hippo hooray

just so you don't think i'm a ruthless, heartless bitch with no tolerance or compassion for any my fellow men, please know that i've just had four quite relaxing days off work and am now more or less back to my own amiable self. thank you for your patience, and apologies for all the fuck you's.

also, have a look at the following.

flodhästen by mia bengtsson

from virka glada amigurumi

ravelry link

smc egypto cotton (50g / 2.5mm)

he was a gift to my brown-eyed, four-toothed angel of a niece on her first birthday. and probably the most heartwarming, awww-inducing little thing i've ever managed to make. not entirely childproof, but festively plump nonetheless.

and he even has freakin' toes. the wrong amount though, as my dad, ever tactful, was quick to point out.

so happy birthday again, sweetheart. may this anatomically incorrect hippo be your guide through your second year of existence. just try and not eat the eyes, or mom will beat the living crap out of me.

march of the sinister knits

well the crochet thing is off. having trudged through 400 meters of yarn in one sitting (with this lovely shawl in mind) i somehow just went "meh" and moved on. the construction and shape didn't feel right. or maybe the butch trucker lesbian side of me's just not ready for pink lace. how sweet is the taste of giving up.

but i do have something to show you instead. throughout the spring i've made lots of stuff which i haven't had the time to present here, due to an unexpected and outrageous lack of spare time. being currently sick with flu offers a welcome break to do some blogging as well as the inevitable jurassic park marathon.

and so, a terribly long and incoherent cavalcade of finished knits follows.

seasons by jared flood

ravelry link

size 3

brooklyn tweed loft (70g / 3 & 3.5mm)

i got the brooklyn tweed seasons kit as soon as they went on sale back in march or something. i just had to get my hands on that loft yarn. (it's totally hot, by the way.) my colorwork is rather, um, amateurish, but the colors themselves are heathered enough to cover up a lot of my inability to comprehend the concept of "color domination".

the hat was a little snug when finished, so i wanted to block it to a nice generous slouchy look. a delightful little encounter ensued at a local department store, where i just happened to walk past the flower section with some completely unrelated business in mind, and saw a white flower pot that, when turned upside down, just caught my eye as the most perfect hat blocking device ever. so i took it to the counter and asked the girl what the circumference was.

"the diameter's 19 centimeters," she said. "no no, i need to know the circumference," i replied and made her look at me like she couldn't understand the words i was vomiting out. i was then forced to explain how this particular pot seemed the perfect size to aid me in wet-stretching a knitted garment which i couldn't pin down and flat-dry because i didn't want the side creases and how the pot needed to be between 60 and 65 centimeters because my head is 58 and i liked my hats a little loose, and i just needed to be sure about the pot size before i bought it.

she was probably lost at "wet-stretching".

but in eerie silence she took out a measuring tape anyway and announced that the circumference is 62 centimeters, to which i responded with some joyous hand-clapping, to which she in turn responded with a look as if i was actually intending to use the pot in some completely different affair, possibly relating to eating babies and/or having sex with leather-clad muppets.

just imagine what a girl can do with a pot like this

but i took it home anyway and blocked the hat, and it's perfect. never mind the fact that i'm probably on some stockmann persona non grata list now.

"i never should've fallen for that muppet"

speaking of hats, back when it was -25C outside i made me a wurm to keep my precious, precious ears warm with its double-layered edge. the size was perfect at first, but after blocking and in use the yarn got all droopy to the point where it's almost too slouchy. so next time i'll be making a smaller size.

wurm by katharina nopp

ravelry link

size biggiest

lana grossa cool wool merino (70g / 4mm)

then i made two of these ruffle necklaces, one for me and one for a friend for her birthday. i had to adjust the pattern a little because following the chart i couldn't get the edges symmetric.

ruffle bib necklace by stefanie fail

ravelry link

mayflower cotton 8 big (25g / 3.5mm)

mine totally look better than the originals, by the way.

then there's a couple of socks i made as presents for some nice people who are working hard to relieve me of my family curse of hideously crooked teeth. yes, i should've gotten them fixed back in the 90s. yes, i'm a 27-year-old with braces. no, i'm not very smart. but just a couple more months and i'll be stunning. yeah. take that.

a girl at work, a.k.a. miss R, a.k.a. my partner in crime in all yarn-related mischief (no it's not an oxymoron) taught me broomstick lace because, as it turns out, i'm not inherently the ultimate master of all knittingy and crochety bits. so with this newly-acquired skill i made some bracelets. they make me look all pretty. and cool.

the yarn's schachenmayr catania in various colors and there's 10 repeats in each. one bracelet took maybe 5 grams.

and finally i made another shallows, this time with some egyptian cotton and one less chart repeat so it sits a little snugger. also i took a crappy photo of it with a warped perspective, distorted colors and dismal white balance. it's all part of the process.

there. i'm all puffed out now. i shall be dreaming about jeff goldblum tonight.

would you believe...

..if i told you i was crocheting?

well i am, so there.

lessons in finnish

christmas came. and went. with some scattered fun in between. i'm supposed to be at work right now, tackling rabid bargain-hunting yarnbuyers with all sorts of pointy sticks, but i've been sick with flu since dec 20. so i'm not.

instead, i'm at home taking these pseudoartistic pictures
of random christmas decorations and our crappy christmas weather

most of the presents i gave this year consisted of these reflectors, because i'm poor and lazy. i crocheted them (poorly and lazily) with 1.5mm reflecting tape, a whole bunch of mouline yarns, and the occasional glitter thread, because life instantly gets better once glitter is involved.

as such.

to my astonishment i've been hearing most people outside finland don't even know what a reflector is. to all of you still in the dark, literally, i reply with a popular finnish colloquialism, "kato vittu googlesta". (you probably won't find it in your regular dictionary.) and point you towards my etsy shop, where they shall be yours to buy after the new year. ish.

i also made a pair of stripey-noro-ripoff socks for my brother, but the receiving end made like a banana and split before i had a chance to photograph them. an elusive fella, he is.

speaking of photographs, you know the word my dad uses instead of "photographing" in finnish? "ikuistaa". which translates roughly as "foreverize". how darling is that?

plus i've finally been able to finish a certain knitting nightmare that's haunted me since july. believe me when i say there's a definite (and often inevitable) point at which an enjoyable, therapeutic project becomes a poe-esque tangle of gore and horror that makes you lose sleep, hair and all the other things you value most (although besides sleep and hair i can't think of any). but it's over now. just that getting someone to photograph it for me may well take another six months. so i should return with a FO post sometime next summer. but in the meantime, have a foreverization of said piece doing a nice relaxing soak in my bathroom sink.

is that the squirmy sound of anticipation i hear?

excessively displeased avifauna

..or, as the colloquial translation goes, angry f-ing birds.

ok. so it turns out geeks love toys.

recognizing opportunity where i saw one, i tapped into the infinite demand of crocheted novelty items by making a red bird for my brother, who’s an engineer and plays with his iphone almost as much as he plays with himself. then he showed the thing (bird, that is) to all his engineer friends. and soon my email was completely swarmed with mails from 30-something engineers asking to make them one too. all i need to do now is get a bunch of robots to amplify the production rate around 2000 % and pretty soon i can retire to an island somewhere and inject myself with liquid money.

improvised pattern

ravelry link

made with all kinds of scrap yarn and a whole lot of felt, paper and glue

i never thought my crocheting would be considered cool. take that, age-old preconceptions about handicraft being lame and embarrassing! i’m the ruler of this block now.

i’m pretty stoked too how they turned out. my birds kick ass. the piggy especially. it stares right into your soul.

close-up pics of each bird after the jump.