Socks All for Me!

Last night I finished my two socks.

I tried the first on.  It was heaven.  It was orgasmic.  I will never knit anything but socks again, until I can assure my feet will always be covered by socks as comfortable and squishy as these comfortable, squishy socks.

The second one...

I was not so lucky.

I don't know what went wrong.  I pulled, I tugged, I cried and prayed.  I felt like Cinderella's ugly step sister, desperately wanting the glass slipper to fit on my feet so I could go back to the prince's castle and live happily ever after.  No dice.  This sock was NOT coming on.

So, another knitting mystery to solve.  The socks were the same stitches, same width and length, same gauge.  I washed the good sock and pressed it flat to block (or something like it, I don't have sock blockers.)

And the other was punished severely.

Then, I went on a road trip, ate Stewart's Ice Cream for the first time, came home, and tried my socks on.

Apparently the bad sock learned its lesson in time out, because it slipped on.  It looks a little baggy, though, but oh well.  Viva la new socks!

Oh, and thanks a lot to Kathy and Emily for helping me solve my yarn mystery! I couldn't reply to your comment via email, so I thought I'd call you out in a post :)

Special Delivery!

Today at lunch I picked up a lovely little present from the Take and Replace Swap on Irish Eyes! There were so many nice things, but I took out these:

A skein of sock yarn and a wristlet.  Perfect since my old one (from my wrist troubles two years ago) was starting to get icky and smelly, and this yarn will be great for new socks for W!  I loved everything in the box, and I hope the person I'm sending it to likes the stuff I put in!

Anyway, I don't get out of work until after the post office closes, but I will mail the box to the next person tomorrow :)

Oh and I've encountered a bit of a mystery:

This was in the middle of the skein of sock yarn! What is it? Thread? It's not more yarn, that's for sure.  There's still 100g in the skein (well, 94 g...) but... it's just weird.  I want to know what it is! :D

Oh, and no quilting tonight - I'm driving across the state on a mission to rescue some cats.  But I should have a nice FO (or two) tomorrow.

Another collaboration finished - kind of

Once again, I find myself doing work for stop mo - this time with W.  And instead of knitting a baby hat at club (shame!) I made this:

Yes, it's a wee little Thorpe for a puppet! I got to put it on him and do my homework with him tanding by my teapot.

Tonight he gets his legs tuned up, his mittens on, and later on this weekend he will become a movie star! I'll make sure to post in the next 5-6 weeks, when the film is completed and up online.

I also got a belated Christmas gift from my friend at Hooks and Needles! Stitch markers!

I love the presentation! :)  She doesn't make them professionally, but I think she should - they're gorgeous.

Oh Happy Day!

Today is Ash's birthday, and I made her some smiley twenty-first birthday cookies.

And also, I got a very nice blog review from Tays Blog,  4.5 out of 5 stars! How nice, you can read the review here.

Strides in Quilting

I worked for six hours today, then spent two hours sewing.  While it doesn't feel like I've accomplished much, I have hit two milestones today.

First, I finished cutting the 40 edge pieces! I realize that I will probably need to go and find more fabric (Maybe twice as much, since I want to use this color for the back.)

Then, I finished cutting the pieces for my first flower! Yup, this is flower one of 25.

This quilt is going to be HUGE. Really, really big - but that's good, right?

I started cutting the pieces for the second flower, but my hands started to to hurt.  The rotary cutter is not so good for your wrists, I guess.

Now I'm off to eat veggie lasagna and perhaps some bananas foster afterwards :)  I've done so much today, it feel great!

First FO of the New Year, and Start of the Baby Hat Parade

It's Hooks and Needles tradition: the annual baby hat drive! I made my first hat this year, based on Algerian Action's Sweet.  I cast on 40 stitches using size 6 needles, and worked the pattern as best as I could (ha ha).  The hat might be a little small - the norm is 50 stitches on size 5 - but it looks like it will stretch to fit.  The only other change to the pattern I made was I only knit in stockinette for 4 rows, so, it's definitely smaller than it's supposed to be :)

I knit this with yarn donated to me from a friend of a friend, whose mother passed away.  I have about 5 skeins of Lion Brand Wool-Ease in a sunny yellow, and I'm thinking about making a sweater with it.  Or more baby hats! :)

My goal this quarter is to make one baby hat every club meeting - so, two a week for the next 6 weeks.  If I just make plain stockinette stitch hats, I'll be able to churn out four a week- they really don't take much time at all to do!

