Crunch Time

So I'm in the middle of a knitting frenzy, as odd as that may sound (though to those of you who knit, that's probably 'not at all'). Christmas is soon (kinda snuck up on me - where the hell did November go??) and I have a zillion projects on the go. The optimist in me says I'll totally get them done in time, but the realist part of me is going "AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!! LACEWEIGHT SCARF?! WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?! BULKY YARN! BIG NEEDLES! NOTHING BIGGER THAN A HAT! GO! GO! GO!"

It's craziness.

In the meantime I've managed to finish a few things, some of which will actually be given out as gifts.


Yoga socks for mom. The color is a little off (have I mentioned I hate my camera?) but you get the idea. For the observant among you, yes that is single crochet around the heel. If I were to do these again I would use a ribbing pattern for the whole thing, instead of stockinette - they would fit better and the crochet wouldn't be necessary, since the heel wouldn't curl like that.


Another beret, using the same pattern as the other one I made except with the brim a little wider, and the body a little shorter. I originally was making this for myself but once again, Nat mentioned she reaaaally liked it... And to be honest she looks damn cute in it once again, so I gave it to her. (I do borrow it from time to time...) I was planning to make her a matching scarf for Christmas but I determined that I didn't have the time to finish if I was going to make anything else for other people, and since I have other gifts for Nat I decided to put the scarf on hold.


This photo is proof that my camera blows all kinds of chunks. The color is not even close to accurate, so here's a picture of the yarn so you can kinda imagine the result.


I made this one for myself (and actually kept it), to match my blue winter coat. I'm impressed at myself for this one, apparently I've gotten better at eyeballing sizes - this hat fits perfectly, even though I started decreasing at 4.5 inches instead of 5.5. If I'd kept going it would be much too big. So yay me!

I also made a neckwarmer for my grandmother out of a fuzzy chenille yarn that reminded me of leopard print. There is no photographic evidence of this because I am a moron and forgot to take a picture of the yarn or the work. I still need to sew some buttons on it though, so once I do that I'll take pics.

So here's what needs to get done before Christmas: a scarf in pink laceweight mohair for my aunt (currently at about 50% completion), a beret for Danielle out of a purple and black boucle (probably going to hibernate this till after Christmas as boucle is hard as f#$! to work with), a hat for my uncle, another hat for Harry (I never know what to call him... 'stepdad'? 'My mom's husband'? Whatever.) and a bunch of i-cord bracelets for some girl friends. Crystal's mittens have been put on hold, as have the slippers - I know, I know, priorities, but they'll understand.

The FO Parade

And we're back! With FOs!

In the past couple months my knitting education has continued, especially since it is no longer hotter than the seventh level of hell in the apartment (next year: air conditioning. Seriously.) And since I haven't posted in such a long time, it stands to reason that I would have a lot of finished stuff to show off. So without further ado here is the FO Parade!


Finished Little Leaf hat. It turned out a bit big for a newborn, but babies' heads grow fast and winter is coming quickly. The baby this is meant for is due in about a month, so I'm thinking this hat will see some fair usage. This is the project that made my mom click in that I was actually a knitter and actually making pretty, useful things. (Now she won't stop hounding me for a Sunday Market shawl. Too bad for her, I don't think I could survive another one quite so soon. I'm planning a Moebius wrap for her for Christmas.)


Kitty ears hat, here modeled by Nathalie. This one is so so, I kinda wish I'd done it in the round with a three-needle bind off instead of my half-assed seaming. It also ended up way too big for the person I intended to give it to, so it's sitting in the workbin doing nothing right now.


Same pattern as Rusty, this one was for a girl from work who was moving away. She really wanted one "like the one you made for Sam", and at the time I was trying to get this Manos yarn to become something it didn't really want to be, so I frogged that and just did this instead. I'm not entirely happy with the fringe, it stayed curly and I didn't have the patience to block it. But she liked it so, I guess it's ok. (The ladybug button is kind of an inside joke, and my way of wishing her luck.)


