Upscale Red Heart

Sigh, at least if nothing else, I will get this accomplished today. Which is not, admittedly, saying much for my day, but I have a week to get my sleep patterns settled up, and I figure that's going to take some doing. I've really screwed them up, which seems to be a family trait, and now I'm suffering for it. Wish me luck.

Anywhoo, back to Red Heart yarns. They have apparently caught on that squeaky, rough acrylic isn't going to give them a dominant market share and started milling some rather nice yarns. Take a lookie-lou:

Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable in colorway Parrot. I love this yarn and debated heavily between this color and one of the others (all of them are luscious, really) but since this was the one that first caught my eye and made me feel the most decadent and guilty, I went for it.

One of The Coven pointed out that the color saturation is more like Noro than Red Heart, and while that's especially true for this particular color, all the colorways are this saturated.

Just take a look at this:

It's like a swirl of psychedelic cream in the Primordial Universe Soup or something.

Also up to bat is Red Heart Boutique Midnight -- this colorway is called Borealis. Me likey. I've already started a long loop cowl for myself in this yarn which I'm calling my Birthday Cowl, because I cast on the same number of stitches as the year I just celebrated. It's my third 13th birthday, an accomplishment that should, naturally, be memorialized in gorgeous yarn. Of course, I tend to memorialize things like buying new underwear by buying nice yarn, so is it any surprise that I'd memorialize a birthday?

Ahem, so here's the yarn:

Here's the side on view:

It's got a gold thread in there, and the yarn is unique to my experience because it's not spun, it's braided.

Interestingly enough, I managed to find the number of stitches -- simply by surviving this long, despite my worst efforts -- that allowed this yarn to stripe out:

To continue my original thought, from before I got completely sidetracked by the thought of the gift I'm making for myself, there are a couple braided yarns in the new Red Heart line-up. I also noticed, on my way out of the store, several other lines have braided yarns, too, which is interesting. I'm wondering if this is going to be a new trend. Or if it's an old trend that I've totally missed out on because of my extreme obliviousness to trendiness in anything, much less yarn.

Maybe I should look up once in a while, yes?

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.

Experiments in Knitting

I'm trying something new, and I'm a little proud of myself. See this stuff?

It's Yarn Bee Princess. You may not be able to see, but there's two strands plied together there -- a matt yarn and a shiny yarn. It is beautiful unto me, and I wants it.

But, in a very different move from the typical, I have decided to choose a pattern before I actually buy the yarn. That way, I get enough yarn but not too much.

Who am I, and what have I done with myself?

Typically I'll just stash yarn and then when I find it again will decide what I can do with the yardage I have. This is the first time I've actually considered choosing the project first and then buying the yarn. It feels rather weird to me, like putting on a new pair of shoes for the first time. Sort of right while still managing to be sort of wrong.

But I don't want to end up with an extra skein that I can't use and have to attempt and trade or just leave to languish. Nor do I want to end up one or two skeins short of the project I really desire. I want enough yarn, and only just enough yarn, but not yarn lying around at sixes and sevens in my stash with no purpose. In other words, I want the yarn to use, not just to have.

Am I growing up as a knitter? Have I passed some sort of knitting maturity test? Or am I just trying something new in my knitting to see how it works as opposed to my other methods?

Gah.

Anyway, I've got my Little Loki pattern off with a friend who is going to check it for clarity. I tend to be a "pantser" when it comes to my personal designs -- the only thing I actually wrote down as I knit was the bead chart; all the rest was catch-as-catch-can.

I hope to have it back, revised, edited and posted within the week, both here and on Ravelry.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Bestiest Besties Evar, Part Deux

Heh, and she even spelled my name right:

Too right, sister. Too right.

It's so very pretty, I'm going to put it between two sheets of clear plastic in a frame and hang it against my wall -- which is a bright jade green, so it will contrast beautifully.

In other knitting news, someone actually asked for my Little Loki pattern, so I'm transcribing it. It's harder than I was expecting, actually. I had to build the chart and now I'm filling in the chart. When I did it by hand, it was much easier. Typing it up on a computer, though, is about to drive me nuts.

You'll see it when it's done, though. As will everyone else on Ravelry. If I can figure out how to post it....

Oops. Gotta go do some more thinking, I think!

Oh, my Bob, sometimes you do get rewards!

You know, on those silly little plastic cards companies give you, nominally so they can offer you discounts on their products and services, but that they really use to track your spending and thereby tailor advertising just for you?

I got 20% off my total purchase as a 'gift' for my birthday at Michael's -- not my big box store of choice, but it'll do in a pinch. I wasn't sure what I wanted to use it for, but I've been in a deep blue funk lately, so I went anyway. You never know, do you, and it got me out of the house.

I bought these:

Charms!

Don't ask about this:

other than it was big, sparkly and on clearance. And I needed something to use that 20% on.

I don't wear bracelets, in the main, or necklaces, so what, pray tell, was I going to use them for? You may well ask:

Ain'tent I clever?

I love those J Hooks, they are so useful. I revamped my old earrings a few months ago and now this. What's next?

Actually, some of the newer beading supplies (pendants and the like) are pretty cool. I might get a new pack of J Hooks and some beads and make my Giftmas presents for the friends again. Maybe.

Or I might just invest in some Half Price Books gift cards. Everyone I know loves Half Price.

In other news, I am bored, bored, bored, bored. Bored in an existential fashion. I'm not entirely sure how to shake myself out of it, either. I've done it before, by doing new things or something else fun like that, but I might have reached the upper limits of new in a town where I've lived for over 30 years.

Maybe I should learn something new to me, like French, or go back to studying piano. Or take up Legos. Something. Anything, really, to shake myself up a bit.

I feel like throwing myself down on the ground, rolling around growling and tearing something up, like my dog used to do when he was frustrated. I miss him, you know. Having him there sort of gave me a focus, or at least a priority. I need a priority right about now.

Bestiest friends ever

I met up briefly with a few of my knitting buddies at a yarn shop today, and look at the freebies I got! There's a couple of DVDs that fell off a truck that passed by on the information superhighway, a swatch (that one of my friends abused for me to see if it pilled or got nasty -- which it hasn't, KnitPicks' acrylic is totally fabulous) and some temporary tattoos.

And you just know which one is going on my person first, awww, yeah, baby....

I really should...

do something useful, but I'm not feeling productive today. We took one of our basement kitties to the vet -- he's been having some issues and isn't feeling the thing lately -- and later I go back to La Maison de Chat Royale for the week, but now, I really don't feel like doing anything but surfing the internet for knitting patterns and new pictures of Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch (the two best English names evar.)

I suppose I could update my knitting project photos, and maybe take pictures of my stash to update my Ravelry stash pages, but that would require me to get up and do something suspiciously like work. My lungs hurt, my eyes hurt and in general I am just not in the working vein today, so I'm not sure how that will work out.

Meh. That's the word of today: Meh. Meeeeeeeeh. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.