Diamond Done

How about that... my crappy little webcam captures the texture of this hat better than my sister's fancy digital camera.



I had some trouble coming up with a nice-looking way to decrease for the crown, and had to frog back a few times, but the method I settled on looks pretty cool, I think.



Now to weave in the ends. If I didn't want to wear this tomorrow, I'd delegate the task to my apprentice. That's what apprentices are for, after all. Hmm.

Teal Diamond

Stockinette hats are great mindless knitting. They're also boring as heck. After my sixth one in a few weeks, I needed a break. I cast on for a new hat that uses a stitch pattern from an edition of Time-Life's Book of Needlecraft so old that its cover is bright orange corduroy. Gotta love the '70s.



It's really difficult to get a good photograph of this hat. The stitch pattern that seems so obvious to the naked eye goes into hiding when the camera comes out. Maybe when it's finished I can do some outdoor pics that'll show the design better. The yarn is more Wool-Ease, a gift from my super-cool friends Melissa and Amanda.

Everything In Its Place

I finally got around to organizing my stash. In the process I discovered that it's a lot smaller than I thought it was. It also contains a whole lot more acrylic than it should. Bad acrylic. Red Heart SuperSaver acrylic. Eww.

Oh well. At least I have my beautiful Rhinebeck spoils to balance it out. So, here's my bagged and organized collection of yarn.



See? Not nearly enough yarn.

On top of the stereo cabinet are my blocking board and a new project that I'll post about soon. The turntable is spinning Blood, Sweat & Tears tonight, and has seen the likes of Three Dog Night, Ella Fitzgerald, Walter Murphy, and the Boston Pops in the last three or four days.*

Also to be posted about in the near future: crochet! I've been making pretty chokers with that Senso my ex bought for me a while back and a beautiful ivory hook I inherited from someoneorother. Stay tuned!


* Speaking of records, I ended up with two copies of Jesus Christ Superstar somewhere along the way... anybody want one? Slightly scratchy, but hey, it's free. I'll even pay for shipping.

Everyone's Doing It!

You know the rules: one-word answers, no explanations.

1. Yourself: strange
2. Your significant other: creative
3. Your hair: long
4. Your mother: hermit
5. Your father: spineless
6. Your favorite item: BittyBox
7. Your dream last night: sexy
8. Your favorite drink: cocoa
9. Your dream car: classic
10. The room you are in: mine
11. Your ex: many
12. Your fear: loss
13. What you want to be in 10 years? happy
14. Who you hung out with last night? friends
15. What you're not? normal
16. Muffins: cranberry
17. One of your wish list items: yarn!
18. Time: flying
19. The last thing you did: dressed
20. What you are wearing: cotton
21. Your favorite weather: chilly
22. Your favorite book: Narnia
23. The last thing you ate: wheat
24. Your life: journey
25. Your mood: relaxed
26. Your best friend: Floridian
27. What are you thinking about right now? Texas
28. Your car: Dabu'di
29. What are you doing at the moment? typing
30. Your summer: quick
31. Your relationship status: happy
32. What is on your TV? nothing
33. What is the weather like? brrr
34. When is the last time you laughed? dinner

Bonus Quote of Yesterday: "But I don't want to play Uno! I want to knit!" -My 10-year-old male protégé

More Pics Than You Can Shake A Dead Muppet At

The Dead Muppet bag is finished! And it's nowhere near what I wanted it to be! Maybe if I keep using exclamation points I'll actually start to like this thing!

Here's what it looked like before I threw it in the washing machine:



My Lopi bag had reduced evenly both length- and width-wise, so I assumed the Cascade would do the same. Turns out, not so much.



It's okay to laugh. Really. I did. A lot. Now, while the tape measure is there to give you an idea of the bag's size, let me make the scale even clearer.



I discovered that it makes a great sling!



This is the way I'll probably wear it, if I wear it. I'm going to see if I can stretch the strap a bit so it'll sit a little lower.



It's actually kind of neat... the stuff I don't need every five minutes can sit in back while the important things ride in front. Maybe I don't need to use all of those exclamation points after all!

Oh bother.

Greenery Pattern

Okay, folks. It's all yours. You're my proofreaders, my beta testers, my guinea pigs. If there's something wrong, let me know. Sis will be home next week with her camera, so I'll add pictures then.

The Greenery Hat (free Ravelry download)

[Now includes two pretty pictures!]

[April 19th 2007: I've created a Flickr group so y'all can post your Greenery Hat pictures!]

Huzzah!

The Greenery Hat pattern is finished!

Sort of.

After being stuck on part of it for a few days, I finally remembered what I'd done, so the pattern is complete. It's just in a very skeletal format right now. I'll polish it up tonight and post it tomorrow. If I'm really lucky, my sis will come home tonight and I'll be able to get some better pictures.

Sorry it's taken so long. For the next fun project I do, I'll take notes along the way.

What To Do With Scrap Yarn

Four stockinette gift hats are finished except for weaving in the ends, and I haven't worked on anything else lately, so here's another old FO. It's not exactly exciting, but I think it's pretty.



