just popping in

Right. Computer still broken. Parents' computer, naturally, has something wrong with the photo application, so can't upload pictures, rendering this blog boring and tragic.

Am still knitting, of course. Have recently made a pair of gloves and a hat for a friend whose birthday is today, actually. I hope, as always, that they fit.

Am now making a pair of gloves for me, out of the leftover psychotic green yarn from that last pair of socks I did. I figure no one but me would really want to wear neon camouflage gloves, and since I actually don't own any gloves with fingers, it's a more-or-less perfect match. Well, and they will also have to have powder blue fingers, since I don't quite have enough green.

Ooooh, and this pair of gloves also proves that I can totally make gloves from the stats in my head. Sweet!

mmm, yarn.

It's so nice to be back in the land of yarn stores, after being stuck with JoAnn's and Michaels' for so long. Granted, I haven't been to the really awesome store yet, but as I am unemployed this is probably a good thing.

And hey, I only got yarn that I so-called needed: stuff to make a hat and gloves for a friend's 30th birthday. I wanted to make her something more impressive--30, you know?--but I've only got two weeks or so. While we all know I could knit a pair of pants in that amount of time, I somehow don't think she'd be thrilled by a pair of knit pants. I could probably also do a sweater, but like I said, I'm unemployed. Hat and gloves (of lovely shades of aqua tweed and blue, aqua tweed courtesy of Plymouth Yarn) it will have to be.

I really wanted to get this awesome hand-painted stuff in browns and blues and greens that went so well with some super-awesome acid-green sock weight yarn, but those colors just weren't right for this friend. So sad. Would have been awesome. I will be lusting after the acid green yarn for a very long time. Just so we know.

hi!

Right. For the approximately two people who read this, I hope you haven't given up on me! I have not quit knitting or anything, no, my computer went into a coma the day after Christmas, and my never regain consciousness. Well, that's not true, and the only reason this isn't a post of extreme woe and panic is that the hard drive is ok, it's just the machine that's busted. So, yes, expensive, but nothing irreplaceable has been lost. Though I am kind of pissed about all the knitting patterns I had bookmarked.

Anyway, on to more pleasant things, like the fact that this year's Christmas knitting was quite well-received, and all seems to fit. My mother particularly liked her hat. My brother may have spent last night using his socks as hand puppets, but at least fun was had. My other brother says that his fingerless gloves will come in quite handy if he ever has to play a homeless man in a musical. I think he may have been mocking me.

And now, on to knitting other stuff! Have to go re-find the pattern for that 60's poncho and finish it up. So I can wear it and be 60's-tastic.

HO. HO. HO.

Santa has brought the photos!

This is the stuff I've made for my family, aka the stuff with the Good Yarn.
The Shedir hat and the Lake Park gloves for my mom:

Socks for my dad (I love the way the Wildfoote feels when it's knit up, but it's pretty splitty and a bit of a pain in the tushie to work with. Still, the loveliness of the finished product totally wins,) and two pair of fingerless gloves for the brothers. The black ones are Lanett, and I love them and wanted to keep them. So I threw them in a box and mailed them before I got too attached. They're really gorgeous. Hard to believe that plain black mostly stockinette could be that gorgeous, but they are. Somehow the yarn manages to make this simple pattern extremely elegant. And now I don't have any more Lanett to make out with, and I am sad.

I still have one more set of gloves to make, for the third brother, but I don't like the way the green Opal is knitting up, so I have to make a new plan. But since I'm going home two weeks after Christmas, my mom has decreed that we'll just do Christmas then, so I've got plenty more knitting time. I have enough time to knit pants if I wanted to. Which I don't. Knit pants are so last year.

grrr.

Dear Jo-Ann's:

Why don't you carry 16-inch size 8 circulars? It's pissing me off.

Love, Me.

ps: Screw you, Jo-Ann's.

discoveries

Hey! Sorry about the lack of posting, if anyone reads this here blog. Between my show and the Christmas knitting, and a parental visit--which really cut into the knitting time--I've been swamped.

Anyway, today I have discovered two things:

1. You can't make a whole pair of men's gloves out of one ball of Lanett. The yarn's magical, but not that magical. Dammit. Oh well--I've got enough for fingerless gloves, and they're very elegant.

2. It's not so easy to count rows while you're listening to The Twelve Days of Christmas. Stop it with the numbers! You're confusing me!

Photos of my nearly-finished holiday knitting to come! Really! I made my mom a pair of Lake Park Gloves out of the Colinette Jitterbug I mentioned ages ago, and they're pretty awesome. Awesome to the point that I want to keep them for myself. So much better than the Autumn Mess version.

proof of blanket

Behold the new psychedelic blanket:
This first picture's a bit busted, because I re-sized it for another website, but you get the idea. I wish it was in a multiple of three, but sometimes you take what you can get. It's not like I'm an expert psychedelic-blanket designer, but I might be eventually.

Close-up of the edge, which is my favorite part. Look at the fun candy-cane striping. And, believe it or not, though I had to attach a new skein for about the last four inches of applied I-cord, it went ahead and matched up really well. Christmas miracle, y'all.

So yay! Now on to smaller things. My dad's socks will be finished today. On to gloves next, and possibly gloves made with Lanett, so I will be in what is known as heaven.