Mailbag!

So, cleaning out the prop shop today I found stuff we had rented that had to go back (oh about two weeks ago...  *whistles innocently*)

And seeing that I had to package that stuff up and send it out, I took the opportunity to package other stuff out and send it, too.  I sent the boy the Scarf That Shall Not Be Finished, despite the fact that he's now working in South Carolina, and it's downright balmy there.  (He thinks that's a selling point and I should come join him.  Hell no.  I like my snow, dammit!)



I packaged up a hat o' death for a friend who though that the whole Hat Attack thing was 'really cool'  Imagine that!  Asking to be cruelly slain by knitted death!

And I even packaged up a special surprise for a Ravelry friend.  Why?  because I had the whim to be very nice.  Hopefully knitterly karma will mean that my projects on the needles will now turn out.

I can hope, right?

Kerchief pics tomorrow.  Yee!

The Mathematical Love Song (remix)

This is awesome...

And I know I am the biggest damn geek for thinking it's awesome.

Yup. waving my flag here.

Inexplicably Purple.

Have you ever found a yarn you thought was so intriguing that you *had* to buy it, only to get it home and think "What the hell was I thinking?  I don't wear that color."

Well...  Let me tell you, I hate purple.  I don't own a piece of purple clothing, period.  Not a single one.  But I bought two skeins of this.



Then to be really freaky, I bought some rainbow colored Noro Kureyon to go with it.  



I think I'm having a brain meltdown.... but the finished project is on the blocking board.  And I'm going to wear it to the opening of Driving Miss Daisy.  A purple, rainbow kerchief.



If any of you punks makes a joke about coming out, I swear I am showing you what a second degree black belt can do with a set of 60" circular, sharpened knitting needles.... 

Revenge of the Knitter

So I told y'all how much I hated that Wildfoote sock yarn, right?

Oh, did I find the perfect solution for getting back at it.

So, the recipe for revenge involves going to a thrift store and buying some poor, lonely, abandoned little Beanie Babies...



See them there?  Aww, aren't they cute?  Actually, no.  I think that Gorilla thing is hideous, and he had it coming.  And that angel bear?  Reminds me of a pretentious pop-princess wannabe.  I never liked stuffed bears.  I felt bad for the Walrus guy, though.  He actually was cute.

Anyways, knowing my destructive disposition these guys were doomed from the start and they were summarily sliced open and pirated for thier beans.



Poor little guys!

Anyways, whatever would I do with all those beans and all that Wildfoote? I was left with 3/4 of a skein left. I couldn’t let it go to waste. I had to find an appropriate pattern for a yarn this vile.

I had a short conversation with myself that went something like this:

Angel side: “Give the yarn a break. Maybe it’s not so bad. Try some wristlets with different pattern. It’ll be okay.”

Devil side: “Screw that” (demonic snickering) “Make a beanis”



I’m sure that this is the perfect project to show off my many years of crochet. >:D

The really funny thing? Wildfoote makes a beautiful Beanis.

More hats.

There comes a time in every knitters life when she has to seriously sit down and think about her choices.  To evaluate the yarn which she has spun and worked into beautiful things and ask herself why?

Why the hell am I surrounded with more hats than I can ever wear?

I mean I *do* look good in them, and I *do* try to give them away, but cleaning my piles of clothes this evening has uncovered 18 knit hats in one small vicinity, with two more fresh off the needles.

Maybe I should sell hats?

Anyways, here is my go at the death hat, mark 2.  I love me some Fair Isle and I like the Binary Cable Pattern, so here is Death: Sweet Black Cherry Flavor using Black encore and the Cascade 220 from the death hat.

This is me, looking diabolical and plotting death:


I adore the way this turned out.  I am now in a mission to make one (probably slightly bigger) for Ruben in green and black; just like an old fashioned computer screen - then we'll see if he can read the binary.

Experimental Clara.



This pattern was given to me by Judith, a lovely knitter who makes the most wonderful things - none of them from a pattern. Yet every once in awhile a pattern piques her curiosity and she tries to make it.  When she gets frustrated with pattern reading she gives the pattern to someone else who will make it and then tell her how it works.

Somehow she was coming up with the wrong number of stitches per round, which I can't quite figure out why because my stitches per round were perfectly fine.  Maybe because some people read patterns differently?  The directions aren't wrong, per say, but they aren't the clearest directions out there.

Anyways it turned out pretty nicely - nicer than I thought it would when I started it.  But it's Lopi and it's slightly rough and slightly small.  It fits my head - but how many hats do I really need?

Wait a second...

Judith has a small head.  She doesn't mind rough wools.  This whole thing was her idea in the first place...

Experimental Clara is now her hat.



