New toy

I succumbed.



And I've been playing with it already.

Bugger

The combination of a very long day and a migraine coming on meant yesterday was the day I failed. Piglottie was spot on with her guess, and so will be getting something yummy very shortly (just as soon as I've scoured her blog to find out what kind of colours Mrs P goes for). Piglottie, email me at dangeroustbadger AT hotmail DOT co DOT uk please!

I've really enjyed blogging every day, and whilst I'm not going to keep it up I am definitely going to try and aim for around 3 posts a week from now on. This should mean I've got enough stuff to blog about but still have time for a life.

Anyway, must go as there is a Very Important Football Match happening shortly and I have to start getting drunk.

Monica

I cast on for yet another project. Tee hee hee hee hee!

It's Monica from Knitty. Yarn is some cotton from stash, so me casting on something else is actually a good thing. Honest.

Oh, and I knit more miters.

Meme

Ages and ages ago I got tagged by a couple of people for that '7 weird things about me' meme type thingummy. Now that I'm struggling for ideas for a post it seems like an ideal time to bother answering it, so here goes:

1. I cannot tolerate anyone touching my belly button.
2. I have a real fetish about picking at other people's bellybuttons to try and find fluff.
3. I have been tattooed 9 times and pierced 16 times.
4. I despise it when people refer to themselves as 'crazy!' or 'totally mad!'.
   
5. I get angry about pretty much everything. Library staff who shelve sloppily are currently the most likely targets for my ranting and foaming at the mouth.
6. For someone with a short temper and huge anger reserves, I have an awful lot of patience with teenagers.
7. I own over 40 pairs of shoes and boots, but only ever wear my beat up pair of Adidas.

There, that's another day of blogging managed. I'm really behind with reading other people's blogs, but I'll hopefully catch up during the week.

Still poorly

Clarabelle is right. When you're ill you need a big knitted blankie. Unfortunately I haven't got one, so I made a new square for my blankie to be. The colours are accurate on this picture, but the pieces have yet to be steamed and seamed. What amazes me is the effect one colour has on its neighbour. The miter in the top right has a very dusky lilac as its contrast, and yet when it's teamed with the pink, it appears far more grey than it does on the ball.


I'm really enjoying knitting these, and it's so much fun choosing colour combinations. The more I look at the colours I have, I'm starting to see the obvious gaps that will require filling. I need a primrose yellow, bright red, a chartreuse green and a pale brown (for now at least). I'm off to Texere to see what they've got....

Ill

I think I'm geting scarlet fever. Poor me.

(Now this really is the most lacklustre post - makes yesterday's offering look positively exciting)

It's not today

Today will not be the day I don't post. It's not going to be a great post, but it'll have to do. I've done no knitting and have nothing of interest to say so I'm going to leave you with a picture of a baby tanktop I knitted during the great blog abandonment of early 2007.




This blogging every day thing is going to drive me insane :(

Pointy pointy

For those who admired the delightful pointiness of my miters, I have words of advice.

1. Choose a good recipe. I'm using the Mason Dixon method of mitering and find it gives a pretty good point to begin with. I tried another recipe that I found on a random blog and found that the lines seemed less sharp.
2. Use cotton and knit it at a gauge you find comfy. Cotton is such an arse to knit with that if you're struggling with too loose or too tight stitches then you're going to have trubble maintaining consistent gauge. Ignore the recommended needle size and choose one you like.
3. Most importantly, my points are delightfully pointy because I fudged them to be that way. I'm sewing in ends as I go along, and that's the perfect opportunity to use the yarn end to tweak your points into pointiness.

So there you go.

I also managed to get pictures of the finished toddler dress.

Pattern: Dunno what it's called as I can't find the pattern book, but it's from Colinette's Jelly Allstars

Yarn: Colineet prism, 2 hanks in Turqoise; Colinette Giotto, 1 hank in Mardi Gras

Yarn Source: The Wool Baa

Modifications: Knitted in the round to avoid seaming and did a 3 needle bind off at the shoulders. Lost the pattern book after knitting the body and so made up a crochet edging for the neck and armholes rather than picking up stitches and knitting a neckband (also I'd run out of the prism yarn). Knitted the frill using a bit of common sense and lots of increasing which made it far frillier and rufflier than the pattern called for.

