Kiss My Knits!

My daughter accidentally got dry-erase marker on her favorite shirt. Does anyone have tips on how to get the stain out?

Here’s a new scarf as a big “nyah!” to the guy who claimed that there’s no such color as berries.

Again, I say, nyah!

Hmm… I wonder if this would sell at Simucon…

Lookie what Tessima sent me! It’s a selection of totally faboo yarns! You’re damn right the picture is huge.It deserves it! I know somebody who’s going to be getting some glitzy duds! Woot!

http://www.freshsensation.com/samorost.swf

At last, I get to work on my booga bag! I’m about halfway done with the knitting. After knitting comes felting, which will shrink it down and give it that lovely firmness and a fuzzy texture. My mother in law bought me the Kureyon yarn, so I’m doing a scarf for her out of Noro Lotus as a thank you. It’s a great yarn, and I’m doing a seed stitch to show off its glitz without getting too complex. Whee! New projects are good!

Finished up another one today. This one was on #13 needles, straight garter stitch, using Crystal Palace cotton chenille in bottle green (less yellow/army green than that picture looks) and Plymouth Paradise carried along. I call it my Susquehanna scarf, because it reminds me of the river valley in autumn, with all the blue and autum colors on the blanket of green.

I hope I’m able to visit the ancestral home in Pennsylvania this fall. I miss it.

Okay, so my daughter wanted a hat like the others I’d made, so I had to knit a THIRD hat. But it was fun. She picked out the yarn herself, and here’s the result. This was the best yet, with the crown decreases working out perfectly to make a cool star-like pattern on the top. I cast on 96 stitches using #6 needles to make a more defined stitch pattern.

Here’s my girl modeling it. You’ll have to turn your head sideways, because I don’t feel like opening up Photoshop this morning just to rotate the picture 90 degrees. I like it. All she needs is a little tie-dyed shirt and she’s ready to follow Phish on tour.

As a side note, I have just about enough yarn left over from the other hats to make another hat. I’ll never be free of the roll-brim beanie!

I decided to quit waffling, already, and finish the second hat. I didn’t give it a point like the boob hat had, and when I screwed up a stitch finishing the crown in the My Gym waiting room, I thought, “eh, she’ll never know” and kept knitting. It turned out better than it looked like it was going to in the first picture. In fact, she loved it, as you can see. Sometimes you shouldn’t overthink things.

For those who care about such things:
1 skein kureyon
size 9 16″ circular and double-pointed needles.
Long-tail cast-on.
On circular needles, co 88 stitches. Place marker at beginning of row.
Knit in the round for about 4 1/2 to 5 inches.
To decrease:
row 1: From marker, *k9, k2tog* repeating * to end of row.
row 2: knit
row 3: *k8, k2tog* repeating * to end of row.
row 4: knit
row 5: *k7, k2tog* repeating * to end of row.
row 6: knit
Switch to double-pointed needles when the work gets too small.
Keep repeating this pattern until you’re down to, like, 32 stitches or so. Then omit the plain knit row and just keep up the decrease pattern, otherwise you’ll get down to 4 stitches and have a boob point. Unless that’s your thang.
When you’re down to 8 stitches (or 4, to taste) using yarn needle, pull end of yarn through remaining stitches and weave in ends. (Or cheat like me and knot it).

FYI, I have a 22 inch head, so you can figure that with 88 stitches, your gauge is probably going to be about 4 stitches to an inch.
(2008 note – at the time I wrote this pattern, I was a tight knitter. You might want to pop down to a size 8 needle.)

Math AND fashion! It’s the ultimate geek girl craft!

So someone saw me knitting the boob hat and wanted one in similar colors. Being the cheap person that I am, I picked out an all-wool yarn from the same manufacturer in colorway 87 and started knitting. However, as I knit it up, I realized that the outside of the skein was deceptive. All the green was tucked way, way inside the ball. It ain’t purple. It ain’t even close.

So now I’m presented with several options. Finish knitting the hat and give it to her, even though it’s not what she thought she was going to get, finish the hat and find someone else who wants it (unlikely, since all my contact in real life is with a four year old), or unravel it, make something like this for myself, and just suck it up and buy some new yarn for her. Opinions?

Well, a few little typos and bugs aside, the opening of Winthoren Manor went well. Thus endeth Team Wedding’s HWN releases! I’m glad we have a place for our more goth-y couples to get hitched now. Team Wedding has had some amazingly talented people come through our doors, and this just proves it. I’m lucky to know these people.