A couple cup sleeves I crocheted. That's right, crocheted. Chris taught me single, half double and double crochet, and these were my practice runs on single crochet. So, will I be trading in my needles for hooks?... Yeah not likely. Sure it's faster, but it cramps my fingers and I don't like the look as much as knitting. Also for some reason it makes me nervous that you're not building on a solid object, but on a chain of loops not really anchored to anything. But at least now if a knit pattern requires me to finish off with crochet I can do it.


Armwarmers for Chibi, modified with eyelets around the wrist so I could put a ribbon in. (Apparently I can't tie a bow to save my life. Who knew!)


Now this I am still pretty darn proud of. I finished this two days ago and dang it, I felt pretty damn smart. It's a beret I made for Nat, using the Freedom Spirit I still had at the bottom of my stash that was doing nothing. I originally cast it on for myself but she mentioned she liked that yarn a lot, so I decided she could have it. And then she put it on and looked so friggin' cute so that sealed it. (She made me a pretty pretty set of stitch markers in exchange, so everyone is happy!) I'm casting on a set of fingerless mitts to match with the last skein. This hat used exactly one ball, with maybe a yard left over. I did a happy dance. Pics of her wearing it will be taken soon.

So what is next for the Nemo?

Well, I picked up another skein of Manos del Uruguay at the Farmers' Market a couple weeks ago, because it immediately made me think of my mother. I made her some yoga socks (no heels, no toes so she can still have a good grip on the floor) and they are almost done, all they need is single crochet around the heel slit. They're a little big so they might get felted a tad before she gets them.

Then my friend Crystal requested some mittens, and I will most likely use my leftover Patons Rumor for that, though I'm kind of on the fence about it since it is mostly acrylic (and the alpaca sheds like a bitch). But unless I can find a really nice bulky red wool, that's what I plan to use.

And today my grandmother said she'd like some thick wool socks to keep her feet warm in winter, so we took a trip to Cricket Cove. Then we decided to make that felted clogs instead, and she ended up buying not only the yarn, but also the needles and the pattern so I could make them for her. It was a bit expensive and I feel bad she paid that much, but she wouldn't let me foot the bill even for the needles and pattern. So I'll be making her those, out of Alafoss Lopi wool. Everyone says that pattern is simple once you get the hang of it, but the instructions look a little daunting... Oh well, nothing like a challenge! (That had a little bit of an ominous feel to it, didn't it? Sort of like famous last words.)

Feelin' Groovy

Hello lamppost, whatcha knowin'? I've come to watch your flowers growin'!

Today's been a really good day. And I mean, a good day. I woke up feeling rested, which I never do, and got early leave from work after about an hour. Then a couple of my coworkers came and hung out here at the apartment for a couple hours, and one of them, Marc-Andre, plugged up my hard drive in my new computer. And that means I have all my files back! I'm so excited! I didn't realize how much music I actually listened to until I had nothing at all.

I don't actually have time to do a full-blown progress post like I was planning to, with pictures of the frogged hat and hermit crabs and whatnot, but here are two things I did want to put up:

1. Finally. Finished. The Sunday Market shawl. OH MY GOD.



The laddering process was fun, but it took for-goddamn-ever.



Totally worth it though. It came out looking amazing. I gave it to my friend Elise for her birthday (which meant staying up till 3 am to finish the ladders, but whatevs) and she really liked it.




2. Baby hat ftw:



That's totally not the right color, but whatever. It's almost done. Which is good because I just got a whole whack of books with baby knitting patterns, and there are babies popping up all over the place around me, so I've got some knittin' to do!


That's it for tonight. Ceeeeeeeelia, you're breakin' my heart, you're shakin' my confidence daillyyyyyyyy... Ohh Ceceeeeelia, I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please to come home!

(It's funny to me that that song makes me so happy. It's about a chick cheating on her boyfriend.)

Do Not Adjust Your Set

So my computer decided it couldn't take the heat anymore (literally), and kicked the proverbial bucket. In order to fully comprehend the impact this has had on me, let me tell you about my computer.

My computer is named Deep Thought. It was named after the second most powerful computer in the Universe (according to Douglas Adams). It was most definitely not the second most powerful computer in... well anywhere except maybe the room it was in, and only then if there were less than two other computers present. It was, however, a huge improvement on my previous computer, which I had dubbed The Millenium Falcon. The MF was a hunk of junk. State of the art when we bought it, sure, in ... 1990? Something like that? 2GB hard drive, 33.6k dial up modem, ran Windows 95... Took about two hours to download one song, and even then you could only store about twenty on the thing before it began acting like a constipated elephant.

