I'm angry, hurt, sick and a little bit sad. Last night I ate Cool Whip with chocolate sauce in front of the TV. Pathetic. At least I could've gotten of my snot-infused arse to buy some proper ice-cream.

I did, however, knit while I was mooching. More baby things. My friends like to rub it in by having their lives waaay more sorted than mine, you know by getting married and having babies while I'm still fucking around with stupid boys. Pity party much? Me? Never...


This is the beginnings of the Ribbed Baby Jacket by Debbie Bliss which is available (along with a bunch more of her patterns) for free HERE. Thank you to someone on Ravelry who posted the link. Yes, I knit all that in one night. At least I'm productive in my self-loathing. After the funky loose stitches in the placket neck sweater I tried my hardest to keep my gauge consistent between my knit and purl rows, and for the most part I managed to keep it nice and even. I may tinker with the pattern a little to include one large button since the original design usees snaps and a sewn on flower as a closure.

Waste not want not

Once upon a time a friend and I joked about writing a mock scientific paper about how you actually do "blow your brains out" when you have a cold, that the amount of snot is directly proportional to number of brain cells lost. I think I'm still in the research phase. I feel like a snotty crap, my eyes were so puffy this morning it looked like I'd been crying all night. Which I hadn't. I knitted all night instead.

People around me will insist on reproducing and an alarming rate. And since I called it quits on the toe up sock waaay before I ran out of yarn, I thought I may as well crank out a little pair of socks for one or other of the zygotes floating around in amniotic fluid out there. These will either be sent to my college buddy in the UK or given to someone here at school that I don't actually like, but whose baby deserves all the help it can get. Youch.

New Socks on the Block

All the cool kids are doing it.... Blocking their socks that is, all thanks to Mz Penelope! Last night was just what I needed to lift me out of my BSD-induced funk (men- hardwired to be douches), thanks girls :) We had an impromptu knitting group at The Point followed by yummy food and silliness at Mamma Budha's. There was a full moon. Need I say more.

I almost forgot...

... also while I was home, I had a little shufty around my mum's craft stuff. I hit the mother load.

I will (most likely) never need to buy reinforcement thread again. Hoarding pays off, after all these things are only 30 (!!!!!) years old

Soapbox and Stash

There has been a little stash enhancement over the last couple of weeks, but unfortunately almost every new acquisition came with it's own tale of prejudice. It's a good job the yarn was pretty otherwise I'd have none of it. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

Goodwill Store, Urmston.
I picked up a couple of vintage knitting patterns and was met with a quizzical look from the lady behind the till. "Are these for you? You don't look like a knitter." Pray, what does a knitter look like?

O'Mailles, Galway City.
Please could you tell me the yardage in these hanks? I'm not sure how many (hanks) I need for a sweater.
"I've been knitting for forty years, you don't need yardage, that bag will do you." (Said in a not so nice tone while looking down nose.
Well the last sweater I made used around 1200 yards...
"Do you knit?"
Um yes, want to see my socks?
"Do you know what these are?" (Shoves knitting needles under my nose)
Yes, those are Brittany Birch.

I think I passed the test. ("Are you going to knit all these cables? Can you really knit these cables?).

Yet another Aran Sweater Shop, Galway City.

Yes that's merino, I wound it double thickness because I've found the knitters like it that way.(Lady, I recognised it was lace weight merino by sight and touch alone. Does that not make me one of the knitters?)

Knitty City, NYC last night

(Another customer at check out) That looks like sock yarn, ugh, don't get me started on knitting socks...
Excuse my French, but what the fuck, people? I am tired of having to justify my hobby to people. I FUCKING KNIT AND I'M FUCKING GOOD AT IT. I do it for fun, for pleasure and as a social activity. Does it make the masses feel better if I say I do it as stress relief or for meditation? Fuck no, I do it because it's fun. (Ahem, less f-bombs, this is after all a genteel knitting blog that's probably only read by grannies...)

