Kiss My Knits!

[Tvini] So, nadira birds. They’re sea birds. Do sea birds have down? I mean, ducks do, but do nadira?
[Smyrn] What a good question!
[Tvini] Indeed! I have someone who wants a quilt filled with nadira down.
[NewGM] I think all birds have down? Swans do, geese do, penguins do… usually it’s baby birds that are described as downy though. Hm.
[NewGM] Ur… can I point out if it’s quilted with down, you can’t tell what sort of bird it’s from unless it’s leaking feathers?
[Smyrn] …and even then, sometimes.
[Smyrn] I want to know who’s going to sit there and denude all those nadira chicks.
[Westryl] You said denude
[Tvini] This is true. But I’m just impressed they actually noticed the nadira birds.
[Smyrn] Yes, (Westryl), I said denude. It’s a word.
[Tvini] Well, as a member of team wedding, you could denude them.
[Smyrn] I have carpal tunnel. Sorry, must beg off.
[Westryl] Tattoo runs in, followed by a naked woman, as he yells, “Denude! Denude!”
[Tvini] Damn.
[Smyrn] LOL
[Smyrn] It was funny, but not THAT funny.
[Tvini] And finally, I have something I can livejournal before Tessima! Woot!

Just some Le Fibre Nobili “Geisha” yarn. I’ve got some in a beautiful cabernet, but apparently there’s a run on fuzzy black yarn across the entire country. See, knitting is really hot right now (finally! I’m in on a trend!) and one of the biggest things going right now is the “scarf in an hour” craze. See, if you get big needles and fuzzy yarn, you can knit up a really cool fluffy scarf without a big investment of time. You only need to know one stitch, too! The problem is that I want to make this scarf but I can’t get the black. Nuts.

On the up side, the Lamb’s Pride bulky for the husband’s manly hat arrived in the mail today. One skein oatmeal, one Turkish olive, one black. So I can make him (at his request) a hat to match his green convertible. Of course, if it’s going to be cold enough to wear the hat, it’s going to be too cold to put the top down, but it’s the principle of the thing. I’m planning on using the Hothead pattern from Stitch ‘N Bitch, a book I heartily recommend to anyone who wants to learn to knit.

I’ll keep you posted, as I know you are all on the edge of your seats!

Well, as I said, I promised my daughter her own little purple fuzzy hat, and here it is.

This was the same pattern, adhered to more closely. The difference here is that instead of a strand of sport-weight wool with the purple, I used a strand of sport-weight cotton, Mission Falls 1824. It was a perfect color match for the purple, so I got lucky. I think the cotton might make the hat a little heavier than a really thin wool (lighter than sport-weight) would have, but the cotton does have pretty good loft and my daughter doesn’t seem to mind. She likes it because it looks a little like the hat the title character in this book wears.

Hopefully after I take care of more wedding work tonight (love is in the air this month, I’ll tell ya!) I’ll be able to start on the other projects that’ve been stacking up.

Question: If it’s January, how come the signups are for May? Do I really have to wait that long to get married? Why the big delay?

Answer: Because weddings vary so widely in complexity, we have to plan for the most complex. For instance, maybe you want 20 black hats for your items. Well, that’s fairly easy, and we can probably whip that up fairly quickly. But let’s say you want items which all have a rich RP history and writing on them in Gerenshuge and you want them to be kind of thiefly, but not thiefly as to get you thugged, and you also want runes (which we don’t do) on them and other stuff, and dammit, your buddy got something just like this five years ago, you think, so you don’t want any guff.

Well, that’s another story.

Now, let’s say you want that stuff, AND you want a massive invasion of snowbeasts wearing tutus, each with individual personalities. Now I gotta round up a bunch of GMs and coordinate schedules. It’s going to be a fun event, but still. There are a lot of variables. And we want your special day to go perfectly.

Question: But the hat thing. I just want hats. Can I get it done early?

Answer: Maybe. It still depends on the schedule, and it also depends on the complexity of the weddings ahead of you, circling around, waiting for their spot on the runway. We’ll do what we can, but don’t sign up for a wedding in May expecting to have it in February. Much as we want it to, it probably won’t happen.

