I am not a sports fan. But if I like one sport, its hockey. And being from Chicago, this was a big year for our team. And me:



This is one of the only teams I support and so last Christmas my stocking stuffer bet was Blackhawks/Stanley Cup while my other family members mostly got Cubs/World Series. Bad deal for them really...

I am about to mail this to Vegas to collect my winnings but wanted a copy somewhere. Blog it is.

Journal swap round 3: librarian.

ps. those are her people.

Journal swap round 3: me.

I like the ripping of the paper. Song lyric got stuck in my head and made its way into the journal...

Journal swap round 2: librarian.

I shouldn't even dignify it with words, but I did in fact, just get lady in red stuck in my head....

Journal swap round 2: mine.

I'm not going to editorialize any of these, in this case I ripped up a book and made trees. Apologies about the quality of the pictures. Blurrrry.

Journal swap! Round 1: Librarian.

For some reason I'm giggling at the fact that it sounds a bit like a boxing match. Probably because I'm super tired from a fabulous weekend celebrating my sister's nuptials. Congrats Mr. and Mrs. Sister. Ha. Newlyweds.

Rounds two and three will be posted over the next few days...

I made a hat that fits, I made a hat that fits! It's a miracle. And finished object number 6...

Busy with a blanket for quite some time. May work in another project before I finish that blanket, we'll see....

Journal swap!

A few months back I stated that I wanted to get creative again and was hoping to do a journal swap. One of my friends, whom I shall refer to as the librarian, agreed to the swap. We bought two journals from Paper Source (one black, one white, to be covered/completed at the end of the project) and off we went. We've only managed to hand the journal off twice now. I'm going to document all of our attempts at craftiness. I'm going to go in order from start to finish for each of the journals (it'll be interesting to see if there are any patterns). Since I only have one journal at the moment, I only have one first attempt. I'll photograph the other first during our next swap and share it right away. Since we're already on our third round, I'll be able to share the second and third attempts shortly after.

My round one:

Phew, it's been almost a month. And it has been some month. It's gone so quickly I don't even know where it went...

Over the next few months I am probably going to be super busy, but I'd like to promise myself to fit the following in:

1. Blogging regularly. At least once or twice a week. I have been working on a journal swap with a librarian pal of mine and I'll start to share that. I'll continue to share my knitting. And hopefully there will be shared posts about a house and a move, a wedding, a fun summer.
2. Continuing to workout. Starting over after taking time off from the gym SUCKS. And today was the first time since I started back up a couple weeks ago that I had a great workout. I've never been the type where working out energizes me. Consistently 7 time out of 10, I get tired after a workout. Today was the other 30%; I felt great during and great after. Maybe if I seriously continue, I can get that up to 40%.
3. Continuing to pick up some stuff I lazily dropped. Mostly this meant knitting, often it means the gym; these two are back in full swing. But I've also stopped stuff I enjoyed like blogging, contributing on Yelp and even cleaning. Keeping the apartment tidier feels fantastic. I really just got soooo lazy: work, home, zone out, sleep. Maybe this just means winter hibernation is over.

This feels weird to post because it's written mostly for myself, but what else for the blog.

Just a quick tidbit for you since it was a bright spot in a kind of less than bright 24 hours. I mentioned briefly that Mona hates loml. Hisses at him when he moves (yet loves it when he pets her). What I didn't mention is that Boku loves him.

Here's the thing: I acknowledge that my cats might be...lemons. I mean, they spayed, declawed and vaccinated Boku and gave her to me for $0. And Mona was the same treatment for $75. But I'm a sucker and they're mine and they're awesome. And I've always had hope that they'd get better.

Then loml came around and won Boku over with his tireless petting. And my scared, clearly previously abused cat transitioned yesterday to letting people pet her when she was in a stationary position. SHE LET US TOUCH HER WHEN SHE WAS LAYING DOWN. Still kind of on her terms, but it's awesome. Maybe in the next 5 years she'll be a normal cat. Or....10 is probably more realistic.

I felt weird posting this to twitter, due to the facebook status update public aspect of it, but I am currently weirded out by the fact that loml and one of my cats are snoring in tandem. They are making snore noises just opposite of one another. It's freaking me out. They're meant to be.

In order to postpone getting in bed until it is respectably dark outside, I present FO number 4:


Bed + book is kind of calling my name - I wore a skirt today and have not managed to feel warm all day (it was a lot windy and cool today). Plus, cat allergy attack. Way to go Mona.

On Saturday night, awake at 3am due to my stomach, I wandered downstairs to the sound of snoring. I live in a duplex, so my bedroom is upstairs. The lower level of my apartment does not share a single wall with a bedroom. And therefore, the faint snoring I was hearing on the stairs was odd. On the way to get a glass of water in the kitchen, walking past my apartment entrance, the snoring got louder. As in - the snoring was coming from just on the other side of my apartment door.

In this moment, I made a sleepy logical leap to: well, loml may be on the other side of that door. I mean, clearly it makes sense that he couldn't get in to my apartment and so fell asleep on the wrong side of the door (yeah. logical. head scratch). And so, I opened the door. To find some male, of the frat boy variety, passed out in front of my door.

I'm pretty sure I ran into that boy coming home from work today. He was coming down the stairs, which are right next to my door. He stopped when he saw me putting my key in the door. Stood there and stared at me, got awkward and said something like, 'hi, how are you') and turned around and went back up. Someone was embarrassed. HA.

This building used to be really quiet. Five years later, I have a drunk dude passed out at the foot of my door (and, suspiciously, the glass in one of the outer entrances has what I would call a head sized smash in it, glass cracked). Am I becoming a curmudgeon or does my building just suddenly have a lot of douches?

Third finished object of the year! Yeah, yeah, I skipped one. But that project had a hasty finish: it had to catch a plane to Arizona with my Mom to be gifted to the recipient.

I present to you my long mittens (not sure if this negates their loveliness, but I guess these were inspired by a pair Bella wore in a Twilight movie, something that I could care less about; I just really liked the look of them). Originally I intended these to go with my new coat. After finishing the first, I decided I needed gray for my new coat. So these will go along with other miscellaneous coats. Casting on gray tomorrow hopefully. Eventually I will be making hats and scarves for red and gray as well.

I'm currently nursing another random obsession. This time with antique keys.

Strangely, I've always considered my preferred aesthetic to be modern. I think this mostly holds true with furniture: though singular antique pieces do catch my fancy, I'll never have a fussy room or house full of them. I imagine some day I'll own antique tables and benches, but they'll be mixed in with my ikea furniture.

Anyway, keys. Bought this shirt. Searching etsy vintage brings up temptations like this. But what would I do with them? I could probably add a small one to my locket chain, that would be lovely. But what else?