Good Thursday!

Well, all right, not that good. Still looking at a way to make rent after my last day. But an ok Thursday, anyway. Though nobody bit on my offer to do graphics or website stuff on this blog, my other blog got me a small handful of work. That means I maybe won’t have to start selling stuff to make rent! Yea!

A few posts ago, I showed you the painting I did of the Apple hat, (because I couldn’t find my camera). Well, here is that picture again… and the completed hat! The colors of the painted version are a bit more true than the photo, but I'm lazy and don't want to go re-edit the photo...

 
It’s tiny. I’ve put it away for a baby gift if somebody I knows suddenly pops. Or maybe I’ll give it to one of those preemie charities…

And I promised pictures of Mr. Bear. Here he is, slumped over like he’s had a hard night drinking… His foot isn't twisted like that... just the way he's sitting.
 

And, just because I had my camera out this morning, here’s my craft area.

The yarn is all neat and tidy. Each cube has a different kind of yarn:

• Upper left – fancy, expensive, hand spun, or dear-to-my-heart yarn.
• Upper right – my fuzzy, furry, or loopy yarn. Boucle, mohair, and such.
• 2nd from top, left -  all the wool yarn I use for Tangle (yarn destroying street theater thing). Was donated. I love you, that special person who donated it.
• 2nd from top, right – wool yarn  in skeins. 3rd from top, left – random wool yarn. Rug yarn, and some other misc. stuff.
• 3rd from top, right – CRAP YARN! My stash of acrylic and other stuff.
• Bottom right – unspun wool that for some reason isn’t in the bins in the storage unit.
• Bottom left – I dunno. The recycle box is covering it up. I don’t think there’s anything in there, actually…

 Bookcase, fabric stash, and notions box. The books are all catty-wumpus because they are too tall to go in upright. Top box is knitting books, bottom is other; spinning, sewing, felting, knot work.

 

My sewing area! That’s my beloved sewing machine (no, I haven’t had it forever. I just got it.) It’s got googlie eyes on it, so I always feel like I’m sewing with a character out of a cartoon show. And note that the Salvador Dali picture “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” is real, but the drawing of the sheep on the wall I added in Photoshop. The wall just looked too bare up there…

 

Speaking of sheep…. Here’s the felted sheep bag I started more than 3 years ago. Just hand felted… this was before I knew about needle felting, which would have been perfect for that… Needs a handle, but I think it’s cute. The sheep is a bit more distintive in person.

 

And here’s something new! Kitten is making a very unique yarn. We’re test knitting it right now… Here’s two balls of the soon-to-be-available Reese’s Fleeces:

 I knit an entire hat from the pink, and the ball didn’t get very much smaller. I could probably do two more. And the blue has already knit me ¾ of a hat, and it hasn’t really shrunk at all. It’s like the basket of bread and fish… but for knitters.

Kitten should have some more to knit with soon…. Go bug her about it if you’re curious…

I also joined Secret Pal 2  last week. I have all sorts of ideas on what to send my secret pal. Bad part is I can't tell any of YOU about them, becuase any one of you could be my secret pal... ::looks around suspiciously::

That’s all for now. Back to work, you lazy thing!

mouse

Interesting weekend. We went and saw "Batboy, the Musical," which was wonderful. If it is staged around you, I highly recommend it. We saw it at Santa Barbra City College, and the staging was superb. The entire musical is surreal, but so, so funny.

And I managed to knit muchly during the intermission and before it started. I had planed to knit during, but I found I was laughing so hard that I had to put it away. The Mate says that he had the privilege of sitting next to the person who was laughing loudest in the whole theater.

So, what else did I do?

Finished 2 different projects. Ok, finished one, and started and finished another.

First: the Hat of Very Ugly.

This is the hat. I had intended it to be a kind of elf/wizard hat, or maybe a stocking cap if I could be that patient. The color is crap in this picture.

This is the hat, tip folded over like a stocking cap. I almost kinda like it. Almost.

This is the hat with the point up.

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. It looks like a multicolored condom with a reservoir tip. Ack. But, because I love you all, here’s the pattern I made up.

Brain Condom Hat

Yarn: I used crap yarn; Red Heart Worsted. I think it’d look fabulous in some other color… Like white. Needles/gauge: I used a size 5, 16” circ and some DPs I had lying around. Gauge isn’t too important.