Thoughts: The sizing on this pattern is definitely on the small side with regard to length. The weight of the prism causes it to pull down a bit and lengthrn it, but it does seem to be on the short side to me. If I'd knitted the pattern as written I would definitely not have had enough yarn to seam the dress and pick up the stitches for the neck and armbands, and so it would mean having to break into a 3rd skein.

Competition reminder: Closing date is tomorrow at 23:59, so get your guess posted if you want to be in with a chance of winning some yarny goodness.

Scarlet Fever

How I wish that the title of this post was some kind of witty word play, and that I was about to show you an amzing knitted thingummy in scarlet. Unfortunately, it isn't. It's because my favourite pirate has got a bad case of the poorlys.




The photo is a bit washed out, and she looks a lot worse now. The doctor said that it's the first case of scarlet fever she's seen in ages, and we're going to be stuck at home for a fair few days til she's better. I'd hoped this meant lots of knitting time (silver linings and all that), but having to be a slave and run for smoothies, cloths for fevered brows, change the DVD every 10 mins, find special cuddly toys and other equally vital tasks means that I've not got as much done as I wanted.

I finished a toddler dress, but my model declared herself too ill for the photoshoot, so the pictures will have to wait a bit. Instead, I shall leave you with a few more miters - they're massively fun to knit, although quite why I've no idea. Clearly simple things please simple people :)

Could it be?

Why, it is! It's a finished object!


I can't get a decent photo, so that one of me waggling my feet in the air will have to do.

Pattern: Generic sock pattern.

Yarn: Curious yarns sock yarn in 'Forest Walker'

Needles: 2.5mm inox dpns

Why did they take so long?: Basically, I cast on for these with the intention of them being a birthday present for someone. All was going well until I went to Skip North back in March with a nearly finished pair of socks. I thought I'd turn the heel whilst listening to a talk from some interesting maths knitterly peeps. Unfortunately it turns out I can't turn heels in the dark whilst drunk and sniggering with other drunken knitters, and the resulting cockeyed heel caused the sock to get shoved in my bag where it languished unloved til last week.

One FO down, a gazillion to go.

Lessons I have learned

Today's knitting lessons, brought to you by Badger:

1. Making an existing design your own is fun.
2. If you're not sure how to alter a design to make it unique, then start by losing the pattern book just before you finish the garment and then make the rest of it up as you go along.
3. Primary colours may look like fun on the skein but when you have a Eurovision hangover they can be painful to knit with.
4. Crocheted edgings on knitwear are easier than they seem, especially when you don't really know what you're doing and just let the hook guide you in a zen kind of way.
   
5. Crocheting a frill is better than knitting it.
6. Knitting the frill, despite thinking that crochet would be easiest, means casting off 4000 stitches.
7. Casting off 4000 fricking stitches takes 4 episodes of 24 to achieve. Thank God for Jack Bauer.

Here endeth the lessons.

And Clarabelle, you really are a cynic! I will not fail this early on in the challenge!

Eurovision!

As tonight is Eurovision I am likely to be very drunk soon. I am therefore making a quick and early post which will allow me to get hammered along with Terry, free from worry about blogging whilst paralytic.

I have been knitting on the mitered blankie today, finished a pair of socks last night and did some tidying, but as the camera battery has died I have no proof and you'll just have to trust me. Instead, I leave you with a progress picture of the Swallowtail shawl. As soon as my pattern arrives it's next on the list to be finished :)


And a close up of the oh so pretty stitch pattern:




Competition News

I'm now slightly worried by the immense optimism shown by some competition entries - Christina in particular seems to have a touching, if slightly naive, faith in me. 5 more days to get your guess entered!

I have yarn!

As I mentioned in the list of WIPs, there is a mitered blankie in the making. I'd been mulling over the idea of knitting some kind of blanket out of my leftovers, but somewhere along the line the idea of leftovers got abandoned. I wanted to knit this behemoth of a blankie out of cotton, and whilst all our American chums may be able to get hold of Tahki-Stacey Charles cotton in a gazillion different shades, over this side of the pond things are a bit trickier. Yarn Forward sell the takhi stuff, but the shipping is astronomical. Rowan handknit cotton comes in over 30 shades, but most of these are fairly muted and I want my blankie to be zingy. I spent several days pouring over various websites, trying to find exactly what I wanted, but nothing seemed to be right. Having depressed myself and just about given up, a wise monkey pointed me in the direction of Texere Double Top cotton.

Wow. This stuff is great value, comes in very vibrant shades and knits like a dream. I'm planning on mixing this with the Rowan cotton in order to maximise my colour combinations, but just look at the colours of this little lot!


