Goodbye, Ben

This is not a happy post in the least. Today, my family lost a member, my cousin. His name was Ben, and he had leukemia. He had two bone marrow transplants from his mother, but neither of them took. After the second failure, they told him there was nothing they could do, and gave him a choice. Take meds, and live for 6 months, or not take meds, and live for 6 weeks. He lasted 5 months.

I hadn't actually seen him in months. Every time I was in his area, I was sick myself. I didn't want to speed up his end by giving him whichever bug I had at the time. The last time I mentioned this was to my mother, yesterday. Now that seems silly. He's gone, now.

When we were young, he used to throw sand in my face and tease me, with the company of another cousin. The last time I saw him, I gave him a hug, the last hug he had from me. He was too weak to fight me off, then. But he'd grown up so much. He'd finished his HSC, and was looking at a promising life.

He was diagnosed soon after we discovered the malformed blood vessel in my brain. We both had life-threatening conditions. But his leukemia claimed his life, while my AVM is shrinking.

He wasn't supposed to die! He was supposed to get better! He was supposed to survive, like me!

I'm sorry, so so sorry, Benny.

Stole in progress

And here is my new stole in progress:



and I have a detail shot, too:



It's a great deal of fun. I'm really enjoying it. I love how it's getting horizontal stripes with the yarn colouration. Yay for new work! And even more for it making progress. :-D

Blocking blocked

Okay, I have found the card reader and can now upload the photos of my cat trying to steal attention from the silk stole. Or rather, trying to share the attention the silk stole is getting, as well as obtaining a comfy surface to lie on...



That is my poor sister who is kindly helping me block the stole. She can be found at this blog. After I took the photos, the cat was sadly evicted from his comfy spot. And the stole was blocked. I shall upload photos of the new stole in progress tomorrow.

Have fun!

Overdue Update

Okay, I've been way, way, overdue for an update. In life, I've reorganised my time schedule, so I'm not quite so tired, joy of joys. I'm loving my classes. One of my lecturers is showing a remarkable tendency towards getting distracted. This is good, as it means we aren't getting through much stuff in class, and he's only going to write the exam to include the stuff we've done in class. Therefore, our exam doesn't look to be very long, so far. Life is treating me well, and wedding plans progress.

In my world of knitting, the off-white lace stole is complete. And I've just discovered that I haven't actually taken any photos of it finished with my phone. It's much easier to put the photos on my laptop with my phone than it is with my actual digital camera. I did take a couple of photos during the blocking process with the camera, but I can't find the thing I need to transfer the photos over.

But typically, the cat saw some nice knitting being laid out on the bed and took his chance. He curled up on it while my sister and I were still putting the blocking wires in. For some reason, I objected to this. Partially due to the fact that he was lying in the middle, and I wasn't yet half-way down the side, and partially because ... it was my pure silk lace stole! Not a cat bed!

I'll upload some photos of the finished stole later, along with photos of my current project, another stole from VLT.

Have fun!

Border fixed!

I have fixed the border! I am very pleased with this.





I've done about 15 repetitions of the border pattern, am about half-way down one side, and I'm wanting to finish it as quickly as possible. So maybe another week or two to work on it. But I have good reason for wanting to finish it. My godmother visited the other day. And she brought yarn. I got 4 skeins of gorgeous 40/60 merino/mohair varicoloured with deep blues, purples, and greens.




Here is one of them, and I will be making another stole, I think, out of it. I confess, I love knitting lace. I swear, I'll make some socks eventually, but we've got summer temperatures in Sydney at the moment, despite still having a month left of winter, and lace is the best thing to knit in summer.

Yay for happy times and knitting progress!

Well...

okay, I haven't finished the fingerless gloves. I confess, I haven't even finished one of them! But I have, however, finished the centre panel of my lace stole, pattern from Victorian Lace Today (VLT)



and here are detail shots:


And the not-so-good news is that I made a couple of mistakes in the beggining of the border, but I've fixed that now. Later, I will upload some images, hopefully in better focus *blush*

But so far, I'm very happy with it. Wish me luck in finishing it. Uni is back and things could get interesting. Of course, I might finish this thing rather than do my homework. This is much more fun.

Progress

And I'm home again. Home with my mother and twin, and, of course, I brought my dear boy with me. I've also done some knitting, which is always good. This is the progress of the fingerless glove I was working on in my last post. I'm moving dreadfully slowly, though. And once I've finished this one, I'll have another to do! But it will make knitting a bit warmer, especially with the winter temperatures we have in New South Wales at the moment. Although, I have to say, I'm really looking forward to having it finished, so I can get back to work on my lace. I hope to post a picture of that in my next post.

Ah, first post

Ah, my first post here on blog. Okay, introductions...
I'm 22 y/o, a student of Japanese language, and a knitter. A long-term knitter. Most of my projects take months or more, and some never get finished. I plan to change that, though. I am working on it, I swear! The photo is one of my current projects, adapted from this page: http://www.knitty.com/issuesummer06/PATTfetching.html We'll see how we go on that. It shouldn't take too long, I hope
I'm engaged to be married to a lovely man, Mike. He's my sweetie and he's not escaping me now.

That's a little bit about me. We'll see how I go on this blogger site.