*Facepalm*

I am so silly! I almost forgot to make my new moon TUSAL post! Thankfully I saw Dee's post here and remembered, thanks Dee :)  Hopefully I won't forget next month! Enter a photo snapped in Photobooth:

So what in my jar?  The ends from Christmas projects, and a bit of yarn from the mittens I made for W's puppet.  I hope to add the threads from quilting, but I haven't even gotten the machine out! :(  Vowing to cut all the pieces first is a hard promise to keep!

New Year, New Design

All crafters get requests from friends and families, but knitters more so. Whether it's a hat for a sibling, mittens for a guy on a bus, or dolls for who knows who, I've done a ton of knitting for others (all of my knitting). Last year, I even got a request to make someone a mer-horse.

Usually, when someone asks me to make them something, I assume they're serious. I ask for measurements, yarn support, what color they want, and if they want to pay me (usually all I ask is that the person buy yarn before the project, and after the project they can "tip" however much they want.) I admit, not a sensible business model but I'm not in the knitting business.

I've had requests for gloves, hats, and even a Barbie sweater "of the finest silk." Often, after the serious talk starts, the person blinks, suprised, asks "You'll seriously do it?" and then needs some "time to think."  Usually I don't hear back from them, the subject is dropped, and they never mention it.  But this time that didn't happen.

My friend asked me to knit her cat a sweater.  Now, my cat experience has told me that cats might not like sweaters, but this cat does.  Zucchi loves wearing her sweater, and by golly, if she wants to wear sweaters I should provide a variety for her.  What are friends for?

So tonight at club I'm going to cast on for my second WIP of the year.  The first sweater will be red, with embroidered white flowers on the back, and the second sweater will be faux argyle on the back and plain in the front.  I'm going to improvise the second sweater based on the measurements I took from Zucchi's current sweater, and the first sweater is going to be the Kitty Cat Argyle Sweater from Eat Sleep Knit.

You may say that all the stress from my vacation has warped my mind.  I will neither confirm nor deny that statement.

The Best of 2010's Photos

I had a REALLY hard time making this post, and that's why it's coming up now instead of yesterday :)  I took over 5,500 pictures last year, and got that number down to 100 of my favorites.  Then I got that number down to 40.  So, here they are!

Let me know which one you think should be the best photo of 2010 :) Oh, and more knitting tomorrow. (P.S. - there are a lot of pictures, so I decided to put them all after the jump!)

My Year in Knitting

It was a truly prolific year for me this year! Wow! I finished 36 projects, some that I blogged and some that I didn't. 

3 Pairs of Slippers

4 Pairs of Socks

9 Hats

12 Stuffies

26 Hearts for Charity

6 Hats for Charity

Wow... I'm amazed at all the work I did. Can you pick out the projects that were a secret up until now? (Hint:  There's 5.)

Crafty Math

Have you ever dreamed of a craft project?  A few nights before Christmas, I dreamt of this quilt.  There was a little boy with curly blonde hair and blue eyes wrapped up in it, sitting in some green grass, grinning.  And that was it. 

Of course, after I got my sewing machine I had to make this quilt - though I've never quilted before and have very little idea of what I'm doing.  I bought the basic materials to make the top - yellows and oranges for the center of the flowers,  and blue for the background, and different prints for different flowers. I even nominated fabric from my gigantic stash of fabric to serve as flowers.

Today, I sat down and drew out templates, deciding how big my pieces will be.  I want to make a queen-sized quilt, so I'll need a lot of fabric.  I don't have all the stuff I need (batting, or backing, for example) but I figured this is going to be a long project, so I can buy more stuff as I need it.  No point in spending mucho dollars on something I won't use for ten or eleven months, I thought.

Yes - I bet understand quilting takes a lot of time. I thought about this as I hunched over on the floor of my childhood bedroom and measured and cut.  Hey, maybe I should cut all of the pieces first, that seemed to be a methodical way of doing things.

So I took out my paper and pencil, and did some calculations.

To make a 100x100 quilt, I will need:

40 edge pieces

100 center peices (the center of the flower)

80 petal pieces

That's not hard math. That's 220 squares!  I'm a little intimidated.  I think the actually sewing is going to be a ways off, while I contemplate how I'm going to tackle this task. I think it's kind of funny that I decided to do this quilt with squares with a ten inch diagonal, instead of squares with a 5 inch diagonal, which was my other idea. That would be even more squares!

