I won! and other random stuff

Sarah Hope from What If Knits had a little contest and I guess I was the fastest googler... Squee!
Here's what I found in my mail box today.

There's a lovely knit washcloth (which is somehow so much cooler because I didn't knit it! I've never had one that I didn't make myself...) and some stickers (which my kids adored) some little M post-it's, and a cute little tin box which I am way more excited about than is probably called for, but hey, it's cute.

Thanks so much!






This came up at knit night yesterday. Apparently there are those of you who have finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but who haven't yet read the J.K. Rowling interview. So go READ IT. (Do NOT read it if you don't want to know what happens because she tells you everything about everything in this interview).

I got some new sock yarn off of e-Bay that I'm itching to knit. Yeah that ravelry thing is working out. I've already added it to my Stash though!















Some of you have caught on to the fact that there are things over in my ticker thingy that *say* they're 100% done that I've never posted. Here's one of them.
It is Susanfrom the Daily Knitter. Believe it or not, I pretty much just followed the pattern. I did leave off the kind of sad looking scraggly fringe, though.

The yarn is Cottontots. Super cheap and not at all hard, but I really like it. It's the perfect thing when it's 90 degrees outside so you're wearing a tank top but the building you're in is 65.



I feel certain there was something else to add to my random blog post, but I can't remember it now so it will have to wait for later. And before that will come something else new.... :)

Calla and Cargo

I finished this a while ago but didn't get pictures up of it.

It is Calla from Magknits, made from Debbie Bliss DK cotton.

Modifications: I knit this in the round, and changed the central cable motif.

I also took out the eyelets in the pattern and added a braided cable instead. I didn't particularly want a row of holes going up over my boobs.

And I made the back a little shorter (lower) than the front.


I was trying to take pictures of myself in the mirror when my kids offered to do it. Most of what they took looked like this
Funny to see the 4 year old perspective of you. None of the managed to include any part of my head.

Oh, btw, that dragon is a henna tatoo I did for the Harry Potter book release. I had several, but they're all gone now. Henna only lasts a few weeks.
Here are pics of the pants that I finished a few days ago. I just listed them on Etsy today.

Found!

The long lost snitch washcloth was discovered today at the bottom of a knitting bag. No word yet as to why the snitch didn't appear in the bag the last 3 times it was searched. Possibly it was in fear of bludgers.


The pattern is from InsanKnitty. I left off the HP and centered the snitch motif, and also changed the back wing a little to look a little bigger, just a few stitches different. If I had it to again I'd move a couple purl stitches on the front wing too. The shape is kinda weird.

But C doesn't mind, she thinks it's sooper cool.

Your life as it has been, is over.

(This is a text heavy post. I'll try to throw in some fibery pics just to break up the monotony.)

Well, I've been away for a bit, haven't I?

First, it's summer. I have 3 kids, one of them special needs. It's busy.

Then, there was the Harry Potter mania. Which means I did nothing but read for 2 days. When I do nothing but read for 2 days my house completely falls apart in a way that takes me 8 days to recover from. Do not try to figure that out, it doesn't make sense. But it's true anyway.

Then I fell down the rabbit hole that is Ravelry. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go, check it out. I'll wait. (BTW, it's still in beta, so you can't get on, but you can get on the waiting list and you might get in sometime, eventually. Do it cause the list will only get longer and you'll regret it later.)

Basically, it's a database for knitters. It has inside it all the yarn and patterns and projects you can imagine. Well no, really it doesn't, but it can, because if it's not there, you can put it there, and then other people can find it. And eventually every yarn ever spun and every pattern ever designed will be assimilated within the Ravelry universe and then the knitters can take over the world!

Seriously, though, it's pretty cool. You get a little virtual notebook where you can organize your projects. That's where you start. You think you don't have that many projects, but then you start entering them in. And then there's a place where you can drag and drop your pictures from Flickr into your project page. And now you have a nifty little thing that shows all the things you are knitting, and you realize how very many of those things there are. Yikes.

THEN, there's a place for you to enter all of your yarn, (called the Stash). Seriously. Ok well I'm never going to enter *all* of my yarn. But I did put in quite a bit. And then I had to take pictures of it all. And there's a lot.

So, I've been using my Ravelry time to organize everything else. I took out the yarn to photograph and sort and put it back. I sold some of the unloved stuff to someone else who will love it more. I donated some acrylic to a lady who is making bears for sick kids. I cleaned out the WIPs and figured out Just. How. Many. there are. But at least I know they're there, you know what you're up against, and where they are now. You can become one with your projects.

