Pictures!

Hey hey!

It's been a while. Yeah, i've been busy, then was out of town, then was really sick for a few days, but all that is behind us now. Because I'M BACK, and I come bearing gifts! Well, photos, but I so rarely add photos to my posts (it's a pain in the...ahem...rear end with blogger) so the addition of photos is exciting, and just as good as a gift! (just nod your heads and humor me, people)

First of all, I'm going to prom this year, and I really wanted to feature something handmade in my prom wardrobe. So, I bought some Knitpicks Gloss, a laceweight merino wool/silk blend yarn from knitpicks.com, to make a sort of a stole/wrap thing. The yarn is super soft, and so affordable!

Well, I wasn't really a fan of any of the colors that the yarn is sold in, so I bought 4 skeins of the bare (undyed) yarn to dye with Kool-Aid! I chose the Lemon-Lime flavor, and dyed it Monday while I was staying home sick (i had...and still have...a really bad cold. yuck.)

Here is the result:

It was a whole lot of fun to dye! After it was done and hanging to dry, it took considerable self control to LEAVE IT ALONE and not try to do anything with it while it was wet. It's just so pretty!!!

Here is the makeshift swift that I used to wind the yarn into a ball:

(By the way, the fabulous chairs were hand-painted by my mom! Check out her etsy site at maryjostudio.etsy.com)

And here is a shot of my ball winder with about half of a skein already wound:

I am in LOVE with my ball winder! It makes jobs like this so easy!

And because I am already adding a bunch of pictures, here's one of my cat, Stormy Llewellyn, asleep on a straw hat:

Awwww!

And finally, I leave you with the challenge of the day. What is this picture a close up of?

First one to guess it right gets a prize!

Hat update

I finished the earflap hat! And I modified the hell out of it!

Yep, that old urge to mess with the pattern struck again. I went with the two white stripes! And I only really followed the pattern as far as the crown of the hat and the front flap. I totally omitted the back flap and for the earflaps I ignored what it told me to do, went down a few hook sizes, just used one strand of yarn, and made them a lot smaller. Then, when I crocheted the "fur" lining, I realized that it would look great as one of those russian type hats (What are they actually called? All I know is that the girl in Balto got one like it as a present...). So I flipped the earflaps up and tied them. So basically, the finished hat looks ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like it was supposed to. I do like it, though.

Only one problem: The hat is waaay too big for me. It doesn't really stay on my head. It doesn't even fit my brother (a.k.a Owen of the Gigantous Noggin). But there is NO WAY i'm undoing the hat to fix it. So whatever.

I'll post a picture as soon as I get a good one!

Dilemma

So, I am currently crocheting this hat from the newest issue of "Crochet Today" (a really cool magazine):

But I changed the brown to navy blue, mostly because the brown I had looked yellow and sickly with the white trim. Well anyway, I have the crown of the hat done, but I'm afraid that I will run out of the blue yarn. So I was thinking about striping the rest of it to conserve yarn. What do you think of this:

(MS Paint - looks real professional, doesn't it?)

Do the stripes look good, or stupid? I can't decide.

New Knitty Issue!

I've always been a huge fan of Knitty, an online knitting magazine with tons of free patterns, but the most recent issue (Winter '08), they have really outdone themselves!

I realized earlier this afternoon that I hadn't checked to see if the new issue was out yet. When I went to the website, I was immediately blown away by some of the patterns! Never before have I seen so many in an issue that I MUST KNIT right away!

My favorites of the issue (there are a lot of them!):

Amused, a raglan sweater with a huge cabled collar, 3/4 sleeves, and ribbed bottom and cuffs (This one is definitely my favorite of the issue. It's gorgeous!)

A little bird told me, a felted purse with an adorable embroidered bird

Fish hat, a hat shaped like a fish. Because who doesn't want a hat that's eating your head? Adorable!

Miitens, mitts for babies shaped like Mii hands (you know, the little people on the Nintendo Wii)

Oomingmacks, slippers shaped like musk oxen. I never realized until today how much I need slippers shaped like musk oxen. (Is that the plural of 'ox'? I wasn't sure.)

Socktopus, a toy octopus wearing 8 different socks

Amelia, an incredibly cute cardigan

and finally Maja, a shawl using a fascinating crossed stitch pattern

I really need to finish up all of my current UFOs (in non-knitter lingo, un-finished objects) so that I can start on that Amused sweater. Because I MUST HAVE THAT SWEATER! It's so pretty!!! I also really want to make a fish hat for myself and for my brother, and my mom would really love that shawl!

I've got to go get knitting!

Finally, I'm back...

...With a brand new computer!!! OMG!

