Recently, my depuartment acquired a new staffmember from the other end of the country.
Crossing all those latitudinal lines in a hurry causes a small problem.
It is MUCH cooler down here and they're just not used to it yet.
(There is a reason why we call out-of-town students 'Scarfies'. They're almost never seen without 2m of wool around their necks.)
Bored and itching to do some colourwork, I offered to make this poor, frozen northener a woolly welcome gift.
They asked for black and red.
Black and red?
But. . . Those aren't Warriors colours. . .
. . . you sure you want the Canterbury colours?
But. . . but. . . THESE ARE OUR BOYS HERE!
Do I really have to use our Arch Rivals colours?
. . . Welcome-to-town present; so yes.
Yes I had to.
At least it turned out looking moderately Goth instead of screamingly Cantabrian, so I feel like a little less of a filthy traitor for using red and black.
Hopefully they'll keep our poor northener from freezing to death before spring ^.^;
Both patterns knit flat and sewn up later. In my opinion those gloves would be excellent for stash-busting and stockpiling for Christmas gifts. The beanie would be excellent for a first colourwork project. It's got a nice simple chart and you don't have to wrap stitches very often. (Wrapping while purling=DISLIKE)
I have a sneaking suspicion that the colourwork bug has not been fully satisfied. . .
This can't be good.
~Topaz
(Also: Thankyou SuperXV for the rugby booty photos)
That one that started the Hexipuff craze a few years ago?
I kinda jumped on the wagon because they're quick and easy to make and I feel REALLY FRICKEN' ACCOMPLISHED if I finish more than one thing in a day.
And it's really really easy to make more than one hexipuff in a day.
Being able to churn out a few puffs while you're watching something is a great excuse to justify spending an entire day watching Marvel movies or going through an entire season of Doctor Who in one sitting ^.^;
Coz I definitely haven't done that.
Nope, not me!
*Ahem*
ANYWAY
I was keeping my puffs in a big glass vase before I moved house, and during the move they got a bit lost in the small mountainmassive pile stack of my 'craft stuff' boxes.
Well the other day I found them again. Yippee!
I shall now chronicle the adventure of the puff rediscovery for you, using a combination of photoshop and the Doge Meme.
Please note:
I will be doing this badly
The word 'Billions' should be read in the voice of Carl Sagan.
So, I found my box of hexipuffs:
Excited, I tipped them out to admire my handiwork.
Wondering how big the blanket would be if I started joining them together now, I started to lay them out.
Pretty soon I encountered a problem.
The pile seemed to be shrinking faster than the blanket embryo was growing.
I didn't have quite as many puffs as I thought I did.
Feeling very let down, I put them back in their box and sulked for a bit. As you do when you're sleep-deprived enough to regress to the maturity level of a small child.
While hexipuffs are fast to make, they don't exactly reproduce like rabbits if you put a couple in a box and leave them alone for a few months. For some reason, I had kinda expected them to do so.
There is a quintessentially American treat that doesn't make it's way down here, most likely for the same reason McVitties have problems exporting Jaffa Cakes with any regularity.
From what I've heard, they're just too damn tasty to last long enough to make it out of the country.
The treat in question: Girl Scout cookies.
In New Zealand we have Girl Guide biscuits, but they aren't quite the same. While they're also incredibly tasty and can be used in a bunch of different recipes, they don't have quite the same range of flavours.
Thin Mints, you say? I gotta try me some of these!
So: I'm putting together a bunch of bribes to see if I can convince a certain someone to send me Girl Scout cookies.
Because bribery and corruption is how friendships work ^.-
The Certain Someone is also a knitter, so I figured handspun yarn would be a good place to start. The fibre used was a lovely bag of pre-dyed merino sliver acquired at the Milton Wool Mill's factory shop.
The colours didn't show up very well there >.< It's a foresty green and golden yellow with a touch of white.
Here is is mid-spin:
The full bobbin against an imperial-style ruler for an idea of the thickness of the single:
All plied and setting the twist! (Please ignore the hoops)
Finished and ready to be used as bribe material!
Time to move on to the next part of the bribery materials. If Girl Scout bikkies are anywhere near as good as they've been made out to be, it's gonna take more than this to get me some!
Just a bog-standard mitten pattern from Ravery, made using 4.0mm and 4.5mm DPNs with a few modifications
My Sister from Another Mister has been complaining about having to use her nose to operate her phone this winter, as it has been too cold to take her mittens off a lot of the time.
Touchscreens, oh joy.
It also turns out you can even lick them if you get desperate enough! Talk about incentive to keep the screen clean D:
So: Mittens in Elle Rustica Chunky with handy dandy holes in the thumbs for ease of phone operation.
I got a little carried away on the thumbs after casting off and on again for the holes. . . I guess they'll make a good place to keep peppermints or something o.O
They also feature extra-long cuffs to tuck way up under jacket sleeves to prevent those annoying drafts that happen when your pocket pushes your sleeve up.
Our beloved Deli Manager decided to leave us, so I made her some mittens as well.
Because winter is coming and she also gets really cold hands.
And I'm on a roll with this mitten thing.