I read over on Tessima’s livejournal that Ilanya seems to think me having a livejournal will be “entertaing.” As I am the soul of restraint, modesty, and decorum, I was shocked – shocked! – to detect a sardonic note in her post.

All right then – Ilanya snores!

Now that, Miss Sarcasmo, is informamational and entertaingal!

Question: But… but… why can’t I have a King’s Wedding? I’ve got all kinds of cool stuff I want to do.

Answer: Because. And you should drop me a line and tell me what you want. It may be stuff we can do in a Queen’s Wedding. You don’t need a King’s Wedding just to have your dead relatives show up as ghosts at the reception, for instance.

Question: Haha. No. Seriously. I want a King’s Wedding.

Answer: I feel your pain. The last time we had a King’s Wedding, we opened up a fest ground, created a new area, made custom-scripted items for the couple, special juggling items for the guests, and on, and on. It was, indeed, super cool. It was also super GM-resource intensive. We need those GM resources elsewhere at the moment. We can do the wedding, or we can kill and maim the players in new and exciting ways.

Question: How much does a King’s Wedding cost?

Answer: Plenty. While the last King’s Wedding cost an arm and a leg, they really got an amazing amount of bang for their buck. Next time we offer one – and we have no set date as to when that might be – it’ll cost both arms and both legs. We’ve bandied around the $10,000 figure, but nothing’s set in stone.

Question: You’re kidding.

Answer: I’m a GM. I don’t kid.

(Liddsville for those not familiar with Sid and Marty Krofft.)

The ice storm (and intermittent cable outages) inspired me to knit a hat.

This was an experiment in using circular and double-pointed needles. It turned out to be a learning experience in other ways too. Lessons learned: swatch for gauge! I was sort of basing it off of this pattern, but decided that instead of size 8 needles, since I wanted it bigger, I’d use 11’s. Besides, I was using Berroco’s Chinchilla Bulky instead of Chinchilla, which knits up, well, bulky. However, I omitted the wool, which would have provided more firmness, in retrospect. The result of going into it blind instead of swatching for gauge (knitting a test patch to see whether or not the stitches will be the size you need) was that the hat is too big and too loose. Warm, though.

Other lesson: Chinchilla bulky is a bear to fix mistakes in. It’s so fuzzy you can’t see the stitches to correct any problems. On the up side, it’s so fuzzy you can’t see the problems, either, so it works right out.

My daughter, however, loves it. She wants me to make a little one, just for her. When we went out earlier, she insisted on wearing my hat, and I had to wear hers. She’s four, so we drew some looks. I think she’s got kind of a Grimace from McDonald’s thing going on there, but still, she’s mighty cute.

Hey, Tvini! Are the rings in the Prince Package the same as in the Queen’s Package?

Yes! They have the same name-change ability, when used in conjunction with a Saemaus’ Kiss rose.

Confused as to how that name-change thing might work? Read NEWS 1 30 in the game.

Well, now that Tessima has linked to me, I feel the need to post something DR-related.

One of the top ten questions asked: Can I have a King’s Wedding?

No.

Thanks for stopping by!

This will be of absolutely no interest to anyone but other knitters, and I don’t know how many of those we have in DR. But let me just be up front and say don’t be a piker on yarn.

I was knitting a fuzzy purple scarf for Tessima, and one of the girls at My Gym was admiring it. I told her if I had enough yarn left over, I’d make her one too. Well, I didn’t have enough Plymouth Firenze left over, and I don’t know this girl that well, so I thought I’d try it with the cheap stuff, Bernat Boa from my local Michael’s craft shop.

Big mistake.

I’ve seen some bloggers posting about how soft this stuff is. It’s not soft. It’s like wearing barbed wire wrapped in fake feathers. The Firenze is soft and fuzzy, and it’s hard to stop stroking it. It’s dyed in nice long strips, so the color is in wide bands. The Bernat changes color every couple of inches. It looked like a giant iridescent zig-zag that was hurting my eyes while I was knitting it. I couldn’t unravel the Bernat fast enough to get it off my needles.

So now I know why the Bernat was $5 for a 50 gram ball and why the Firenze was $11 (yes, Tessima comped me). You really get what you pay for.

What’d Tessima’s scarf look like? Ask her! She still owes me a picture!