My new hero
is Crazy Aunt Purl who knitted this masterpiece:
Photo copyright CrazyAuntPurl.com 2009 I found the pattern made with regular wool as well here but the Noro is so freakin' gorgeous, I might have to be a copy cat. See? Still pretty but not nearly as orgasmic:
Yarn Porn
I'm making socks now with some Noro, but I might see if I can make a hat with the other stuff.
Is yummy.
Dearest lectio.ca,
You know that sweater I felted (*sob*) well, I want to turn it into a cardigan.
You mentioned me making mittens, but I think a zip jacket would work better for the hare-brained scheme I have for trekking in Bhutan. (also, I am teh cheap and don’t want to pay $168 for a wool jacket.)
Does the wool/knit unravel when you cut it? Does sewing a line with the sewing machine hold it well enough for me to put the zip in? Do I need to put stuff on the edges (liquid stitches, etc.)
Inquiring minds wanna know. ;)
Thanks ever so, oh mistress of knitted socks and stuff (and the fabu danger sock shot!)
love,
fredlet
p.s. This is a hilarious pic… what’s more, I totally understand it.
A little cozier
[From Perth Now 10/31/07]
A GROUP of German ladies are raking it in – by selling fetish knitwear to kinky fans who like it soft.
Their range includes lingerie, face masks and full bodysuits.Group spokeswoman Manuela Buesch-Dankewitz, 45, said: “The women love to knit, and it’s great to earn something from it.
“Our oldest team member is 86. She makes willy warmers and other gear just like the rest.”
Ms Buesch-Dankewitz said she came up with the idea after a customer asked for a woollen bondage suit.
“Since we put the items online we have been flooded with requests from all around the world,” she said.
“We make our wool products to order and there is a big demand out there.”
Check them out at www.wolltraum.de
Dude, I was just searching for tea cozy knitting ideas…
heh and LOL!
Barn Kitty and Sock Monkey Hat
This year’s headgear was Sock Monkey Hat (no I didn’t make it, I haven’t had enough practice to go beyond square, but that is another blog entry.)
I had Sock Monkey socks (the ones you make sock monkeys from) a sock monkey scarf…well, mostly done, not completely – it was my plane project and finally; sock monkey keychain.
Mmmm… want to touch my monkey?
This person is neat.
As in spiffy and cool…
Check this out:
CD Tower as yarn holder…
The tower from Ikea works very well – I can get easy access to my yarn, and it looks awfully nice.
(note:this image will go away after a while and only the link will remain so i don’t hork up all the bandwidth.)
[snip! image removed, go see the link]
A pile o’ Lion Brand Suede (garnet)
After a day full of crap, several WTF?!?! moments followed by the decision that I am officially breaking up with Oakland, Ca. for MANY MANY reasons, I received a box full of this lovely stuff in the mail.
I might do something like this with it…but I haven’t decided yet.
stuff
So I was toiling away dutifully on my floofy scarf that went with my raspberry beret (Mike I Am, cue the music) and then I lost my tiny little mind and bought this hat.
Of course it doesn’t match my floofy scarf and as I know my tendency to get distracted by shiny things, I probably will not take this off of my head all next weekend in the Great White North.
Hence, I need new yarn for another scarf. (I also bought some new needles in purple plastic – they were on sale – so that security at the airport won’t wig out over knitting needles. They didn’t last time, but these are larger than my other ones, but I’m hoping that they aren’t intimidated by knitting needles that look like they are descendants of Barney.)
Such a hardship, I know. However, time is getting short and I need to finish the floofy scarf, because, dammit, I will be bringing it with me regardless, and also I need to get the other one started so that I have something to do on the plane but also so that it doesn’t HAVE to be the only thing I do on the plane.
I will need to sleep some, since it is likely to be the only sleep I get next weekend.
I’m also trying to remind myself what it feels like to be cold and psych myself up for it. Right now I’m trundling around the house fairly regularly in my boxer shorts with robots all over them, a tshirt and my leopard flip flips. (radiators are nothing if not efficient in my building… and the cat, she likes it warm.) while knitting stuff and snuffling over Grey’s Anatomy.
I caught up on most of this season watching it streaming over the web. Handy that.
And I really don’t ever think that the networks will ever get it through their thick skulls that when they up the volume on the commercials they are just begging me to mute the fuckbleeper and not watch it. If they left it at a consistent volume I wouldn’t bother and I might actually get the message for the sponsors.
Morons and luddites, all of them. I’m not going to play their game.
New desk is in this week as well.
I ordered this to set next to my desk/cabinet that I use for my office and little laptop. I would have just put the new setup in there, but for large projects on VAIOlet I definitely need an external monitor and even 15″ ones don’t fit in the opening. The desk I got is actually a hall table and I just didn’t put on the lower shelf. Luckily, it wasn’t unstable without the shelf so I didn’t have to worry about my knees bumping. It even matched VERY closely the finish on my other desk.
