barney

having grown up in a time and culture where children's TV programming mainly consisted of DDR propaganda, extremely disturbing PSA's, and german detective cartoons where every episode contained at least one plotline involving strippers and/or boobs, it's probably not surprising that i never got to know barney.

sad face.

i would probably be a lot more pleasant to deal with, a lot less troubled with negative emotions, and a whole heck of a lot less burdening to others today, had i learned very early on that happiness is the only acceptable state of being, disagreeing is futile and disrespective, and your own needs are always infinitely less important than those of others.

again, sad face. but i did learn a lot about boobs.

either way, a while back i offered to make the boy a pair of socks for his birthday, because he has the soul of a pensioner and thus suffers from cold feet (and increasingly greying hair). i even went so far as to let him pick colours.

of all the colours in all the world, he picked barney's.

to be fair, i rejected his inital choice of the dr. seuss-esque combination of red and white, just because it was in my power to do so.

oh, what a girl wouldn't do for his love muffin.

the big reveal

the secret is out. part of it, anyway.

i'm sorry it's not a box with an embarrassing spongebob photo inside. but it's pretty sweet anyway.

please give a standing ovation to my first published pattern. let me repeat that last bit. it's a pattern. which i designed. on my own. i'm awesome.

i give you nineteen twenty.

as of today it will be available for your purchasing pleasure on ravelry or the sweetgeorgia shop for a very reasonable price of $6.

it's a weird but oddly fascinating combination of a wrap, and a shrug, and a cardigan, and is modeled here by the ever-gracious jing, who makes everything look good, for which i hate her.

it's made with 2 skeins of sweetgeorgia merino silk fine, in a brand new fall colourway called mink (i know it's not fall yet, but we're thinking ahead, like newton, or vanilla ice). it comes in two sizes, both of which can accommodate a wide range of female anatomies. the pattern comes with instructions on how to customize the sizes too, to make it more or less drapey and to fit those oddly shaped bodies which are still (mostly) beautiful.

buy it, and make it, and wear it, and post all your praise in the comment section below. thank you.

sick

being sick is not fun.

in moments like these i find myself gazing longingly to the east, to the mildly socialist republic of finland, where you can be as sick as you can and miss as much work as you want, and the friendly government will always be there to cover your medical costs and reimburse you for the paychecks missed. they will patronize you, and belittle you, and humiliate you with endless red tape in the process, but at least your ability to pay rent and buy food is not compromised by the choice of some testicularly challenged dickwad to sneeze all over you in the skytrain.

but at least i have this.

it's a sock. the stripes me happy make.

stresslessness

i feel like i've just given birth.

today i've brought to conclusion an unprecedented, three-part project which i carried out with much determination and poise, despite all the dangers and uncertainty inherent in such projects.

as the boy would surely testify, upon agreeing to take on this adventure i was not fully aware of what a project of such magnitude entails, and granted, there were many a moments when faith was almost lost, and gods were almost denounced.

but with steady hands i gracefully steered my proverbial boat through gushing winds and every other nautical allegory until arriving at the safe harbour of calm and quiet and stresslessness. hopefully it will all soon translate to fame, riches and global awe.

it's all so very, very secretive.

oddly, being stress-free feels an awful lot like bronchitis.

smelly

there was a sheep, and the sheep was smelly.

the sheep ate grass and some other things too. sometimes the sheep slept and dreamt sheepy dreams.

then the sheep was sheared and turned into yarn, and the yarn was dyed and then some tool made a sweater out of it.

a sweater that smells like sheep and grass and other things and sleep.

carpino by carol feller

ravelry link

size modified 35"

sweetgeorgia bfl sock (224g / 3.5mm)

blue

speaking of line breaks...

