Life, Hanging in the Balance....

Either that is the start of an emo-poem, or the latest round of hatly violence has taken a turn for the worst.

And since I am rarely (if ever!) emo, lets move on to hatly violence.

Monday, March 31st was a blur of orange yarn and crochet hooks.  The newest Yarn Smackdown pattern was released at 8pm EST, and I was determined to finish it before I slept.

Called the "Divine Hat" by Sarah Arnold, it's a lacy little crocheted beanie.  I whipped it up in just over two hours, and was on the bottom ribbing when I noticed that I had made a mistake.  Not a weensey little mistake, mind you... a big honking, "I read the pattern completely WRONG!" mistake.  

In my defense the pattern is white type on a black background in 8 point font.  Despite the fact that my monitor is big, the resolution made it darn near impossible to see.  So I dug out my glasses, re read everything, consulted pictures of finished and more divine hats than mine on Ravelry and figured out that yes, in fact I was a blithering idiot.

So at around 10:15 or 10:30 pm, I ripped.  And ripped, and ripped.  I ended up with this:

So sad.  I could only save the first 3 rounds.  I took a break, got some chocolate and some Diet coke, sat back down and began to crochet again.  It went faster this time, and I got the hat done a smidge under 1am, finishing and everything.  That's OK.  I cannot physically mail anything earlier than 8am because no freakin post office around here (that's within 50 miles) is open anything other than 8-5 (ok, a few are open 7-4, and if I wanted to drive all the way to Concord NH there is one that is open until 6)  Point being these mystical things called 24 hour post offices are mythical and legendary in the snowy fields of Vermont.  So I was pretty happy with myself and I mailed it very early the next morning.

Well, my opponent also mailed hers early, if not the night before (She does live in a place where there are mythical magical late night post offices.   Lucky punk!)

She mailed hers Priority.  I mailed mine Priority.

On Friday both hats arrived.  

As of right now we don't know who is alive or who is dead.  

On the bright side I got lovely natural soap with a nice hat!  So if I die, at least I'll be clean and smelling good.

Crocheting for Blood and Glory

Ahh, the YarnWarrior.  Entering the windswept plains of battle with naught but her hooks and needles, dangling a thin thread of yarn from her pack.  She is the forgotten heroine of the wartorn tundra.  She is: crazy.

In other words we have entered our second deadly fiberarts contest of the year.  Yarn Smackdown, which is set up alot like March Madness where knitters and crocheters face off in a bracket style competition, the winners advancing to the next round.

I have been put in the crochet brackets since, well, you name it and I do it.  The hat pattern is both charming and aggravating.  Charming because it makes a nice hat.  Stretchy, attractive, warm.  Aggravating because it is *alot* of work for a hat.  Maybe it just seemed that way because I was furiously hooking for my life before I went to bed (Now how many other contexts could you get away with saying *that*?!)

It's a vintage pattern; using front and back post double crochet to form cables.  They are very attractive cables, but it kinda made me want to knit cables instead.

I can't believe I just said that.  Me... the old hand at crochet wants to knit instead?  Partially it's because I enjoy doing certain things in certain mediums better.  I love crocheting afghans, but in knitting they seem like a chore.  I love crocheting pineapple doilies, but I wouldn't want a knit lace pattern to try to imitate pineapples.  In the same way crocheting cables felt like kind of a chore.

Anyways, the hat is done, sent and delivered already.  I'm hanging on the mail delivery tomorrow to see if I got a hat on the same day or not.  But my hat?  Well, this baby is a story in and of itself.

I got the pattern and read the yarn requirements.  It took 2 skeins (1 1/2 to be exact) and I went "what?!" I have lots and lots of one full skeins - enough for most hats, knit or crochet.  But this sucker takes alot of yarn.  So I started ripping apart my stash at 7:00 at night (after all the yarn stores were closed) looking for what I had with two matching balls.

I found Encore left over from an ill conceived scarf idea...

Encore is nice yarn.  It's part acrylic, but it's soft and washable.  

But there was this problem with the color.



Yeah.  You see what I mean, right?



Looks like a "Watch out and slow down, dummy, there's a school zone ahead" sign, doesn't it?

So then I made up a song for it.

Sing with me: (to the tune of a possibly recognizable Men Without Hats song…)

Ssss-aaaa-ffff-eeee-tttt-yyyy
Safety-hat!

You can knit if you want to,
you can leave your friends behind,
Because if your friends don’t knit - or they don’t crochet, then
They’re no friends of mine!

I say, we can knit where we want to
A place where they will never find
And we can act like we come from out of this world
Leave the real one far behind
And we can knit.

Francois!

Ah we can wear what we want to the night is young and so am i
And we can dress real neat from our hats to our feet
And surprise ’em with the yellow dye

I say we can knit if want to if we don’t nobody will
And you can act real rude and totally removed
And I can look like an imbecile
I say we'll wear yellow; there colors are out of control
We can knit, we'll crochet we’re doing it wall to wall
Put it on, go outside, everybody look at your hats!
Fold the brim, don a scarf, everybody takin’ the chance
Safety hats!
Oh well the safety hat
Ah yes the safety hat



Safety hat!

Now that that song is in your head, hope that I don't live to next round to make an even dumber song for an even more obnoxious hat.

Mwa hahaha.

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!

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!