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December 30, 2004

Come on, Santa, light my fire

Why did they put the wick THERE? (is Santa just happy to see me?)

These are the things you do to amuse yourself when you work in a party store. Look at these fabulous novelty items we sell, and the directions for use:

It takes a whole paragraph to explain how to frighten people with a fake mouse on a string (it's important to remember to keep this trick a secret, because that way people will never figure out that you have a wire attached to the mouse).

Apparently everyone already knows how to install a toilet seat squirter, so no explanation is needed.

Just in case you were wondering, there aren't any directions provided for the fake rubber cat puke. I'll spare you the picture.

Christiane asked for a closeup of my armband tattoo, and I'm happy to oblige.

The design is mine, and the work was done by Trevor at Addictive in London, Ontario, in the summer of 2003.

Posted by jodi at 07:42 PM | Comments (2) | categories:  dumbass : self-absorbtion

December 29, 2004

Rogue report

She fits!

I think I need to get it out of my head that ease=frumpiness and start making some things that aren't so skintight. I like the way this fits, though; I can wear it under my close-fitting jackets, and when I do a cardigan version I'll make that a little bigger.

Since the hood looks like it will be the most fun part, I'm not letting myself start it until both sleeves are done. Here's how far I am:

So close I can taste it. Before I do any more on this today I'm fixing my Cathode. I have to work tonight and I know it will be die toten hosen, so I'll save Rogue's sleeve to work on there (and get paid for it).

I'm going to have enough yarn left over from Rogue for at least half a sweater; I think I'll dye what's left brown, then put it together with this

and make Bonne Marie's ribby cardi. Then hopefully I'll have enough left from both of them to make this!

Posted by jodi at 10:47 AM | Comments (2) | categories:  sticks and string

December 28, 2004

Chapter 37, in which our heroine savours her triumph and is threatened by an enemy well-known to her

Here you go. To prove that I did indeed have Cathode finished in time for Christmas Day, here I am wearing it in front of the water tower in beautiful downtown Huron Park, Ontario (YES, I grew up in an industrial park. Let's not discuss it).

Here are the details: Stefanie Japel's Cathode pattern from Winter 2004 Knitty, worked with recycled (mostly acrylic) boucle yarn (with two strands held together throughout) on a 9mm circular. The ribbing is worked in Dalegarn "Daletta" on 3.75mm needles. I had to make the collar four inches shorter than the pattern called for in order not to run out of yarn; I'm not happy with the way the neck bunches up as a result, but I think if I redo the ribbing along the edge with more stitches it will lie a lot flatter. I also think the whole sweater still looks a little short, so I'll probably add an extra inch or two to the bottom ribbing (I probably should have made the next size up; I think it looks shorter than it is because it's a little tightish and is riding up on my chub). So expect to see some pictures soon of this sweater improved and looking better.

I had to put Rogue on hold for a bit in order to make some socks for my mom; I'm just starting the second sleeve now, and still have the hood to do. I worked on it as much as I could while fulfilling the family holiday obligations, but there's a heavy workload of card-playing expected by my mom's family, and present-opening expected by the others, so it was hard to get a lot done.

I'll leave you with my favourite picture from our holiday visits; here's my little cousin Justine trying to scare me with a very ugly doll.

This doll used to belong to my mother and her sister. It has always been in my grandma's house, and the kids of my generation were all afraid of it. Just look at her abnormally bulbous forehead, and the way her evil eyes bore into you like a maniacal drill bent on destruction. And the way her disgusting hair comes out of her skull in clumps. I always knew that she was waiting for the perfect opportunity to sink her little plastic teeth into my throat.

Well, the next generation of kids in this family love this doll. They have no fear. I suspect they may be biding their time, planning to unleash the fury of the doll on their parents and grown-up cousins when we're least expecting it, lulled into a false sense of security by the narcotic effects of Christmas turkey. But in the meantime, Justine takes every opportunity to stick the nasty little thing in my face, just to watch me jump and get some cheap thrills. It always works.

