Weekend Update

Posted on March 18, 2008 by HappyGoth

Only without Jimmy Fallon, Tina Faye (okay, so now you know roughly how old I could be), or any sort of scathingly witty commentary. Sorry.

Things of note:

1. Tornadoes! In! Atlanta! I live very close to the damaged area, and work within sight of the Georgia Dome, so this was a little unnerving. Not scary, because we only lost power for about 5 minutes, and then found out about the tornadoes when my dad called to check on me, but unnerving nonetheless. We can’t easily get to Cabbagetown, and I made the husband go out on Saturday to check on work, to make sure the windows weren’t busted out and that nobody had looted the place (there’s a seriously sketchy tenement complex next to the building). All is fine, and I have some hail saved in the freezer, or at least until it sublimates away.

2. Chickengoddess and I are making matching socks, because we are Huge Gigantic Dorks. I have cast mine on three times now. I do not know if I will cast them on more times. I hope I don’t. We are making them with Twisted Fibers Warlock (the striping is unbelievable, see?:

twisted),

in the garter rib sock pattern from Sensational Socks. And now this makes three concurrent sock projects, plus a sweater, plus a hat, plus a lace project, plus another project that needs to be a secret for a little while. I’m pretty happy with this.

3. The cat (I’m not sure which one – they both look very guilty) unwound an entire ball of yarn that I had strategically hidden (I thought) away from feline smell and reach. And the kicker? He did it not while my husband was home all day, but in the brief 30-minute period between when the husband left to pick me up from teaching and when I got home. The cat(s) seriously has some issues with me.

4. I’m ready for the next round of the Little Red Riding Hoodie! Thank you, Chickengoddess, for your glorious math.

5. We made very juvenile poetry on the Knitch refrigerator during knitting on Sunday. I hope it’s still there (Interweave, don’t tell me you didn’t expect knitters to do those sorts of things with your magnetic knitting poetry. If you didn’t expect it, I expect that you’re lying).

And that’s pretty much it. The camera woes continue, and now my battery won’t function at all. I’m going to get a new one, plus a replacement charger as I have misplaced the one I had. Then, there will be photos of knitting things.

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I’m covered in bees!

Posted on March 14, 2008 by HappyGoth

No, seriously.

COVERED IN BEES. (seriously, click the link. CLICK IT.)

“My father was a beekeeper before me. His father was a beekeeper before him. I want to walk in their footsteps. And their footsteps were like this – ‘Aaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaah! I’m covered in bees!'”

ZOOOOROOOOWWOOOOZZOOOOW.

Youtube clip:

And, erm, yeah.

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iPod cozy, here I come!

Posted on March 13, 2008 by HappyGoth

I’m a crafter in addition to being a knitter (one just kind of follows the other, doesn’t it?). Also, my iPod recently died a sad death, and so I recycled it and bought a new one, which is black and shiny and beautiful and scratches easily and doesn’t fit in my iPod cozy.

So I went to etsy.com to search for a new one. After looking through ~90 options, in my usual fashion I decided that I could do a much better job (mind you, I haven’t tested this theory yet) and sat down and drew up my own design. Then today, as if to reassure me that I had indeed made the correct decision, I stumbled upon this beauty of a blog post (links to the Design*Sponge post via the photo):

Well, I must say. This is quite something, and I want one desperately, and so I’m going to make my iPod cozy in much the same way (I’d kind of started along those lines, but the process is going to change somewhat). I had thought to knit it originally, but I kind of want to do something different, and so the husband and I are taking a trip to the fabric store this weekend to pick up supplies and whatnot.

{Do you want to know my secret guilty pleasure? I love buying thread. Not yarn – thread. I really do.}

At this rate, I’m never going to finish my socks.

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For Yul.

Posted on March 12, 2008 by HappyGoth

http://feltinginfibrespace.blogspot.com/

Have you seen it?! Have you?!? It’s so awesome.

Posted in General stuff | 3 Comments

And

Posted on March 12, 2008 by HappyGoth

This is what I’m doing with the lace yarn the Chickengoddess gave me (I’ll put in the name, colorway, etc once I find the ball band):

I was worried because I couldn’t find anything I really gravitated to, but this seems to have solved my problem! Hooray!

[EDIT

Or perhaps I lied and really meant this one:

I think you’ll know what’s the truth and what’s only a lie. I do.

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Now that I’m down to 3 projects

Posted on March 12, 2008 by HappyGoth

I’ve begun to think of what I might knit next. I’ve got a mostly finished scarf that I need to finish, a couple of pairs of socks that are in progress, and a failed squid hat that I need to frog completely and rethink (the pattern was terribly flawed, and I’m going to need to do some reworking of it before I start again). And there’s the sweater, the one that is going much faster than I’d expected, up until the point (like now) when I run out of completed stitch counting conversion (because I suck at math). So I’ve got time for other things.

It’s Laminaria from this month’s Knitty. It sounds like it’s way above my head, but I’ve bought a lovely new skein of laceweight yarn (Prism Lace Wool in Blue Lagoon), and I think it will be perfect for this project. See?

Blue Lagoon

It’s pretty much this beautiful, only wound now and ready to be knit. I think I’m going to start with a swatch of the star pattern (what the pattern recommends), and see how much my brain hurts afterward. The good news is that every WS row is plain purl, so it shouldn’t be too bad. All the ones I’ve looked at from Victorian Lace Today have patterning on both sides, plus this pick-up-and-knit border (which terrifies me, though it shouldn’t), so I think I will wait to do those after I get in my Ravenscroft Laci (because I’ve already chosen a pattern for it).

