Ahhh, summer vacation. So, I'm done with school for the semester, and I am very, very happy. I didn't think I'd make it. 13.5 units... plus a full time job, plus another 'job' that took me out of town every weekend. I'm not sure how I made it, but I did.

And I think I might have pulled a 4.0. 0_0

So, that's good. I got a bit of knitting done while waiting for Biddy to get her newest tattoo, done by the incomparable Pat Fish. Go check her out. She's witty, sharp, a wonderful artist, and has two beautiful Irish Wolfhounds.

For those of you who've never seen one:


So there. That's what they look like. No, the dog, not the boy. Man, you lot are picky!

So, I'm sittin' there, watching Biddy get a lovely still life painted into her arm, and I'm knitting away with some scrap Paton's Canadiana in an eggplant color. My goal? A quick version of the ever popular fruit hat. I was going to do a grape. Then both my brain and Biddy point out that grapes come in bunches. Now, this gift is for a very fertile friend of mine, but I certainly don't want her to have an entire bunch of babies! So I change my plans for the stem and leaf, and now it's a plum hat.

Right...

I finished it up the other night, and managed not to kill myself with the DPNs. Go me! Don't mock me. I'm the girl who manages to cut herself on butter knives and phone booths. I actually cut myself on a lollipop once. No kidding. For a while my mate wouldn't let me cut my own food for fear of hurting myself. Anyway... I added a stem, and pulled out the eye gouging green scrap yarn I have for the leaf.

I think, "I can make a leaf..." and then I proceed to knit what looks like a run over frog, or perhaps the lost paddle to a very relaxed canoe. No, no, this won't work!

So I comb the internet and come up with a leaf pattern I think I can do. I'd share it... but I forgot to bookmark the site, so all I have is the pattern. And we all know not to ask for somebody else's pattern, don't we? See Wendy (May 07 post)if you're unclear on this.

More on that as it develops.

I also was struck by the thought that I should start another project. Why? Who cares.

I saw the Sophie bag mentioned Rob's blog, and I just had to start it. So I dig up some worsted type yarn (Don't worry, I waited 30 minutes after eating inspiration to go Stash Diving. Don't want to get a brain cramp, after all,) and came up with some GOD awful yellow yarn I bought at the Torrance Handspinner's sale in August. Now, you have to understand, this yarn came in a HUGE hank. Like... bigger than a newborn baby. Ok, a small newborn. But big, I tell you. And it's scratchy. And it was cheap; 5$ for the whole thing. So I bought it. And 4 others of different colors. The dye is spotty, the yarn is scratchy, and it felts.

I'm in love. :D

So I pull two chairs a few feet apart and begin to wind it into a ball. By hand, since I seem to have misplaced my craftMum's ball winder. Whoops... Anyway, I wind. And wind. And wind. Mate reads to me from Hunter S. Thompson's The Great Shark Hunt to keep my brain busy. I love that man. You pick whether I mean my mate or Hunter S.

At some point I realize that I'm turning the ball once for every 3 pulls off the skein. I look down, and great googile mooglie! The ball is bigger than my head!

So I stop. I make a second, normal sized ball with what's left of the skein and put Godzilla ball away. I kit back and forth on the needles I have on hand (Gauge? We don't need no stinking gauge... I know, I know, bad knitter... but it's not like it's a garment, after all.) which was a size 8 or so. Give or take; these are Honey's old needles, given to me when her eyesight faded. No numbers to be found.

Knit, knit, knit.

I love bag patterns. Back and fourth, then pick up the edges and away you go! So... on Mother's day, away I went... only to realize that the circular I grabbed in my dash out the door was a size 4.

Yes, going from size 8 to size 4... I knew it wasn't gonna work , but I started it anyway, just to see.

Hoo Boy! Not pretty. Looked like a pear with a glandular condition. So last night I ripped out the size 4 disaster (And we all know that most women aren't size 4, and the media is teaching us to be that size. DOWN WITH SKINNY MODELS! ::cough:: um...) and dug out my NeedleMaster kit and set to work. I'm a inch or so up the sides.

Maybe it's time for me to read the pattern, eh?

I should shut up; this post is huge. Have a good weekend, and if you're around the LA area, come see me at the Renaissance Faire; I'm the 'dim' Scottish woman playing with yarn in the street.