Posted by jodi at 11:10 AM | Comments (1) | categories:  self-absorbtion : sticks and string

December 24, 2004

The season of getting is upon us

Our friend Mita always does something way cooler than holiday cards. This year she made peace cranes, and look, ours not only has knitting on it, but handknitted socks!

Whatever holiday you're celebrating, I wish you peace.

And beaver.

Posted by jodi at 12:54 PM | Comments (0) | categories:  dumbass

December 23, 2004

Jesus freaks broke my blog

Okay, they didn't really. But you shouldn't delve too deeply into the other pages in that last link I provided yesterday; it's really, really scary (see, now that my blog's fixed I'm getting ballsy and mocking the Jesus freaks again just to see if there are repercussions). I hope nobody thinks I'm ripping on Christians, I'm only ripping on the scary weirdo ones. If you really want to get into the scariness of the Lake Hamilton Bible Camp people, here's a good one: check out what they say about puppets.
(What do you think these people would say about my good friend Sock Monkey?)

So now that my blog's not broken anymore, let me show you the presents we got in the mail.

Whee! Skull 'n' bones polar fleece scarves for me and Peter, plus evil kittycat hair clips for me. Thanks, Krista!

Here's a closeup of the ubercute kitties:

And here's a blurry action shot of Pete's scarf:

Since I love to plug my friends, let me do so one more time: you can get this stylish gear over at pixiefashions.

And I can show some Cathode progress; although there hasn't been that much progress what with all the unravelling and all, she's finally on the right track.

Yesterday we performed some neck surgery:

Then I frogged that bit of collar and added it to the torso, which is now six inches long, like it's supposed to be:

Much better. I'm back in the home stretch now, just ribbing and weaving in ends to go. And when I make my next Cathode, I'm using store bought yarn to avoid all these hassles. But I'm only a week behind schedule; I'll be wearing it on Christmas day, and to prove it I'll take some pictures of me wearing it in my home town, so you know I'm not fooling ya.

Posted by jodi at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | categories:  dumbass : sticks and string

December 22, 2004

Not your regularly scheduled blog entry

Well. We got presents in the mail yesterday (thanks, Krista!) and I was going to show pictures, but Movable Type is being a bitch and not letting me upload them.

So instead I'll give you a little story. Yesterday I read a really disgusting story over here, and thought I'd tell a disgusting story of my own.

Because I couldn't get a tattoo on my birthday, I went and sat in my favourite coffee bar with my knitting for a few hours instead. I overheard Bob the painter who lives upstairs telling this story: seems about a month ago a local woman met a guy, went home with him and gave him a blow job. Sounds very nice so far, eh? She wakes up the next day with horrible sores and boils all over her mouth, goes to the doctor where a few tests are done, and is told that the sores are caused by embalming fluid. Because the guy was having sex with dead people.

So then the girl who works at the bar chimed in that she knew the woman involved (not very well of course, just through friends, is this starting to look like an urban myth to you, too?) and that the guy's parents own a funeral parlour here in town. And that there was a lawsuit, and they settled out of court (which means that the story would not make it into the newspaper; do people always settle out of court in urban myths?). What, no criminal investigation? She got sores on her mouth but there weren't any sores on him? As if.

So I did a little bit of Google searching, trying to find out if any of the websites about urban myths had this story. I found this: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa010699.htm, which is close, and the story I heard is probably a variant of this one.

The scariest thing? When searching ["embalming fluid" mouth sores fellatio] on Google, the only site that came up was this one: http://www.lakehamiltonbiblecamp.com/man/massdm5.htm. Oh, dear Jesus.

Posted by jodi at 11:01 AM | Comments (2) | categories:  dumbass

December 21, 2004

Jesus Murphy, can't we quit picking on the Irish?

I was looking through some old knitting magazines that a co-worker brought in to work, and I found some treasures to share.

Get a load of these stylish separates, knitted in the "traditional Irish manner". Um, honeycomb and moss stitch notwithstanding, I don't really see much in this outfit that's traditionally Irish. Oh yeah, all those poor bloated, drowned fishermen who could only be identified by the patterns in their bellbottom pants. . . and whether they were the traditional fuschia or the traditional purple.