So when I got my first job, wage-slaving it at Toys R Us at 16, I saved up and bought myself a brand spankin' new computer. 80GB hard drive, Windows XP when it was still the New Thing, DVD drive and CD+RW drive... Not a super fancy video card or sound card, but enough at the time to do what I wanted it to do.

That computer has been with me for just about, oh... six years now? It moved to Montreal with me. It moved back to Moncton with me two years later. It's had parts taken out, put back in, it's had Windows reinstalled and all kinds of things have gone wrong with it. For a while now it's been ailing, the motherboard wasn't quite what it used to be and I think that reinstalling a maybe not-so-legit copy of Windows on it wasn't quite a smart thing to do (I blame the ex-boyfriend for that, I told him to use my copy but nooo, that wasn't good enough for him... But that's another story). So it's been stuck on Service Pack 1, with no Windows updates available because it wouldn't clear the genuine software verification, I couldn't run more than two programs at once without everything slowing way down and some programs would just not run at all. If I needed to restart the computer, I had to shut it all the way down, power it off and unplug it, leave it alone for about a half hour and then maybe it would come back on if it felt like it. So instead I just left it on. All the time.

So when I got home last week and found it powered off, alarm bells started blaring in my mind. And sure enough, no amount of trying would get my poor computer to power back on.

It kinda sucked for timing, too, cause I'd been meaning to blog about a bunch of things that had been happening that week, and now all the pictures are stuck on that hard drive. My mom gave me her computer, which is in much better shape than Deep Thought was and is now purring happily in my living room, but - and let me stress the importance of this - I have no files on this thing. No music. No pictures. No saved text files with appointment times, bookmarks, resumes, what have you.

I feel almost naked, and I am going into severe music withdrawal.

So the point of all this is, until I can get my hard drive slaved to this computer, I can't write about all the stuff I wanted to write about. So let's just pretend there are some pretty pictures here of the hat I made then frogged, the new yarn I got, the scarf I'm making for a coworker, the baby hat I'm halfway done with, the hermit crabs from the beach, the necklace I bought at the market...

Or better yet, I'll save all those for a future post. How's that?


Oh, and PS. Deep Thought will not go unremembered. My friends and I are planning to take it apart and use the innards for art.

Playing Catch-Up

Hey there, long time no blog! June is always kind of a busy month for me, what with birthdays and graduations and stuff like that (we've had grads something like five years in a row, starting with my high school grad, through my cousin's, my brother's, my other cousin's, my mom's partner's daughters, and this year three of my friends graduated university... Congrats to them, I'm super proud of them). So here's a quick recap of the stuff that happened in June!

First, there were birthdays. My mom's is on the 16th and mine is on the 18th, so we had a few parties. My grandmother had us over for supper, and made me a zucchini-chocolate-chip cake with cream cheese icing, my special request. It was really good (of course it was, otherwise I wouldn't have requested it!)

The gang all pitched in to get me a kickass present (thanks again, guys!):



A ball winder! I was so excited. That night we had supper at a pub I love here in Moncton and then we came back here, hung out and played Guitar Hero while a little drunk on Jello margarita shooters that Brian brought (thanks, Brian!) I showed everyone (repeatedly) how to use the ball winder. I don't think I've ever done anything as much fun as drunken wool winding:



That's just from that one night! Then on the actual day of my birthday I was told by Nat not to come home early cause she had to have time to plan her birthday surprise for me. Turns out she'd bought a lemon pie for me, because my favorite dessert is lemon meringue pie, and she'd been trying to make the meringue. I guess our beater isn't fast enough though, so she ended up making me cinnamon raisin French toast instead - which were super good, and we still had pie afterwards, so I was super happy! She'd also gotten organic snickerdoodles. (So, logically, yellow round thing with slices taken out of it + small round thing = Pac-Man picture.)



(We have a thing about making food in the shape of Pac-Man:




See? We were especially proud of the pancakes. Kudos go to Nat for those. My roommate is awesome.)