Mmmm, purty yarn!



And remember, if you haven't yet entered yesterday's competition then there are still 6 days to go (and some of you are proper cynical b*stards!)

Compemetition time!

It has been suggested by some doubting monkeys that my new resolution to update this blog every day won't last very long. As such, I have decided to have a compemetition! You have to guess the date that this resolution gets broked - basically, what date I will fail to blog. Leave your guess in the comments (one guess only, if you post more than one then I'm only going to accept your first answer) and the winner will get something fantastic when I finally do abandon the blog again.

Compy entries must be entered by 23:59 on 17/05/07, and even if you're not a regular reader/ commenter then please still play along :)

(And I promise not to be insulted if people think I won't last the week)

Spurious accusations

I am shocked. I was accused earlier today of not updating this blog regularly, and quite frankly I see no reason to quietly accept this dreadful slur. I update every single time I have enough alcohol in my system, and if this isn't often enough for people then I suggest they send me margarita mix and remedy the problem themselves (and yes,that means you, Northern Monkey).

So anyway, I have thought about yesterday's list and pondered over the comments. I'll be making some decisions about the various projects in the next few weeks and no doubt several of them will be heading for the frog pond. Quite which ones is still to be decided, but there are several likely candidates. I also remembered another WIP, the space invader socks. They are really, really cool and I love knitting them, but there is a size issue that needs resolving. I'll be frogging these soon, but will defintely be redoing them at some point. Here's the sock before it's ripped back.


I thought I should also post pictures of my buffday booty. This is me with some Noro Iro that Helen sent me, and some natural coloured alpaca from Kai.


And I got another knitterly present today from Super Monkey. Here I am with the gift all wrapped up.


And when I opened it there were the coolest lace up gloves inside! it's very difficult to take photos of both arms at once, so I settled for just one modelled glove. Looky.


She's a clever monkey, is that one :)

(Thankyou for the various offers of the Swallowtail pattern - I've arranged to borrow one so I'm all sorted now. Knitters are the best.)

Yee Haw, Cowgirl!

Today I decided to pretend to be a cowgirl, and as I have no steers in my small garden I had to round up my WIPs instead. It got a bit distressing after a while and I had to have a sit down with a nice cup of tea. Having become slightly overwhelmed by the projects I was finding I have now decided to simply see how many I can remember and blog about them here, in the hope this will shame me into doing something about them.

1. Forest walker socks - one complete, one more than half way through. This project got abandoned, as I attempted to turn the heel whilst hideously drunk at Skip North. It all went a bit wrong and they got shoved in the bottom of a knitting bag waiting for a sober badger and I promptly forgot about them.
2. Blue stripy socks - half a sock complete. Boring, but is my lunchtime knit for work.
3. Bright stripey sock - one done, second one not yet cast on for. This sock has a garter stitch short row heel and toe and I don't think I like them, hence the second sock not yet being in existence.
4. Pink toddlers sock -one done, one completed as far as the toe. I can find the completed sock, but have no idea where the in progress one is hiding. Maybe I should tidy up occasionally.
5. The icord jumper - no excuses with this one, I'm just slack and easily distracted by other pretty things.
6. Sage green bulky sweater - I knitted all the pieces but then discovered a gauge issue with the back. I frogged it, but never got round to redoing it. Considering I was modifying the pattern as I went along and didn't make any notes, I'm not entirely sure I'm going to get a succesful result with this one.
7. Colinette toddler dress - just needs seaming and a frill knitting. Hasn't been finished as I realised it won't fit baby badger and I don't have enough yarn to make it any bigger (or the inclination, quite frankly).
   
8. Colinette lasso crochet wrap - going to get frogged. I've lost interest and it's not going to come back.
9. Top down raglan in Wendy pure bamboo - loving this, and have no doubts it will get finished. It hasn't been on the needles very long, so this one is justified.
10. Hedera - I knitted one, got bored. I now feel the desire to knit the other, but have lost the original one (again, tidying is looking more and more like the right thing to do).
11. Swallowtail shawl - I put it down for a little break and then misplaced the pattern. Is anyone seeing a theme emerging for many of these UFOs yet?
    
12. A mitered blankie - I just cast on for this, and it shall be the last thing to be casted on until at this list of WIPs gets considerably less. Still, it's looking darned pretty so far.

It's all got a bit too much. I think I need some cocktails and a lie down.