And THEN.... Here's the real time vortex. You get a queue. Every pattern you want to make. Or think you might want to make. Or you want to remember where it is. Or yarn you want to buy. Put it in your queue. Add in all the stuff you might want to know, what kind of yarn it needs, where the yarn for it IS (behind the curtains, under the bed...) Plus, you can go through and look at what other people are making. You can find out what the monkey socks look like in 903 different projects. You can find out that Hedera is way cooler than it looks in the really dorky pictures on Knitty. You can figure out just how much sock yarn you have and which ones would look good knit in Hedera, and even though you just found out that you have 19 WIP's, you can start Hedera anyway.

I really love them.

I have also been using this time to organize all my patterns. I have a very many patterns. I picked out several to give away because I just don't need THAT many baby sock patterns. They aren't that different. I still have very many patterns. But now I know where everything is. So that's cool.

I have 27 projects. 175 stashed yarns. 138 projects in my queue. Just in case, you know, you were wondering.

OOOOH and I forgot, I'm a *DESIGNER*. I feel all official now. I have my own special designer page. With 1 lonely pattern on it. Now I'm feeling like I really need to finish writing the other 5 or 6 patterns I have plans for. Cause, you know, it's Ravelry, and I can't resist.

Resistance is futile. **

Meanwhile....

Life has apparently continued on. My blog has sat, blogless. I have finished some pants that I haven't even mentioned starting, but, they were in my Ravelry :) I finished 1 Hedera sock and decided I had to finish the pants before I could make another one. I'm determined to cut down the number of WIPs to a more manageable number. Then I have 138 projects to make. And I'm quite sure there are things that still aren't in there.

I'll be back to regular entries here this week. Probably with fresh pictures. School starts next Wednesday (WHOOO!). I have lots of work to do between now and then.

For now, here are some Q&A from the comments.

Did Spike's sweater survive the remainder of the winter?

It did! I was thinking I should probably make another one so I can alternate them when it gets wet. He really likes it when it's snowy. I wish I could figure out how to make felted booties for his poor little feet. It's hard to think about snow when it's 100 degree heat index though!

Re: the Harry Potter knitting:

What are your thoughts after the whole experience?

I assume you meant the midnight book experience? It was fun and I'd totally do it again. C was so excited she couldn't stand it. They interviewed her on the news twice. When she actually got the book she was screaming and squealing like mad.

Also, the book was awesome. I loved it. Everything I knew would happen did, everything I thought should happen, did, but there was still a lot of stuff I couldn't have thought of, and that was cool, too. I'm kinda sad that it's over. And I need to knit a beaded bag. In a bad way. Make that 139 projects in my queue.

By the way - what exactly is a Pygmy Puff?

It's a miniature Puffskein. That clears it up, doesn't it? Basically, it's a little tribble. One of the characters has a purple one as a pet (Arnold).

Hope the Snitch washcloth turned up!

It didn't. Bummer. It only took an hour or so to make, though, so it's not a huge loss. Not like the original Spike sweater or anything.... *sniff*

** 10 points if you can spot all the geeky Borg references in this post.

Ravelry....

is such a HUGE vortex of time-wasting mojo.... I'm trying to convince myself that this will save me all kinds of time later on, being more organized... yeah, right, finding dozens of new things I want to knit, that will save me *LOADS* of time....

But, it's sure fun to play on!

We're all ready here...

I haven't had time to post since we got back from our trip. I finished the stag bag before we left except for some finishing, which I did when we got back.

I really really love it. Seriously love it.
Here's the back

And the insides, just in case you want to see that too...
Remember when I showed you a picture of this a while back as a hint? It was an extreme closeup and I was hoping you couldn't tell it's scale.

Well here it is all finished. It's a bookmark. It's made from embroidery floss on 0000 needles. I did it with double knitting because I didn't want to fiddle with double pointed needles on something this small. Instead, half of the stitches are slipped one way, turn it over and stitch the slipped stitches, and slip the stitched ones, the other way. Same thing but only 2 needles.

Just for the record, it's 12 stitches per inch.

Last night I whipped up this Pygmy Puff for C. She has named it Penelope. (I was thinking it would be Arnold, but she wanted it to be a girl... *shrug*).

I also made a snitch washcloth on our trip, finished it while we were there, and now I can't find it. I think we're completely unpacked too, so I'm really baffled as to where it went. Maybe a house elf has decided to pick it up...

We're just waiting for the book to come out now. Just under 12 hours...