...i made another one. a blue one. in six days. with fingerless mitts to match. i was in a rush, and in my usual rabid acid speed monkey mode. it does wonders for my project knitting, but less for what my friend, who recently spent a fortune and flew 15 hours only to see me knit non-stop for six days, calls social life.

that's as much of an apology as you'll ever get out of me, and you all know it.

but let it also be known, and visually observed, how pretty the set turned out to be. garter is my friend, my lover, my well-behaving woolly poodle bitch. garter makes the asymmetric short-rows drape gorgeously and the eyelets pop out just right. and the mitts, while completely brainless in construction (hence no pattern), hug your hands with all their squishiness and provide extra warmth thanks to the interlocking rows.

channa modeled. because she's pretty and photogenic. thanks, channa, for being pretty and photogenic, and putting up with my art direction. i curse because i care.

the set's already found its way to its new owner back in finland - a very special person who reached a rather respectable milestone recently and greeted this unexpected form of postal gifting with much joy and gratitude. normally i don't do much gift knitting, because i'm such a selfish tit, but this time the exception was both justified and rewarding.

we might have started something here, and it terrifies me.

manly

a certain special point in the course of things has recently been reached.

the point where it has become evident that one person is fairly interested in creating fluffy knitted things, sparking a second person to express a shy and modest interest in acquiring one of said fluffy knitted things.

a short exchange of thoughts was carried out, mostly consisting of the first person pondering within and out loud whether or not the relationship between the two persons has gone far enough to actually sit down and create a fluffy knitted thing for the second person, since history does offer evidence that doing so is a sign of some level of commitment to which not all second persons are prepared to take part in; and the second person saying, "sure, cool".

and so, a manly man cowl was born.

five by five cowl by felicia lo

ravelry link

malabrigo sock & sweetgeorgia tough love sock (90g each / 5mm)

it is custom-tailored to his color preferences and style, and without the mohair strand the pattern calls for, because while he does make his living in the film industry, and judging by his tea tastes is a bit of a girl, he lacks the edward d. wood jr. type obsession with dressing up in actual fluff.

the cowl was very easy to make and, had the first person not been distracted by the second person in many devilish ways, would have been finished in a matter of hours. but, as things were, it took a bit more. the result is very pretty, though, and well worth all the effort and pondering.

rumour has it that he actually wears it, too, which makes the first person happy, as well as a bit embarrassed that she keeps referring to him as "a bit of a girl".

artisticky

somewhere between everything that has and has not been going on recently, there was summer, and yarn, and a shawl.

quill by jared flood

ravelry link

size gigantic

BT loft (220g / 3.5mm)

also there was a deep and profound sense of discomfort at being photographed - despite the many, many unspeakably dirty favors the photographing party was willing to offer in return of a single frame where eyes weren't crossed, tongues weren't out and/or breasts weren't flashed.

what can i say. there is something utterly disturbing about posing in front of a machine that has the full capacity to capture your soul and put it in a jar and sell it to the gypsies, all the while being bent into weird shapes and attempting to look as if you were too cool to care.

still - what a lovely, therapeutic knit, and what a lovely heathered colour, which, incidentally, was personally approved for this particular project by the lovely jared flood himself at vogue knitting in april.

sizewise it turned out to be more of a blanket than a shawl though, and as such has found its place less as an everyday accessory and more as a priceless sit-on-me-and-fucking-die type of chair cover.

but for one day it got to go out and be pretty, and artisticky, and pretty, and indeed it was, and things were good, and souls remained intact, and afterwards there was a bit of boobage, and that was lovely too.

loverly

by this time you should all be aware that when it comes to knitting, and reporting about knitting, i am not a here-and-now kind of a person. let's just say i'm very easily distracted.

so it shouldn't surprise you that i'm coming forth today with yet another FO that has been finished for ages. seven months sounds about right. although this time a lot of it really has to do with crappy cameras, which, i'm glad to tell you, have recently been replaced by awesome cameras. cameras capable of giving knitted things the vibrancy and depth they so thoroughly deserve.

lovely by melissa kwan

ravelry link

sweetgeorgia superwash dk (65g / 4mm)

it's a test knit for a cowl that was designed by my good friend, vigorous enabler, and cohort in all things yarn-related, melissa. she put the pattern together back in the winter and was brave enough to ask me to try it out (i say brave, because... well, all of the above). which i did, in two days, because i'm fast and awesome.

