Color Meme

"If you want to do the meme, leave a comment requesting a colour and I'll give you a colour that I think represents you / makes me think of you, and then you list ten things you like in that colour!"

Stolen from Kate & Scribbles & Taya & a bunch of other people. Scribbles gave me "green". I haven't done Kate's and Taya's yet.

So, GREEN:

No, I kid. The Grinch is much too Christmas-y for me. Even in that pic.



Yes, yes, there are eleven pics there. Two of them are really the same thing. I was having trouble deciding between the two windmills, and then I needed something to balance the lower corner, so they're both in there.

Anyway, left to right, top to bottom. If you get confused, look at the pictures for heaven's sake. ;)

Windmill: I like green energy. I like lower electric bills. I like the look of wind farms.

Mountain Dew: Do I really need to explain this one? It's the elixir of life! Or at least of NaNo.

Yarn: Again, this should be self explanatory. Yarn is soft and squishy and has such amazing potential to become cool knitted things. Or crocheted, I suppose. This is the color Evergreen from The Unique Sheep.

Cat's Eyes: This is Tiptoe, my mother's cat. (The cat formerly known as Spare. My mother finally caved to the peer pressure and renamed her.) She has beautiful green eyes.

Money: I like having money. I like having enough money that I don't need to budget every penny. I really like having enough money to spoil my friends. >_>

Desktop: Kate made this for Kay, but it's so pretty that I stole a copy (with permission). It hasn't been off my desktop since.

Moss: I love the look of moss. I used to love the feel of it, too, but there was an incident with a moss-covered rock and a wolf spider. *shudders*

Forest: I love trees, especially in forests. I may be part dryad or something.

Knitting Kit: This was a "freebie" from one of the shipments of a Sock of the Month club. At first I thought it was kind of silly, but it's incredibly useful and handy to have all my little tools in one place, and to not have to worry about losing them because they're so small.

Tupperware Bowl: I'm a dork, but I really love this particular Tupperware bowl. This isn't a picture of ours, which is a slightly darker green (mom/camera problems), but it's really a wonderful bowl. Microwave-, freezer-, and dishwasher-safe, even on the lower rack. It's a great size--big, but not too huge. The perfect size for hat modeling. >_> And jambalaya storage.

The other windmill: (see above)

Links & a Contest

Just 1 week until Knight Errant (by KD Sarge, available from Turtleduck Press or from Amazon for the Kindle. Or a few other ebook places, I believe) can be bought. Want to win a copy? Go here! KD is giving away TEN copies on Library Thing. (LT account required, but free.) You'll need to scroll down to find the right give away. KD and Knight Errant are also on Good Reads, and I've even got a (very brief) review up there. I'm working on a better one. >_>

I can't wait to get my hands on an actual PHYSICAL copy of the book! That will make it so much easier to reread all my favorite scenes at night. As it is, I go to bed, want to reread something, and have to decide if I really want to reboot the computer to get to the proofreading file.

Bookmarks! And Squid!

My bookmarks are here! YAYAYAYAY! They arrived yesterday, and I'm still gleeing about it. :D Sorry about the weird background color. The colored paper I had handy was melon-colored, but it scanned pink. Hope the boys will forgive me. (Click to embiggen so you can read it! Even my mother thinks it sounds like a good book!)

Do you want a bookmark of your own? (And if you don't, WHY ON EARTH NOT? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU???) Go here! KD's still giving them away.

Now then, I believe I promised people a post about a squid hat. >_>

It's big.


Really big.

Almost as tall as I am.

It took me about 5 months to knit it, using this pattern. Except I think KD's squid is cooler, because I made him in rainbow colors. (His name is Skidoo.)

It started with this.

Well, actually it started with this. I cut the yarn into lengths and spliced it to form the rainbow ball(s).

Then there was the inner hat. I don't actually have any pictures of that, so here it is inside out. The circle is where the eye was attached, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Next, 8 arms. Although I think of them as tentacles. (Yes, there are only 7 in the picture. Hush. I obviously wasn't thinking about photographing every stage as I did it.)

Then the 2 tentacles proper. (You are ignoring the backgrounds of the messy house, right? >_> )

Skidoo is so friendly. Even before he was completed, he'd hold hands with me.

Now come the eyes.
And the other one.

Attached:

Next up, the body! It took FOREVER, but at the same time went much faster than the tentacles. I don't have any pictures of this stage completed either. But here are the fins.


And the finished hat! Yay! (No cats were eaten in the taking of this photo. Afterwards? >_> Well, I think Lilac's still around here somewhere.)

And here's a post from KD in which she talks about Skidoo a little.

SO EXCITED!!!

