Beware the yarns of eBay

So here's the thing, you buy yarn thinking that it is as stated, worsted, when in fact it is nothing more than sport. Worse than that, you cannot, abosolutely cannot get it to knit to the given guage. Never mind you think, I'll select another pattern from the pile which has a similar gauge. I'll make good....

Click, click, click go the needles for a good many rows until, what's this? A knot! And another! And another! Can you see all the strings hanging from the side of this thing?

Front:

Back: Hmmmm, maybe the $11 a ball yarn has it's purpose after all...

But until I magically win the yarn lottery I guess I'm stuck with this yarn from eBay. Although the yarn is busting my chops, I am rather liking the waffle pattern of the cardigan from my vintage book. Only another three inches before the armhole decreases! (Because everyone knows, that's where knitting the back of a cardigan gets fun.)

Laa di daa....

I made another kitty, this one is denim with a pink face and cream ribbon bow. At some point I'll put him in my store too since the little lucky black cat is gone (hooray!!). But right now I concentrating of destroying a cold virus before it fully takes hold, and on decifering the pattern for the Fibonacci Sweater at Knit Picks.

I'll admit my brain is a little fuzzy today and that I have an overwhelming urge to climb into the 4 degree here in lab to cool off a little, but this pattern seems like it's a whole heap of needless complicated. There's charts and math and knitting in the round. None of this was mentioned on the website when I ordered and none of which I have attempted before. It looked so simple and easy but nooooooooooo. Blergh.

Maybe this will be my excuse to try one of the vintage patterns I bought for ten million dollars from eBay (ok, really it was $25 for a book which is more than I've ever spent ever on patterns). It has some very Jackie O type cardigans and sweaters which I'm itching to make. None of the sweater patterns I've seen floating around are as nicely fitted and shaped as the vintage ones, and to be honest, my figure is more of the vintage variety that the heroine-chic chicas of today.

In surveying what I've just written, I think maybe I'd be better off leaving the knitting alone and sleeping more this weekend. My brain is fried.

Baby it's cold outside

Can you tell who is completely in love with her finished red scarf? Can you?

I didn't join up with the Kniting Olympics, but this little pretty was cabled up during several hours of inattentive kniting watching the ice skating and bobsled. Unfortunately this lead to mammoth unpicking sessions and a much elongated knitting time, but I am so happy with the results :) I have no idea how those people attempting much more involved patterns are managing to see any of the competitions, hats off to them.

Cubic

OK, I had so much of a hard time getting these pictures to actually post that I'm hoping you'll forgive the fact that the first two are sideways because, quite frankly, I already wasted about half an hour of my life trying to get them up here in the first place! Just plant your left ear on your shoulder and pretend like there's nothing wrong here....

Right then, now the disclaimers are out of the way and you have assumed the position, what do we have? First up, the experimental pillow... You know how I'm totally in love with cables? Well, I kind of splurged out with this one. It's based on the Irish Hiking Scarf pattern, except obviously with more cables and more frequent repeats (66 stitches across, therefore five rows of cables, twisted every six rows). On the back, party because I was running out of purple yarn and partly due to inspiration from a mohair pillow I saw on someone's blog which I now cannot find for the life of me, STRIPES!! My first attempt at carrying the yarn up the side interarsia stylie. Now I've found another technique I'm totally infatuated with, expect many more stripey pillows appearing in the near-ish future!


And after Drew's comment about yarn for the Heartmade squares, I remebered I did actually have a skein of the acrylic he mentioned hiding out in the bottom of my drawer. (I lied about my stash being three balls, it was actualy four....) So here we have two more squares to be mailed during the week. I think maybe I'm putting too many stitches in the corners, hence the raised wrinkliness, next time I'll try to keep it flatter.

Are you Square?

I've been sneaking over to The Crochet Dude's website for a couple of weeks now. I started his Chic on the Half Shell purse (but I can't find the right handles to save my life), and now I'm trying to brush up my crocheting skills by making and donating squares to Heartmade Blessings.
Here are my current two offerings:

The wobbly one on the left is from Chris Simon's pattern page (wonkyness reflects my crocheting ability rather than the pattern!) and the right hand, much neater square is from my Bible. I thought I could squeeze a third square out of the absolutely hiddeous Red Heart Supersaver (I got friction burns!!) but unfortunately it wasn't to be :( The yarn is per the specifications on the website and I chose the colours to fit in with Operation Purple Heart, but I'll be damned if I buy another skein of this yuckiness! Oh well, I might...

I still have a small amount of green acrylic yarn in my "stash" which I will soon be using up in a square of some sort. By the way, my "stash" is so called because it consists of approximately three balls of yarn. I think I need to get working on that :)

SOLD!!

My first ever Etsy sale! Hooray!!

This scarf was made using a mystery ball of yarn that my housemate had dispaired at for some time. I did exactly 100 sc to make the length of the scarf, then sewed seams together to create a keyhole effect. This yarn is really funky, bright parrott colours, a kind of reminds me of David Lynch movies...