(I'm not Irish. But I work in a party store and so in March I have to sell a lot of cheap plastic products intended for people who want to pretend to be Irish by getting really drunk while wearing some dumbass green plastic hat. Because that's how you can tell someone is Irish, right? It seems like the only people it's still okay to make fun of anymore are dwarves, fat people and the Irish. How come the rest of the world doesn't have a holiday where they dress up and pretend to be North American by acting crass and bigoted? I'm just sayin'. . . )

Anyway, yes, I photocopied the pattern too and no, I'm not going to knit these. But if anyone else is brave enough to admit they want to make them, I'll be happy to share. But I get to mock you.

I'm sure you're all asking, what happened to Cathode? Well, I had to rip out the bottom ribbing because it was too tight. Not too small for me, but too tight in relation to the main colour section, making it look like a poofy 80s sweater. So here's what I'm going to do: sacrifice about three or four inches of the collar in order to get some more yarn for the body. So it won't be quite as luxurious, but I won't look as stumpy. I'll also knit the bottom ribbing on a slightly larger needle. Too bad I already did the collar ribbing and I had to rip that out too.

I promise I'll have pictures in a few days. And I'll be wearing it home for (seasonal holiday family obligations), and it's going to look hot hott hottt.

We don't really do any holiday decorating in our household; here is my only concession to the season, and I suspect even this one decoration bugs Peter a little:

I just can't see the point in putting tacky crap all over the house and then taking it all down again, when I'm not Christian and it's not my holiday (and you can see from the picture that there is enough crap all over our house without adding any tinsel and reindeer). So this is it, a ribbon to put our paltry amount of seasonal holiday cards up on. And most of them are actually graduation and birthday cards for me; the three Christmas cards we have are from the realtor who helped us find our house, an old former chum that I haven't spoken to in fourteen years, and Kay (a lovely Irish lass who wouldn't be caught dead in a purple knitted pantsuit).

Posted by jodi at 01:45 PM | Comments (1) | categories:  dumbass

December 20, 2004

And you shall know us by the trail of socks

I came home this afternoon and was greeted by this:

I know when I started this blog I said that I wouldn't talk about my cats, but those of you who know me well won't be surprised to hear that Cathode didn't get finished in time for Saturday (I've had a few more setbacks, but it'll all be okay), and since I hate blogging without pictures I'm showing you this instead.

So let me tell you a story. Benny and Pickle don't get out much and as a result they're a bit on the corpulent side. Last summer, in the interest of their health, I decided to put them on a diet. As soon as I started rationing the food, Benny got a little crazy and started performing ritualistic moving around of laundry.

(Okay, a little further background is required here: years ago, Pickle had his own ball of yarn that he would carry around and bring to me, and because I thought it was funny and cute I would reward him for it. When it became a nightly ritual of him waiting until we had been in bed for ten minutes then bringing the yarn ball into the bedroom, shouting his fool head off the whole time, we threw his yarn in the garbage and started training him that he could get love without having to perform for it. He switched to bringing me my knitting until I started hiding it, then anything I had knitted, then finally he gave it up, but they both still have this idea that they can please me with woolen stuff.)

So when the diet started, Benny started bringing socks down from the laundry pile in the bedroom and dropping them near me then standing at the food dish. She has even brought my sweaters downstairs, and we've caught her dragging towels out of our bedroom a couple of times. There was also a matched pair of striped socks laid out neatly on the dining room floor when we came in today, but I picked them up before I thought to take a picture, then found the trail of dead on the stairs when I was going to put the others away.

If anyone knows how to stop this kind of behaviour, I'm all for trying new things. Scolding doesn't work, and it's too cold to keep the bedroom door shut right now.

Other reasons why you should have your camera ready at all times: today we drove past a transport truck that said "show chickens inside" on the back. What the hell does that mean?