She also got me the Flight of the Conchords CD, a pineapple lip gloss and the best birthday card ever. Handmade, handpainted, and it made me cry and laugh at the same time. (I do believe I snorted.)




Now onto knitting news! (Cause, you know, that stuff about the ball winder had nothing to do with knitting.)

I finished the Fingerless Gloves of Doom, Take II. No, I don't have a picture because I'm an idiot and didn't take any yet. No, I can't take one now because they're in my locker at work. No, I'm not wearing them so much there - I started bringing a blanket to my desk instead cause dang it, that place is getting colder every damn day.

I worked a little on my Sunday Market shawl. I made about... oh... two inches' worth of progress. Plain stockinette is boring. So to liven it up, I decided to try continental knitting instead of English style. I can't do the purls yet, but the knits go so much faster! It's easier on tiny needles than on my 13s, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

Speaking of tiny needles, I wound up my odd lot of Fleece artist and cast on my very first lace project, the Butterfly Lace Stole from Knit N Style magazine:



I cast on using size 3 needles instead of the suggested size 6, which means that I am totally disregarding gauge, which is reckless and dumb what with the not knowing the yardage on that skein, but... I don't really care. If it's too big, it's a shawl. If it's too small, it's a scarf. If it's useless but pretty, it's wall art. So there.

I also kind of went book-crazy. Chapters is having this sale right now where if you buy 3 books, you get the 4th free... So... Here's what I got:

Yarn Harlot's Knitting Rules!, which I devoured and loved every bit of. Great book, super helpful.
Knitting New Scarves by Lynne Barr, which has a few so-so designs but a also few really freaking great ones.
Judith Durrant's One-Skein Wonders. Some super cute stuff in this one, and y'all know I've got plenty of just-one-skeinage.
Jackie Pawlowski's Field Guide to Knitting, for the impressive stitch and edging library.
Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden. I don't crochet but it looks like I'm gonna damn well have to start.

The astute among you will have noticed that that is five books, not four. Well, that would be because I got three other books, but they're not knitting books. I got 'Fragile Things' by Neil Gaiman, which is a short story anthology that I am really liking so far, 'Those Left Behind' in hardcover which is the first Serenity comic book, and this gem, 'POPS!' by Krystina Castella, which is super awesome recipes for frozen pops and desserts, classy-style. It is unbelievably cute, and I might just have to go back for her cupcake book.

And finally, I have yet to mention here that my good friend Chris (the instigator of the Get Nemo a Yarn Winder Movement) has started teaching some beginners' knitting classes at Cricket Cove! Yay Chris! I'm super psyched for him, and I know his students are in good hands. Congrats Chris!

Whew! That's it for now. I will hopefully return soon with pictures of my knitting endeavors!

Party Hats On... NOW!

Yay, I'm now officially 22!

That is all.


(I might post later today. Maybe. If I'm not drunk.)

Quick FO And Some Silliness

Yep, you read that right! A real, honest-to-goodness FO. Sure, it's a simple one, but whatever.





Easy peasy lemon squeezy handwarmers. I used size 7 needles and about half a skein of my red Manos Del Uruguay 100% Wool. I especially like how the stockinette looks in this gauge, it makes a really nice fabric:



Nathalie called them my 'Fingerless Gloves of Doom', so that is what they are. These aren't even worked in the round, that's how lazy I am. But my hands were cold at work all the time, so I figured quick and easy was the ticket. Actually, these ended up going to a coworker, so my hands are still cold at work... Which is why I cast on a second pair, this time with ribbing at the top so it doesn't curl. (Duh, stockinette curls, you'd think I'd have caught on by now...)

Progress on the second pair:



This pair is done in Twilleys of Stamford 'Freedom Spirit', in a purple/green colorway which I guess is called 'Zest' (it doesn't say that on my skeins, but Ravelry says that's what it's called, so... Yeah.)

And now for some very silly things.

First up is a picture of my friend Tom, "cosplaying" as the Prince of All Cosmos with the help of a couch cushion and a knitting needle:



And finally, this is what happens when Chris decides he wants to use the camera, but he isn't sure which button does what. (This was hilarious to watch.)



My friends are awesome.