Same needle sizes, same yarn, different colour. Elle Rustica Chunky in 134 Mauve.
Gah, this yarn is so soft and snuggly warm it was hard to give these away.
No thumb holes this time and standard cuffs. She has other people to do her texting for her XD
Also known as "adventures in knitting sleeves for those too lazy to make the rest of the jersey"
^.^;
Hey, the pattern was lying on the top of the $1 pattern box at Knitworld when I was between projects.
Impulse shopping is so very, very evil. . .
I got the pattern and ended up making two shrugs.
The first one is ALL MINE MUAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA *ahem* the large size made with King Cole's Mirage.
I'm already regretting the choice of yarn a bit. While it looks utterly lovely all knitted up the halo is kinda scratchy and it pills like an absolute beast.
Blargh.
Knitting with Mirage can be a bit of a pain as well. It is basically a DK-thick single, meaning you have to manage the twist as you knit. Because of the way I knit mine tended to wind itself into an overspun state so every now and then I'd have to stop knitting and un-twist my yarn so it was puffy and relaxed again.
Even knowing all that it looks so good I'd probably use it again if I found the right project.
Shrug Number Two was made with Patons Rainbow 8ply (Colour #249). This yarn comes in truly ginormous balls so the small size shrug only needed one of them, opposed to the 1 2/3rds for the large in Mirage.
The final result came out a lot better than the Mirage, all thick and soft and squishy. If the arms were longer I would definitely keep it.
This one is going up to England to keep my Sister-From-Another-Mister warm in the chilly winter wind, so I'm going to have to wait to see if it really is as snuggly-soft as I think it is.
The almost even colour-banding on this was a complete accident. I'm still not sure how that happened o.O
I hope you are well and not dying of overheating or turning into a giant iceblock.
Since I hear that Canada and North America are currently being subjected to some mind-bendingly hostile winter weather, I thought I'd share a very small collection of warm fuzzies.
By "Warm Fuzzies" I mean a few photos of Dralion with a crocheted blanket.
Last year The Long Thing got ripped up and reincarnated as a Yarn Eater Blanket, and the first time I put it down Dralion staged a hostile takeover.
I kid you not, this cat wastes no time at all when it comes to warm objects -.-;
It's still growing slowly whenever I can pry it out form under her, which honestly isn't very often because she just looks so darn CUTE I can't stand the thought of waking her up.
At least during November I had an excuse for not posting. Once again I competed in NaNoWriMo and just barely dragged my sorry carcass across the 50,000-word mark.
Now though?
Just plain lazy ^.^;
To make up for the long silence, I have two completed shawls for you.
The first one is a simple stockinette shawl knitted from some unidentified handspun acquired at Seriously Twisted down in Port Chalmers.
The yarn knitted up fairly chunky, despite being rather variable in thickness. Rather a pain to block when you're using polystyrene and sewing pins! It still smells clean-sheepy good.
The second is the Dia De Sol pattern from Ravelry, executed with John Q Sands' "Impressionista" sock/lace yarn in the Garden Path colourway.
I don't like the John Q Sands yarns in general, but I will admit that they do make a nice 4ply. Both the Impressionista and the Jewel lines are very smooth to knit with and the colours are an absolute delight.
Really, my camera doesn't do it justice.
There wasn't quite enough yarn in the first skein of Impressionista to finish the shawl, so I had to go back and acquire a second skein just to do the final chart of the pattern. It is pretty expensive, so I wasn't very happy about that.
I'm going to have to find something to do with the last bit of that skein when I can find it. I'm STILL not sorted out from moving flats! It will have to be something with a fairly simple stitch pattern, though. I feel like the wonderful colours I saw on the skein got rather lost in the final product.
I love wearing them and I love looking at them, but actually making them comes in pretty low on the list of activities I enjoy and actively seek out.
A few years back I got pretty desperate for PROPER fingerless gloves, so I broke and made myself some.
Warm hands? YES PLEASE!
Purple possum-merino goodness.
If they're so pretty and snuggly warm, why do I dislike making them? BEHOLD THE REASON:
Successful juggling of all the needles and stitch holders requires that you posses approximately the same number of arms as the average Hindu deity.
Yeah, seems legit.
Did you know that threading the on-hold stitches onto a circular needle makes thing much easier?
I do now -.-;
These are Glamour Nana's Wintertime Driving Gloves, in the same Corridale she used to make herself a cardigan. There wasn't quite enough there is grey possum/merino to pad it out.
I really shouldn't watch Doctor Who while knitting. Fingers are different lengths, silly Topaz!
I've been thrashing last year's NaNoWriMo atrocity into shape and taking notes in preparation for this year's event. Sadly, that doesn't leave much time for mucking about with yarn :(
When NaNo2013 starts I'll put a little widget in the sidebar so you can stalk my progress if you feel like it :p
To celebrate the finish of the first edit, I shall be following some advice found in the NEV Knitting Squad's Library:
(Yes, most of the books were purchased at Library sales. They're in a better place now)
A while back some family friends moved all the way to the other side of the world.
