My new tattoo

Based on an Alphonse Mucha painting called "Winter", drawn by my father-in-law and done by Indelible Ink. Soooooo in love with this.

Swapping Blorp

I signed up for the Crafty Detective swap on Craftster..this entails filling out a detailed questionnaire and having your partner "stalk" you to make you the perfect gift. I filled mine out, but later realized I left a lot of things out...so here's a few more for my partner's stalking pleasure!

• My dog, Annie. We call her Annie Dog, so any items with that on them would be great! She is a rescued Basset, and she weighs about 36 pounds. The length from her neck to base of tail is 17", and her width for sweater purposes is 12". Her neck is 17". She likes chewy treats only..she ignores crunchy ones because she had some teeth trouble when we got her and still thinks she can't eat hard things. I love pink and brown things for her, but a superhero-type jacket would rock! She's not big on toys either, unfortunately...but we do have to bathe her a lot, so if you know how to make doggie shampoo we would sure use it! Oooh, or a special towel just for her!

• My three cats. They love catnip mice, especially furry ones. I crave a spiked collar for Violet. She is just your average smallish cat size. I would LOVE this silhouette of Bowie cleaned up and framed!

• My husband and I are both very into cryptozoology and dinosaurs. He wears a size XXL t-shirt and prefers black, I wear a size M and prefer black and pink. T-shirts that say "RAWR means I Love You in Dinosaur"; "Cracka Please" (with a parrot) would be most appreciated.
  
• 
  

The classiest thing I've seen all day.

Of course, most of my day was spent attempting not to think about the small runny noses I was wiping, so it wasn't much of a contest.

Free tutorial via Craft

Making Space

My craft room before New Year's Day:




My parents will recognize this as the natural state of every room I have ever occupied since birth.

"After" pictures to come when I have finished compulsively labeling everything in the hopes that this will help. I am optimistic! Yes!

I spent the morning alone with the snow falling outside, knitting myself something:

• Stockinette tube to be used as cowl. Yarn: Mystery ball of something pretty from the thrift store. From the very lovely and unexpected color changes, I suspect it of being something expensive. It is almost definitely wool, and very soft wool too. I'm using big old size 15 needles and it is just mesmerizing. I love it.

This pig is something I made this week. I wanted to write up a pattern for my old Aerial Pig crochet pattern (I just now realized I still haven't replaced those pictures from the Slimy eBay Incident; better get on that) for knitters. I have the notes and everything written down for the pattern....but then I did a few searches, just on a whim, and guess what? I'm not the first the think of it. There are already some lovely, and very similar, patterns for small knitted pigs out there to be had on Ravelry and Knitting Pattern Central. Some are free and some are not.

This spearheads a dilemma I ponder often. The crafting world has absolutely exploded while I was out of the loop. It has grown from a small, badly photographed and rabidly enthusiastic community to a mangrove swamp of gorgeous designs, books, and talented, dedicated people. This is AWESOME.

It does, however, lead to a lot of overlap and it's part of the reason I hesitated to get back in. What do I have to offer anymore? If there are already many similar designs, is it a waste of cyberspace to offer up my own, even when mine was created in complete ignorance of the already existing one? This is really a moot point when it comes to selling, and it is definitely worth the time to research what's out there already before putting work into an idea you have for a product. That's happened to me several times already; someone else came up with it first! For free things, though, I'm not sure. I think it's worth it. Maybe mine is just exactly what someone was looking for, someone who's not quite willing to fudge things yet and would like some really specific instructions. I don't mind putting some time in for that person. After all, others did it for me.

Business Time

Just a janitor note to say I've packed up and moved the old blog over here now, so all the old posts are in the archives and can be reached by the sidebar. I'm also in the process of moving all my free patterns to Ravelry, although if anyone has a better suggestion for how those should be hosted I'd love to hear it. Geocities won't be cutting it for me anymore. Geocities! Land of my first teenage webpage! My, my.
I'd prefer something for pattern hosting that a. has no bandwidth issues and b. doesn't require membership to view.

Should I just put them into blog posts here? Eh? Opinions?

Vinni Puh

There is probably nothing more adorable on earth than this Russian ripoff Winnie-the-Pooh video. At least for today.

The Kim Hat

To celebrate the new year, the husband unit and I went up to Denver to our friend's brand spanky new loft apartment. It is super-swanky, all original 1940's pipes and molding and ceilings that go up for miles. It almost made me want to be a city girl, but I'm pretty sure the honking light rail at 3 am gets old fast.

So obviously this was a New Year's Eve Party, so naturally I spent it with my face in yarn. I believe there were salsa dancing lessons happening at one point, and I know there was Rock Band because I helped carry the drums, Xbox and other accoutrements up the parking garage stairs, which underlines the point somewhat.

But I worked on and finished a hat just minutes before midnight, because I promised this hat to my friend Kim at the Guy Fawkes Day party on the 5th of November, and it's been sitting neglected since then. Now it is on her head, and I have pictures, and a free pattern for you all!

There is a reason these pictures are all sepia'd up. They are unquestionably party pictures: you may rest assured there is somebody holding champagne, strawberry margaritas, and/or something my husband calls a "beer-garita" and I call "incredibly ill-advised" cropped out of every one of these. And party pictures always come out sickeningly dark or overexposed, which bugs me more than it used to.

Pictures now. This one here is of the one I made for myself first. I used Brown Sheep Bulky and Size 13 straights.

There you can see the color, which is one of my favorites and whose name I cannot recall. Grass Green, possibly.

Now here is Kim's version: She likes her hats slouchy and more loosely knit than I do, so I used double-stranded Red Heart Worsted in Tan and size 17 straights.



I love making things for these people. Their appreciation knows no bounds and I am always a little overwhelmed by it.

The Kim Hat

Materials:

• I use straight needles, but you could do this in the round with a nice 16" circular and some double points in the same size, which should complement a bulky yarn. I recommend anything in the 13-17 US size range.
  
• Bulky yarn or double-stranded worsted.
• Yarn needle or crochet hook for seaming
• pompom maker or your fingers for the making of pompom if desired.
  

How To Make It:
1.Figure out your gauge. Most heads are 21" around, and it's important with berets to have a good tight band fit so they don't fall off. I figured on a 20" band for Kim's hat, and my gauge with the double-stranded worsted and the 17 needles was 2 st/inch, so I cast on 40 stitches.
2. Knit in 1x1 rib (k1, p1) for about 5 rows or however long you like your hatbands to be.
3. (right side) Increase row: Increase every other stitch using your preferred method. I did this row: *K1, Kf&b* to end, turn.
4. Purl.
5. Knit.
5. Now, for me that would be slouchy enough, but Kim likes hers really poofy so I used my little ridge row I stuck in there to do another increase. You're going to knit a row here even though you're on a purl row. This creates the ridge on the other side. I did this as an increase: *K2, kf&b* to end, turn. If you don't want yours any more slouchy, just knit this row.
6. Knit.
7. Purl.
Continue in this manner, knitting a purl row every three rows for that little ridge, until your total knitted length measures 6 or 7 inches.
8. Start decreasing.I fudge this big time. Starting on the right side, *k3, k2tog*, then a purl row, then a row of *k2, k2tog*, then a purl row,then a row of *k2tog*, then a purl row.

9. Break your yarn with a looooong tail and thread that through a yarn needle. Use your yarn needle to gather up all the stitches you have left on your needle and pull them into a tight ring. Tie off and sew up your seam. Add pompom. You are done, and odds are it took you less than three hours. Hooray!