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.