Holidays Got Me CrayZay

I hate the holidays. Have I said that before? I hate the holidays.

Although I took two weeks off work this year, and it was helpful. The Rex had his surgery (now he has his second bionic knee), everyone came to the house, ate all the food, I caught a cold and slept for four days straight, and then I bought some yarn.

Crazy, right?

Why I don't eat a lot of pure sugar.

I realized today there's a second reason I don't eat a lot of pure sugar candy (sort of pure, because I don't think the added chemical flavors and colorings in Sweet Tarts add anything like "purity" to sugar). Another reason aside from the fact that I don't really -- except for the aforementioned Sweet Tarts and the occasional chocolate -- have a sweet tooth.

Pure sugar candy hops me up like I've just taken a big hit of crack, and then it makes me ravenously hungry. Like, creepy woman in the tv on Doctor Who hungry. I had two bagels for breakfast and a normal sized lunch. Typically, that's enough to finish me up for a day, but toss in a crap-ton of pressed sugar pellets and by the time I got home I was so hungry I ate the majority of a large pizza, a handful of chocolate and am still hungry. Every so often, I go into the kitchen and putter around, trying to find more food to stuff in my insatiable cake hole.

Now, I'm not a big eater (evidence to the contrary aside), before I had the full time gig I used to occasionally forget to eat breakfast and lunch altogether. This hunger is...disconcerting. I saved up some pizza for lunch tomorrow, and there's a chance it won't make it until then.

Maybe I'll have a cup of cocoa to fill in the gaps.

Anyway, on to knitting matters. I'm getting tired of the same-old-same-old stuff when it comes to knitting. I have all that sexy hot yarn sitting in boxes and bins and taunting me with its fiberey lushness. So I'm going to add some new projects to my rotation. No worries, little duckies, I can add them and still say under my three active project limits.

So, comes the quandry:

Make a Clapotis of my Wollmeise

Or a Ginko Biloba Shawl out of my KP Stroll. Color is called "Canopy", and I have more than enough mileage to go for the massive leaf size shawl.


So you see my confusion. What's a girl to do when faced down with so much fluffy, colorful, yarny goodness?

Oh, yeah.

Christmas knitting

I'm still working on the garland for my tree and the ornaments and such, and have chosen the yarn for my Angel topper. I've decided to use this yarn:

For the wings (gold) and dress (green), and this yarn:

(the beige on the far right) for the head. I think I'll even give my angel hair, just so it doesn't look bald. Maybe...hmm, I don't know. Maybe the black of the Knitpicks acrylic. It will be pretty.

In the meantime, I've managed to dig myself out of the doldrums. I sat with myself and figured out what was bothering me, and once I reasoned it out, I was able to lift my mood. It's amazing what directed navel-gazing will do.

And now it's time for dinner. I am trying to feed myself when I feel hunger, so I need to get myself food now. Maybe I'll have bagels, cream cheese and salami. With a cup of hot chocolate on the side.

Warm and nice and filling. Perfect for a lazy Saturday night!

Have you ever wanted to run away?

I'm having one of those lifetimes, right now.

I know wherever you go, there you are, but sometimes I think a major change in scenery would do me a world of good, if only by keeping my mind occupied with new sights and sounds and smells.

My Christmas knitting proceeds apace (maybe that's part of my problem -- I've made so many of those little curliques I'm going around the bend myself?) and I've found an adorable pattern for my tree topper, the Hurricane Angel.

I'm going to have a very fibery tree, if I can ever get around to finishing my garland (and on the up-side, I've figured out how I'm going to attach them together, when I get to that stage.) And I've got a ton of sparkly beads to decorate the ones that are ornaments.

Now I've just got to get around to doing it all!

Little Loki Pattern

Yes, I go away, I come back. I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say I'm happier now that I can be here again.

I missed you.

