spring, socks & skippity skip

spring's here. finally. winter and its foul snowy presence had tormented us for too long to be any level of fun anymore. you know how the first snowflakes in october make you go "yay winter"? after seven months the childlike reverence has turned into vile screeches of "fuck winter" and "why, god, are you doing this to us".

but it's here now. time to lose those seven layers of clothing and enjoy the sun. maybe get a little spring flu or skip some rope or something. what do you mean adults don't skip rope? what's wrong with you?

i still need to cover my puny legs until i'm rid of the whole "whiter shade of pale" look, so i made a basic pair of striped socks to skip in. i've grown to liking the toe-up method, because in addition to all the practical benefits, it makes me look like a pro knitter. boo-yah. the color gradience was a little off from what i thought, but not too bad.

ravelry link

size 38

austemann step & zauberball (25g each/2.5mm)

the left sock is affectionately called "stupid fat ugly party leader debate", because that's what i was watching on TV when i knitted it. two hours of my precious, precious life completely wasted on the altar of inane rantings and mind-shattering baby-pink blazers. and since we now know the election saw a landslide victory from a populist anti-immigration party, which incidentally is lead by jabba the hut, perhaps this is the electoral term that finally forces me to pack my earthly belongings and move to canada, where the sun always shines, nothing ever goes wrong, and the only thing you ever have to worry about is stephen harper, who eats babies.

anyway, by the same rationale the right sock is called "terminator 3".

although said fine motion picture left the most important question unanswered: how is it that you can't hurt a robot by shooting him in the head, but can hurt him by kicking him in the crotch?

yarn-a-plenty

seems like my obsession with yarn has gone to a whole new level. and i'm not just talking about basic, no-frills yarn. i'm talking about luxury yarn. hand-dyed yarn. yarn you can only get from one store 2000 miles away. 30 bucks for a hank? worth every penny. i'm not gonna have anything left for food, but still.

recent weeks have been especially.. um.. productive in terms of online shopping. luckily i can't count double-digit numbers so i don't know how much i've spent exactly. but it's not like i'm drinking or buying male prostitutes so it's all good, right?

first i got me some blackberry zauberballs at a yarn sale. usually i don't like gradient colors, but here they go together quite nicely.

think i only bought one ball? think again

here's a couple of knitpicks stroll handpainted sock yarns from great british yarns. i actually only ordered the bottom two (tree fort and playtime), but they accidentally sent the wrong colors at first and after sorting it out gave the top one (tea party) for free. cool beans. stroll sock is definitely one of my favorite sock yarns, but it's really hard to get outside the U.S.

then there's malabrigo lace in cadmium and alpine pearl from priima. i'm not a huge fan because the yarn breaks so easily, but the colors are pretty cool, although i was going for a more ochre-type yellow. (not visible: the amount of damage the yellow one took when the mailman tried to ram it through my tiny letterbox.)

two hanks of mirasol hacho (333) from lankaidea, too thick for socks but will be good for baby clothes or something. the manufacturer does charity in peru which made the impromptu decision to buy it easier.

some hand-dyed sock yarn from villamokka...

wool and silk yarn from a recent crafts fair...

heritage silk, silkbloom extra fino, cascade 220

and finally, the crown jewels of my collection, fleece artist trail socks in redfox and hemlock from titityy. knitting this yarn is better than having sex. with another person, even. the hanks are so pretty that odds are i'll never even wind them, i'll just sit and look at them in complete awe. maybe sing a little love tune every now and then. who needs men when there's yarn around.

money well spent. definitely. right?

mom's birthday

nothing says "i love you mom" like a hand-made present with a little blood, sweat and tears sprinkled on top. which is why exactly two weeks before mom's birthday i decided to make her a lace scarf. the idea was beautiful of course, and the outcome too. getting there, not so much.

kernel scarf by bonnie sennott

ravelry link

size 180 x 27 cm

wetterhoff sivilla (75 g/3.5mm)

i assure you, my mother is not being held
at gunpoint in this picture

the pattern was pretty clear and knitting it wasn't hard at all, just a lot of repetitive work. but when it comes to details and finishing my IQ drops by 40 points the second the basic chart is done. graft without reading the instructions? okay. thread the edges with sticky cotton yarn? sure. start blocking at 0:30AM? why not. and don't bother counting the charts either, a ballpark figure is accurate enough. frogging lace is easy anyway. sheesh.

here's me grafting. see?

i ended up redoing simple things over and over, because the lobotomic side of my brain couldn't keep up with the excitement, and because the smart part just couldn't let it go. also there was a south park marathon on TV during the first trainwreck of a blocking cycle, which may or may not have contributed to the lack of focus and abundance of epically retarded decisions. sticks and stones may break my bones but i'm jesus and you aren't.

still, 10 days for my second ever lace scarf is not bad. and mom seemed to like it. the yarn choice was perfect too, although the color was supposed to be a little more pink and less purple. so in the end the project turned out fine. but will i learn anything from all the shit i put myself through here?

hell no. same time next year.

more pics after the jump.

possum to the people

my friends are awesome. really, really awesome.

one of them did me a huge favor regarding a certain pair of bright red eyeglasses, which pretty much made me break down and weep because i was so moved (see, i do have feelings after all). anyway, i couldn't decide how to thank her until i went to a local yarn store with some other business and saw this beautiful eco-friendly black yarn that was super soft and had some curious grey fibers sticking out of it. so i thought, i'll make her a pair of fingerless mitts, because my ultimate goal in life is to make her look like a homeless person. no. wait. that didn't come out right.

i made her a pair of these...

with this.

wait. go back. what's that there, the 30 % part?

possum? as in, i-have-a-pointy-nose-and-hang-upside-down-from-my-tail-because-i-can't-be-bothered-to-stand-on-my-feet possum?

yup. apparently there's a huge eco-disaster looming out in new zealand because possums, which some douchebag brought from australia in hopes of becoming some major fur honcho, destroy trees and eat birds and do all kinds of shit they're not particularly welcome to do. so people out there are trying to eradicate them by shooting them with bazookas or whatever (no one wants to tell me how they actually do it but i always love the idea of bazookas), and once the buggy-eyed bastards are dead they make yarn out of 'em. which i totally support. if there's such a thing as eco-friendly yarn, this is it. really. everybody wins. except, you know, possums. because they're dead.

the yarn really is soft, softer than alpaca in my opinion. some guy somewhere with too much time has measured the possum fibers with a fancy microscope thingy and concludes that it's physically impossible for it not to be soft, because the fibers taper down to 1 microns, which is well below the human ability to sense. so no "prickle factor". i love that word.

the mitts themselves are very basic, but the material is curious enough as it is. so curious, in fact, that from now on i will only wear things made out of possum hair, because unless you wear possum, YOU ARE DESTROYING NEW ZEALAND.