It seems as though lately I’m really into blues and greens, which might have something to do with spring coming up, or perhaps I’m just sick of purple and magenta. It’s probably a little of both.

[Note: Aargh! The coding is broken! I will have to play with it later. Sorry about that little paragraph of text next to the photo.

ETA: Okay, so whatever I did fiddling with the code seems to have worked. Never mind!]

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New posting thing

Posted on March 11, 2008 by HappyGoth

I’m currently pirating an idea from a couple of other blogs (design ones, found here and here), and I’ll probably shuffle it around until I find a day that works best. This week, that day is Tuesday. Later on, it might not be Tuesday. Eventually, though, it’ll normalize and be on the same day every week.

So, without further ado, I present:

Knitting Things I Love [Tuesday]

1. Rivendell socks. These are so incredibly awesome that I almost wet myself when I first found them. No, seriously. I will be purchasing and knitting this pattern, as it is now available individually (though it will come out in a book later on this year).

2. Snow White Sweater by Ysolda. I think it would be a very pretty thing I’d wear maybe once, but it’s still a very pretty thing.

3. Irtfa’a shawl by Anne Hanson. The Chickengoddess knit one of these, and I think it’s beautiful (though I probably won’t knit one; there’s a stole version that I will attempt to tackle at some point).

4. Dalek socks. I previously though I’d make these just for a friend. Now, I think I need a pair, too.

5. Malabrigo merino worsted in the Velvet Grapes colorway. I’m knitting the Little Red Riding Hoodie from the Domiknitrix book in it (with the help of a lot of math, since the pattern calls for bulky). It’s so very soft and lovely.

6. Noro yarn, of any flavor. At Knitch, upstairs where I knit on Sundays (sometimes), there’s an entire wall of it and I’m usually staring straight at it the entire time. I’m surprised I’m not completely broke by now.

7. Knitch. If any yarn shop stays open after the apocalypse, I hope it’s this one. I mean, at that point, I’ll take what I can get, but why settle for a poor yarn shop when you can use your newly finned form and extra arm to knit things with quality materials? (Photo stolen from PixiePurl’s Flickr photostream)

8. Torchwood. Okay, so maybe this isn’t a knitting thing, per se, but I just finished a laughable amount of stockinette work on a sweater, all thanks to Capt. Jack Harkness and his lively crew.

9. Knit Picks needles. Why, oh why, did I wait so long to get these? Was it a deliberate mental block, or did I just not realize what I was missing?

And that’s all for now. I think I’ll start this sooner next time, and maybe I’ll have a better range of stuff to put in there. Whew!

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No stupid this week.

Posted on March 10, 2008 by HappyGoth

I really did feel stupid, like, all of last week. I couldn’t think and I couldn’t do and sometimes I couldn’t walk (I have the bruises to prove it). So far, the only half-rational explanation is that there was something in the water, because everyone else felt the same way, but that can’t possibly be true, and I will perhaps blame the weather. It was 72 one day and 35 the next, with snow. Though the strange temperature fluctuation is normal for Georgia this time of year, the snow isn’t, so that’s probably the cause. Albino brain chiggers and all of that.

At any rate, I didn’t feel like much of anything this weekend. I bought a replacement iPod, since my old one died completely on Friday (but I wasn’t that attached to it and they gave me a discount for recycling it). I got the Apple Care plan for this one, so that if it dies, I won’t have to buy a whole new one again. And then yesterday I knitted basically the whole afternoon and into the evening, as I went to Knitch after lunch and worked on my sweater, and then worked on the sweater some more at the ChickenGoddess‘s house while watching Torchwood (did I mention that it’s awesome and that this is possibly the longest run-on sentence ever?). I’d work on it some more this evening, but I have run out of the math that lets me convert a bulky yarn pattern to a worsted pattern and I’m so not mathematically inclined. However, I have two pairs of unfinished socks that need some attention, and that will be healthy for me.

I have no proof, but I’m now convinced that knitting is a sure-fire cure for the stupid, even if you feel stupid while knitting. After knitting? Not so stupid anymore. I’m still in clinical trials, but I’ll let you know if I prove my theory (I hope I do).

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Why I love BoingBoing

Posted on March 7, 2008 by HappyGoth

Reason #24:

It directs me to awesomely awesome knitting projects. Holycrapyes.

Anatomical skeleton cardigan

Oh my stars and garters. How incredibly awesome is this? I must have one in all colors of everything. Also, I must make one with an anatomical octopus motif. Because I am thoroughly and completely crazed by this. And you know what? It doesn’t even phase me that the pattern is entirely intarsia, which is, in and of itself, insanity-inducing. There’s just something about a skeleton woodcut that does funny things to my brain.

(For the record, BoingBoing.net is seriously my 100% favorite website in the whole world)

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I just bought these!

Posted on March 6, 2008 by HappyGoth

Oh. My. Goodness.

https://i0.wp.com/images.etsy.com/all_images/2/2ff/3f2/il_fullxfull.15523481.jpg

Tentacles! Yay!

I have a thing for them. My husband received a pair of tentacle arms for his birthday, and I painted tentacles on my salvaged coffee table. Also, I have a tentacled creepy guy on my shirt today. I think I might have a problem.

Posted in Cool things | Tagged | 2 Comments