Posted by jodi at 04:33 PM | Comments (4) | categories:  crazy cat lady

December 16, 2004

Thirty-three and sexier than ever

If I do say so myself.

In honour of my 33rd birthday, I'm wearing my sweet sixteen underpants today. That's right, I'm wearing underpants I've had since I was sixteen years old. Sorry, no picture, my parents read this blog sometimes. They're cute pants, black with flowers, but they're a little threadbare and don't quite cover as much arse as they used to. But hey, it's a long way from 16 to 33, at least they still fit.

I should have been under the needle right now, but the birthday tattoo has had to be postponed, because qpaukl messed up his back so badly that he can't sit bent over me for that long without collapsing. Hopefully we'll be able to do it next week. So instead I'm working on Cathode, putting the ribbed edging on the neck. Then tonight, I'll be pigging out on Ethiopian food at my favourite restaurant (I won't be wearing a new sweater, though). I might take one of Rogue's sleeves to work on while we wait for our food, depending on how pissy that makes Peter. We have an ongoing argument about knitting in public; he thinks it's antisocial. Obviously, I disagree.

Here's a picture of my neck decreases:

Pretty snazzy,huh?

Posted by jodi at 03:26 PM | Comments (6) | categories:  self-absorbtion : sticks and string

December 15, 2004

This sweater makes my neck feel short

I'm making progress on Cathode.

I ran out of yarn when the body was four inches long (it's supposed to be six). I literally had NO yarn left, and even had to go fishing in the trash can for a tiny piece in order to finish the last few stitches in my round. So I just switched to the black right there and started ribbing; I think it will look okay, because I am a lot shorter than Stefanie and I have a short torso, so hopefully it will still look hot hot hot and not make me look like a football player.

These are not colours I wear. I wanted to show a picture of the four different yarns I used but, seriously, I didn't even have enough left over to photograph little scraps on the table. They are all boucle, probably mostly acrylic, one strand of rust colour, one teal (yuck!), one slate blue (the only one of these colours I actually like) and one multicolour that has all of the above plus purple (eeew). Here is a close up of the colour mix in the fabric:

The sweater is made up of hundreds of short, short pieces. I'm trying hard not to think of all the ends I'll be weaving in on Friday night in order to wear this on Saturday.

Posted by jodi at 09:50 PM | Comments (1) | categories:  sticks and string

December 14, 2004

Happy birthday to Rob

Here is a picture of me with my dear friend Rob, waaaaay back
before we both gave up the dorky clothes and chopped off all
that hair. I had a major crush on him back then. (can you blame
me? look at those legs!)

Ten things about Rob:

1. Rob turns 35 today. Our birthdays are two years and two days apart. When he turned 31 and I turned 29, we had a "Rob and Jodi are 30" party on the day between our birthdays. So tomorrow, Rob and Jodi are 34!

2. Our cats are sisters, born 11 years ago in my bed. He's got the pretty sister, I've got the dumpy one.

3. Rob makes all the girls tremble and the boys swoon.

4. No matter what kind of grotty apartment he's living in, Rob always manages to have the classiest bachelor pad going.

5. Rob is the kind of friend who will steal seeds from other people's gardens and send them to you in the mail.

6. Rob learned to knit socks because I was into knitting socks. His first socks were purple, and way too big.

7. When I tried to learn to dance because he dances, he never gave up trying to teach me, even though it's hopeless.

8. A pink velvet doublet becomes him like no other.

9. Rob is one of the kindest, most generous and most beautiful people I know.

10. I still have a crush on him.

Posted by jodi at 08:23 AM | Comments (3) | categories:  sugar shock

December 12, 2004

First snow day!

I know, I know, we're probably the last city in Canada to get snow, but still I'm excited. Too bad I stopped working on my mittens here,

in order to concentrate on Rogue and Cathode (Rogue is up to the neck and Cathode, after TWO f***ups that made me have to rip back to the collar, is back down to the armpits). Alas, there's not really enough mitten here to keep my hands warm. Ah well. My birthday is on Thursday, so I know this snow won't last (I haven't had birthday snow since about 1979).