As a sidenote; I know alot of people don't like Lopi because it's scratchy, but it is warm.  disturbingly so!  I was knitting it and I wanted to see how the stitch pattern swirled so I put my left hand in the hat to hold it up and held it in front of my face.  After about ten seconds I realized my left hand was getting noticably warmer while my right hand was cold.

Remind me to make mittens out of Lite Lopi and knit a nice soft lining for them out of something yummy... because shit is this stuff warm!

Death, by hat

It's official.  I am D-E-D dead.

I have launched my weapon, killed my target, but I am also dead.

~*~*~*~*~*~

(Sit down, kiddies, it's storytime!)

So, we got the hat patterns on Saturday sometime just before 9 am.  If I had been living in PST like I was two years ago, I probably could have gotten the hat knit and mailed before the post office closed; but I now live in EST so I didn't sweat it.  Too much.

I opened the pattern (binary cables, how geeky-cool is that?!) and read it through, and looked at the yarn in my lap.  Chianti Lamb's Pride, Dark Magenta 220?  I had gotten the Cascade 220 wound up the day before, and it was lovely and soft.  I think I chose it because it was going to give a better cable stitch definition.  It was very nice to work with.

There was a knitters retreat that day in Hanover NH, and I went.  I told alot of very wonderful older ladies about my (somewhat crazed) competitive knitting.  They were highly amused.  I finished the hat itself later on while basking in the sunshine lights of White River Yarn's knitting den.  (They are those full specturm-mimic sunshine lights.  Most happy!).  Finished at 7:15 pm EST!  Post offices closed at 11:30 am EST.  BOO.  

Later, at home, I was looking at the hat, paranoid at all the posts saying the hat was short.  Well, I have a teeny head (and I hoped my target did too, which she does!  perfect!)  but I wanted something that gave a small edging, add a little weight, add a bit of a finished end, so I grabbed my trusty crochet hook and some baby brush alpaca (mmm, leftovers from the spiral hat) and crocheted as carefully as I could around the edge.  I had lots of time left!  That Sunday I decided I wanted me some Doctor Who.  And there is one place that carries it used... and also carries tons of other quirky things; so we picked up some amazingly fun skull key covers to go with the hat o' death, packaged it all up and shipped it out Monday morning eaaaarly.

Monday went by and I was informed (gleefully, I might add) by my target that she read my assassin was done.  Done?!  Oh no!  I had launched a weapon, but I was dead woman waiting!  My Target lives in California... my Assassin lives in Massachusetts.  That's practically in my backyard >.<

So I knit hats.
Alot of hats.  
And I wear every single one of them at least once.  Sometimes I wear them a few times.   But of all my dozens of hats, I usually end up wearing just one. This is my signature hat.  I love it.  It lives on my head:


Despite my better judgement I opened the package.  What have we here?  It's white!   It looks somewhat hatlike...


I should have known then and there that it was dangerous.  But I had my suspicions...


And then all of a sudden... it ATTACKED!  It flew at me, eating my signature hat!  Eating my head!  Aaaaugh!



Later they found me, my hat on my head, D-E-D, that spells dead.



I am consoled by the fact that my target is also dead, and her blog post about it is hilarious!

And My assassin?  haven't heard hide nor hair from her.  But from her blog she's a published author (She's got a website)  So I can say I got killed by a famous person!

Death... By Knitting

So, as some of you know I'm nuts.

As some of you may not know I'm officially part of the Hat Attack, which is a game of assassiknitty or Sock Wars, but instead of knitting socks, we're knitting hats.

Hats?!  Did you hear that?!  HATS!

I love me some hats.

And I have me a target.  This fine lady has a blog too: go check it out! (and it's pretty cool)  She's lovely, she likes Doctor Who, she knits... and I am going to kill her.  Mwahahahah!

Now I just really need to settle on a yarn.

The Dreaded 70's.... Gloves?!

Ok, 'fession time.

See last post?  The one where it exalts all the great things about 70's colors and say I'm make a pair of socks?

Well, I was making a pair of socks...

Let me start this 'fession off by saying I.  Made.  A. Gauge. Swatch.  I'm using using the "Sensational Knitted Socks" book by Charlene Schurch.  She has these nifty little charts for how many stitches to cast one for each pattern, and my foot size with my gauge fell directly between casting on 66 and 88 stitches.  I was leaning towards casting on 88... but then I talked to one of my best knitting friends who had just made a pair of the same socks.  She had big feet (as do I) and CO 66 stitches - her socks came out huge.  So I cost on 66 stitches and knit halfway down to the heel before trying them on.

Well they fit... sort of.  They're uncomfortably tight, but they fit around my hands just fine.  So I have now made a thumbhole and CO some extra hand stitches and continued on my merry way with my new glove "pattern"

I guess this proves positive.... gauge swatches might not lie, but every knitter IS different.

(To be fair, she knits continental and I knit stubbornly English... so yeah, I gues English *is* tighter)