Nice.
Am very happy.
(and I’ll take a picture of it in situ when the living room isn’t so crapped out from getting ready for next weekend.)
I know, I know…
a long weekend and nary a post.
sorry.
I was going to use a lot of this weekend to be alternately cleaning the house or unconscious as I am still sick.
However, life intervened and I ended up out of the house a great deal of the time.
I did manage to drag myself to Michael’s to look for yarn to match a raspberry polarfleece hat I bought on super duper insane sale at REI for when I go to the great white north in a few weeks.
I had an idea of what I wanted in the yarn, sort of multicolored and possibly nubby (I’m a sucker for Lion Brand wool worsted weight). What I found that I liked was somewhat atypical for me… that floofy yarn that I’ve always looked at with a sort of cross eyed look.
But it seemed to be what I wanted so I grabbed several skeins and bit the bullet to go pay for the somewhat expensive stuff. Well, when the total showed up, it ended up being 2 bucks a skein.. so I went back and bought the rest of the bin ;)
In short, I’ve gotten about a foot of scarf done in a few hours (i’m using my monster needles which works well with the yarn.) I like it because it looks like something real… not something that I did… if that makes any sense.
I blame that last sentence on the fever I’ve had on and off for a week. It makes me hallucinatory and rather cranky.
Today at work was just hideous.
But I won’t go into that.
up, down, strange
sorry, no quantum ducks here.
Anyhoo, I know I have a fever so the world gets all surreal and hallucintaty when I have a fever.
Big indicators are my irrational wants (very different from the irrational wants when I am PMS’ing (and that generally just involves some form of chocolate or some sort of crankiness at men who don’t understand the gravity of the chocolate situation.))
Today, i woke up with Bunny having a mild seizure by my head. I managed to cradle her so she wouldn’t fall off the bed inadvertently, and she calmed down after a bit. Her tail kept going though. It looked like a question mark sticking out while she was laying there, but she didn’t seem to notice it much.
I really hope it doesn’t hurt her. She isn’t making noises or flinching away from my touch and that’s the only thing that is keeping me from losing my mind entirely about these episodes.
After I managed to get ready for work (I was only about 20 minutes later leaving than normal) I got in the car, and I have no idea where it came from, but I got a whiff of Downy and my already taxed emotions/brain decided that things would all just be ok if I had clean clothes that smelled like Downy.
Like I said, surreal.
I did manage to sit down and cave in to a craving to knit something. I wanted to get monstrously huge needles and really light, poofy yarn and make a roll neck sweater. But I didn’t have any of that yarn in the house currently so I settled for some of my Weasley Auburn wool and started a very plain scarf.
After 6+ months of not being able to do much with more than 3 fingers, i had to take a peek at my “Knitting for Morons” video to remember what the hell I was supposed to be doing. It came back pretty quickly and I happily avoided work that I will put off feeling bad about not doing until tomorrow.
It was good.
thisI’m pondering
just how retarded I’ll look if I make the arm warmers (a la leg warmers) for the trail. I want to avoid having to take off and put on my pack when I get cold and want to put on a jacket/sweatshirt.
And really the only thing that gets cold on me is my arms.
114374669022159228
So.
I am officially flaking on the blue sweater and have decided to make it out of the grey wool mix stuff I have.
I don’t think the world will be worse for wear for me doing this.
The turning point for my decision was looking over the knitting that I did while I was sick.
Damn.
How do I breathe on my own when I am sick much less knit? The answer to that is that I *can’t* knit when I am sick (yet).
I had to rip out a few rows, which in itself isn’t horrible, but what seems to happen is that the row looks funny when I re-knit it.
I think its because the loops are twisted funny.
I finally lost patience with it and myself and decided to give in to the urge to switch.
The other thing I want to do is try a trick I learned on someone else’s blog. Namely, casting on with a needle 2 sizes larger so that I don’t choke my poor size 8 to death. My cast ons are tremendously tight. (I’m sure there’s a dirty joke in there somewhere.)
So, same project with some variations to come.
I said it was a learning sweater.
the joy of a newbie knitter
(or to be overly cute… a knewbie kniter)
mk carroll: “Under special stitches, ‘2-dc cluster across next 4 sts’ is clearer if it’s called ‘2-dc cluster across 4 sts’ and should read (note missing yo): Yo, insert hook into same st as last dc worked, yo, draw yarn through, yo, draw yarn through 2 loops on hook, sk next 2 sc, yo, insert hook in next st, yo, draw yarn through st, yo, draw yarn through 2 loops on hook, yo, draw yarn through 3 loops on hook.”
So when I read this, my goofy first read through sounded like some gangsta reading you a knitting pattern inside my head.
Yo bitches! insert hook in next st, yo…