Anyone who follows me on Facebook or Twitter knows that one of my all-time favorite authors is releasing her first book on Dec. 1 (Knight Errant by KD Sarge, available from Turtleduck Press). Now she's giving away bookmarks! Squeeeeeeeeeee! I've wanted one since she first posted a pic on her blog, but I felt weird asking for one since they're a promotional tool and I'm already buying the book. >_> But now I can have one! Yay!

I've read the book already, as sort of a beta/proofreader. It's wonderful! You should all buy it! Seriously! Buy it, tell me you bought it, and I'll knit you something. Maybe not something as big as the squid hat, but something.

What's that? I never posted about the squid hat? You're right! But that's for next week. I don't want to distract from the bookmarks.

Edited to add: KD has now written a blog post specifically about this bookmark giveaway here.

Deadline Knitting

I like crazy deadlines. This explains a lot about me.

It also explains why I'm knitting a child-sized afghan. In 2 weeks.

You see, one of the charity knitting groups that I'm involved with (For the Children of Pine Ridge (Ravelry link)) is trying to make blankets for the children enrolled in the Head Start program at one of the kindergartens on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Many of the children do not have their own blanket at home. Starting this past April, group members began knitting and crocheting squares to be joined into afghans. The goal was to make a blanket for every child (130 total), but at this point, we're still a bit short. So I'm going to make a whole afghan by myself. In 2 weeks. Yes, crazy deadline. But it's not really like I'm doing much else at the moment.

So, here's the yarn. (That shiny thing is a quarter.)
Each skein makes three center-pull balls like this. (Same quarter.)

And here's my progress so far. (The edges look stretched and uneven, but once it's blocked and the border is added, that will be fixed.)

I started last Tuesday. It's about halfway done at this point, because there will be a border to knit once the square's completed.

(This is the From the Heart Mystery Baby Blanket. (Ravelry link) I'm adding a bigger border to make it the required 48 inches square.)

Also, obviously, the blog has a new look/theme. Orange was my favorite color when I was a little kid -- so little I pronounced it oranch, as my mother never fails to remind me. It's taken a while, but I seem to be back to liking it. So welcome to my orange blog. Sunglasses are on the table to your left. >_>

A Week in the Life of Some Yarn

Sale at LYS, Nana's Knitting Shop! 30% off! Mom makes a purchase for command knitting!

Zillions of patterns to choose from, mom settles on one that's not readily available. Attempt to improvise something similar. Success!



Hmm, some leftover yarn. What to do? Socks!

Done now.

Coming Soon

I'm here. I'm not dead. I've been starting to get calls and e-mails, so I thought I'd mention that. >_> I keep meaning to write up a post about the squid hat I knit, or how life is going, or something else. But then I don't get around to it. Sorry about that. I'll try to get something more up this week.

A small reward will be issued for information leading to the successful capture of my motivation.

How to Knit a Love Song

I've been reading Rachael Herron's blog for a couple of years now, so I was very excited to be able to buy her first book, How to Knit a Love Song.

The book "in the wild"

The Wild

I bought the book at The Bookstore in Glen Ellyn, even though they had to order it for me, which meant that I had to wait for it to come in. The Bookstore is a tiny, little bookstore. However, they're also next to my LYS, String Theory Yarn Co. (on the left in the photo), so I suggested to the owners of both shops that stocking the book could be a good idea. After all, there's a pattern for Cade's sweater in the back of the book. Buy the book, then head next door for the yarn. Win-win, right?

Of course, the book is also available online at Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Powell's. It will be available in Target stores starting in April.

The Review:
I'm not always much of a romance reader, but I enjoyed How to Knit a Love Song. I admit, at first I was horrified at Abigail's assumptions and borderline rudeness. And sometimes Cade's an idiot. But things start to work out between them, and by the middle of the book I wanted them to get together, without feeling any of the whiplash sometimes associated with such a change of opinion concerning a character.

I loved Eliza Carpenter. The quotes are great -- very much reminiscent of Elizabeth Zimmermann without actually copying her. The knitting-related parts of the story felt very real to me. I'm not entirely sure I'd like to have EC organizing my life like that, but it surely works in the story. And I love the sweater pattern that's included. I'm tempted to cast on for it right now, but I should probably finish at least one of my dozen or more current projects first. So I have the right sized needles available, if nothing else.

My regular readers are probably shocked by now. No complaints at all? So unlike me! Therefore, full disclosure: I could have lived without the last 14 paragraphs of the epilogue, but that's my hang up. I don't really like what a friend calls

**SPOILER ALERT**

Baby Ever After endings. Like I said though, that's my hang up. It's a common enough type of ending in romance novels that lots of people must enjoy it.

All in all, a very good book. I'm definitely going to get the next book when it comes out. I want to see what else Eliza's been up to.

