Rising From The Ashes

As you may have noticed, I failed at juggling.  In fact, I catastrophically crashed and pretty much everything but school fell to pieces.  I still made straight As.  I have no idea how.

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My grandfather died in April, a few days after his 70th birthday.  I hadn't seen him in some time because I didn't want to remember him like that, so I'd already said my goodbyes.  Twelve hours later I listened to the announcement in church and just felt numb.  One week later I went to his funeral in a black-and-white dress (mostly white) and bright teal shawl because I couldn't bear to just wear black.  My aunt looked at me and said "I think all Grandpa would have said is 'nice hat'.  Non-issue."  Apparently he didn't look too good dead, so the casket was never opened.  I'm okay with this.  (The funeral arrangements included those tiny Hershey's candy bars wrapped in little blue papers that had a picture of Grandpa and had his birth/death dates on it.  We were very disturbed by what we dubbed the face chocolates.)

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A couple weeks before this, on the 8th, I finished this blanket for a baby cousin so new he wasn't even born yet.  He was born exactly one month later, on May 8th.

It's a very happy blanket.  I have a picture of him lying next to it, but I'm not going to put it up here out of respect for the kid's privacy.  Suffice to say, he's an adorable little bugger and I can't wait to meet him.

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I got my wisdom teeth out about a week and a half ago, and my jaw is still sore.  Plus food keeps getting caught in the empty sockets and bothering me.  I'm not really sure what the point of that was, but it's over now.  Although I did lose some weight while on a soft-foods-only diet, which could be problematic.  Essentially all I did for three days was watch episodes of Arrow on Netflix and work on this:

Which I finished two nights ago.  It needs a good blocking, but I'm happy with it.  I don't think you can see the beads, but they're definitely there.  Lots of them, lovely little gold things.

The yarn is a cashmere/silk blend laceweight, and I have one gram left.  No idea what I'm going to do with it.

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I'm going to make my dear friend E a shawl for her birthday in July.  A TARDIS shawl, to be precise.  The yarn and needles are on their way from Knit Picks and should be in by Thursday, at which point I have to start knitting frantically because I think there are like 30,000 stitches in that thing.

I also have the yarn for the blanket I'm making to send with my boyfriend to college.  It's kind of a race to see how far into the semester he'll be before I finish it.  It'll definitely be done in time for his second semester, but I'd like to finish it sooner than that.  Here's what it should look like when finished:

Quick explanation, since the design (modified by me) and colors mean things.

• He grew up with quilts everywhere, since various members of his family make them.  The red and grey motif is called a Friendship Star, and it's a pattern he's been familiar with since he was tiny.  When he saw this design, his first reaction was "it feels like home", and then "it feels warm and safe".  This was more than enough for me.
• The purple lines form a Celtic knot, weaving under and over each other and ending up right back where you started (seriously, try it).  I am obsessed with Celtic knots.
• Red and purple have sort of always been us.  Purple is my favorite color, and years ago when I asked what his was, he said red.
• We count by months rather than years; a habit leftover from high school.  The date we use is the 15th, and there are fifteen blocks.

There are 187 blocks in this blanket, but 16 of them are composed of four smaller squares, so that's 235 individual pieces to make.  I'm joining as I go in order to not go out of my mind.  I'm not starting it until his graduation party on the 14th, which means I have two weeks to finish up as many WIPs as possible.  Starting with the one occupying the hook I need!

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I'm not sure what else there is to say at this point.  I'm putting pieces back together after a few months of insanity.  Hopefully I get a chance to breathe before August sneaks up on me and school comes crashing down again.