OK, whatever. On to the business of the day. I finally -- after a shockingly long time, considering how much work I do on the computer using multiple flavors of software/OS/stuff -- figured out how to make a PDF of my Little Loki pattern.

You remember, this one:

I'm sorry, I am blonde.


 
So, anyway, here's the linkie to the pattern and charts (there are two documents, be sure to download both of them):

Little Loki Scarf Pattern and Charts

It's on Dropbox, a handy little place to stash documents for public consumption. Click on the files, download to your computer. I swear my computer has been practicing safe connection, I have no virii. Knock on wood.

Happy knitting, and let me know if there are any problems with the links, pattern or my psychology.

Eh, scratch that last one.

In other news, I found out that Red Heart is going boutique in their new yarns. I've bought a couple different flavors and have every intention of reviewing them for you. Look for that in the coming days.

Golly gee whiz. Did I mention I missed coming to my blog? I did.

Just to clear my head

I'm going to work with this:

It's a lace weight alpaca/silk blend. Soft and shiny and smooshy as all get out, and it's just the tonic I think I need to get over the knit funk I seem to have fallen into lately.

Just enough for a nice, lacey scarf -- I'm thinking of a pattern that is called daisy lace, but sort of looks more like church windows. The daisies are in the negative space (ie, the holes), and there are ridges of knit arches over them, so...windows. With daisies in.

I'm quite looking forward to casting on. But I think I'll eat dinner, first. Today I had a lot of other work hey-nonny-nonny to get around to, so I didn't get a chance to write. I'm hoping, sort of, to get an outline out of the way tomorrow (and Friday; that's a mostly unscheduled day for me so I can get it done between the two days.) Once I have my outline, I can go all NaNo-style on it and crank out my first full length novel. At least, that's the plan, and we all know how the best laid plans of mice and men go, alas. Still and all, I'm not averse to trying it that way.

God knows no other way of writing long form has worked well for me. Can't hurt to try a new method! For I am determined to write long form fiction. Short stories are all well and good, but I don't want to be a one trick pony.

And then, as a reward for working on it this week, on Sunday morning, I'm going to take myself to see Brave. Maybe even in 3-D. Ooooooh.

Sea Glass Cowl

I got bored today while watching Poirot on DVD. I had time, I had some yarn, I got myself busy. Then I went shopping and came back and finished being busy. And at the end of the day, what have I got?

A cat! No, I joke. Yoda's just being fuzzy and cute there. See the drapes behind him? He lurves that window. And then it takes six washes to get him off the curtains. Meh.

Anyway, here's what I really have:

A new cowl! I actually took a picture of it on, since it's pretty anonymous lying on my chair there.

I love those colors. It's my Mochi Plus. I like how it turned out, even if it felt a bit like a bugger-up while it was being worked on.

Do you want to know how to make one for yourself? It's easy!

Sea Glass Cowl

One skein Mochi Plus (aran, 50g, 95 yds)

Four fingers on your non-dominant hand, two on the dominant one, occasionally your non-dominant thumb for anchoring and tensioning your knitting

Finger knit an approximately four foot long strand. Test this around your neck, make sure it loops twice loosely. Don't know how to finger knit? Here's a wonderful Knitty tutorial on the subject. Basically, you're using your hand as a rake loom -- each finger is a peg. I begin with my tail in the palm of my hand and wrap behind my pointer, in front of my middle, behind the ring and around the pinkie, then carry the yarn across the front of the pinkie, back of the middle and around the front of my pointer, dropping my yarn to the back. Wrap around in a figure 8 for a second row then, starting at the pinkie end, lift the bottom loops over the top of your finger and drop them to the back, in sequence. For some reason, in that tutorial, there's a picture of her with three loops on her fingers, and I am not quite sure why -- ignore that part, I guess. Once you have dropped your bottom loops to the back of your hand, do another figure 8 wrap around and repeat. Easy-peasy.