And Thus Another Christmas is Conquered!

The presents are delivered.  Everyone loved them! I'm pretty excited that this Christmas went so well, especially since I made more hand-knit items then ever before this year - five!

Even the slippers, which I was really nervous about, were well received.

As for me, I made out like a bandit.  I got a new sewing machine, some rocking boots, and books, to name a few of my favorite gifts.  I'm already planning to quilt a bit, having little experience in quilting but a lot of experience reading about quiliting... so here's hoping.

Also in the realm of my life... my Dad's  computer got hit by a pretty nasty virus, and I'm having some very bad family problems.  I don't like keeping secrets, but the women of my family gathered around a table today and made the decision not to tell certain people in the family things "so that they can enjoy the holidays."  I'm happy I got to sit with my family and give my input, but I don't believe in keeping secrets.  I'm pretty bummed out about it - can't post here, of course, it wouldn't be a secret - but if  you could spare a prayer or a kind thought, I would appreciate it :)

Christmas Presents of the Non-Knitting Variety

Each year, my college friends do a secret santa - freshman and sophomore year, it was run through our floor, but this year, we did it ourselves.  I got a cool kid that likes war-like things, and pokemon.  So I went and made him this:

What is this?  It's a snowglobe! I made it with hot glue and army men :) It only cost about 7 dollars, too!

I wrote "Merry Christmas" in German (I don't speak German, but I looked it up) on the bottom.

I hear tell he had a total unwrap attack when he opened it! My roommate said she would film it, but she hasn't posted it up yet and it's been a few days, so I don't know if she ever will.

I Don't Know If I Should be Proud of Myself or Ashamed!

Yes, it's almost ten days until Christmas.

No, I still haven't started the last pair of slippers!

Instead, I've started this pair of socks.  Why? Well, because I just couldn't take it.  I see W in his socks almost every day, and now my mother has socks, and my brother... why shouldn't I have a pair? So, I'm making some toe up Jaywalker socks, and gosh darnit, I'm going to enjoy them!

The yarn? Opal Prisma which I bought at Rhinebeck.  I wish I had bought more, because it's such an amazing yarn and it's been discontinued! I guess I'll have to spend my Christmas money on some on ebay.

Tonight, though, I get my needles back from Ash and start on those slippers! Viva la Christmas!

Christmas is Almost Here - and the Knitting is Almost Done!

Yes, that's right - I finished my brother's slipper socks. 

I cast off for the second sock, wove in all the ends, and knitted up the heels while at Ash's house for an awesome slumber party :)  We ate delicious beef stew, hot cocoa, and raspberry peppermint jello with whipped cream! Oh, and of course, did girly stuff like read magazines, laugh at reality TV, and hang out with the best bunny on the planet:

(Okay, I didn't have my camera with me last night, so this is a picture of Sammy from last week, when I picked him up from the vet.)

I also got some work done on the sample for my January pattern - and cast on for a new knit toy! It's about time I started working again to bring my designs to life.

I've also started saving loose ends for the Totally Useless Stitch Along from It's Daffycat! I thought about waiting until the new year, but while digging through my bag today I found these yarn bits, and I figured that I might as well - I have a bit of a disadvantage to cross-stitchers, since I don't have as many ends (but, they are bigger... hmm.)

Anyway, if you're interested in joining, you should check it out here! It'll be a lot of fun, and there will be PRIZES! There are already 75 bloggers participating, which is exciting.

Exciting News and Ideas!

Several good things are happening to me lately!

1.  It seems that I WON'T kill myself this Christmas with handmade gifts.  Assuming that I can finish the final pair of slippers before Thursday of next week... this might all work out!

2.  I want to start a pattern collection.  Lately I've been thinking of nothing but knit pencil cases for some creepy, strange reason... so, I'm going to challenge myself next year! Put out a pattern every month!  January will be the slouchy hat that I'm currently having test knit, but after that it will be pencil cases :) A set of 11 pencil cases for your knitting pleasure.

3.  And I'm making English muffins from scratch today, that can't go wrong.

How To: Make a Cut Paper Garland

This whole week I've kind of been obsessing about paper.  Paper snowflakes, paper garlands around my apartment... so, I thought I'd do a tutorial.

This post will show you how to make a dancing hedgehog garland using two sheets of paper, scissors, and tape! You can also do whatever design you'd like, but if you want to make my dancing hedgehogs, I've included the template here. 