the cowl is the perfect one-skein project that doesn't take that much concentration, but won't bore you either. i used smaller needles, like i usually do, so the size came out a bit smaller than the pattern measurements. but since i like my cowls to be fairly close-fitting anyway, i can see how it could work even with fingering weight yarn. i can also appreciate the fact that the girly-girly heart motifs are balanced with rugged cables every now and then. i have my manliness to protect here, for god's sake.

so in short, it's a must-knit. go out and knit it, or else.*

in addition to all her yarn-related escapades, melissa periodically locks herself in a closet (literally - i've seen it) and sews project bags. she is too modest to believe it, but they are known throughout BC and beyond. so much so, in fact, that they don't even make it to her etsy shop before they're grabbed by knitters who notoriously hoard stuff and aren't afraid to use their elbows in the process (while being brain-burstingly, ever-smilingly passive-aggressive about it).

THESE ARE MINE SO BACK THE FUCK OFF, DEAR

but it just so happens that melissa is going to be a vendor at both fibrations and knit city (her first live appearances!) so this is your chance to have a look in person and get your own. act fast though, before some greedy skank buys them all. i'll be the one who's armed with zombie machetes and a pair of wolverine claws. what's your plan, bitch?

*or else what? exactly. 

unbroken

for those not familiar with what's truly imporant in life, the lady in the previous post was bette davis in now voyager (1942) and the letter (1940).

notice how she's ugly when she's weaving, frumpy when she's crocheting, and completely smokin' hot when she's knitting.

the defence rests.

in other news, here's a shawl i made. the boy took the pictures. he made me look all girly and pretty (i'm wearing a dress, for god's sake) and afterwards we went back home and had hot perverted sex chocolate milk until dawn. as some consenting adults choose to do.

line break by veera

ravelry link

madelinetosh tosh merino light (160g / 3mm)

to be fair the shawl has been finished since april. but i can't keep up with all the stuff that happens anymore. there's just so little time, and so much chocolate milk to be had.

mysteriously, at the same time, i've had to cut down work hours as well as knitting hours, because my retarded body won't keep up either. i'm 28 and so, so broken. i have hip pains, joint pains, back pains, nerve pains, horrible eyesight, thinning hair and a general sense of an expiration date long since passed, notably manifested in the 13 different medications i've stooped down to taking daily.

but as god, bob and all other deities know, it takes a shitload more than that to break my spirit. in fact, i dare you, I DOUBLE DARE YOU, MOTHERFUCKER, TO SAY 'WHAT' ONE MORE--

yes. the shawl.

indeed it is.

even at the risk of sounding unacceptably exhilarated, it's a divinely perfect combination of yarn, texture, shape and colour that enamors me and positively sweeps me off my feet every time i wear it - and apparently others too (hi becca - no you can't have this one, make your own bloody shawl!). making it was pure bliss from start to finish and taking it off the needles literally hurt my insides and made a part of me die - much like childbirth (episiotomy, anyone?), and indeed this furry piece of red cloth is my baby, probably more so than any actual human being will ever be.

i wanted it to be a bit smaller than the original sample, so i used 3mm needles instead of the suggested 4's. the size turned out just right. it's big enough to wear as a wrap, but small enough to tie around the neck. the tighter gauge makes it a bit warmer too.

not that additional warmth has been necessary here lately. we are now officially at day 35 of the epic nonstop heat wave of 2013 (it hasn't rained in five weeks, and i can smell it). but hot weather makes for pretty pictures, and also melts some of the permafrost of my cold, icy heart.

the spiders get fucking huge though. where the hell is the DDT?

hi mom

you made me. that was a fairly awesome thing to do.

i know i've been the retarded black sheep of the family sometimes. made you lose your shit and caused you lots of worries and heartache when you deserved none.

sorry about all that.

and now i'm 5000 miles away and haven't seen you in six months. life is good here, but not being able to hug you and say thank you and have farting contests with you sucks donkey balls.