A note to Mariah-knitters: there was an error in chart "c" (thanks, Dana, for pointing it out to me!). The chart was fixed and went up on Knitty last night, so if you already printed out the pattern you'll need to make another copy of the chart. And if anyone spots any other mistakes, please let me know.

Posted by jodi at 04:08 PM | Comments (1) | categories:  sticks and string

December 10, 2004

Heavy petting

First of all, let me just say that this

has totally made my week. Thanks to Eklectika for starting this, and for making such a great button for it (and since I'm always happy to plug my friends, the ubercute skull 'n' bones hair clip comes from pixie fashions; tell her I sent you!). And thanks so much to everyone who wrote to me about the sweater; getting published for the first time was pretty exciting, but deep down I kind of didn't expect that people would really want to knit one (my life is a constant battleground between low self-esteem and raging egomania, although the egomania *usually* comes out slightly ahead). What with the grad show last week and then Knitty coming out right after, I've been getting the ego-stroking of my life, and I like it too much.

If I wasn't such a two-timing slut, Rogue might be keeping me warm right now (but as it is, she's only been keeping my lap warm). I've been working on Cathode and Rogue at the same time, while taking breaks once in a while to work a few rounds of ribbing on the skirt.

Cathode is a really quick knit, but I had a little setback last night and had to rip: I had reached the end of the raglan shaping and put the whole thing on waste yarn to try it on, only to find that while it was wide enough to fit around my body, the yoke didn't reach all the way down to my armpits! My row gauge was off by about a third; shame on me for being a half-arsed swatcher. So I've ripped back to the collar and now I'll have to do my increases every third round instead of every second. Here's a picture of her collar:

It's four different boucle yarns, worked with two strands together and alternating the colours. The only drawback to using this yarn: can you see all the little ends sticking out all over the place? This yarn was given to me about ten years ago, the leftovers from a blanket that a co-worker of mine wove. I made it into a striped t-shirt, then didn't like the fit, ripped it out, and made the boxy striped pullover you saw in pieces on the floor a few days ago. So this is the second time it's been ripped, and there were tons of short pieces from all those stripes; it's covered in knots! I want to have this finished to wear out to dinner for my birthday next week, and getting the sweater done will be no problem, but I don't know how long it will take me to weave in all those ends. Eeek.

I think the colours are going to look great though, so hopefully dealing with the knots will be worth it. They're not colours I normally wear, but with the black borders to set it off, it will look fabulous on me, I'm sure.

Rogue's back is finished, and I'm just about to start the cabling for the front of the neck. This one is a quick knit too, so I expect to be wearing both sweaters home for the (insert chosen religious festival here) break.

I haven't been able to bring myself to work in the studio since the grad show; I've really felt like I needed a bit of a break from it (also, I'm not doing any more printing until the intro print students have had their final crits, because there aren't many presses and I don't want to take away any of their printing time). Adele, one of my advisers, asked me the other day if I was feeling down at all, now that it's over. I said it was a kind of euphoric depression; a mix of relief and regret. Anyway, it's only an undergraduate degree, and I'm eager to get on to the next thing. I'm a little sad, though, to be having my last meetings with Daniel and Adele next week.

And just because I like to show lots of pictures, here's another.

This is going to be my birthday tattoo, which if all goes as planned I will be getting next Thursday. It's from folio 124 recto of the Book of Kells, the same page from which I adapted the pattern for Mariah's sleeves.

Posted by jodi at 10:39 AM | Comments (4) | categories:  self-absorbtion : sticks and string

December 07, 2004

A little piece on the side never hurt anyone

Well. Rogue and I had our first little disagreement last night. . .I had cast off for the armholes and knit up about half of the back portion when I realized that my gauge looked different on the flat knitting than on the knitting in the round. I did swatch for both (I cut off all those ends of yarn to swatch in the round, even though I consider it a waste of yarn, out of respect for Rogue's designer, who is a way smarter knitter than me), and found that my gauge was the same in the round on a 4.5mm circular and flat on 5mm straights. Even so, the portion of knitting on the straight needles was clearly looser. SO, I had to rip out and continue knitting flat on the 4.5mm circ instead.