1. Long tail CO about 133 st. This should crowd your needle up so much you can barely knit. Join, being careful not to twist. Your needle should be so crowed that you are never entirely sure that you didn’t twist.
2. Knit 2 rows, cussing.
3. Say “Fuck it” or some other epithet. K2 together around hat once. You should have 67 st, or something like that. Realize that you’ve made a ruffle. Blink, and accept that.
4. Knit a row.
5. Purl two rows for no apparent reason other than the hat turned itself inside out in your bag and you didn’t notice. Later explain that the purl rows keep the ruffle from curling.
6. Knit for approx 7 inches. Try on hat. Giggle.
7. Count your stitches and divide by a random number. I chose 6. Place a marker every 11 stitches, sneaking the extra stitch in somewhere.
8. Knit to 2 before marker, K 2 together. Repeat around hat.
9. Knit 2 rows.
10. Repeat 8 & 9.
11. Realize the hat is decreasing too fast.
12. Knit 4 rows.
13. Repeat 8.
14. Knit 3 rows.
15. Begin to decrease every row at a different marker. Doesn’t matter which one.
16. Continue decreasing until you can’t stand it any more, or you get down to 6 stitches.
17. Pull the tail through remaining stitches and tie off.
18. Try on, and realize you look like you have a condom on your head.
19. Blog about it.

Yes, well…

The second thing I did this weekend was try out a pattern from the book I bought more than a month ago, the ABCs of Making Teddy Bears.

I made the Billi bear. Now, realize that the pattern assumes you will be making said bear out of fur, and so my bear, made of flannel, is rather anemic looking.

But look at that head!

So, I’m going to make him a bigger body, and see about getting proper joints. No store in my town (that I could find) has doll joints, so I thread joined him. He looks kinda… floppy. The Mate calls him “Parkinson bear” because his head jiggles (No offence intended to anyone out there with Parkinson’s disease, or their loved ones. Just a way to describe the head jiggle.)

And, as I am typing this post, I have been informed that I will be “temporarily” laid off in two and a half weeks. Shit. Well, I’m going to go to the EDD website now….
 

Finally set up the camera at work. Pictures!
 
This is the lace I'm working on. It's the seashell lace thing (see last post). 
  

That's a few repeats, stretched out with the help of a drawer, two needles, one hand, and a post-it note...

Here's my backpack, started long, long ago (more than 2 years...) and finished almost a year ago. yes, it's taken me this long to upload pictures... but, in my defense, Kitten just put the grommets in weekend before last...

Before

After. I've been using it as my primary bag for a while, and other than a bit of hole-growing around the strap, it's been great.

And lastly... what happens when you tell Mouse to be ready to go around 8 am and then don't go until 11? She gets... crafty. This is the "AHHHH! I'm bored! Oh, look, a sewing machine!" bag.

Ok it's photoedited to be the bright neon green instead of the olive that the camera picked up, but it is that color, I swear. And yes, I know the flap hem is ragged; was going to do something else with it, and changed my mind. It has a flat bottom (unlike me,) and a nice inside hem on the lip. At some point I'll figure out how to line it correctly, and then maybe my needles won't poke out the felt....

I just have to share this with you:



That's Kitten's little girl. Isn't she a darling? Kitten just finished her 'lellow' hat, and she was showing it off.

I don't have kids, and sometimes my clock is ticking hard. That little girl both helps, and hurts; I know Kitten and The Wanker's lives have changed a lot since the kids were born, and they can be a bit loud, but...

Sigh. Anyway.

I'm working on a lace scarf, and it's actually working. Who knew? I got the pattern from Rob's sometimes-weekly newsletter... lets see if I can find it. Ah HA! "Shells on the beach". Bad picture. Simple pattern.

I like it. I'm doing a scarf in the random non-wool (it's cotton + something, I think) yarn that I swatched it in, and then maybe pick a variegated to try it again. Maybe double the pattern width. I can never leave good enough alone. I'm always tinkering....

Also, in the pattern it says just to knit the YOs normally... but i found that made the 'hole' almost disappear. So I'm knitting through the back loop of the YO, and the hole is nice and noticeable. Anybody else every have this problem? Is it a function of the weird way I knit? Hmmm.

Well, I promised you pictures... I LIED! BWHAHHAH!

Ok, I had some camera snafu's this weekend (we went to LB to visit Kitten and the Wanker) and didn't take pictures of anything. But I did the next best thing.

Here's Little Dead Bear, made for Red. I'll get a picture of them together at some point.


And I finally finished the red hat! Bit of a hodge podge; wool hat, acrylic stem, bright flaming green leaf. But its done!


A confession; I did something I never thought I'd do. I thought it was below me, or something. Messy, painful... could lead to things. Dangerous... But look at the colors!


That's Fiesta Jewel Print Mult ... by Red Heart.

Kill me. I bought a skein of Bleeding Aorta, and I love it. Knitting it with metal needles (so they don't squeak) and just kind of dashing off a pattern. I'm shocked at how much I don't mind the acrylic. Usually acrylic has me chewing my fingers off, but this isn't so bad.

And it was $2.50 for a 170 g skein. I'm going to make some hats for my friends who are wool allergic...

No nibbles on my offers to do web graphics. Not marketing myself enough, I don't think. And I probably should spend more than five minutes on ads for my services...