tagged by Lucky Charmz

A-B-C Tag!

A - Available? happy with my man

B - Best friend? Kresie

C - Cake or pie DEATH? Um... cake, please.

D - Drink of choice? juice

E - Essential item you use everyday: medication

F - Favorite color? sometimes sage, others crimson, it all depends on my mood

G - Gummy bears or worms? worms don't have feet to nibble on, silly

H - Hometown? settled in 1633

I - Indulgence? Noro ;)

J - January or February? for 2007: February

K - Kids & names? no human kids yet, sadly, but three furry babies: Sassafrass, Hendree, and Witch Hazel

L - Life is incomplete without: yarn and dogs

M - Marriage date: hopefully before I'm 30... it would be nice to be settled

N - Number of siblings: one is more than enough

O - Oranges or apples? apples make pie

P - Phobias or fears? injections

Q - Fave quote: "Do you have a flag?"

R - Reasons to smile: phone call last night

S - Season: Autumn

T - Tag 3 or 4 people: I'll pass. Do it if you want to. :)

U - Unknown fact about me: Well if I told you, it wouldn't be unknown, now would it?

V- Vegetable you don't like: lima beans

W - Worst habit: so many habits... don't know which one is worst

X - Xrays: teeth, stomach, right hand, right collarbone

Y - Your fave food: Mom's "Bombay salad"

Z- Zodiac sign: fishy

Potato of Love

In French, "chou" means "cabbage." "Chouchou" means "sweetheart." How that little bit of linguistic evolution came about, I'm not sure, but I laugh every time I hear "chouchou," because it translates in my head as "little cabbage." When David started calling me "ma chouchou," I started replying, "hey, who you callin' 'cabbage?'" After a while, he decided to find another pet name.

"Haricot vert?" (green bean) "Pois?" (pea) "Artichaut?" (artichoke) "Ooh! Pomme de terre!" (potato)

I guess I laughed hardest at that last one, so it was settled: I am his pomme de terre d'amour... his Potato of Love. I never would have thought being named after a tuber could be romantic, but I like it. In honor of the name, I pulled out a crochet hook and whipped up this cotton version for him.



In case you were wondering, it's really freakin' hard to crochet a Potato of Love from scratch. This is version 5, I think. The eyes were the most difficult.



It's stuffed with a layer of fiberfill around the edge and Poly Pellets in the middle to give it some weight. The yarn is Sugar-N-Cream cotton.

Now I crave potato salad. Hmm.

Love For the Linux Geek

A week or two after Rhinebeck, my computer turned against me. I had been dual-booting WinXP and Ubuntu off different drives, decided to reformat the Windows drive so each OS could have its own partition on it, and that's when things went terribly, horribly wrong. Tears were shed, curses were uttered, and through it all, David was a beacon of sanity. (He probably just spit coffee all over his keyboard at that.) In thanks, and because it looked so darned cute, I knit Knitty's "Pasha" for him.



I don't remember what the black yarn is. I got it several years ago for the purpose of darning my then-favorite pair of toe socks. The white is Plymouth Encore D.K. and the orange is Shepherd Baby Wool 4 Ply. Pasha (or Evisceron the Harbinger of DOOM, as I believe he's now called) was knit on US#1 needles, and gosh darn it, I want to see if I can knit the next one in the round in as few pieces as possible, because seaming the little beast was a lot of work.



Linux. It's a good thing.

w00t!

Sunflowerfairy made my hat! Yay!

Real post later. Hopefully.

Devil Went Down To Texas

I can finally post about one of the gifts I sent out!



This is one of the Hanukkah gifts I made for my dear David. It's my own design, made with Lion Brand Wool-Ease. The horns have short-row shaping and poly-fill stuffing. Maybe, if we're very lucky, he'll post a picture of him wearing it. ;)

Foot Foliage

I'm nearly finished with the first Falling Leaves sock. I'm still loving it, and I hope that love will continue until I've finished the second sock. I think once that's finished, I'll either frog my alpaca sock and try something lacey with it, or I'll use some of my Rhinebeck stash to try my hand at mittens or gloves. Opinions?

Falling Leaves, Baking Plastic

The holiday gifts are almost finished, but I can't post pics of them until after the recipients have opened them, so I'll show you a few other things I've been playing with. I started Knitty's Falling Leaves socks last night, and I'm enjoying them. They're my first patterned socks and my first lace anything, so it's really fun to watch them grow. I'm using Patons KroySocks in "Winter Eclipse" on US#1 DPNs.



Purty, huh? I love the yarn and the pattern... I think these are going to be my favorite pair of socks for a while.

I've also been playing with ShrinkyDinks a lot lately. I have no stitch markers, and I've gotten sick of using hair elastics, so I made these to fill the void. All but Shaun are still waiting on large split rings so they fit on needles larger than size 3.



I just made another set a few nights ago after being inspired by the first Shaun the Sheep marker. He's so darned cute that I found a bunch of screencaps of him, traced them, and baked up seven more markers. They're waiting on split rings (split rings at Michael's: utterly useless), which are waiting on cash, which is waiting on a band teacher in Sabinal, Texas to buy my bassoon. Tangential, eh? Here's the new Shaun-y goodness:



There may be more Wallace & Gromit characters coming soon. If I can trace Gromit knitting, that'll be the next one.

Rock On

A while back, Bernat gave away balls of its Disco yarn, and I got one in a bright turquoise ("Aqua Velvet"). After sitting in my stash for a few days, it told me what it wanted to be: a mohawk. I found a soft, black, acrylic blend to go with it, and three or four tries later, ended up with a mohawk hat I liked.



I wore this hat a lot. It was my everyday hat all last winter. It went through snow and rain, got shoved into and yanked out of pockets, and all that wear and tear took its toll. It now looks like this:



Compare the fluffiness of the Disco in the two pics. It's a fun yarn, and nicer to work with than a lot of novelty yarns, but it just doesn't handle the elements very well. Not that it should, I suppose, but I think a yarn that's essentially plastic should be able to handle a little water and friction better than it has.

I think it's time to make a new mohawk hat with some other novelty yarns I have kicking around. After I finish holiday gifts. Yes. After. *ahem*

Happy Hooker

For most projects I prefer knitting to crocheting. Knitting has more flexibility and, to my eyes, looks much nicer. There are some projects, though, that demand to be worked with a hook. Here are three such projects:







These were all made with DMC Senso wool/cotton blend and my ivory hook, which is a hair smaller than a US size F. All three patterns are out of 220 more Crochet Stitches from The Harmony Guides.

I've been knitting, but it's mostly swatches for various projects, some of which must remain secret until after the holidays. I'm also trying to find a good lace shawl pattern that only takes about 600 yards of DK-weight yarn... any suggestions? I may end up designing my own pattern, but if there's a nice one out there that saves me the trouble, I'd love to know about it.