knittingninja

No posts in forever. Been busy working, and knitting.

With that last one being prominent, you’d think I have photos to show. Well… not yet.

With not much time to run errands, I’ve not been able to get camera batteries. On top of that, the weather here has been disgusting. Rain and clouds. Not photo weather at all. Today was actually sunny, but aformentioned battery problem kept me from photo-taking. I need one of those little portable light studios everyone makes for photographing their knitting.

My Rogue is progressing swimmingly. It’s such a delicious pattern. Well-written, and engaging. It keeps me interested and entertained. I stop every row to ogle the side panels. I’m currently on the cable midsection and I tried on the sweater thus far and it fits so great. Love.

I’m still working on my Lighthouse Gansey sock as a travelling project, although I haven’t gone out much lately with aforementioned work.  I’ve also, just tonight, cast on for another cabled newsboy cap, since I wore my last one right out (and it was made of ACRYLIC, jeezus!) and I have this lovely leftover dark grey/black Patons Classic Wool Merino. I love hats.

Photos will follow as soon as I remedy the above.

Happy spring, Happy April, and Happy Knitting. :)

For someone like me, knitting is currently a slump.

A ditch, if you will.

Mind-numbingly boring.

I’m consistently working on chain chomp hats, which are knit with acrylic yarn and are dumb-easy to work. Even so, I managed to screw up one by making it too short. Hurrr.

I always have them on the go, as there are some requests for them that I am filling personally. I’m happy to do these few requests, but after a while they get very boring.

I’m also on the foot section of my first Lighthouse Gansey sock. 3×1 rib and stockinette. Plain colour. I’m not used to this with socks. I adore the fit of the sock so far, and the yarn is still delicious to knit with, but it’s still a plain colour, and for the foot section, a very plain pattern. Yawn.

Project number three is repairing Matt’s Shark Hat. I’m putting knit teeth onto it to replace the felt ones, as the knit teeth are sturdier and he’s worn the felt teeth right out. I’m also adding some elastic on the inside of the hat and a fleece lining to keep it warmer. This is also boring, as the teeth are pretty much identical to the Chain Chomp hat. Ad Infinitum.

So, I ask you, readers, why the hell am I looking at prices for yarn to create a  9-foot long scarf in garter stitch stripes?

I’ve been researching my best bets for wool to make the Doctor Who scarf. Specifically, season 16.  The pattern graphic is here (major kudos to Chris for making the Doctor Who Scarf website and going through all the grit to re-create all these fantastic scarf patterns!). Looking for a good yarn that is inexpensive to purchase. I’ll probably have to get this through friends in the states, by  the looks of things. We’ll see!

Head-chinchillas help me sort things out.

Um, there are pictures.

Just not on this computer.

Found out two days ago that no, Acer can not fix my computer because somehow, I fried the entire motherboard. And I’m not using the word “fried” because it sounds cool; there were literally burn marks on the panel. Oops. WTF?

The good news is, the hard drive’s data is easily recovered, as it didn’t suffer too much damage. I’ll be claiming my singed laptop, and using a friend’s casing to pull the data onto a portable HDD.

It certainly pisses me off, though. I still have a working computer, but it’s a monstrous mixture of pimp video card + processor, and shit power supply + RAM. With this news of my laptop,  I think I’ll definitely invest the 100 bucks ro so to fix my PC up so it runs more smoothly.

But wait. People read this for knitting.

Tongiht I caved and bought my yarn for the Rogue hoodie. KnitPicks Wool of the Andes. Cheaper, with shipping and exchange, than buying the equal amount of Cascade 220 in stores locally. Win. I’m getting the Mist colorway. I’m considering this a birthday gift to myself, since it’s scheduled to arrive the week after my birthday sometime. yes. That excuses it entirely. Yes.

Also working on a scarf for Matt, and trying to resist temptation to make the Doctor Who scarf a summer project.

Hrrr.

I’ve been hit with a bug. A bad cold bug.

I’m pretty positive it happened when everyone visited for Winterlude. My body has a tendency to incubate viruses for a long period of time, generally three weeks or so. Given that, this one’s right on the money. It also is no coincidence that the Pirate has it too. At least I have someone to commiserate with.

The housemates (Matt, the darling boyfriend, and Joel, our new roomie and pal from Scouts) are busy downstairs, playing Halo 3 with friends and otherwise being nerds. I came upstairs to get some of my freelance work done, and to have time alone with my DVD player and my blues.

…all that blue.