i really really miss you.

back in the winter i saw this lovely merino-silk fibre at work that reminded me of you. i was only just learning to spin with a wheel, but fearlessly i sat down every night after work anyway for a month to spin a skein of yarn. my first full skein of yarn, in fact.

after ogling the finished 500-yard skein for a good week or so it seemed only fair that you should get the very first thing i've ever knit with my own handspun, and so i started knitting you a shawl. the pattern is the same 22.5 degrees one i used to make my own shawl for TNNA.

towards the end i managed to run out of yarn for the scalloped edging, so i dyed some more fibre at work. not being very smart i added soap to the dyestock, and the fibre got felted. but being very persistent i spun it anyway, even though every second felt like a good old prison-style ass ramming (as you know i'm quite fine being gross).

and this is how it turned out.

it's soft and shiny and lovely and for some reason it's perfectly stripey too -- i can't say that was intentional, since i just split the fibre into two bobbins and plied them without any colour planning whatsoever, but i'm willing to accept all of your oohs and aahs anyway.

i hope you like it. i love you and miss you and one day i'll be back and we'll have us some good stinky times again.

nonchalant

so we went to the TNNA winter show last weekend.

i love how casually that rolls from the tongue.

just flew down to long beach, hung out with madelinetosh, took a dump at the stall next to beth casey, you know, the usual stuff.

with some delightful food-baby-walking-dead marathons scattered in between

for that completely nonchalant occasion i made two cowls and a scarf, all in company yarns, because i figured it would make me look even more professional than i falsely think i am.

the first one's a highly classified test knit which i cannot explicate further at this time. it's a cowl, and it's green. that's all.

the next two i cranked out in five days prior to leaving for the show. during those five days i also worked full time as well as moved my ever-increasing earthly belongings to a new apartment, so i suppose it's safe to say i'm pretty fuckin' fast. not that i'm one to brag (although i totally am).

22.5 degrees by martina behm

ravelry link

sweetgeorgia cashluxe fine (111g / 3mm)

cabernet cowl by monika sirna

ravelry link

sweetgeorgia cashluxe fine (54g / 3.5mm)

pretty things, aren't they?*

*the question above is not a rhetorical one and only has one correct answer

reine

i'm such a brooklyn tweed whore. you know that much if you've read any of my stuff anywhere, ever.

give me any pattern curated by the magical jared flood, and i'll be salivating all over it like them more girly knitters are doing to pictures of ryan gosling right now.

(personally, i don't find him that hot. but that's because my girly bits have recently dried up and withered away because of an involuntary and tragic lack of use.)

reine by alexis winslow

ravelry link

size 33.75

bc garn semilla dk (350g / 4mm)

reine was the ultimate piece of comfort knitting back in october. just a smooth relaxing sailing from skein to skein, from piece to piece. the pattern was extremely knitter-friendly and the top down, short-row set-in sleeves produced a sweet fit at the shoulders. it was such a perfect pairing between yarn and needles that i just wiggled my fingers every now and then and somehow from that a cardigan emerged. the sleeves took maybe 3 hours each, that's the level of simple comfort we're talking about.

but because i'm not very smart, it never occurred to me to consider some of the essential differences of semilla and the intended yarn. you may or may not know (and if not, why the hell not?) that BT loft and its delightful woolen texture allow it to be knitted up with a gauge of anything between light fingering to DK without losing any fabric integrity, drape or general awesomeness.

at 250 meters per skein, one could squeeze out this cardigan with just 200 grams of loft. semilla, as wonderfully soft and ever-so-slightly rustic as it is, is just 160 meters, so for me it took 350 grams--which is just enough for gravity to do its dastardly deed. and so the cardigan turned out droopy.

oddly, back in my LYS days, i was definitely smart enough to publicly ridicule anyone not familiar with the pitfalls of substituting yarn, i.e. those considering only one factor of the holy trinity of needle size, gauge and yardage. material obviously plays into it as well, but i don't know what you call a holy foursome in a fancy biblical way. quadrility? anyway. i know i'm a horrible person.