The following yarn came prejudice free:

Up side down

If the jet lag was backwards, it only stood to reason that the sock would be too...

I've never attempted a toe up sock before and thought I'd give it a whirl on the ugliest sock yarn I own (moment of the now defunct destash blog crazy). And you know what, it's not so bad! I'm even starting to really love the plain ol' stockinette sock. SLANDER! Now I feel a wee bit more confident in winding up the Brooklyn Handspun that's been hiding out under my bed for over a year and setting it free in as-high-as-they-can-go sock form.

The world is now my oyster.

Plus, absence really does make the heart grow fonder.... heh.

Ireland

Clicky to make bigger.

I am a Machine

Every so often my friends and I go on a movie binge. A couple of months ago it was all three Terminator movies and I've been dying to use the Machine line ever since. Now I've finally done something worthy!

Puppy + Monkeys = Cuteness

So.... really there wasn't much knitting needed to be done on those, just the heel flap and the whole entire foot of one sock. All in an afternoon's work really. So, um, I knit another pair in my jetlag-induced insomniac state. Three days from cast on to cast off. And they're cute too! Almost made the yarn cheap!

Me likey.

I saw this and I thought of you

A truly English rose in my parents' back yard.

And views of the neighbourhood, just because. The US of A is so different to "home" I thought you might all like to see how much.


The blue sky is an anomaly.

On the knitting front, I am a machine. Pictures of that when the sun comes back out to play...

Up, Up and Away!

I'm off to "model" my knitwear in England and Ireland for the next two weeks. Expect more pictures of the dog with socks! This is to be the UK:FO trip since I'm only taking my monkeys and languishing sidewinders with me, all safely checked away in my baggage, just in case...

See you on the other side of the pond.

Delusions of grandeur

Sometimes I do the stupidest things. Today my stupidity involved a very hot room, a very thick wool sweater, the self timer on my camera and this:

Can you guess what I was doing? Heh heh heh....

A couple of weeks ago a certain editor of a certain knitting magazine asked me to submit pictures of a certain hoodie I knit a while back for possible publication. It was a case of "Ravelry made me famous!". Of course I totally forgot I said I'd do it until a day past the deadline (sorry Lisa!) so I decided to take some more pictures today. IT'S A MILLION DEGREES IN MY ROOM.

Anyway, just for fun I thought I'd show you some of the out takes.

Misplacedpom does coy.

Misplacedpom does high fashion.

There is a reason no one ever told me I should model for a living. Mind you, it's hardly glamorous all this running between the wobbly stack of crap and the back of your bed. I think I'll stick with science.

By the way, I joined my lab. Momentous occasion :)

Monkey Business

Exam : Check (Phew!)

Dinner cooked for the BSD: Check and Check ;)

Monkey Sock: Check!

How much do I love this pattern? Let me count the ways...

It's so gosh darn quick. Despite knitting the sock in snatched half-hour breaks from essay writing, I'd managed to knit the entire leg in two days. The heel and foot only took another two! There is something almost hypnotic about the flow of the pattern that propels you forward. And then, before you know it, it's time to start the second sock. Sigh....

And the yarn! I bought this from Knitty City on the day the BSD came back into town. (I thought I'd let him know what he was in for when he called and I was otherwise engaged in molesting yarn and had been for some time...) I was pretty sure at the time that it was Great Adirondack yarn, but I may have fondled it a little too much and the label was missing at time of purchase. Now I'm thinking it may be Schaeffer Anne since it has that mohair fuzz to it and I did spend a lot of time buried in a basket of that stuff too. But whatever, it is beautiful. Knitting it brings to mind sun drenched fields of sunflowers, a sight I've never actually witnessed. The yellows, the blues, the greens... I see the South of France, corn fields... Le Sigh...

Le teeny tiny problem... I decided to do a slipped stitch heel which ended up being a smidgen too short. It is thick and durable compared to the rest of the sock, but short none the less. And we all know how I'm not into short things right now. Ahem. That sounded dirty. Maybe it was. Ooh la laa.