Since Rogue tricked me with the gauge thing, I felt the need to get passive aggressive with her. I dug out this old beast, the last remnant of the days when I was an enthusiastic young knitter who knew squat about shaping, drape or stretch, and started unravelling it.

Then I swatched for Cathode.

Is this a mere dalliance? Hard to say. It's easy to start something and then drop it like a hot potato when it's from recycled stash yarn; there's really no sense of commitment there. But then, when I was in the yarn store today buying something else, somehow this wound up in my bag.

Don't you think this would be perfect for Cathode's contrast ribbing?

Posted by jodi at 05:11 PM | Comments (0) | categories:  sticks and string

December 06, 2004

Up to my armpits in glorious red stuff*

Psst. . .Winter Knitty is up! And this is my first time published, so I'll wait here while you go check out my pattern right now.

I'm dying to start Cathode right away, but Rogue is chugging along so nicely that I'm not sure I can push her aside just yet. When our relationship descends into the Seventh Circle of Sleeve Hell then maybe Cathode and me can have a little talk. Dinner, maybe, a few drinks. One careless night of passion.

How's Rogue coming, you ask? Well, as promised, I haven't been showing boring pictures of every inch of progress, but today she's

finished up to the armholes! She opted to pose in the potted plants instead of the cold, wet garden.

Now. I promise, no more pictures until I'm knitting the hood. If I make it that far; I may be showing you a finished Cathode first.

Just so as not to have you think that I took a picture of those works in progress and then shoved them back into the chest of drawers and forgot about them (okay, I did shove them back but they're still on my mind, honest) I put this skirt on waste yarn and tried it on.

I've learned the hard way, repeatedly, not to assume that I know what I'm doing and that things are going to fit. I'm trying to train myself, when designing on the fly, to always try things on. So now I know that I'm about four or five inches from being done (I guess that sliver of kittycat underpants showing means this is no longer a family blog; good thing my Grandma doesn't have internet access). I think I'll do some dramatic decreasing in the next row, then switch to a 2 x 2 rib for a nice deep waistband. If I could just put Rogue down, this could be done tonight, not that it's warm enough to wear it. The effect of the generous amount of thigh exposure would be kind of lost with thick winter tights, I'm thinking.

Believe it or not, since I decided to stay home today, I'm NOT going to devote my day to knitting in front of the computer while watching my music downloading program in action (uh, this would be how I spent my whole weekend). Instead I'm going to do some real work, filling out online grad school applications (while knitting and downloading music, duh).

So far, these are the schools I'm applying to: in Canada, NSCAD (Halifax), maybe Concordia (Montreal). In the States, the University of Georgia (Athens), the U of Louisiana (Baton Rouge) and the U of Wisconsin (Madison). I'm starting to think, though, that maybe that's not enough. I want to go to the best school, but I have to remember that there's a hotshot like me in every printmaking department on the continent, and they'll all be my competition for these places. On the one hand, I'd rather wait an extra year or two for the right school to want me rather than settle, but if I only apply to the very best then I'm setting myself up for waiting, hmm? So, I don't know what to do. I guess for now I'll just work on applying to these places, then talk it over with Peter later.

*better than being up to my armpits in not-so-glorious pig manure. Once was enough.

Posted by jodi at 12:28 PM | Comments (12) | categories:  school : sticks and string

December 02, 2004

If you've got a bandwagon, I wanna be on it

After creeping into the school gallery early to take the Day Without Art drapery from yesterday down off the artwork, I took the whole day off from thinking about art and dug a little into my stash of unfinished knitting.

finish us!

These here are my top priorities. Clockwise from top left:

1) a long cotton skirt with a cable up the front. I stopped working on it around July.

2) a sassy red cotton skirt with a deep crochet openwork hem and a plain jane stockinette top. This has already been finished and ripped out once, and was abandoned when almost done. Typical of me.