And the tissues, cannot forget the tissues. But seriously. It’s common knowledge that I have a general fascination for all things blue. I try to vary that as much as I can in my knitting, especially because when it comes to knitting, I -adore- a rainbow of colours. Still, though… I often fall back to at least some bit of blue.

Those are the projects-of-the-current-moment. But before that, I finished my Jaywalkers.

They were a fast, fun knit, and I would totally use Regia Canyon Color for another pair. Gorgeous yarn, gorgeous, simple colours. And, being such vividly-striped yarn, makes for GREAT Jaywalkers.

As soon as the second sock was cast off and the socks were put on my feet,  I cast on for the new pair of socks.

The first of a pair of Lighthouse Gansey socks, in the newest Knitty issue. I’ve waited for a basic, nicely-designed sock to use the Reynolds Soft Sea Wool I bought in Pittsburgh, and this sock fits the bill. Plus, Soft Sea Wool, Lighthouse Gansey… it all seems to fit well. In this case, the blue seems to be a good choice.

I should also mention that this yarn is so absolutely delicious to knit with. It’s extremely soft, has a beautiful amount of stretch, and, well, I adore it.  These will definitely be an enjoyable knit.

And yes, I -am- truly that pale. My skin white-contrasts right out of every closeup photo. I want to harness it as a talent, but have no idea how.

I made a small KnitPicks order last week, to get some Crayon for some toys I’m making. I decided to also pick up a skein of Wool of the Andes in the Mist colorway to swatch it for Rogue.

Rogue is going to be my first sweater attempt.  I’m nervous, because I’m fully aware that it’s not the easiest sweater to take on. However, I have done intricate cabling, and I have loved this hoodie ever since I first saw it. This yarn swatched up well for the in-the-round swatch, and I’m now knitting a flat swatch.

I also have to give mad love to Leanne for selling me an inexpensive set of Denise Interchangeables. I’ve been using them nonstop. They’re so comfortable and warm up really easily. <3  I’ve been using them to swatch for Rogue, as you can see.

I have the blues. But not entirely in a bad way.

Have an obligatory chinchilla.

This past weekend, I had a handful (about seven) of my friends visit my beautiful city, to hang out and take part in Winterlude festivities. I’ve done this over the first weekend of February for the past three years. We’ve dubbed the event “AwesomeCon”, and it becomes more like an actual convention every year. This year, we booked rooms at a hotel, stayed up too late and got up too early, did lots of fun things, and most of us even got “con crud” - which is a term for the illness many people get after geeky conventions, either from getting too little sleep and too much activity, or from getting infected by a congoer.

Now, it would come to pass as mostly a coincidence, that five out of the seven people who came for AwesomeCon are knitters. Even odder still, two of those five people are straight males. The oddest part of all?

One of the two non-knitters, another straight male, was a convert by the end of the weekend.

Now, this wasn’t out of the blue. We were chatting on IRC several weeks before his arrival, and he had mentioned many times before that that he would like to learn to knit sometime. I mentioned that myself and the Pirate (who was another of the AwesomeCon attendees) would be more than happy to take time to teach him over the weekend, and maybe even get him started on a scarf that he wanted to make.

Sure enough, we had him addicted by Saturday night. He went home with nice bamboo circular needles, two skeins of Cascade 220 in a brown heathered shade, and an inch and a bit of a garter rib scarf. <3 He’s been knitting ever since! Happiness.

I should mention that this same friend (his name is Brandon) brought me a lovely gift of this shirt:

Be still my beating heart. This will have to do until there’s a Ninja equivalent.

I also got delicious gifts of yarn. Delicious, delicious yarn.

Blue Moon Fiber Arts’ “Socks That Rock” lightweight in Jail House Rock. A wonderful gift delivered to me from one of my best friends, Janis, by my bestest friend and her roommate, Dusty, who visited for the weekend and is one of the guy knitters I mentioned. <3 Janis also sent me a lovely thinking-of-you card, which is extremely thoughtful considering she’s been having health issues herself lately. <3 I’ve never knit with STR, so it’s exciting!

Noro Kureyon Sock, from my darling sis, the Pirate. Pirate also brought me some yarn with a more interesting backstory…

A delicious alpaca-wool blend in some of my favorite colours. She bought it while piss-drunk at Pennsic War this past August.

 I love my sister.

My darling bro got me some Lorna’s Laces at WEBS on the way up to visit here from CT. I adore the colorway. Not sure what to knit with any of this yet.

But it’s given me inspiration to motor through my second Jaywalker sock.