I haven't been able to post in a super long time because I have had some crazy computer problems recently. All of our old computers had crashed at some time or another, so they were all moderately "injured", but suddenly all three of them decided to just die on us.

Okay, it wasn't all at one time...It was more like one died, then we were trying to fix it and another died, then we tried to take them apart and mess around in there, so we got them both up, and one of them was working properly, just like new, but the other one had a damaged keyboard driver, so you couldn't type anything. We spent several days where all we could do to type stuff was copy and paste individual words or letters from Wikipedia. Anyway, so we had two working computers and one useless one, so we ordered new parts for the broken one, but the new motherboard didn't fit in the old one's CPU case, so we decided, lets put it in the other one's CPU case (one of the working ones, the one that had died a few days before, but had been repaired). Well anyway, that didn't work, and when we were trying to put the other one back together, a wire on the inside broke, so it wouldn't even start up.

ANYWAY, we were stuck with only one working computer, in a family where one member spends literally all his free time on Facebook and IM (my brother), another member relies on the internet for her business (my mom sells her painted furniture online, maryjostudio.etsy.com) and yet another member has a million essays and stuff to write and spends almost everyday doing homework on the computer until like 9:30 (that's me). Needless to say, it was not a good situation. So anyway, I thought my mom was just going to order new parts for the old computer, but when I got home from school yesterday, here was this brand new PC sitting on the computer desk and my mom looking sheepish.

So, now we have this super cool, super fast, super awesome new computer, and I can actually blog again! Yay!

So, how was everyone's [Insert whatever holiday you celebrate here]?

Santa Claus is coming to town!

Holidays are right around the corner!


And if you're a knitter, you know what that means... Time to knit presents!

This year, I wanted to make something easy and quick enough to make several in time for Christmas. What I came up with is this:

An awesome Santa Hat!!!

And my Christmas present to all of you in cyberspace is this free Santa Hat pattern! Yay!

Materials:
-Yarn
A: 1 ball of white eyelash yarn (I used Paton's Cha Cha in color White)
B: 1 skein of white worsted weight yarn (I used Red Heart Super Saver in color White)
C: 1 skein of red worsted weight yarn (I used Caron Simply Soft in color Autumn Red)
- US 11 straight knitting needles, or size needed to obtain gauge
- Yarn needle
- Scissors
- Pom-pom maker (store-bought or home-made, doesn't matter. See this website for instructions, if you need them)

Gauge: in st st with two strands of C held together - 11 st and 14 rows = 4"

Hat:
With two strands of A and one strand of B held together, CO 48 st

Rows 1-7: work in garter st (k all rows)

Rows 8: With two strands of C held together, k across

Rows 9-23 , work in st st. You should end with a purl row.

Row 24: k1, k2tog, *k 6, k2tog, repeat from * 4 more times, k5 (42 st)

Row 25: purl

Row 26: knit

Row 27: purl

Row 28: k1, k2tog, *k5, k2tog, repeat from * 4 more times, k4 (36 st)

Rows 29-31: Repeat rows 25-27

Row 32: k1, k2tog, *k4, k2tog, repeat from * 4 more times, k3 (30 st)

Rows 33-35: Repeat rows 25-27

Row 36: k1, k2tog, *k3, k2tog, repeat from * 4 more times, k2 (24 st)

Rows 37-39: Repeat rows 25-27

Row 40: k1, k2tog, *k2, k2tog, repeat from * 4 more times, k1 (18 st)

Rows 41-43: Repeat rows 25-27

Row 44: *k1, k2tog, repeat from * 5 more times (12 st)

Rows 45-47: Repeat rows 25-27

Row 48: k2tog across (6 st)

Row 49: purl

Row 50: knit

Cut yarn, leaving a really long tail. Thread yarn through all remaining stitches and pull closed.

Finishing:

Use tail of yarn to sew up the back of the hat. Make a pom-pom about 2" in diameter, and attach to the point of the hat. Weave in all ends. Wear and enjoy, or give as a gift!

See? I Told You So!

Having decided to stop wrestling with that god-awful yarn, I feel so much freer! I don't even feel bad, really, for stopping because I got three projects completed in the rest of November. That's right, THREE WHOLE PROJECTS, start to finish!



And guess what!!! I even wrote a pattern to share with everyone! What do I have a pattern of? It's a surprise!! Yay! But it's awesome!



Ah December. I'm so excited! We set up our Christmas tree two days ago! Well, it's not really a Christmas tree. We made it out of bamboo poles set up in a sort of a teepee shape. My mom's an artist, so we usually have unique trees like that. It actually is really cool, though, it looks like something from Dr Seuss books, so we call it our Who-ville tree. I'll put up a picture later!

That's all for now! Adios!