Tina's Quest to Make Changes

I hope you’ll keep following me as I switch over to another site!  Find new posts here and watch out for a few new projects coming soon!

I finished my gray scarf!  It ended up pretty long and very soft.  :)

After I finished that, I figured it was time to learn the purl stitch!  Here’s my first attempt at purling each row, which means that it looks…well, just like the regular knit stitch, but I really did purl it:

Here’s my first attempt at “purl one, knit one” which produces the stocking stitch on one side:

And this stitch on the other (which is the garter stitch, but more tightly looped):

Here’s the whole practice piece, including my attempt at “intarsia” (the green at the top):

The backside of my piece; the ends are from each colour change, but I didn’t bother to tuck them in since this was just a practice:

I also started a soft gray scarf over the holidays…

The little iris, finished:

All my threads sorted for the big project:

The whole key laid out:

I took a little break from the big one while we traveled for a few days and did this one (forgot a before pic, sorry):

I found this one at a craft store down in Texas, the Hobby Lobby, and made it on the plane ride home (thinking of our hedgehog, Wash, of course):

Discovered some really awesome stuff at Tuesday Morning (on Monday morning, haha): knitting books!  I was browsing through the craft book section and found some cool books that inspired me!  A lot of the projects, I think, are totally within my skill level (as soon as I learn to purl) and maybe I could even make some money on Etsy!

My favourite pattern from this book:

Not sure if I’ll make anything for myself from this book, but there are some cute patterns that I could probably sell:

Maybe this one for me…but in ANYTHING but pink:

Cute little patterns in this book…not all entirely practical, haha:

This one CRACKS me up:

Though, I might make this one for me…

This book is my FAVOURITE.  I knew that it was possible to knit pictures into projects, but I never knew what it was called “intarsia” and I never knew there was a book on how to do it!

Hooray for instructions:

Definitely going to make this one for me; it has a POCKET!

Love this one too; I think it will sell:

I’m really excited to get started!  First step: learn to purl!

Pants, probably size 12ish

Votive holders (need a cleaning, but not chipped or anything)

Super adorable turtle garden statue

Black bag; there’s also a blue one of the same style

Colourful bag, bought at Borders brand new (on clearance, of course), only lightly used

Backpack

Shirt, very comfortable, but too short (kept tugging it down all day)

Christian and I are doing a major purge of our stuff and we’d sort of like to do an online garage sale for our friends before we go down to Goodwill.

Everything’s a buck unless otherwise noted and YOU have to make arrangements with us to pick it up (or cover the shipping so we can send it to you)before March 15th, otherwise it’s going down to Goodwill.  Comment on this post or send me a Facebook message telling me what you’d like and how you’d like to get it BEFORE March 15th.  If it has a name beside it, it’s claimed (rather than just write “claimed,” I’m going to put names there so that both of us don’t forget!)!

(These movies, books, and games are the SAME ONES that I posted on Facebook a while back.)

Books:

Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (paperback)

The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood (paperbook)

The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, by Lauren Willig (paperback)

Pendragon Book 5: Black Water, by DJ MacHale (paperback) (Danna)

Christ the Lord: Out of Egpyt, by Anne Rice (mass market)

Abarat, by Clive Barker (mass market)

Movies:

Rat Race

Memoirs of a Geisha (Danna)

Something’s Gotta Give

Ocean’s Thirteen

Good Luck Chuck

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

13 Going on 30 (Danna)

The Ninth Gate

Notes on a Scandal

Becoming Jane (Danna)

Flightplan

First Knight

The Iron Giant (Matt)

The Italian Job

The Kite Runner (Danna)

Legend

Panic Room

Perfume

The Phantom of the Opera (Kristina)

Robots

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

Deep Impact

Secondhand Lions (Matt)

Troy

Waitress (Danna)

Games:

Burnout 3 Takedown for Xbox (Shanie)

Onimusha for PS2

Enter the Matrix for PS2

The Sims 2 for PC

The Sims 3 for PC

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for PC

Portable cassette player/recorder

CD zipper case, holds 48ish?

Mini polar bears and book

Mini penguins and book

Crazy Machines PC game

Magnetic weekly calendar (write in dates)

Butterfly photo album, holds 24?

Gray Old Navy vest, size M?

An awesome black shawl that I just never get around to wearing

Brown Old Navy tank top, size L?

Wooden kitchen utensils

2 pairs of green sock (yes, worn, but not much)

Hot Wheels Cars, free

Ducky on a string, free

CD rack, 20 spaces

More to come soon!

Well, yesterday, Christian and I had intended to clean the house, to rearrange a couple things, and generally be useful.

We didn’t do anything.

I got fucking sucked down that same vortex of…horrible-ness that I was in on Wednesday.  One little thing that Christian did soon after we woke up irritated me just a little bit and it put me in a foul mood that I COULD NOT SHAKE.  One little thing led to another then another and soon I felt like I was just drowning in despair.  Everything seemed to be going wrong and everyone was doing everything wrong and I was doing everything wrong and messing everything up and there was no hope.

I even started hugely over-exaggerating things that Christian was doing and making them out to be so horrible in my head and I oscillated between, “How could he?” and “I must be fucking horrible if he does that,” when really it’s just a little thing that doesn’t matter THAT much, but it seemed relationship ENDING.