This photo is outdated. I’ve just finished the heel gusset decreases, and al knitting down the foot. :)

I also picked up a new amigurumi book, and pulled out my crappy acrylic yarn and crochet hooks. Just for a bit of getaway from knitting. I’m a crafter of all trades. :D

Finally got the Shark Hat pattern up, along with some accompanying caricature images of the boyfriend and I that I drew for shiggles:

I have to give some serious cred to my new knitting pal Debbie and her daughter Leah for working out the serious kinks that my scribbled-out pattern had. They knit not one, but TWO test hats for me, finding out different things with each attempt. I cannot thank them enough, they are seriously cool people. Thanks, ladies!

At last, the shark hat is available for all to knit. Check it out using that link in the sidebar!

Working on things that make me monetary gain has taken up a lot of my time. Mostly reviewing design work, and designing a few things for friends. I received news today that a local printing place has offered me an interview. This is really exciting, since I’d like to do pre-flight work full time. It’s something I’m good at, and what I’ve been trained to do. Here’s hoping!

The bad news of today: After emailing all the big legal kahoonas I could think of to find out about selling chain chomp hats, I found out some unfortunate-ness from the big guys at Nintendo themselves:

Chain chomps fall under the Super Mario Bros. registered trademark. This means that I cannot legally sell them. Because of this, I am choosing not to sell them.

I know a bunch of gamers who are watching my blog for news are smacking themselves over the head, and some may yell at me for not making the money that I could with this. But rules are rules. I’m not about to violate the rules of another country just to make a few bucks. Plus, I don’t think I’d really like to knit a million of these; I already have “orders” for gifts for trade with friends.

NO NOT FRET, however. There are options to getting your own Chain Chomp hat. I will present them here:

1) Learn to knit. And don’t give me the crap about “I don’t have the patience/time/drive”. I’m ADD, I fidget compulsively, I learned to knit when I was a full-time student with a part-time job and a pile of extra-curriculars, and I learned because I saw something that I really wanted to make. If you really want to make this, you can learn to knit. Knitting takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s easy to master all the basics, and there are a ton of free internet resources to help you on your way.

2) Find someone who knits, and beg them to make you one. You’d be surprised at how many people, girls and guys alike, knit. Ask around, you never know. Treat them to a nice dinner or buy them candy in exchange for a hat.

3) If you’re into crafty stuff, I am generally up for swaps! Swaps are where two crafters trade objects. They’re huge on sites like Craftster, and there’s often a theme involved. For instance, I would happily trade a Chain Chomp hat for something that is equally gaming-inspired that took approximately the same amount of time/effort as one of my hats. Email me, we can talk.

Due to the work I put into these hats, I will NOT give them away for free. Please do not ask.

Now, where was I?

Right, work.

This is what I knit when I procrastinate my work.

Part of a Jaywalker…

And a lot more of a Rowan scarf.

All over my keyboard. While I work.

Yup.

This is why, when I get a real job, I’ll have to try really hard to leave the knitting at home.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

Sleepy.

Been suffering from an extreme messed-up sleep… sick… thing. Oversleeping, not sleeping enough, otherwise not pertaining to a sleep schedule of any kind.

In my waking hours, I knit, and plan.

I’m planning the Chomp hats. Trying to figure out how to charge, and more importantly, how legal this might be.  I need to cost out materials and time (the bigger one being the latter. The yarn is inexpensive). In the meantime… I knit.

Mostly the Jaywalker.

No photos. Too tired. XD

Any gamer worth two cents has played at least ONE of the Mario games. Thusly, nearly every gamer knows of the mighty Chain Chomp.

An enemy in the Mario Bros. franchise, they first appeared in Mario Bros. 3, as a black ball with eyes and teeth, attached by a chain to a block. The chain would lunge itself at Mario, teeth a-chomping, if Mario was within its range.

In later games, the chomps could appear on a loose chain, trailing after Mario and friends. They also adapted their own sound effect, a doglike, rumbling ARF ARF. In the latest release in the franchise, Super Mario Galaxy, Chomps are seen chainless, rolling around happily in their natural habitats. They have long been one of the many instantly-recognizable entities in the Mario world.

I designed this hat on a whim, inspired by discussions with my geeky friends awhile ago, about how relatively simple it would be to design. In the last few days, I drew it up and knit it on the fly, taking notes as I went. The result is a Chomp that has happily broken free of its chain, only to latch itself onto an unsuspecting gamer’s head.

Pattern is available on the sidebar! More photos accompany the pattern.

Enjoy! I sure enjoyed designing this. :)