I don't remember what the yarn is... it might be Plymouth Encore, but I'm not sure. I had a little left over after making gift socks last year, and this headband used it up with just a few inches to spare. I love it when that happens.

It's just a strip 5" wide by 20"-ish long, mattress-stitched into a tube and clumsily stitched closed at the ends (this was before I learned the beauty of the Kitchner stitch). My tension for the mattress stitch was too tight, so it leaves a stripe across my forehead, but it's warm and otherwise comfortable.

Daddy, Can I Have A Pony?

At Rhinebeck, it was common to see people walking, talking, and knitting at the same time. At the Equine Affaire yesterday, I was stopped at least four times by people who were amazed that I could walk, talk, and look at the horses while working on one of my stockinette caps. Most of them were knitters, too... not Knitters like there were at Rhinebeck, but people who made novelty-yarn scarves once in a while. The most common comment was, "wow, you must be really good at that if you don't have to look at it while you work." I shouldn't have been surprised, I guess, but with Rhinebeck still being clear in my memory, the Affaire felt like an extension of it. I caught myself looking at people's sweaters, checking out the (machine-made) intarsia caps being sold, and wondering if there would be any vendors with nice yarn. I grinned when I noticed that a woman in front of me was wearing a vest with a Jacob sheep embroidered on the back. She, I thought to myself, she is one of my people.

In the eight-ish hours we were walking around before the big show, I finished one cap and got to the third or fourth decrease row on the second. I would have finished it during the show, but I can't count stitches in the dark, especially not while being distracted by amazing examples of horsemanship. Really amazing examples of horsemanship. Did I mention they were amazing? There was the slapstick comedian who had obviously put years into training his horse to "throw" him around the arena. There was the Olympic dressage rider whose flying lead changes were flawless. There was the woman who did some fantastic reining... without reins. To end the night, there was Clay Maier with his Fresians. I'd heard a little about long reining years ago when I rode regularly, but I had no idea that it could be so impressive. Doing dressage on the horse you're riding is difficult enough. Doing it on the horse you're riding and the horse in front of you at the same time... wow. Just wow.

So yesterday was a good day, both for knitting and for everything equestrian. Now it's time to go play video games.

And When I Return, I Shall Come Back

I apologize for the dearth of posts lately. I've been having some serious and frustrating computer issues from which I'm just beginning to recover. A lot of files, including a bunch of pictures I took before sis reclaimed her camera, are still inaccessible, so there will be text-only posts for a while.

Thank you so much for your interest in the Greenery hat. I'm working on a pattern, I promise. Some of the cabling happens across the end of one row and the beginning of the next, and I'm still trying to figure out how to write that in a coherent way. It should be ready sometime in the next week.

I've been churning out simple stockinette hats during my lunch breaks and after school, finishing one every two or three days. I've gotten really good at hand-winding center-pull balls, which is a necessity given my lack of a ball-winder. Speaking of which, I put one (and a few other knitterly-type things) on my Amazon wish list, because I'm a gift whore. *wink*

School is going really well. I need to study for my theory tests a bit more, but I'm third in the class in the shop. We've finished gas welding and have moved onto arc welding, which is a little bit scary and requires a bit more finesse than gas welding does. It's scary because I'm essentially holding a jumper cable in one hand and running a current through a rod that creates an arc of electricity to the plate I'm welding, melting the rod and the plate together. Playing with electricity is fun!

Okay, I do have one (year-old) picture to show you, since I've been on a hat kick lately. The yarn was probably Wool-Ease (I love that stuff) and it was probably done on US#8 needles (or maybe 6s). The subtle knit-and-purl argyle pattern is from Lesley Stanfield's The New Knitting Stitch Library (p.40, #57).



He usually flips up the ribbing so he can, y'know, see and stuff.

On another topic, are any of the locals going to the Equine Affaire at the Big E on Saturday? I'll be there, same bright pink vest, knitting out of my Lopi bag. Feel free to drag me away from the people I'll be with.

Furry Beasties

No knitting content today, I'm afraid. I've been working on a new hat that I'll post about soon, and I'm trying to write a pattern for the Greenery hat, but today I'm exhausted from school, so you get to meet some of the furry creatures who live here.



This is Hendree, my sister's cat. This cat is insane, and extremely intelligent. She was a stray my sister found on campus a while back. After a week of watching the cat eat out of garbage cans, sis caught her and brought her home. After half an hour, Dad, who had been very strict about his "no more furry pets" rule, started saying, "well, she's a sweet cat... maybe we don't need to bring her to the Humane Society." There will be a video of her antics on YouTube as soon as I pester the person who's going to upload it for me.



Y'all remember Sassafrass, right? She saw me taking pics of the cat and wanted to examine the camera. Surprisingly, the flash didn't seem to bother her. She's nine years old, seven of which have been spent with me, and she's a retired racer. She loves snow, chasing bunnies and 'possums, and meeting new humans. Other dogs either scare her or get ignored, except for the greyhounds.

We have another cat, Witch Hazel ("Haze" or "Marble"), but she doesn't like to be photographed. We call her marble because she's a bit on the heavy side (runt of the litter, eats like an alpha), and when she sits down she looks like a marble with a head and a tail.

Time to think about sleep now. G'night, all.