Casualties of War

Hands... tired. Must... rest. Go on... without me.

Knit or Be Killed: Glove Wars is Coming

I got a squishy! I've been waiting since June for this baby. It's my Jayne hat. (some assembly required) The woman who makes these kits has a kid with special needs and sells the kits and the premade hats to help keep above water. Love it! Bigger yarn than I'm used to. It should knit up in a flash!

But I have a delay: gloves of doom!
No! Not these! Not my beautiful Hartfield Gloves!
Gloves that kill! I am a part of... Glove Wars! I have received the dossier on my target and will knit her a pair of beautiful blue gloves. Barring my death, she will receive them from me and die. Okay, yes, it's a game. A silly game. A knitting and mailing stuff game. For further details on this madness, go to the Glove Wars Home Page.
But it doesn't start until Thursday night. So, let's see, this is Tuesday, I have about, oh, 53 hours to knit what I want until I must kill or be killed. Probably both.
If I am killed, here are the notes on my most recent Mile-a-Minute quilt blocks so you can finish the quilt for me. (sad yet noble music to be played here) Above you can see the inspiration fabric. I found a number (33) of small scraps of this and decided to make each block with a little of it.This is the pile of fabric scraps I thought would coordinate well (enough).It has been here incorporated into a crazy block before trimming. What? I said it was crazy.And here trimmed to 8.5". Scraps on the right will be discarded, scraps on the left back into the pile. Stashbuster Alert! It's a great use for those itty bitties that you just can't bear to toss. Speaking of which, I hear that the completely useless bits are (if clean) prized by pet rats for nesting in. Keep it out of the landfill for just a little longer!

A Conversation Between Me, Myself, and I

Me: It's hot.
Myself: It's Thursday. It was hot yesterday.
I: But we had someplace to go yesterday.
Me: I don't wanna be hot.
Myself: Where can we go that's cool? What is cool?
Me: Cheese is cool. Can we go to cheese?
Myself: (sighs) No. We can't go to cheese. (looks at I) What else is cool?
Me: Fonzie is cool.
Myself: That's nice. But cool to the touch.
Me: (waving hand) Ice! Ice is coo--
Myself: Thanks, anyway. Back to the subject.
I: No, wait. Ice is a good idea...
Myself: What? Iceland? That's kind of a long commute.
I: No! The ice rink!
Me: I don't wanna go skating...
Myself: No need. There's chairs and tables...
Me: And people to watch!
I: And I can bring my knitting!
All together: Score!

And I finished a pair of socks while I was there. What? Two socks make a pair, right?

Little Things Mean a Lot

My own homemade row counter. I used jump rings and soldered rings and a pretty lampworked bead. I like how it goes with my Cherrytini Jubilee socks. I've almost finished the first one. Squee!I call this top Jane Austen. Somehow that blue always takes me back to her. All the blocks are Mile-a-Minute blocks made from tee-ninecy scraps. Yes, made that since the last blog entry.

My exciting new hobby: Geocaching! Have you heard of it? You go to this site: Geocaching.com. Here. This movie clip explains it really well.

When I looked it up, there are 32 (!) caches within a mile of my house. Some are urban--found one attached to a fire hydrant--and some are in the wild, just off a hiking trail. This is what I found in one cache in a local canyon.
Who Says Size Matters? These socks fit perfectly. And I can do the finger can-can in them. La-da! Da-dee-da-da!

Sweet!

Hartfield is happily under way. I haven't been sleeping really well (it's hot) and this project is very engrossing. I've never knitted on something that required so much attention. Gotta say I like it! Gotta say it would have driven me crazy last year. This is a close-up to show the pattern a little better.I purchased this yarn recently: Sugar Rush. Yes, it's made of sugar cane fiber! (So I can nosh if I'm hungry--can you just imagine me like a goat, with a strand of this stuff hanging out of my mouth?) It's got a sheen, like granulated sugar. It's a pale lavender and I've got the pattern all picked out: Clapotis.

Podcast highlight: Stitch It!

Meghan is like a good friend, just talking about what crazy projects she's got underway. She's a real "can-do" kinda gal, which I find inspirational. While it's ostensibly a knitting podcast, she also talks about spinning, gardening, hair products, her adorable kid and husband and extended family. There's always a section called "My Favorite Things": it could be music, food, or anthing that strikes her fancy that week. I really enjoy listening and this is one of my Favorite Things.


I'm planning to do some quilting today. We'll see. I also have housework. (blah)

Kitchen Knittin'

The Girl's Best Friend socks are finished. Of course, it helps that I only had to make one to have myself a pair! (Thanks, Faith! Your second sock syndrome was my bonus.) Anybody else want to pass on their half-done sock projects?

Cherrytini Jubilee is chugging right along. I really like to look at this one--pink is such a happy color! Check out my new cable needle. Turns out I had a box of 'em in the kitchen all along!

Yes, I know it's really a toothpick. Dur. It was Faith's idea. It's also handy if I've been eating corn.

And speaking of things that come from the kitchen, a new pair of tofu socks are in the making. I started 'em during Comic Con and got a good inch and a half done during Harry Potter. Always good to have a brainless project in the pipeline.And then there's the reason for a need for brainless projects: Ai-ah! This one is seriously charted with a new type of stitch: the twisted right-leaning decrease (Say that one five times fast.) The pattern is called Verdigris. It's a pair of fingerless gloves and is patterned so pretty. Go to the link for the picture and the free pattern. I'm calling this project Hartfield Gloves, for the home of Emma Woodhouse in the Jane Austen novel, Emma, which I'm currently reading. The project seems ambitious enough for Emma herself to begin, if not finish. I think I've got a little more staying power, though.

