Well, that year got busy.

While I was forgetting to post, I...

... made some cards.

[top: Valentine for my best friend, bottom: birthday card for a friend] 

... made some scarves.

Fragile Heart in Malabrigo Superwash Lace

Ravelry pattern page

Ravelry project page

Malabrigo Superwash lace is the loveliest thing in the world.

Heartbreak in Hedgehog Sock (pink and navy) and Auracania Lace (turquoise)

Ravelry Pattern page

Ravelry project page

My sister-in-law has moved back to San Francisco from the wintry wilds of New York, so I can make her non-Wintry presents.

... went to Glendalough.

... went to California for my brother's wedding.

... submitted my Master's thesis.

It's a page-turner.

... posted to this other blog.

I let myself get subsumed by thesis for the last few months, and haven't really been making. I'm trying to remember what I like doing. I want to get back to knitting, drawing, and running around outside. I don't know if I'll delete this or not - if I haven't posted in a month, I think I will.

Up all night to get Loki

One of my jobs had a KAL of Vera Valimaki's Colour Affection. I had just seen Thor 2, and god damn I love a good villain*, and what better way to show that than through a scarf-based reference that only I will understand? Loki and I apparently favour similar colour schemes, too, so that was also a plus.

The green is Malabrigo Arroyo in Vaa, the grey is Louisa Harding Orielle, the black is Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino. I knit it on 4mm needles, finished it, and realised it was impractically gigantic (and that was the small size). I found the masochism to rip it out, halved the number of all the section repeats, and was a lot happier with the end result (though i could have saved quite a lot on yarn if I'd known I was going to do that.)

I worked on this while I went to visit my best friend in New York in January. (I thought I would have something to knit on the plane, but then was too much of a chicken to risk taking the knitting needles on board and having them taken away.) One evening we were hanging out with her friends in the common room, me knitting and her solving a Rubix cube as we sat on the couch at the end of the room. One of her friends' friends was a film student, and commented on the fact that both of being casually engaged in activities as we talked made it look like we were in a film - characters flatly delivering dialogue is dull, so you want to have them doing something else, as people often are. I hadn't consciously noticed that before on-sceen, and now I can't not.

What I can also take from that is that my natural behaviour comes off as artifice contrived  to appear natural.

* I actually preferred the treatment of Loki in Thor and Avengers to Thor 2. A lot of the character's strength came from the fact that the role was written a little flat, and given a great deal of depth by Tom Hiddleston. It seemed like the writers of Thor 2 picked up on what fans liked about the nuances of his performance, and then wrote it all in explicitly. I found it a bit heavy-handed. Still a fun silly film, though.

Paris Je T'aime

I went to Paris last weekend! Here is some photographic evidence.

Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, and the Eiffel Tower from the wrong end of the Champs-Élysée. I brought my nice SLR camera, but as it uses film it will be a while before I do anything with the photos. Some of the the photos from my digital camera were unexpectedly quite nice, though.

I really love the fact that they have a permanently installed open-air book market along the canal. But not as much as I love...

Shakespeare and Company! It's a wonderful English-language bookshop. Stepping inside feels like stepping back in time, but for the covers on the books. It's like the old Chapters on Abbey Street, but with even more nooks and crannies. It is the sort of shop where a story should unfold. A lovely aspect of it is that they allow writers to stay for free in exhange for a few hours' work.

I took this photo because the title of the book on the far right makes it sound like Louisa May Alcott was writing for Mills and Boone for a while, but even more exciting than that is the fact that the book on the far left is about a haunted yarn shop. My boyfriend bought it for me. I'm embarrassingly excited to read it, but also apprehensive, because how can it possibly live up to that premise?

Go to France, buy English books. In my defence, the one at the bottom of the pile was for my mother. Against my defence, I went back two days later and bought myself another book.

This was written on the inside of the Sherlock Holmes collection, which came from the second-hand box. Hard luck, Matthieu.

The inside of the top floor of the Musée D'Orsay. I like this picture because it looks like some 1930's sci-fi.

This picture does not accurately depict how much this ice-cream looked like a flower, or how delicious it was.

I went to the Louvre and drew some sculptures. This one of Hercules turned out better than my drawings are prone to doing!

I am trying to get back into the habits of both drawing and proper photography (though films slows things down, and I really should join a photography club). Proof of same may start appearing.

Cambridge!

I visited my friend Steph in Cambridge last weekend!

 

1. We nearly entered this cardboard boat race, but were hampered by not having collected cardboard and made a boat.

2. There was garden party in the Chaplain's garden. There was a cake-baking competition, and we came second with the chocolate and raspberry cake in the bottom right! I also won a notebook in a raffle, and came first with two of Steph's friends in a trivia competition. Best garden party I've ever been to.

3. There was a punt race one evening. Another team were dressed as bananas.

4. St. John's College from the back

5. Steampunk-looking tower on top of the library.

6. The Bridge of Sighs in St. John's College, the most Hogwarts-esque - and therefore best - structure in a town full of Hogwarts-esque buildings.

7. We punted down the river and had a picnic. Some ducks tried to muscle in. On the way back a duckling tried to jump into the boat. And I didn't fall off while punting!

8. Steph behind the door of the St. John's Chapel tower, like some sort of terrifying tower-goblin.

9. The chapel tower from half-way up.

10. The view from the top.

11. Fireworks at the Trinity College May Ball. It was the night before St. John's, and everyone sat on the backs and watched. I always forget how much I like fireworks.

12. The theme of the St. John's May Ball was "Ars Gratia Artis." Each court had a different theme. This was the 'street art' court (titled "Mean Streets of Cambridge").

13. Fireworks at the St. John's May Ball.

The May Ball was excellent fun, more like a black tie festival than a ball proper. I also drank more Pimms over the course of the weekend than I otherwise would in a year or several. Cambridge.

Like this, but about Dublin.

Passport Cover

I made a passport cover for my dad's birthday. Kind of. I finished it at three in the morning the day before his birthday, then realised it was too small. So my options were to stay up all night or give him that part of the present late. I opted for the latter, and then took nearly a month to get around to making it... I'm a terrible daughter. More of this was handsewn than I had intended, as it took me a while to work out the tension settings on the new sewing machine, but I got it in the end!

The outer cover is a fairly light cotton, but it's lined with curtain lining (left over from a bag I made for a friend), so that makes it a bit sturdier. The clouds and airplane are felt.

Fun fact: it is hard to make a cute cartoon airplane not look like a shark.