Introducing Miss PhB

So named because I wasn't really paying attention when attaching her second arm, so now when she stands up she, well, she picks her bum (a favourite past-time of monkeys everywhere). She'll be joining the barrel of monkeys being auctioned off during a benefit dinner for the sock monkey charity this June. Lets hope she can refrain from her natural anally-fixated behaviour during this black tie event...

My most favouritest thing

In 2004 I decided to throw a Halloween party and went all out with my theme. I made pine cone bats, witches finger cookies, sugar spiders and lace-curtain ghosties. It was during the production of said ghosties that the Reverend's "most favouritest thing in the world" was born; a raggedy, cut-off and discarded hem of the mesh curtain which he promptly picked up and started twirling like a gymnast while making leaps and pirouettes around the apartment. He'll love me for telling that story. The sad thing is, after the initial burst of twelve-year-old-girl antics, the favouritest thing in the world was misplaced never to be seen again, it truly vanished into thin air to become another unsolved apartment mystery, just like as the tassels on my blanket throw that would tie themselves into knots...

I was going somewhere with this I think. Oh yes, so I think I may have found my most favouritest thing in the world today. In the trash. The trash at work. (I'm a bone fide garbage picker, other people have the most interesting trash and around the Upper East Side I'm constantly amazed by the stuff people throw away).

So may I present, my most favouritest thing in the world: Is that not the cutest bit of rubbish you've ever seen?

Crochet: An Extreme Sport?

Who knew? Certainly not me. After a weekend happily spent crocheting up the back and part of the right front of the cardigan below, I have since spent the past week in absolute agony.

This backache/muscle lockdown is 100% due, I'm sure, to my bad posture during crochet. Does anyone out there have any tips on how to prevent it? I do want to finish up the cardigan at some point, but since it hurts like a b***ch to lift my arms to type, I'm really not so willing to do it right now.

I guess the only crafting I'm going to be doing for a while is making up rice filled heat pads :(

Whaddya thunk?

I'm trying to branch out into crochet, I swear. But the thing is, I'm not really sure whether I'm a lacy, mesh type of person. I think this cardigan looks beautiful on the model, but on me? I just don't know.... I might just give it a go anyway, this yarn (Paton's Katrina) has been hanging around in my stash far too long and is so stretchy it kind of lends itself to the open work.

Happy Recycle!

Laundry isn't my strong point, take for example the full blown fit I pitched this week (documented in all it's glory over on the other blog). I bleach things at work, I shrink them in the drier, things don't last so long with me.

So instead of getting rid, I decided to recycle! Ok, ok, I'm a total sheep and used yet another pattern out of Nuigurumi Style, but it so cute I just couldn't help myself!

Somehow having a sewing machine isn't helping in shaving time off the making process. I think this little bunny still took me four hours plus! Oh well, I guess practice will help with timing.Plus I'm all about the ribbons and buttons and those are fiddly.

Available over at the Etsy store :)

Understatement

Just a little bit, a teansy-weansie itty bitty titty in love with this site. You could knit and crochet until the end of time and still not complete half of the fabulous patterns here! Oh my, PAS overload!!

PAS

Yes, it's official, I have pattern acquisition syndrome. I can't stop. I have more patterns than I have yarn or time. I'm addicted to annies attic free pattern of the day, I constantly trawl knitting magazine sites for free designs, and now I've just ordered these three beauties:

They are all by karabella yarns, and all so simple and truly wearable that I couldn't not buy them, especially when I found them for $5 each at kpixie. Now I just need to find a viable alternative to the stinkily expensive yarn they require. Alternatively, I may just go for it and never buy another sweater again (or food for a week which ever feels more crucial to survival at the time.)

So it's a little different...

An impromptu day off work coupled with my overwhelming desire to keep a low centre of gravity, meant that I got to finish up the right/left side of my vintage cardigan. I thought I'd show the pointy-boobed reference picture from the pattern book (Bernat Fashions Book 90, probably from the late 50's early 60's) so you could see just exactly how many times I screwed up. Changing the cables was intentional though, I didn't like the way they flattened out in the original pattern, plus I have OCD over symmetry so they had to mirror image each other otherwise I would have eternally rearranged them to my satisfaction in my mind. It would have bothered me no end.

I just have the arms to go but I'm a little bit of a pickle. Since all the yarns listed are discontinued and there is no yardage given, I have been winging it with the amount of yarn. I originally had ten balls of yarn (1110 yards) and at this point I have three left (eBay purchase, only sold in lots of ten). The thing is, the arms are supposed to be full length, 21", and wider than the fronts, 72 st versus 64, but each front took 1 1/2 balls. I am no pattern alterer by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I'm going to have to work the increases at smaller distances and try to make 3/4 length sleeves.

Eeek.

And the award for the worst picture of a black knitted garment goes to...

So here's the left front..... wait, what's that you say? It's actually the right? Well, aren't you smart, much smarter than me who only realised I'd in fact knitted the fronts in mirror image after I'd already cast on for the other side and figured out the pattern as written was wrong, wrong, wrong. This is causing much confusion as I try to place the cable and button holes on the flip side of the pattern, while remembering that odd rows are front, cables now get held to the back and woops, boom!

My head just exploded.

Oh and did I mention that I screwed up the cable pattern doing repeats if six instead of ten? Yeah, I'm that good...

A Barrel Full

The cardigan continues at full throttle. The back and almost all of the left side are finished. When I get a bit further I'll post pictures, but right now it's back to the monkeys.

Considering my friends call this the sock monkey blog, there has been a distinct lack of primate action in the past few months. I've had to slow down a little in my production as the Japanese toys and knitting in cables have taken over, but I have still been turning out about one a month at the sewing circle meetings. And now, I finally persuaded them to let me have a couple to list on Etsy.com. So may I present to you, the MONKEYS!!

$28 each (price set by the charity) and I'll be donating ALL of the money to Fresh Art. I'm donating listing and selling fees so I will not profit in any way from the sales.

If the last guy looks a little familiar, it's probably because he is.