After Mum went to vist them and took the lastest permutation of her hat, she decided they all needed hats of their own for Christmas.
Guess who can use DPNs as is easily bribed with Blackpool Rock and Jaffa Cakes?
*Slowly raises hand*
-.-;
With those incentives dangling before me, I put my latest pair of socks aside and sat down to the task of knitting four hats.
FOUR.
"One for Bruce, one for Allie and one each for the girls"
A nice lady hat, a manly hat and two hats that are similar-but-just-different-enough to make each girl feel special and not cause fights.
Well, there IS rock candy involved.
And Jaffa Cakes. . .
. . . CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
First Round: The girls
I used Ashford's Tekapo 8ply in colourways that would appeal to both the girly-girl and the tomboy. Pure wool to be snuggly warm in the frozen wastes that Mum swears can be found in the UK at that time of year.
They both got the 'Boyfriend Hat' pattern, with an extra 1.5inches of 2x2 ribbing around the bottom to circumvent this pattern's tendency to become loose and floppy with long wearing.
The basic similarity of the hats should also prevent arguments over who gets which one.
Voila!
Next up: Bruce
I find the absolute dearth of patterns for blokes rather annoying. Is it somehow perceived as not "manly" for guys to knit or design things that THEY would want to\wear?!? I for one find that things male relatives buy for me, while well-intended, don't fit my taste at all. Personally I find a guy that is willing to make some of his OWN clothes the way HE wants them to be to be quite attractive ;)
Unfortunately I forgot to bookmark the pattern I used for Bruce's hat. I'm kicking myself because the decreases at the top look so awesome that I really want to make another one!
The yarn is an unidentified 10ply I leaped on at a sale before realising I already HAVE a billion hats and there wasn't really enough in the ball to make anything else.
This was pretty much how I felt upon discovering this:
So Bruce got my pretty yarn *Sniffles*
Those colours, though. It looks like a woodpile in snow. *Sniffles*
Finally: Allie
I really wanted to find her something fun and a little different. The Double Double Cloche from Mary Keenan on Ravelry looked just right. (Except the pattern broke my brain a bit to start with)
Mum knows what colours Allie likes, and she chose a gorgeous colourway of Cleckheaton's Country Tartan for her that I wanted to steal for myself.
I resisted the urge. Are you proud of me? :p
The yarn doesn't knit up to look very tartan-y, but the colours are so pretty it doesn't matter at all.
I was told that the hats got to their intended wearers just in time for the first snow of Winter 2012, and they were every bit as warm as I had hoped they would be.
Excellent!
Remember, everyone: Knit fast; Winter is coming.
(Yeah I know it's spring for me. I just wanted to say that!)
As part of an ongoing losing battle um, attempt at stash-busting I got out my leftover bits and bobs of Opal sock yarns and made myself some "Dobby Socks"
They are so named because of the wonderful little scene in Harry Potter where Harry gives Dobby some socks and Dobby says they've made a mistake at the shop for giving him two the same. (Then Ron came to the rescue with another pair for Dobby so he could mix them up properly)
So, simple little just-over-the-ankle stockinette socks with Opal's "Fisherman", "Florist" and "Electrician". All I did was make sure the bands were the same (To make it easier on me when I have more than one pair) and changed yarns in the same order.
I'm so proud of these heel flaps. NO HOLE AT THE TOP! BOOYEAH!
Um, we may have a problem here. They kinda match a bit. . .
There is a lovely person in England who has adopted me as her sister, even though we live on opposite sides of the planet.
Her General Awesomeness level is so high she was on my Sock List within 4 months of meeting her.
So, as her birthday approached this year I started dropping little hints as to what her Gift Package from Sheepland would include.
"Hey, do you like vanillia?"
"Mmmmm, lattes are AWESOME"
"The berrylands a a nice place to visit at this time of year."
Well, I guess that berry orchards would be nice to visit at this tome of year if you lived in the Northern Hemisphere. Down here they're all brown and bare and contemplating the effort it will take to grow the next lot of leaves -.-;
So, what did my super-sneaky cryptic hints mean?
SOCKS, WATSON.
SOCKS.
This year's Birthday Socks were the Vanilla Latte Socks created by Virginia of Ravelry.
I thought this pattern is a lot of fun to knit. They worked up a lot faster than others I have done because the two-row ribbing pattern provides just enough "Oooooh fun time!" to keep you going while not being too complicated for Newbie Sock Knitters or too boring for those with more experience.
Of course, the yarn also provided enough curiosity-arousement to keep me from putting them down in boredom and going to find something else to do.
I used Touch Yarn's Magic Merino for Socks in the "Berrylands" colourway.
The patterning that comes offyour needles changed depending on the number of stitches you have, the tension you're using, the stitch pattern you're using. . . Yeah. Magic. I really want to get my grubby mitts on the other colourways in the series to see how they turn out!
That yarn really must have been designed by a Mad Genius Dyer after a midnight encounter with a unicorn. I did NOT intend for the two socks to come out looking so nearly identical!
I have no idea what went on with that. They were a bit late, but were much appreciated and I've been told they'll be put into use when England starts cooling down for winter.
