had my final exam in an Egyptology course. I think I did well :) Afterwards we went out to celebrate with fancy dinner at one of our favorite places.

Saturday I baked a ton of bread while my mother went shopping, and we had bread, cheese and wine while we watched the Eurovision Song Contest finale in the evening. 

Sunday we visited the botanical garden for a little while before we went to see the new Robin Hood movie. I liked it a lot. It's definitely not "men in tights", but it's also very different from the Kevin Costner version. Darker, dirtier and with more chaimail armor :)

Monday was the day we'd been waiting for. The Guns N' Roses concert in Bergen! We warmed up with lunch/dinner at the best burger place in town, and then we went to the show. The warm-up band just left the stage as we arrived, and then we waited for two hours... It was so hot in the hall that I was nearly extatic every time someone walked past me and created a little breeze! My feet and back hurt really bad, but when the band finally came on stage it was all worth it! :) 

They kept going for a little more than two hours (which was a little short compared to the other shows on this tour), but it was still great :) The show ended with fireworks, confetti, and this is how the floor looked after it was all over:

I spent most of Tuesday packing up my stuff to go home. And I have a lot of stuff! This time I only packed clothes and no books or other stuff, but I still needed to bring a lot of yarn and two bags of stuffing, since that is practically unavailable where I come from. I filled a small bag with finished amigurumis to be sold this summer, and half the rest of my luggage is just yarn! It's a little insane :)

My boyfriend stayed behind in the apartment, and my mother and I took the bus home on Wednesday morning. I slept most of the way, and didn't do half the crocheting I had planned. When we arrived home I discovered that my mother has killed my cactus! :( Poor Gustav... Another cactus, Carl, is on the floor behind the couch... (In case you wondered, they are named after the Swedish king!)

Yesterday my mother and I went to get new tattoos! Yay :) My mother got a tribal thingy on the back of her neck. I got a small one on my wrist of three Egyptian hieroglyphs meaning "Life, Prosperity, Health", and a larger one on my leg of Bollan! I thought this was a great opportunity to combine two of my favorite things, so I drew her knitting, with two balls of yarn and a crochet hook :D 

I drew Bollan myself, and the knitting and yarn I adapted from some clip-art I found online. I'm very happy with it!

I've talked to the lady who's going to be my boss this summer, and I don't have to start working until next week, so now I'm just enjoying the holiday and doing nothing except amigurumi :D

Give-away & contest!

Cheryl of Bingle Bears is celebrating her one year anniversary of blogging with a give-away, and the prize is this really sweet bear:

He's so adorable, I want him! :) His name is Sammy and he's 11 inches tall and fully jointed.

Fiffel & Tråd is celebrating 1000 visitors with a contest! The first prize is this lovely pile of yarn:

Second prize is some other goodies like pompons and hearts to decorate amigurumi:

Congratulations to the both of you :D

Magazines, stickers & yarn

Last week these magazines came in the mail:

The two latest issues of Simply Knitting, my first ever purchase on ebay! I'm very proud :) I paid enough for them, though, the lady who sold them to me (used, but with all free gifts still intact) probably made good money, but I still paid less than I would if I'd bought them in a Norwegian store... I guess I should subscribe to the magazine, it's a lot cheaper than buying single issues, but then I only buy the ones with the Alan Dart patterns that I want, so I don't really know.

Then I got a letter from my mother-in-law, containing these really cute hedgehog stickers:

Aren't they lovely? She accidentally found them in a store and just had to buy them for me :)

Yesterday I went out to get a few balls of white yarn I need to finish a project, but as usual the store was all out of white... But there was a 30% sale on all DROPS yarn, so I bought a pile of Eskimo to make more hats:

After that I came across a new and exciting craft magazine, Cross Stitcher:

I stood in the shop for a while and wondered which magazine to buy, because there are LOTS of them, but when I discovered what the free gift was I simply had to buy it!

Have you ever seen such a cute hedgehog? (Well, yes you have, if you've seen The Great Boll!) The world can never have enough hedgies :D

Weekend visit & shopping

This weekend we've had a visit by my boyfriend's parents. They brought LOTS of chicken/turkey hot dogs and chicken filets, our freezer is now completely full :) The mother's birthday was just a few days ago, so I made a cake, and I finally got to use my dinosaur sprinkles!

We went out shopping one of the days, the mother was looking for an 8mm crochet hook to make the Olympic hat, and we ended up getting new yarn for me to make more hats :) 

After I tried my first Olympic hat I fell in love with the yarn (DROPS Eskimo) and the spimplicity of the hat pattern, and I wanted to make lots of them to sell. I have now developed a pattern of my own that I'm happy with, and I'll add it to my pattern blog later :)

I also got the biggest Easter egg I've ever had, it has room for both Bollan and all my candy!

Back to school

Woke up to 20 degrees C in our apartment this morning, almost comfortable :p I think it's getting warmer outside as well, so I'm hoping the indoor temperature will rise to a survivable level during the next few days.

Yesterday I bought school books for more than 3000NOK (more than 350USD), the most I've ever paid for curriculum books in one semester (yes, books are insanely expensive in Norway), but then I haven't taken as many courses before. Two linguistics classes, an Egyptology class and a full semester of Latin :) I think all the courses adds up to about 2.5 regular semesters of credits... I'm going to be very busy this spring! This means that I probably won't post as often as before, partly because my studies aren't that exciting, but mainly because I won't have time to do much crafting to blog about.

Today I have tried to tidy up my yarn stash, but with little success... I have too much! Bags and boxes everywhere, and nowhere to store them :/ I think I'll give up the tidying and start working on my Latin vocabulary instead. First class tomorrow, yay :)

Freezing!