horrible, AND with a stupid face

but i can live with the droopyness, because the cardigan is just so freakin' comfy. and the pockets are perfect for those moments when you're feeling awkward among half-strangers and know that if you resort to your usual i'm-uncomfortable-so-i-need-to-do-something-with-my-hands routine and keep on twirling your fingers and tearing off pieces of fingernail in a visible manner, it will only contribute to making you seem even more out there than you actually are, therefore rendering the moment unbearably awkward and possibly fatal. but with this cardigan--voila! pockets.

my hand could be doing anything in here, and you would never know

not a word about the quality of seaming, though. i'm a knitter, not a fuckin' seamstress, okay? seaming makes me aggressive, which doesn't go well with my otherwise gentle manners. fuckin' seams.

again thanks to miss R for the photos!

northern non-summer

i'm back. sort of.

inspired by fellow bloggers, and encouraged by my employer-turned-mentor, i've decided that when it comes to presenting finished knits, even super duper late is better than not at all. you may direct any objections to that brick wall over there.

so in the following days, or weeks, realistically speaking--which we always are--you will see some very very random posts about stuff i've made. mostly from last year, because since moving to canada i seem to have caught a really sturdy case of i'm-just-gonna-wind-this-yarn-and-knit-a-few-rows-then-move-one-to-something-else-hence-the-pile-of-eleven-simultaneous-WIPs, and haven't been able to finish much stuff.

to start things off, this here is a shawl i made.. last... spring.

northern summer shawl by jo kelly

ravelry link

wollmeise pure in olio vergine (170g / 3.5mm)

i know it was spring because i was watching the ice hockey world champs on TV (we lost) while working on the lace edging. you know, the type of edging where you're effectively binding off exactly one edge stitch for every two rows of lace? sheesh, omg, lol. i thought it would never end.

i also remember going completely berserk when someone interrupted me on one of the last chart repeats, causing me to lose track and having to frog back at least 15 rows. with all due respect to my family, friends and the entire humankind: which part of this concentrated, constipated look on my face when i'm knitting lace does not scream "DO NOT FUCKING SPEAK TO ME RIGHT NOW PLEASE THANK YOU" to you?

i just don't like to be interrupted, is all.

i also also remember that i ran out of yarn with just two chart repeats left. i'm not gonna go over the details of that gruesome episode because it hurts too much. but i somehow managed to find a lovely generous person willing to part with her leftover yarn from the same wollmeise update (!), so i was able to finish the edging a couple of days later.

the pattern had some pretty significant errors here and there, but i trudged through anyway and i think the finished shawl looks fine. there's enough weight there to make it drape nicely and prevent the edges from curling, which is the sole reason most of my scarves and shawls are plain garter stitch. so in this case the yarn works--so much so, in fact, that this was one of only three hand-knit scarves that got to accompany me to canada.

(notice the decidedly un-springy scenery in the photos above. they were taken in mid-november, because for the actual northern summer i was locked up in the cave of fluorescent lights and windows facing a concrete wall that was my previous workplace. many thanks to miss R for helping out anyway.)

but the more i've worked with wollmeise the less i'm liking the base yarn--OMG SHE DIDN'T JUST SAY THAT--because the plying really really puts me off. an 8-ply fingering-weight yarn? are you fucking serious? yeah and we'll make the plies really loose too, so that we're effectively taking out all the luxurious squishyness of merino and replacing it with these lifeless little straws of fibre that split and fray like a mofo and completely disintegrate when drawing from a center-pull ball. why, in short we've taken a luxurious merino and turned it into something that resembles cheap cotton.

i really really want to like the yarn, because the colors are so amazingly vibrant. but i think my wollmeise hoarding days are over. surely it can only mean that my taste in yarns is becoming more and more refined? and surely that's only a good thing?

rosebud

just when we thought summer would skip our grand nordic nation entirely, that she would cruelly ignore our very existence in this odd peninsula--affectionately nicknamed either the armpit or the asshole of northern europe, depending on which warped position you imagine us in--she arrived in a blazing chariot of heat and sunshine.