The yarn is alpaca and a bit fuzzy and soft as all get out. Sport gave me the yarn from her stash. I'm a little worried that the fuzz might obscure the pattern, but it'll probably be fine. Seems okay in the photo, huh?

Holy Sheet, part deux

You may not remember my Holy Sheet post, where I was so pleased by my repair work, gosh, a whole month and a half ago, but I do. Notice anything? Like the tears around the repairs? Since I couldn't find any online advice, I patched it with quilting cotton and used a buttonhole stitch around it. That heavy stitching seems to have emphasized the surrounding weak fabric. I'd say the further damage was caused by my thrashing around style of sleeping. (And you wonder why I knit.) Here's another view.
So I decided to cover the whole weakened area with fabric from an old pillowcase. I made a very large patch this time (the ruler's 18" long). I started with a blanket stitch, but that seemed to be leaving a lovely little perforation around the patch (not a good start!) so I quickly switched to zigzag. Yes, I know the whole thing's wrinkled. I forgot to take a picture before I folded it up and put it away. I ironed it to work on it and that's enough. Ironing sheets is for those who love the iron way more than I do.

Runnin' With the Night

Ah, yes, I finished the Ooh, Shiny! hat. Tiny squirrelled it away so fast I didn't get a picture until now. (And I still had to use a lampshade.) I can't believe that child is fifteen years old (and I'm still only 22!) and she's taller than me. sigh
Also, I used a panel of that horsey fabric and a bunch of 2.5" x 5.5" scraps to make this top: Midnight Ponies. I started it before Comic Con and had to fold it away until I had time to work with it. As you can guess, it's much less work than a fully scrapped quilt, yet I think it's more impressive.

Five Socks

Who is the Knittin' Fool? She be me. I brought my completed Beach Dwarf sock to Earth Mother to see if they'd fit her, 'cuz they're clearly way too big for me. I thought I might have to frog the toes and knit 'em smaller but I was in luck. (And so was she: free socks!) This gave me the impetus to knit the last inch or two on the second sock, so.... All done! (yay) The clips are there to show where the ends of my feet are. So glad we don't all have the same size feet!

And the Socks for Cutting Hair are done, too. The last of the knitting was completed on Main Street, Disneyland, so I think I knitted some fun into them. I wasn't able to get the Man of the Place to model them until last night, though. "Oh, the light's not good." "You want me to model now?"(shaking sudsy hands at me) "I'm working." Last night I ambushed him. "Put these on and pose!" He obeyed.

And I figured I had freedom to cast on a sock I've been wanting to try. The pattern is called Cabletini from Wendy Knits. Here's a pdf link that will immediately download the free pattern. I'm calling mine Cherrytini Jubilee. This is the second pair of two-ups I've tried. The designer has written a book of toe-up socks so I have hope that these will actually fit me.So I think this will be a no-stitch summer. The reasons are two-fold:

1. I don't want to sweat on my projects (hello, it's summer. duh.)
2. I want a chance to miss my cross-stitch. Then I can come back to it with happy-happy joy-joy attitude.

The Knittiest Place on Earth

I have had some busy times this last week, from wakey-wakey to sleepy-bye. No blogging. No email. No kidding.

Dateline: July 20 DISNEYLAND

I drove a truckload of teenagers the hour and a half north (plus extra for missing the turn-off but I wasn't going to mention that) to Disneyland, which means--of course--I was driving the truck. Boo. Nice truck, don't get me wrong but in my book, the smaller the car, the happier I am. Nuff said.

They abandoned me at the gate--I guess I could have scampered off to find yarn stores, but the $69 entrance fee was probably less than the $$$ exit fee at a yarn store. Anyway, it's "the happiest place on Earth," so I had to go in! Anyway, I brought some friends. Meet my Sweet Little Kumquat Sock. The pattern is Girl's Best Friend from Knit Picks. This is the only pic I could get inside the haunted mansion from my doom buggy. Kumquat also posed outside and around the corner at the pet cemetary. As it was a hot day (July in Anaheim, you may recall), I found myself looking for cool places to sit and knit. Pirates of the Caribbean is nice (but very dark), Indiana Jones is heavily air-conditioned (but the single-rider line is way too fast*), I feel like I should be ordering something in the restaurants, but then I found... Ta-da! The arrivals gate at Star Tours. They have two benches, one well-lit! And they let me sit for as long as I wanted. How did they know I wasn't waiting for someone stuck in a two-hour line? I even left and came back through the exit. No problem.

We stayed in the park until 10:30. The kids would have happily stayed until midnight, but the driver preferred to stay awake while driving. (Just a little bete noir of mine.)

Dateline: July 21(Sleeping)

Dateline: July 22-26 COMIC CON San Diego

I worked the Art Show at Comic Con. This involves long hours with no pay and all the geekiness I can absorb. This convention is the largest grouping of overall fun and interesting people that I've ever attended. Oh, I had such fun! (Tiny loved it too.)

I worked on this cuff, finishing it during a screening of The Vampire Diaries. The best thing I can say about the show is that... um... I met somebody who really liked it. Yay. Good for her. Seems a little too soap-opera-y for me and I'm a bit vampired out.

The Chuck panel opened with Jeffster! They really warmed up the crowd. I found a video of it from someone much closer to the action. If it's your thing, click and enjoy.

I was so excited that my fingers just flew and I made a lot of progress on the leg of Kumquat. I was in the same room with Adam Baldwin (squee!).And the Heroes panel was so thrilling--I was 20' from David Lawrence XVII--I over-knitted and had to rip back 5 rows! This is a very bad pic of Milo Ventimiglia.But here's Kumquat in her natural state, folded over to show her pretty cuff. I think she liked her adventures this week!

*Oh, yeah, I can just hear you: "Poor baby, line's too fast for her. Awwwww..."