Everything I thought about turned that ridiculous.  I can tell NOW that all those things were ridiculous, but at the time, I thought I was dead on and I just kept feeling worse and worse about everything.  I bawled literally uncontrollably for half an hour into my pillow and another half hour into Christian’s shoulder.  In the middle of it all, I could barely even tell him what was wrong.  I couldn’t even put words to how hopeless everything was, and when I tried it all came out differently than it was in my head, so I couldn’t make him understand why I was crying.

I am so grateful for him.  I don’t know what I would have done without him.  Even though I had been kind of a bitch and taken my feelings out on him, he held me and comforted me and encouraged me to talk about what was going on in my head and the more I talked about it, the more I could hear how ridiculous it was.

I don’t understand what’s going on.  Wednesday was kind of the same thing, but with less crying, since I was at work when it started.  Both times, I start with feeling overwhelmed and irritated at something, and it all spirals out of control.  It feels like I can’t control all the thoughts that I’m having and I can’t reason with myself and I can’t stop THINKING.

As I write this, I feel like if I relive too much of exactly what I was thinking, it’ll happen again.  I KNOW I could start crying right now and if I start, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop.  This all sounds so dumb.  I don’t know what it is.  I don’t know what’s happening.  It’s so frustrating that I can’t control what I’m thinking during these…times and that lack of control makes everything seems worse and it makes me cry harder.  I just don’t fucking know.

Well, yesterday, obviously, I was feeling like shit.  I feel better today, but still…a little funny.  I don’t know.

There are a couple things that I have to get off my chest to my imaginary readers.  First, I totally fucking failed at the Whole Living 28 Day Challenge.  I mean, it’s not even funny how hard I failed.  And I don’t have a good excuse.  I just never felt like doing the things on the list RIGHT THEN.  And because it’s always RIGHT NOW, LATER never came and shit never got done.

Oh well.  Just one more thing I can add to the list of shit I never followed through on.

I also haven’t read anything so far this YEAR. I keep accumulating more and more books and the list of “READ THIS NEXT” keeps getting longer and nothing ever gets checked off.

Just to make the failures come in 3 just like tragedies, I also haven’t exercised in a week and I had Nilla wafers and Nutella for lunch.

But despite all of that, I’m a glutton for punishment and I’m taking on a new project.  It’s installing on my hard drive as I type.

I’m going to learn to write applications for Windows Phone 7.  I’m going to TRY to learn how.  I’m going to TRY to learn a skill that can be USEFUL for a change.  I have  feeling that change is coming very soon to our peaceful little life here in Kirkland (I won’t say why just yet) and I’d like to be able to DO something.  Christian has watched a lot of the videos already and he says they’re nothing I can’t handle, so instead of watching Netflix at work tomorrow and Saturday, I’m going to see if I can follow along with these.  I don’t know.  We’ll see.  My track record does not inspire me to hope for a lot.

Some days, I just feel OVERWHELMED. There’s no other word for it. I feel like the world and my responsibilities are crashing in on me. I feel like everything that I hope to accomplish is impossible, everything that I have accomplished is meaningless, and nothing means anything.

It’s very exhausting.

Today, I paid bills and then felt like shit. I have a lot of student loan debt and that amounts to a lot of bills that we have to pay each month. I was about a month behind, so the amount seems like a lot more than it really is on a monthly basis, but…fuck. So much fucking money.

And if I have to pay THIS much each month for just STUDENT LOANS, how can I possibly think we’ll be able to save up enough for the wedding we want by July?! And speaking of WEDDING, there is SO much to do, and because we’ve been so…procrastinating about everything, we lost the date for our spot and have to get a new date now. Fuck fuck fuck.

So then I start thinking of what I could do to earn more money and then I start thinking about how I could do something that I LIKE to earn more money, and then I realize that everything that I’m good at (which is basically nothing) is completely useless in the long run but there’s so many things that I’d like to do that MIGHT earn money, but if I’m going to learn those things I need time and if I’m going to take time I need money to keep going…

Shit, did that even make any sense? I just feel so overwhelmed. There’s so many things that I want to do, that I want to try, that I want to learn, but I don’t have time. It seems like if I try to concentrate on one thing, NOTHING else gets done. And I always try to start easy, so I never get anything done that MEANS anything, or that will help me earn money.

It all seems so hopeless. Pointless, futile, impossible…on one hand, I’d really like to think that if I could, I would sit at home on my ass all day and play video games. On the other hand, I’d like to think that I’d go out and DO things and LEARN things and make something of myself. The truth is in between. I’m not lazy and self-pleasing all day, but I’m not making anything of myself either.

Rant #2 (about 15 minutes later)

Also, it sucks that nothing I ever do really…catches. I mean, no one really reads this blog. I know I don’t update it every day like I used to, but I’m pretty sure that even then no one read it. I have another similar project that I tried to get a couple people on board with and that’s pretty much a flop. Every time I try to make significant changes in my life, I fail. I’m not eating well anymore and I haven’t exercised in a week. I’m discouraged because I never see any results. I know I should keep it up, because this can’t go on forever…but what’s the fucking use? God.