Got back to our apartment today, and it was just over 3 degrees Celsius inside! No time to unpack, just to turn all the heating on, and then we curled up under a pile of blankets, with hot water bottles (yes, plural!) and tea. We lit lots of candles and had a very quick dinner, and now I plan to stay in my chair until bedtime :) Poor Glyptodon had to rest on a hot water bottle, he was so cold. I still have both my alpaca hat and wristwarmers on, and I have trouble typing... It was actually warmer in the fridge! Now, a few hours later it's almost 8 degrees, practically summer :p

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, hopefully the apartment will have warmed up a bit more, and I'm going to buy lots of new school books. Always the most fun part of the semester :)

By the way, this is what it looks like when I go back from a holiday.

To start with, I pack very little yarn, a few balls only, because I know what I'll end up with... The strange thing is that I rarely need to buy colors that I know I already have, so I don't end up with several balls of colors that I use very little of. Quite practical :)

A night out and more yarn :)

Yesterday we were supposed to meet all the people we haven't had time to see earlier this holiday, so we went out early to have lots of time. First we stopped at the yarn store so I could buy some more yarn :) It's more or less the same colors that I bought last time, but this yarn is for felting (and the other yarn is superwash and won't felt). I need it for a new project I've started (surprise!), which I'll post about later :)

After that I parked my boyfriend at a cafe while I went looking for more craft stuff. I had put Tunisian crochet hooks on my Christmas wishing list, and when I didn't get any, I decided to buy them myself. This is what I ended up with: two metal afghan hooks and one bamboo, the tiniest circular needle I've ever seen (only 23cm/9.5 inches long, perfect if you can't use double-pointed needles to knit small things in the round) and a regular crochet hook with a bamboo handle. It cost me a bit, but I think it will be worth it :)

After the shopping we met two of the friends we've seen several times this holiday, the other ones couldn't come after all, they apparently had some trouble with their dog. I understand the dog is fine now, though :) I got a delayed birthday present, an RPG dice set with pretty purple dice with weird shapes :)

Haven't played with them yet, but the few rolls I made last night weren't exactly good... Maybe I'll donate them to The Boll, she likes to play :) I understand that all roleplayers are extremely superstitious, some won't let other people borrow or even touch their dice. I have no problem with other people using my dice, but I have found the ones that work for me (a mix of my own and by boyfriend's), and don't like to use other ones...

Anyway, after dinner we went to a pub where a friend of a friend works. It was very dark and very hot, but a cool place. I was of course crocheting all night on my new project, and ended up with some yarn ends. I gave a piece of string to my friend, and this is what he made of it:

He calls it his minion...

Oh, by the way, I have become totally hooked on the soundtrack from the new Sherlock Holmes movie. If you haven't seen it yet, you definitely should! The music is great, sort of gypsy style with violins, mandolin and a broken piano :)

Finally, in this very long post, a picture of some pretty grafitti on a wall:

Happy birthday to me :)

It's my birthday today :) Well, technically it was yesterday, since it's now past midnight. I'm 27, and rapidly closing in on 30... Should I worry? I don't feel old at all, not much older than I felt 7 years ago. 

Earlier today we went for a walk at the frozen lake, and it was extremely cold. About 12 degrees freezing. I had a knitted alpaca hat, and my newly washed hair was tucked in my jacket, but the inch that was exposed actually froze stiff... 

My mother-in-law gave me some money for my birthday, and I thought I'd spend most of it on yarn in fancy colors (I need them all!). The yarn shop had a 20% discount on all yarn, so I  went a little bananas :) This is the yarn I usually use for small amigurumis, and for my granny squares:

I can also mention that I'll be participating in a crochet-along at Veronica's blog Ulliga Gulliga Saker. You find the crochet-along here. I understand it will be something like an amigurumi, but otherwise it's a secret. The pattern will be posted tomorrow, I hope. I'm so excited :)

Hmm...

I don't know how some people do it! I needed some thin yellow yarn for a project, and then I found two skeins of shiny golden crochet thread I'd stolen from my grandmother two years ago. It would be perfect, if I could only find an end so I could begin unwinding the thing. But no... Before I started it looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

That's after my boyfriend saved me from the yarnmonster (and my bad temper when it comes to knots and tangled yarn). At least I got enough yarn for my project before we gave up.

Check out my Advent calendar in a few days to see what this thing is a part of :)

Yarn distress and a shortage of time...

Where to start.. *sigh*

Yesterday I found out that my favorite acrylic yarn is no longer sold in any shops anywhere near me, and I haven't found a good (read: cheap) online store yet, so it looks like a dozen of my projects are never going to be completed :/ It sucks.. I discovered this when I went out to buy some black yarn to make a Halloween cupcake, but that's not all.. There's really no good substitute for this yarn, and the closest has a very small color selection. I really wanted to get some yellow and light blue yarn as well, but the alternative yarn didn't have yellow or light blue.. All I could find was black (fortunately), a new pink and a darker green. I was supposed to buy some darker blue, too, but I managed to drop that ball on my way from the shelf to the counter.. Argh.. So now I'll have to go back there today just to buy that one ball of dark blue :/ On top of it all I have once again realised that Halloween is just around the corner, and I probably won't have time to make the stuff I've been planning. This is how it is every year, really, but do I learn? Nope...

It's not all bad, though. I have now spent a good while uploading pictures on Flickr, both new and old ones, and organizing my albums and stuff. It's good to have a day off to do nothing important :) In a couple of hours (after breakfast/lunch and a little tidying of the house) I'm going out to buy that dark blue yarn and a nice bottle of wine to enjoy all by myself tonight, while my boyfriend is out with a friend. Wine, a decent movie and crocheting all night long :)