Here’s my finished robot. He’s a bit lumpy, but that adds character. Or something.

This is my only finished pattern from the borrowed booklet. I started on an Odd Fellow (and would have had plenty of time to finish it), but I was really unhappy with the yarn choice so I just frogged it. Then I had to take a knitting break because my wrists were acting up.

But I was excited to make the robot! And now that I’ve done it once and understand how it’s put together, there are probably more robots in my future. I liked reading over the booklet and seeing how the various toys were constructed, now I’m thinking of trying to make my own toys. Maybe someday I’ll find the time.

This is so exciting! Joanna is being awesome and is loaning out her copy of Jess Hutchison’s out-of-print toy pattern booklet to a few of the folks from the Knitty board.

It got to me today, and I have until December 4th to play with it. So the next two weeks are for knitting toys. I just found some stash worsted and declared it a robot, so I’ll hopefully post photos soon. I think it’ll go pretty quickly, both because it’s a fairly small thing and because I’m excited about it.

I’m still hoping to be able to buy or trade for my own copy of the book at some point, but having it live with me for awhile rocks! I’d still been moping about that whole “robot on the cover of Craft magazine that we weren’t given directions for” deal, so I’m thrilled that I’ll finally get to learn to make my own. Thanks again, Joanna!

Must… make… pirate… dice bag.

My current D&D character is actually a pirate, so this is extra perfect.

I’ve been playing with some sweater ideas recently, and have bought several types of yarn to swatch with. I got a few yarns from Knitpicks, and some others from my LYS. Once I finish all the swatches, I’ll try to post them.

To be honest, the LYS yarns are more tempting so far. But they’re also quite a bit more expensive. They’re not unreasonably pricey, but this will be my first sweater. (Yes, after about 4 years of knitting. I’m slow, okay?) So I’m leaning towards one of the KP yarns just in case it turns into a train wreck. I feel like a good, sturdy Wool of the Andes sweater would frog more easily than the more tempting but delicate yarns that I’m crushing on from my LYS. Maybe it’s bad luck to plan a sweater from the perspective of frog-ability, but I’m trying to be realistic in my expectations.

Maybe I’ll make two sweaters this winter. A basic wool “starter” sweater followed by a cushier one after I have the technique down.

There’s no telling. I’ve been knitting, but I just haven’t felt motivated to post. Partly for personal reasons, and partly because I just needed a break from the online crafting community.

I’ve mostly been knitting Christmas presents. The plan this year is to make a small amount of quick, instant-gratification things, but to really focus on making two or three nice presents. Once I decide on a button and make the button loop, I’ll be finished with a recycled silk wrap for my mother-in-law. After that, I’m thinking about a cable scarf, possibly a two-color one. I also want to make something nice for my granny, but the only thing I can think of that she’d need is a lap throw, and I don’t know if I’ll have time to finish one. Maybe I’ll do it for her birthday in February. Maybe she could use a short scarf, I’ll have to think about that one.

I’m halfway done with the rest of our Christmas shopping, I started super early because I realized that our budget would do better if our gift-buying was spread out over several months. It’s also fun because I get to go shopping without that “spent too much money on myself” guilt. I’m so on-the-ball that I even have a few things wrapped already. I’m going to start writing Christmas cards next week, even though I won’t mail them until after Thanksgiving.

I have no idea what’s causing this holiday organizational fit, I’m normally Miss Procrastination. But it’ll be nice to kick back and relax some this year instead of getting overwhelmed all December long.

Comments weren’t appearing before because I didn’t check their configuration out, but I think I’ve taken care of it. I also added a Bloglines subscription button, which seemed to work when I tested it.

Right now I’m finishing up another handbag that I’m planning on felting, I hope to have pics soon.

Here’s a bag that I finished a for a friend a few weeks ago. The pattern is from One Skein, which is a book that I’ve gotten a surprising amount of use out of in the short time that I’ve had it.

I’ll have some actual knitting content on the new blog soon, but I wanted to explain how you could have a really interesting Fourth of July in four easy steps.

1. Get together for a cookout on the 3rd, because most of your friends have the 4th off. Eat burgers, set off illegal fireworks brought up from South Carolina, and burn yourself with a sparkler because you are trying to hold like six of them at the same time. Run out of fireworks, then complain about how unfair it is that (semi)responsible adults can’t have fun things in our state because of The Children and The Morons That Blow Their Fingers Off. Get tipsy enough to think driving to South Carolina for more fireworks is a great idea, but not too tipsy that you can’t actually pack and hit the road.



2. Leave your town around 11:30pm and head for South of the Border. While driving through Fayetteville, see who can spot the most pawn shops, tattoo parlors, and strip clubs. Read all South of the Border billboards aloud and laugh at the stupid puns. Arrive at SoB, be awed by all the neon, and get a room from the surly night clerk lady. Wake up the next morning, try to ignore how skeezy the room looks, and apply badass snake dragon temporary tattoo.



3. Walk around the next day, eat at the diner, and pretend not to be disappointed at how much crappier the place looks without the benefit of darkness and large amounts of neon. Hang out in the tourist junk stores because most of the other attractions are exaggerated and/or smell like pee. Go up the Sombrero Tower and look for amusing graffiti, then have lunch in a place with a sombrero-shaped salad bar and a velvet painting of a cockfight.



4. Try to nap after your friends drop you off, but end up watching a documentary about fireworks accidents. Grill again, and set off the new batch of fireworks in the name of freedom and explosions. Make those awesome tank ones attack each other a few times because that is hilarious. Be paranoid about someone calling the cops even though there are at least 4 other houses in your neighborhood with contraband flying fireworks and the cops haven’t seemed to care much during the last couple of years when everyone else but you had some. Then go inside and post about it on the internet.

And here’s a bonus photo of that velvet painting, because it has to be seen to be believed.

I took a break from blogging recently because of a knitting funk and some personal issues. Before getting started again, I wanted to move my blog. I’d been unhappy with some performance issues on the other site, especially when a database rollback made me lose my last 3 posts and several comments.

After a lot of searching, I picked Blogsome. I looked around at some other systems, but decided to stick with WordPress for both features and familiarity. Wordpress.org is inviting, but it’s just not customizable enough to suit me. I wasted a lot of time trying to personalize a site over there only to realize that it just wouldn’t let me do what I wanted. Since Blogsome lets users play with their template code, I won’t have that problem here.

I’m not bothering to import all of my previous posts, the other site will remain up (though comments will be closed) for the forseeable future. I’ve been doing a little more knitting lately and hope to have some progress to report on soon.