"go out and get naked," she said, and the entire nation went, "okay."

except me.

this is me celebrating summer in the best way i know how, i.e. by posing in a long-sleeved shirt and a chunky woolly hat, looking as soulful and tormented as edgar allan poe, or robert smith, or to a lesser extent, aaron lewis. i can't believe that band still exists.

rosebud by jared flood

ravelry link

size small

brooklyn tweed shelter (50g / 4.5-5mm)

what can i say. hats are my weakness.

against every last grain of intuition i had in my body i made the smaller size instead of the slouchy one. usually i'm drawn to anything that's labeled slouchy like gum on shoesoles, but this time something in my brain said no. by the time i reached the point of either continuing on to crown decreases, or knitting the cable chart once more, i just found myself having less and less stitches on the needle. i like to wear my hats pretty far back so somehow i managed to figure out even the shorter model could work.

and this time, completely out of character, i even weaved a lifeline into the stitches of the final row before the decreases, so that if i totally changed my mind i could go back and undo the rows without counting them and getting all messed up on the chart. i have no idea where all this epic far-sightedness comes from right now.

it sits really well too now, and the shelter yarn (in homemad jam, for those interested) was every bit as pleasant to knit with as i expected. although i have to say that both loft and shelter tend to lose some of their perky fluffiness with blocking. or maybe i'm doing it wrong. they get a little droopy. not too droopy, but i could do without some of the droopiness. it doesn't really show in photos though.

what's also not showing in the photos is my mom crying because of my fascistic art direction during this photography session. sorry mom. at least the girl knows what she wants.

and i haven't had a haircut in 13 months. does that show? sheesh. no wonder i'm still single.

people = shit

forgive me the raunchy title. how it takes me back to year 2001, a year covered in heartbreaking teenager angst and soundtracked by a certain iowan 8-piece with a well-noted affection for such raunchy titles.

but i'm not really a people person. i see that now.

this week, at work, i've witnessed so much astonishingly assholistic behavior from all and every direction that i'm currently on the verge of losing my faith in mankind.

you see, there's a very special symbiotic bond between you and your LYS worker. the store wouldn't exist without you, and satan would use your hands for masturbation without the store. an open and creative dialogue with mutual respect among all parties is encouraged and nursed for the benefit of the individual, the community, and the entire human race.

some people choose to treat this sacred bond with the loving proverbial curb stomp instead.

please note that while there is a certain responsibility on my part to be the smart one; to not get dragged into childish feuds and unending he-said-she-said bullshit; to be polite and show respect even to the douchiest, most outrageously inappropriate people--which thankfully sometimes pays off--there's a limit to anyone's endurance, including mine.

i am not your BFF, or your therapist, or your general piñata-style punching bag.

and if you're having problems which i, at that particular moment, for whatever reason, cannot help you solve, then go home and cry in the dark like everyone else, YOU MISERABLE ASSHOLE.

that felt good.

and thankfully each day, after another day's worth of trying to cope with all the shit described above, i get to come home to this.

all sarcasm and ironic moustaches aside, for real, seriously, i truly honestly shit you not--

--this is the most enjoyable knit i've ever had on my hands.

it's a  BT lace wrap with three simultaneous charts and 40+ row repeats, but i don't ever want it to end. normally i'd rather go all gaear grimsrud on myself than volunteer for lace. especially during times of great emotional discomfort.

here, there's a sense of pure zen-like relaxation when i'm creating these stitches. a perfect pairing of the exact right texture of the yarn and smooth wooden surface of the needles. the meditative repetitiveness of the garter stitch. the sense of achievement after a completed chart. just one more row, i keep telling myself, and lose myself in the silky grey haze.

forget all about the stress-induced zombie nightmares. the panic attacks. the lunchbreaks spent crying in the kitchen.

that there, my friends, is what knitting is all about, and what will keep me going through anything.

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.