Friday, April 27, 2007

New Look

Or, muchos kudos to my sister, who is awesome in so many ways. She drew this icon for me when I was having a bad day and told her I wanted something for my blog:



That was several months ago. It is a testament to how wonderful she is that, in the past several months, she has only said once, "So, I thought you were going to put that picture up on your blog...?" And she used the gentlest voice when she asked, too.

Sister, this one's for you!

A European Contest

I'm going to Europe this summer.

Seriously.

And, of course, my first concern was what I would knit while I was there. It has to be small, because I have to fit everything into a large backpack for the month I'll be there. It has to be difficult, because it has to keep me occupied for the month (month!) I'll be there. On the other hand, it can't be too difficult because I might not always have the best light or attention when I'm knitting.

My first idea was a sweater made out of sock yarn with a crazy cable pattern.

I still haven't completely abandoned that idea.

My next idea was a black cardigan (again out of sock yarn) with a bunch of cabling and cute little silver buttons on the front.

I haven't completely abandoned that idea either.

Here's the deal (and where your ears should perk up, because it involves yarn): whoever suggests the thing closest to what I actually end up knitting in Europe gets a prize.

Remember this yarn?



It just happens to be from Italy (where I'm going to go!). I can't figure out what I want to do with it, and I need a project for Europe, so...whoever wins the contest gets the yarn. Fair enough?

I'll even accept entries that tell me to go for one of my original ideas, so long as you include a little more direction (like a stitch pattern, a picture of an example, etc) than I already have.

Ready? Set? Go!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Wow...how embarassing

Hello everybody. Remember me? The girl who keeps promising she's going to update this thing, and then keeps forgetting to?

Yeah. Hi. How's it going?

Things have been a bit crazy lately (not, mind you, that they ever aren't), which in turn lead to not posting. I'm not going to bore you with the details...let me just say it was not all horrible, and in fact at one point included a full body massage by a cute guy named James.

But you didn't come here to read about that. You came here to read about knitting. And look at pr0n, of course.

First off, we have a picture of a good friend of mine. He's wearing a sweater I made out of random scraps of yarn I had in my stash. The sweater was his Christmas present (delivered late, of course).

How the sweater came to be his Christmas present, though...well. When I made the sweater, I was also in the process of evicting the acrylic from my stash. Somehow (okay, it was because it was the right color, but still...), some of the acrylic made its way into this sweater and, well...it's not something I can fix without frogging the entire thing, which I wasn't prepared to do. Plus, there are a couple things I would do differently if I made it again (such as an industrial metal zipper instead of the dinky black plastic).

Anyway, after I was done with and wearing the sweater, I started complaining about all the things that I didn't like about it, and Chris (the friend pictured here) said he loved it. He, meanwhile, had bought some curtains for his bed that didn't quite work out, while I was desperately looking for curtains for my bed. We decided to switch, and I think we're both better off.

Plus, I get to make a new one now. With good yarn.

In other news, a few months ago, this:


became this (for transportation purposes):


which in turn became these:


that later metamorphosed into these:


with this much left over:


By the way, did I mention that I got a new spinning wheel? And that I'm loving it?