But it's sold!!!!!!!!!

Prolly a little too over-excited....

Lil' Mo

This weekend I decided to explore Astoria ('bout time) and ended up at the strangest little thrift store up near Astoria Blvd. This place is bizarre, tacky, dirty, over-crowded.... but if you look hard enough there are little piles of treasure everywhere. I had the crafty thrift store find of the century, an entire trash bag full of threads, zippers, lace trim, ribbon, needles... absolutely everything you could possibly imagine and more for $35. Yes, 35 little dollars!!

And so, fully stocked up with cotton, I managed to finally dust off the sewing machine and put my baby to use. So meet little Mo, made from cotton velvet and a pillow case, all edged in vintage lace. So cute, so easy.

I heart Japanese craft books.

What? No cable?

What is a girl to do? One busted cable box, (no 24, House or constant dreep feeds of CSI...) it's a shame. So to cope, I replaced one cable with another and look at how pretty it is!! I'ts probably slightly wrong how happy I am that I finally got over my cable-phobia and treated myself to both a set of cable needles and what is, quite possibly, the yarn to beat all yarns.

Ever since I saw this pattern courtesy of Alison, all I could think of was seeing it in a claret or a scarlet. So I trawled eBay..... checked out online stores..... but I couldn't find anything that grabbed my fancy. That is when I decided to be ultra decadent, walked about fifteen blocks to Knitting321 where I preceede to purchase wool for what will possibly be the most expensive scarf ever. I bought 5 balls of Karabella yarns aurora 8 in colourway #5.

Oh sweet baby Jesus this wool is devine! It's probably almost pornagraphic the amount of pleasure I'm taking from knitting with this lucious 100% extrafine merino. And now I fear I may never be able to go back to the darkside of wool mix, and, dare I say it, *gasp* acrylic. Oh woe is me and my bank balance! BUT (just for you New Yorkers, the ever resourceful google has informed me that this yarn is available here for $2 a ball cheaper than at knitting321, and online it's available here for 65c less than that).

Say hello to Jill, Tony

This is Jill (she's standing on Tony), she now lives with The Reverend and I'm sure they will live happily ever after. Until her arms fall off.

Jill was made using a pattern in nuigurumi style (ISBN 4056041792), from cotton fleece and some strange sweater-like edging material I bought for a dollar from a quaint little fabric store in the UES. At some point I will actually plug in the sewing machine I made the Reverend go all the way out to Shea Stadium with me to collect, but for these mini folk, it just seems like hand stitching is so much easier.

Finally some daylight!

It's hard to tell dimensions from the pictures but this is really more of a shawl than a scarf. It's made from 1 1/2 skeins Patons Divine (mostly acrylic plus about 20% mohair, all the poor starving research tech can afford *sniff*) plus 2 skeins of ladder yarn bought of eBay in a pre-holiday yarn binge. This thing is nice and heavy with just the right amount of fluff. The ladder yarn makes it have so much more depth and interest........ sigh...... I'm a little bit in love with it..... Soooooooo, it's going to my mom, not my store because I might want to steal it back some day.

Seeing aliens

So many UFO's so little time....

I have a purple sweater languishing in a shoebox with only the front knitted. I checked the gauge before I started but somehow it's knitted up waaaaay smaller than I intended, like it could fit a skinny five year old or Kate Moss, but not the "haven't been to the gym in a year" me. There are two skeins of wool already invested in this project with five more waiting in the wings, but I can't motivate myself to frog or continue. Oh well, the longer I leave it next to my bed, the sooner it will get kicked under it and forgotten.

And then there's the NW-line shawl, or the tree shawl, or the random fugly red thing I can't stop crocheting every time I get a seat on the subway. This is also at the point of being a two-baller (ha) AND at being totally pointless. Should I continue? Should I pretend I meant it to be a table runner all along, add a fringe, some beads and a black backing cloth? Or should I leave it in the bottom of my purse and continue torturing myself with it for several more months? Decisions, decisions....

There's a one armed tailess sock monkey on my bedside table, a present for a co-worker who's leaving next week, and another armless monkey under my desk gnawing at my toes in a desperate attempt at getting my attention. I just kicked him.... he's all quiet now.

But there is some hope on the horizon, I managed to turn one skein of Lion Brand Jiffy (from a random Ebay grab bag of yarns) into a scarflet using plain ole single crochet and a five petal flower,

And I turned this bundle of joy (times 2):

... into something rather stunning even if I do say so myself. I would show a picture except my camera batteries crapped out just at the inopportune moment. That's thing thing with rechargeable batteries, you actually have to remember to give 'em some juice every now and then.

The New Year postcards are starting to arrive thick and fast, I'll post all ten when I get them. Thanks to everyone who signed up for this, the cards are so quirky and fun :)