Na(Fail At)NoWriMo

So, erm, yes.  Maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't, but I have not succeeded in writing a novel.

For a number of excuses reasons, that I will elaborate on here:

1. Finals.  Oh, yeah, those two middle weeks in November? Dear Alyssa, you forgot that those were finals week.  So you didn't sleep.  Bah.
2. No support system.  Yeah, I guess this should be minor, but from the beginning I was hearing from W how people were asking why I was "writing so much." And by writing so much, I guess they meant writing 2,000 words each day? Anyway, people started making comments like "Well, I'd write that much, but I have SCHOOLWORK." As if they were so much busier than me.  
   
   In the end, I felt BAD about writing. Different.  Socially shameful.  I wasn't skipping schoolwork or shirking obligations, but I just felt alienated by these people.  I don't know why I let them hurt my feelings, but it did and that was probably the major reason I stopped writing. 
3. I just got lazy.

In the end, though, I learned some important lessons.

1. The people that W gossips about suck. Not all of them, but the ones that are hurtful. Yeah, they're losers and I need to not care about them.
2. Finals are hard when you're taking 20 credit hours :(
3. Everyone has a novel inside of them, and mine is NOT about a pediatric nurse falling in love and knitting.  Mine is much more exciting.

My plans for next year? Eh, probably NaKniSweMo :P

Pre-Quarter Crafting

I returned to school on Friday, partly to prepare for the upcoming quarter and partly to just sit and relax somewhere without feeling guilty for not visiting family.

I also spent some time cleaning up the apartment for the quarter, and organizing things! One thing I did was do this spiffy wall art above my bed, using contact paper.

I plan to spend a day making some paper snowflakes to further spruce up my room.  I'm not a big Christmas decorator, but I do love decorating for the winter season with snowflakes and of course, warm throws.

Also on the list of things accomplished were these: Oreo truffles, which I am quasi-famous for :) 

My Christmas knitting is reaching a bit of a paniced state.  I know I can finish everything, I just have to TRY HARDER, darn it, and not get so distracted by shiny things.  For one, I underestimated the size of my brother's feet, his socks look like Christmas stockings!

I'm knitting them in Plymouth Yarns (a worsted weight) on size 5 needles, that I bought at the Yarn Crawl. He told me he wanted "slipper socks."  What are slipper socks?  Slippers? Socks? These are more sock-slippers, I guess, because they're just thick socks. But he tried them on before I left (to make sure the heels are in the right place) and he liked them! So good!

Oh, did you notice the cool stitch marker? It was an odd earring, then I was inspired by Jordan at In It To Knit It! You should check out her tutorial here.

There's another project I'm working on, but it's still in the planning-esqu stages. I'm sorry to say that I'm hoping once again to get into Knitty - and I'm close to actually submitting this time :) So, if I get rejected, it will just be a for-sale pattern, like Borneo.  

Also, W is working on a stop motion puppet for his two quarter, who need clothes! So, I taught him how to use the sewing machine! I'm also knitting him a scarf and a pair of miniature mittens, but I figured I could do another post on that later :)

But, as part of W's sewing machine training, I made him he made this pencil case.  At least... part of it.  The seams were a little uneven, and I tried to fix things but just ended up screwing things up even more when I added the zipper.  So the result was this.

Hey, it still holds my pens and pencils... so so what if it's a little different? It's my pencil case, made with love from W :) 

How to Write a Great Knitting Blog

As a serial blogger and a crazy avid blog reader, I feel like I have some wisdom to impart on blogging, especially for those who want to start or improve their own knitting blog.  I know I'm no means an expert, but there aren't many posts on the subject.  So if you want to write a good knitting blog, here are some steps!

Vacation Update

I've had a nice time on vacation so far, time to craft and time to spend with family.  I'm pretty frustrated with a current WIP, which I'm thinking of abandoning (at least for a while.) Another is finished, and the pattern is being written up!

Good luck Rocky! Erm... Pinwheel!

Rocky has been passed on to Tanglewood, and I'm sure he's happy to be there! They kept his original name, Pinwheel, which W and I gave him.  He seems happy, though it's hard to see it through his huffly exterior.

And on the bunny front, we have had success getting Samson to use a potty pad! I woke up this morning to this sight.

His pee isn't really that color, it's the pen liner showing through ^_^;

Okay, his pen looks totally gross but I HAD to run and take a picture, I didn't even think to clean his cage... whoops.

Well, I hope everyone is enjoying their week, whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not! :) We sure are.