My work is Awesome.

that is all.

introducing MR. KNITTYKNOME!!!!

So I finished some socks. The yarn is actually three different sock yarns, all of which were pathetic on their own, so I spun them into a SuperYarnCakeOfDoom. The resulting 3ply was awesome.


At work I found a gnome, his name is KnittyKnome, and his greatest ambition is to take over the world using only string. Here he is helping me through a bit of a snag, the yarn he's working on is some of the yarn used in the socks pictured above.
and here is Mr. KnittyKnome working on his first scarf. Like many of my friends, I introduced him to knitting with chopsticks. Manly because I couldn't find my sz9 DPNs for him to work with.
Also I've begun making wallets using scraps. so far there's five.
this is the most recent and complicated one. It has a zipper salvaged from a pair of pants, and my very first button hole. All of the fabricsclothng it features come from FancyTigerCraft

Flirty Skirty

so for work I have 3 choices for what to wear, black pants, kaki pants or a skirt. So I made some skirts. I have 3 done so far, though I only have pictures of two. Above is the second one I made with the Amy Butler Barcelona pattern. I chose it simply because I love the way David Tennant says "Barcelona"(1:o9seconds).


Above is the Barcelona skirt just barely pined together on the left side. I'm currently using the floor for a cutting table and it sucks. I hope someone donated a good table to work soon so that I can trash my cruddy too small desk.Above is the fist skirt I made, the Amy Butler A-line that also comes with the Barcelona skirt pattern I like it, but I have to learn how to make darts because it is a little too big.

below my mom is holding up the Log Cabin quilt I'm working on. I stole the pattern from The Yarn Harlot, but the yarn it's made of has been intended for a blanket for a looooooooong time. Currently it the blanket is too big and hot to work on efectively in the summer.

KICKASS BAG OF AWESOME DOOM!!!!!!!!!

Pattern is High Street Messenger Bag by Amy Butler

This bag took me about 3days to make. I got all the materials from Fancy Tiger except the snap which I alredy had.


This is the inside of my AWESOME bag. It's got pen holes and everything!



The inside pocket of the bag hangs on a flap, so it can flp out for easy access. This is my favorite part of the bag. In the bottom left corner of the flap is a darker square. In the original pattern that was just negative space,but I decided that a coin pocket would be good and added a 4th zipper pocket. The zipper was cannibalized from the fly of my favorite pair of pants from a few years back, that unfortunately wore out beyond all repair in the butt.


This is the back of the bag, I find it to be very exciting in that the picture came out clearly. that is all.


This is the first time I ever used a Zipper foot. It was awesome, there's all sorts of things that you can do with a zipper foot. Not only is a zipper foot good at zippers, it's also great for making sharp edges on the edge of the material. Almost as sharp as store bought stuff, only my hands made it sort of wobbly .

Addition; I haz it.

this week I am addicted to:

• Bobbles!! and wtf is up with that? I hate them, but I can't stop making them.
• Dish/wash-cloths! again wtf? why are they so addicting and why did no one ever tell me this before?
• Knitting backwards!(right to left, rather than left to right) do you know how much easier this makes my life? Especially with bobbles and short rows? Thank you dyslexia!
• Daleks!!! DALEKS ARE SUPREME. OBEY. OBEY. EXTERMINATE!

The result of all the new addictions is multiple repetitions of EXFOLIATE

Here Come the Drums

I started some more socks with my Malabrigo, the pattern is Red Herring by Cookie A. who's new sock book I am anxiously waiting for. Anyway here are the socks so far, it's been a while since I've worked two-stranded so it took me awhile to get the hang of it again.Now I've got a good rhythm and a little chant that I sing under my breath "red, red, green, green; red-green; red, red, green, green"

crunk t-shirts

Little Bro moved out and left behind all his old t-shirts. the ones that were too sketchy for the goodwill or just cool enough to fit me with some alterations, got sliced up and turned into this:

7 tshirts worth of 'yarn' which I tried to knit on my sz19's. The 19(as thick as my thumb) were too small for the type of fabric I wanted so I frogged it, and pouted on twitter. Lucky someone on twitter had a pair of sz50's they wanted to get rid of, and they happily mailed them to me. I was so excited I got this much done in about 10 minuets.

and by the end of the day I had knit up all of the 'yarn'. Unfourtnetly it ended up being the size of a bathmat, so I now have three choices, 1)marry bigfoot 2) rip it out and make it into a bathmat, or 3) go get some more tshirts!!!! I think I'm going for door no.3.

the epic tale of the birthday present of monkey w!n

So I realized that mom's birthday was in a week and three days and that I had totally forgotten what I wanted to get her. So I freaked out about it for a day or so and then thought "what has mom been complaining about for ages?". Most of the answers were things like how messy my room was or how the house is too big; not really b-day present material. And then inspiration slaped me like a fish to the face: DUH! Knitting! Mom is ALWAYS telling me to knit her stuff, or fondling stuff and saying "If I could knit..."; It's kinda obvious that something knitted at the very least will be appreciated, or even activity lusted after.

The next step figuring out what to knit, was easy; a sweater would have been too insane to even contemplate, so that was right out, and I've alredy given her mitts so a repeat would have been lame. A hat and scarf set would have been alright, except that she alredy has many of both and I would rather chew glass than seriously attempt a scarf (except the Doctor Who scarf) and a shawl would have been in the same basket of crazy as the scarf. A purse or bag could have worked but people are always so picky about their bags, and they remind me of how Grandma would always sent me unwanted purses when I was a kid. So that left only socks and knitted pants, and nobody wears knitted pants.