EDITED TO ADD: The book is published as Eliza's Gift in Australia. I probably should have mentioned that earlier, since I know I have international readers.

Frustrating Weekend

What do you mean, I didn't post last week? I see no week!

So, yesterday we went out for my sister's birthday. (New Star! Best Chinese restaurant ever! Well, within 15 miles, at least.) I even finished the hat in time.

You're just waiting for the frustrating part, aren't you? The hat was rejected. Deb didn't like it. It was too short, despite the fact that it's longer than she asked for. It's too loose, despite the fact that it's tighter than she asked for. I was waiting for her to tell me that she didn't like the color, despite the fact that she picked out the yarn. So, here's a photo of it in it's formerly completed state. (Well, the photo was before I cast off, but it's close enough.)



And the poor hat's current condition.



*sigh*

School? My Spanish midterm went well, complete with the 8-minute one-on-one conversation with the prof. This week I'm working on my midterm philosophy paper, in which I get to argue both sides of the legalizing prostitution issue. Fun! :/

Didn't Win

Current photo of Deb's hat, my project for the Knitting Olympics.


Yeah. No gold for me.

Oh. Right. Monday.

Nothing much this week. I'm planning to turtle extensively for a little while, and hopefully reemerge feeling human at some point.

My Olympic knitting? Yeah, it goes slowly. This picture shows about 1.5 hours of work. Just the knitting, just this bit. Those 1.5 hours don't include the swatching, measuring, pattern-combing, plotting, calculations, ripping out, other attempts... none of that. Just this bit. 1.5 hours. The increase patterns are insane, but they're all I've found that will look good and lay flat(ish). Never again, NEVER AGAIN does Deb get to dictate exactly what she wants in a knitted item.


I no longer worry that I was setting the bar too low by choosing just this hat for my project.

Non-Knitting Update

There's been very little knitting progress here this week. I did finish the hand portion of one of the mittens for my mom's birthday. However, when I went to add the thumb, I discovered that the pattern had told me to make the opening absurdly low. There would have been very little cuff over the wrist, and there would have been over 2 inches of empty mitten flopping around at the end of the fingers. Therefore, the mitten has taken another trip to the frog pond (it's third). I have noted the new thumb placement on the pattern's chart, and the fourth time should be the charm. Not that I'm thrilled about needing so many tries.

I haven't even begun my sister's birthday hat yet, so it doesn't look like I'll be winning the Knitting Olympics this year.

The good news is that I went to the dentist today! Thanks, Julie, for your recommendation. I'm Very Pleased with this dentist, which is really the first time I've been able to say that about a dentist. True, I did feel the Novocaine shot a bit more than I did with my last dentist. However, I didn't feel the drilling AT ALL, and there was new decay under the (already deep) filling that had fallen out, so I'm particularly impressed by that. In fact, it's been nearly four hours since I got the shot and I can still barely feel the right side of my mouth. This may make eating dinner interesting.

Also, I got my tax refund this week, so I've ordered a gizmo that I think will help with some of the slowness I've encountered lately on my home computer. I don't want to jinx things before I get it hooked up, but it's arrived, and I'm hopeful.

Knitting Update

I was supposed to post something on Monday, wasn't I? I seem to have started a tradition of flailing for a month or so at the beginning of every semester, and my blog is one thing that gets knocked off the table.

At any rate, I have a little knitting news for you all. I know you're excited. ;) (This is a photo-intensive post. Apologies to anyone with a slow connection.)

I have a new iPod (my first MP3 player, in fact). His name is George. He's purple. He also has a cozy. I always thought that people who knit cozies for their iPods and cellphones were crazy, but I didn't want his screen to get scratched in my purse, so he had a cozy within 12 hours of his arrival here. >_> I used some Claudia Handpaints fingering weight yarn that I had left over from one of my traveling scarf projects. I've always loved this colorway, and I'm delighted that I thought of something I could make for myself with the partial skein that I had kicking around.

I also did some knitting repair this week. Do you remember the Never Ending Scarf that I finished on Sunday, January 31, 2010? Of course you do. It was the cause of that whoop of joy heard 'round the world. Would you like to guess what happened on Thursday, February 4, 2010? No? I came home from school to find the scarf on the kitchen counter with a note asking me to fix it.

There had been a Zipper Incident. Can't see what I'm fussing about? Let George help to highlight the problem.


FIVE DAYS!!! It took me over 13 months to finish that blasted soul-sucking scarf and my sister managed to damage it in FIVE DAYS!!!!! And when I informed my sister that she was on knitting probation and would be banned from receiving any further handknits if anything else happened to this scarf or to the hat she's requested for her birthday, she had the gall to tell me that the scarf leapt into the zipper, even though she was holding her coat 3 inches away from the scarf at the time. I am skeptical. The pull has been mended as well as I could, given that this is acrylic yarn and thus splicing the torn strands is impossible.