Yes, using aran weight yarn will make a very loosely knit strand -- for a tighter knit, adults should finger knit with a bulky yarn. Finer yarns will produce knits that look like you used a fingering yarn with size 10 needles. Do not panic, this is as it should be.  

Special Note:  Once you start a strand, you really can't stop until you get to the end. I mean, you can, you can slide the live stitches onto a holder and then put them back on your fingers again in order, and eventually as part of this pattern you will, but it's problematic. It's best to just set aside a solid 15 to 20 minutes to work on each individual strand and finger knit like the wind.

When you come to the end of your strand, don't cast off. Slide the four stitches from your fingers onto a stitch holder. Cut your yarn leaving a long tail, at least 8 inches long, and put it aside. Finger knit another three strands of the same length, sliding each and every one onto the holder with the first. You should have some yarn left over. Cast on and knit a fifth strand, a little longer than half the length of the other four, closer to two-thirds of the longer strands length. Don't bind this one off, either, and slide onto its own stitch holder. Set aside-aside, as in away from the other four. (I didn't, as you'll see in the pictures below, but I've got a super long stitch holder. Please yourself in terms of the arrangements you make.)

Secure the stitch holder on something so you can braid the strands, like so:

I braided mine by wrapping the rightmost strand (A) around the one immediately to the left (B). B goes all the way around A and then over the top of C. C goes around the top of B and D. D changes places with C and becomes the new C. Repeat from the right to left again, over and over until you get to the bottom. OR figure out your own braiding pattern. In either case, braid rather tightly in the middle -- it will get loosened up after it gets bound off and you putz around with it a little. Pinch everything together, then take it all back to a chair so you can bind off in comfort.

I didn't take pictures of this part, but what you do is take the loose loops of the first strand off the stitch holder and slide the stitches back onto your fingers, making sure the yarn tail is hanging off your pointer finger next to your thumb, as if you'd just finished knitting. Pick up one of the cast on ends (it doesn't matter which one) and find four loops to slide onto your fingers above the other row. Use your long tail to wrap your fingers once in the figure 8 pattern and then pass the bottom two loops over the tail loops (in essence, knitting the ends together -- sort of a three needle bind off without the needles). Bind off the single row of loops left on your fingers in a normal fashion and tie the bind off tail and cast on tail together for extra security. Repeat with each of the four finger knit strips. Your cowl will now be four feet in diameter. Put it on, double it up to make sure it fits around your neck, and then remove as it is. This will ensure it's long enough when doubled up to pass over your head. Mine was, so now we consider the short strand.

Wrap the short strand around the doubled up cowl in a spiral fashion, securing said cowl in its doubled-up form (think in terms of tubes: The doubled up cowl is wrapped in a loose spiral tube of finger knitting). Knit the ends of the short strand together as you did with the first four strands. I left my knots in -- the point to the thing is to look a bit rough and rustic, plus I'm a bit sloppy anyway with the finishing. You've seen my work, you know how I am. Anyway, you end up with visible knots like these:

I simply trimmed mine down as far as I felt safe doing so and then pushed them all to one side of the cowl. This side goes to the back, under my hair. Not that they're really visible -- the thick and thin nature of the yarn and super loopy nature of the finger knitting tends to hide things you don't want seen. Bless.

Here's a nice shot of the colors:

And there you have it: The Sea Glass Cowl. A tribute to the kindergarten style of knitting. Perfect thing for a lazy Sunday afternoon. It reminds me of those gimp bracelets (the plastic lacing is called gimp; don't come at me for the name) that we made when I was in grade school as friendship bracelets. Just softer and prettier and in a less obnoxious color-theme. Of course, if you love florescent colors, choose your yarn accordingly. 

And yes, I still have my teddy bunny on my bookshelf. Gunderson got me through many a long dark night when the boogey man was hiding in my closet and/or under my bed, and we don't even talk about what was hiding in my mirrors! -- he's a friend, not a stuffed frippery! You don't just throw your friends away. 

Heartless jades.