After this magical epiphany I consulted my mates on Twitter about the feasibility of this venture, and after some deliberation we decided that it was doable so long as I stuck to something I alredy knew. The only successful pair of socks I have completed to date are Monkey Socks in Malabrigo (completed just a few blog posts ago!) a fine choice, except I thought I ought to do something different. Then I came to my senses, and realized that experimenting with a new sock pattern while on a deadline would only lead to tears, frustration and disaster. Serendipitously, several people on Ravelry had decided just that day that it would be a great idea to have a Monkey KAL in honour of Charles Darwin's birthday on the 12th. So I wasn't exactly alone in my ambition.

So I went to Fancy Tiger, and picked up a ball of Malabrigo 'lettuce' and cast on. In one evening I had completed the cuff and 2pattern repeats.

By day 2 I had 4 pattern repeats and some cupcakes.
By day three I had 6.5 repeats, but then I had to hide it and work on something else 'cause I hung out with mom all day at a quilting expo. Then I came home and hid in my room and worked very hard on them. I make a huge mistake, fixed it and knitted on. I came to the heel turn and began the heel flap, overjoyed at my own awesomeness, and decided to take another picture to show off! This is what I ended up with:Yes, as you knitters can see clearly above, the left sock is full of beautiful, beautiful FA!L when compared to the sock on the right. You non-knitting heathen muggles are a bit confuse here I'm sure.

"Why is there anything to complain about?" you ask, "Clearly the nommy green yarn is by far the superior in both colour and consistency of stitches. Sure it appears to be longer than that fine red sock, but who cares? we like longer socks anyway"

The answer is in the circumference of the socks. The length merely hint at how ridiculous the discrepancy between the socks is. The red sock, while a bit tight, can comfortably fit an adult woman size 7-8. The green sock on the other hand, can can comfortably stretch to fit an entire baby. If your leg was the size of a baby, that wouldn't be a problem, however most adult mammals are far thinner, so the sock simply slouches into a horrifying crazy cat lady style.

"oh noes!!!" you all cry "How could you have let this monstrosity get so far out of hand???"

And again that is a simple answer, the scrunchy lacy pattern of the Monkey socks conspired to hide their true evil nature for as long as possible, the better to drag out my false hope that I would knit something right start-to-finish for once.

"But is their nothing you can do?" you might wail to me, hoping that I might somehow pull a miracle skill out of my buttock as genies are wont to do. I wish I could tell you that your confidence in me at this point was well deserved, but I am very sorry my dear reader to tell you that, there are but two terrible solutions:

1 Marry sasquatch in the hopes that his foul hygiene will force my mother to disown me
2 Frog it. Rip it out. Sacrifice it to the knitting gods, and cry a thousand tears of frustrated sorrow.

I chose option no.2, and frogged the whole thing. That meant that I now had to find needles that would give me the correct gauge. The red socks were done in 2.25mm and are slightly tight on me. The disaster was created on 2.75mm, meaning that I need 2.50mm. I called 3yarn shops before finding one that carried them in metal DPNs (NOT wood, I thrash the wood). And then stupidly said "I have to go to the yarn store"

Mom: "Really? I'll go with you! Why do you need needles?"
Me, "Sure, I'm feeling lazy."
Mom, "what do you need them for?"
Me,"ummm.... mitts? The ones I was working on the other day?(aka the ones on sz4 DPN's which are HUGE by compairison.)"

Well we went to the yarn store and I go the needles, then freaked out that THEY were too big, before finaly relising the perfect solution: Knit the ankle with the 2.25mm because that's what fit me and Mom's ankle was probably the same size, and then knit the heel, foot and toe with the 2.5mm to make the foot slightly larger. It took me 4 and a half days to finish the whole pair; most of that time was spent avoiding her in the basement.

the final Result:

check out my first cheese cake^

The Beast has put his Mark upon me

Yay! 666 posts on Ravelry!!!!!! and I have cheese cake in the oven Yay!

Doomsday mits

So I finished my Doomsday Mitts pretty quick. The Doomsay Mitts are based off of Billie Piper's Rose Tyler costume in Doctor Who. After seeing the last episode of season 2 I just HAD to make these, they were the only thing that kept me from sobbing through the last 10 minuets. I originaly wanted to make them a sort of "mauve" colour (an inside joke from dr.who s1) but I am aparntly an idiot when it comes to telling reds apart, so I ended up with this sort of dusty rose colour.
Some nice pictures of Rose Tyler from the Doomsday episode. This is the end bit at Dårlig Ulv Stranden, AKA Bad Wolf Bay, where she wears the mitts, and makes me cry because it is just so sad.
I love the pattern for these mitts, it's got all the best elements of a knitter life: cables and seed stitch, with a nice swath of stockinette across the palms.
I'm not too thrilled with the colour, or the gauge, so I gave them to Emma and cast on for another try. I went to Fancy Tiger today and found some different yarn, this time in 'boysenberry' which is closer in colour to what I want.

EXTERMINATE

Woot! The photos of my journal that I promised!

Allons-y!

WOOT! I finally managed to
a)update this blog
b)with my own pictures from my own camera
c)and have a nearly finished project that doesn't suck!


Pictred above are my Bloody Monkey Socks! All I've got left to do is the left toe!! yay!!! I would 100% recommend this pattern especially as a first sock pattern, it just flies by like butter. If your wondering what's on the TV in the background it's the new Doctor Who my new obsession. I am SO in love with David Tennant and Billie Piper (again a 100% recommendation)
My other new fun thing is my Wreck This Journal, I'm going to try to get some pics of it up here, but for now I'm going to finish my monkey sock and watch some Doctor Who.