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.