While I'm at it, here are 2 pics of the entire scarf in its entirity, taken less than 24 hours before the Zipper Incident.































I've also been working on the mittens for my mom. After all, her birthday is tomorrow/today (depending on if we're going by the I-haven't-gone-to-bed-yet;-it's-still-Wednesday theory or by clock-based reality). Deadlines? I'm with Douglas Adams on those. ("I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.") This is still the first mitten. Luckily, we still aren't sure when we're celebrating, although it's extremely unlikely to be this weekend. The red line on the palm of the mitten is where the thumb will be knitted.

























Unfortunately, missing this deadline is probably going to interfere with my ability to get my sister's hat knitted during the Knitting Olympics. Then again, I'm not entirely convinced that it's possible to knit this hat in the first place, since I'm supposed to be creating the pattern for a close-fitting, top-down hat in fingering weight yarn that will be longer in the back than on the sides and longer still in the front, but with no seams. Also, ribbing is prohibited. And my sister, who doesn't knit, has never seen a hat like this. I'm designing it based on her mental image of portions of several hats she's seen over the years, some of them possibly knitted. It needs to be custom-fit to her head. If I'm found stabbed to death with knitting needles anytime before March 12, know that I did it myself to put myself out of my misery. Also, this is absolutely the last knitted project that she gets to request. First the scarf, then this. Clearly she can't be trusted with the responsibility of it.

The SHoD (Squid Hat of DOOM) now has 3 tentacles. I really want to work on it, but that's probably because I need to be working on my mom's mittens. Hopefully I'll get those done in the next few days so I can squeeze in a day of fun knitting before tackling the other hat. Also, I'm not posting pictures of the SHoD because I want to spring it upon you in all its glory when it's completed. No spoilers. :p

Breaking News

THE NEVER-ENDING SCARF IS DONE!!!!!!!!!

I would show you a picture, but I don't have one. My sister came over today and I made her try on the scarf. The Incredibly Shrinking Scarf. The one that, last time I knit 6 inches onto it, became 2 inches shorter than its previous measurement. The scarf that I've been working on (off and on, obviously -- only when it hadn't completely sapped my will to live) since December, 2008. Yes, 2008. Not a typo. It's double knitting in acrylic, with a lattice pattern that required reordering the stitches on the needles in every single row.

This is one of those projects that, if I'd had a little more experience when she asked for it, I'd have refused to make. Yes, I can do double knitting. Yes, I can do lattice stitch. Yes, I can even work with that horrible acrylic microspun yarn that splits like crazy and my sister loves so much. (It's fine to crochet with, and I don't want to rag on the manufacturer, because it's a perfectly good microspun product. I just don't like to knit with acrylic or microspun, particularly this stuff.) Yes, I can knit a scarf that's 6 feet long. The problem came when I tried to combine those four things.

Also, in case you don't know enough about knitting to realize this, knitting a 6-foot scarf in double knitting means that you've really knit a 12-foot scarf, because double knitting is two layers of knitted fabric that are attached to each other, like layers on a quilt or something.

Anyway, my sister tried the scarf on and said that it was long enough. This despite the fact that a measurement taken just hours before her arrival showed that it was still nearly 2 feet short. I snatched it off her neck and had finished casting off before she finished laughing at me. A speed record may have been set, if only someone had been timing me. She's now gone back home, and she was wearing the scarf when she left, so I must fall back on my original photos for this post. Someday, when the scarf is around and my mom isn't (digital camera issues are complicated in this house), I shall take a picture of the completed scarf. And then make you read another post about it. >_>

Side 1

Side 2

Please Stand By

Testing

This is a test post to see if I can link my pattern here. If you don't mind, would you see if you can view that pattern? I want to be sure that anyone can access it, not just me.

Thanks!

Designing

I'm late. Again. I know. *hangs head in shame*

Want to know why?


I'm designing. I've decided that I'm going to be published by the end of January, even if it's only a crochet pattern. Besides, writing the pattern up will save me from having to reverse engineer this hat AGAIN the next time my mom wants me to make one. Which I may or may not have already done five times. >_>

In other news, school starts on Thursday, and I've begun to knit the SHOD (Squid Hat of DOOM!) I'm still in the first section of the pattern, and so far my main reaction is "Holy @#$* these colors are bright!" Which is kind of the point of rainbow, but whatever.

Perhaps I'll have something more interesting to say next week. You never know. Stay tuned! I might talk about the incredible shrinking scarf.

Secret Project Revealed!

The Secret Project has arrived at its destination, so now I can post pictures of it. Yay!

Lying down

Sitting up



With his SPORK!!!!

Also, this squid has been named Huggsley by the recipient. ^________^