I come bearing patterns. A pattern for a cute little ferret sweater. :D

Palom, my adorable, huge boy in the photos, was kind enough to model the sweater for me. In fact, he’s still wearing the Noro one. And napping. He loves his sweater.

I made two, a blue stripey one and one from leftover Noro sock. If you’ve got ferrets, it’s a great stash buster for leftover sock yarn!

Palom got a treat for being so photogenic, and to beg forgiveness for scruffing him for an underside shot in the second photo. Sorry, little man. Enjoy your peanut butter chew.

Pattern will be in my pattern list to the right momentarily! (Decided to do the post, first.)

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. :)

In the meantime, knitting has been a bit slow, but on the uprise. Between beating illnesses and getting some profitable freelance work done, the time for knitting has been narrowed to movie-watching. Luckily, that was the Christmas gift of the year, so I had a lot of fodder.

I unearthed this gem for some nice mindless, but enjoyable knitting:

A simple basketweave scarf, knit in Rowan Felted Tweed in Whisper.

It’s a scarf I started a long while ago that sort of got buried. It would be nice to finish it in time to wear before winter is gone for good.

A few other things have found their way to the needles, too. The second Jaywalker is on its way…

I even achieved, without much effort at all, an identical cast-on.

The Jaywalker is the current “travelling” project.

The current “this takes up every fibre of my being” is sock designing.

It currently consists of using the leftover yarn from my Monkey socks to swatch up some lace designs, while I fill up graph paper with concepts and designs.

There was an offer from a lovely yarner for free yarn to make your pattern with, if the pattern gets posted on her website for sale (split profits). I figure it’s yet another awesome way to get my designer foot in the door, and an excuse to design really nice socks. Which I’ve been meaning to do for awhile. The process will probably take a while, since I want these to look really cool. I have a few sketched-out ideas, we’ll see what works out!

What’s been going on? Well, this is Jack.

Jack was born on December 7th, 2007 at about 3:00pm. My brother called me to announce him at about 4:00pm. Not a word of a lie, I cast off at 3:38pm for this.

This is Jack’s Beanstalk Blanket.

It was a name that was suggested by three seperate people after hearing his name (Ninja-Boyfriend, friend Janis, and friend Kevin, for credit’s sake) and I liked the name, so it has been named.

The lace columns are a Vandyke lace pattern, split with columns of stockinette stitch, and a seed stitch edging all around.

Knit with Patons Decor, a soft acrylic and wool blend, making it both machine washable and warm. The final measurements are about 30″ wide by 31″ tall.

Took me a total of two months to knit, smattered with other knit things, here and there. Mostly focusing on the blanket. The pattern is an original design by myself, and I will be publishing it soon.

But first.. I need to finish the painting I’m doing for Jack’s nursery and get this parcel sent off for Christmas. :)