3) the Must Have cardigan in orange lambswool. Started on summer vacation then dropped like a hot potato when I got an exciting design project in my head, it doesn't even have a full back yet.

4) Rogue, in mystery wool, which really shouldn't be included here since I only started it yesterday, but right now Rogue and I are in the giddy flush of new romance, and I can't bring myself to prioritize any of these others above her. Give us time, all new wool relationships sour eventually (usually around the seaming stage, if the rocky second sleeve period doesn't do you in). But for now, I love Rogue so much that last night I forced Peter to admire all three inches of her and tell me how lovely her pocket was (it was all I could do not to invite him to stroke it).

5) a cotton top down raglan cap-sleeve t-shirt, a la Glampyre. This is cotton recycled from a sweater that I dyed before unraveling so it would be uneven like that. It took me three dyebaths to get this boring olive colour. I think I'm going to duplicate stitch a black star on the front, like my star tattoo.

6) Jenna's funnel top, also started on vacation, didn't get very far (I think I worked on it for about two hours). I really want it for wearing under stuff before spring, though. When I get to the armhole bind-off I'm switching to black; I love me some lime green, but not too close to my face, please.
The funnel top is Stahl Portofino, all the rest are recycled yarn, meaning it is torture to work on the cotton ones because cotton from commercial sweaters isn't spun and splits like crazy. I won't be recycling anything but wool from now on but I still have a big stash of cotton to get through.

There's also a blue openwork dress that's kind of a high priority, but I finished the whole thing already then decided to use a different stitch and knit it sideways instead, so I don't want to show a picture because someone will say it looks fine the way it is and that I am too obsessive, I should just leave it. I just think it could be better, that's all.

I won't be showing too many progress photos of Rogue or the Must Have cardigan, because although they're both beautiful sweaters, most of the cool bloggers have already made them ages ago, so everyone's sick of seeing them. I promise I won't show Rogue until she's at least to the armholes, and the Must Have not until at least the knitting part is done.

So: after getting all this stuff out, do you think I worked on any of it? Did I even spend any quality time with my newest love, Rogue? Hell, no!

Since I haven't been allowing myself any knitting in the last 3 months while getting ready for my grad show (a wire dress doesn't count, I mean knitting I can actually WEAR, that doesn't shred my hands up), I've been living vicariously through the knitting of others. It seems there's some obsessive behaviour regarding mittens going on, and it made me realize that I am currently mitten-less and it's cold here; I want mittens like Stephanie's. I don't have any of those great mitten books (or a desire to haul my lazy arse to the library right now, thanks anyway) so I dug out my copy of Nancy Bush's Folk Socks instead. Although I love this book, I've only ever made one pair of socks from it: the Mamluke socks. So rather than branch out at all I decided to make mittens with all of the pattern elements of the Mamluke socks, plus Estonian braids (a disgraceful mixing of cultural traditions you say? Oh well. I'm a bit of a slut that way).

Here's my cuff, with braids (I learned that technique today!) and the "Allah" pattern from the socks. Oh, those tiny, tiny dpns, they've been languishing in the needle jar for too long. My hands get too hot in mittens, but too cold without them, so I need mittens that are sort of thin. The black yarn here is a Value Village score that I think is a mohair/wool blend, and the red is an angora blend unravelled from a secondhand sweater (did I mention what a cheapskate I am?). The yarns are both really fuzzy; I hope they don't felt into a ball the first time I wear the mittens out. Because then they will be too warm.

I think these patterns will work well in red and black, though. I'm just trying to ignore the fact that my jacket is green.

I'm such a fickle lover though, I don't know how long I'll be able to stay with these mittens. I had a little browse through the winter Knitty patterns (apparently designers get to have an early peek! a perk I hadn't anticipated) and there are a lot of great things in there; I already want to start Stefanie Japel's design before the issue even comes out. Only the lack of good enough yarn in the stash stops me.

Posted by jodi at 04:39 PM | Comments (0) | categories:  sticks and string