i'm cleaning my room...i swear

see, i have a very specific technique when cleaning my room...it involves shuffling around piles of crap so i feel like i make progress, finding half-finished projects, and finishing them "really fast."

i never said it was efficient, i just said it was a technique. ;)

today, i got distracted by a half finished comfy-coozy i was making valerie...figured i could finish it and give it to her with the rose i made for our anniversary (wow...a fake rose and a beer coozy...ain't i romantic? :P )


the coozy before getting a bottom sewn on



sewing sewing sewing (please ignore the fact that it is 1PM and i am in my poojammies)


inside out coozy, hiding the ends of the yarn


and the coozy in action. hooah!

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alright...enough procrastination...i have a ton of cleaning to do...gotta have everything looking nice and neat for when valerie comes over!

all the yarn everywhere on my floor makes it look like a cat's wet dream in here...

Gratuitous Cute Couple Picture in honor of our anniversary!!!!BWAHAHAHA

she's crafty...

so tomorrow valerie and i will be celebrating 3 months together...
and i am too poor to buy her a gift...being the sentimental fool i am, i would love to give her flowers, but it is too cold to find any growing outside and she doesn't like "plant carcasses" so, when i stumbled across this tutorial for making bead roses, i was thrilled.



the damn thing took me nearly 5 hours to complete...she's going to love it, though!







i didn't have any floral wire for the stem, so i just twisted all the wires from the petals together and wrapped them in green embroidery floss...i used a darker colored green underneath the main color wrapped around a couple of spiky shapes to form "thorns." the leaf is embroidered onto a piece of felt, and has wire inside of it so that it can be shaped...my hands hurt now.

i'm going to go finish watching season 1 of Heroes on netflix.com

bet. job. ever!!!!!!!!

I got a job through a friend of a friend...knitting samples for tigo gifts...i'm so fucking stoked...i have 2 weeks to make 2 baby blankets...wish me luck!



also, it looks like she might be interested in having me design some jewelry for her, too! i'm so stoked!

ok then...if anyone needs me i'll be up all night...knitting.

GLEEEEE!

i found my davy jones pincushion i made!!! so effing happy!!!



he's cuter in real life...started his existance out as part of a doll i was making, but i was too lazy to finish it.

saints sins and stitchmarkers

I am extremely pleased with myself today...spent the morning organizing my stash and cleaning my room. I also stumbled across a medallion given to me by a friend last summer. It depicts St. Clare of Assisi (St. Chiara)...the patron saint of knitting!
i need to figure out something cool to do with this...


please excuse the blurry picture...i took it with my laptop.

also, i came up with a cheap way to make some repurposed stitch markers!

i have stretched ears (size 0) and even though it looks amazingly silly to wear normal earrings in my holes (see below photo for reference :p ), i've hung onto a bunch of dangly earrings various people have given to me for sentimental reasons.



now, i tend to use whatever i have on hand as stitchmarkers...safety pins, bobby pins, bits of thread...but i am getting tired of it! my quest for a better solution led me to my jewelry box, where i came across a handful of my old earrings. with very little modifications to the hooks, they make great stitchmarkers! and now i don't have to go out and spend money on stupid plastic ones!


SCORE! plus, now my knitting is stylish and blingy!

ok...thats it for now...happy tofurkey day!

New beer-cozy/coffee-sleeve/wrist-warmer!

yeah...that name is SO not working for me...so i've named them Comfy-Cozies!
this one is a pattern i designed over the weekend modeled on a candle of mine...i'm going to mass produce these babies as christmas gifts! i think i need to tweak the pattern on this one so that the mug doesn't stretch out quite as wide...i'll upload the pattern as soon as i get access to a scanner, so be prepared!

mixed feelings...

I am saddened to learn that there is already such a thing as Knitting Scouts...however, on the plus side, i already earned 3 badges! yaaaay ^_^

The Macgyver Badge:

The recipient must demonstrate clever use of a non-knitting tool in a knitting-related scenario. For instance, recipient has used paper clips as stitch markers, or successfully whittled and then utilized bamboo skewers as dpns.

The Knitting Whilst Under the Influence Badge:

This applies to both actual knitting under the influence, as well as achieving moments of stunning intellectual clarity about ones knitting under the influence. Presumes talking about knitting whilst under the influence a given.

The Proselytize Knitting Badge:

A requirement for all Knitting Scouts, the recipient must do his or her bit to present knitting in a positive light, whilst at the same time avoiding all references to “hipness”, grandmothers, and yoga.


...cool shit...

Knotty Knitters Meeting

every sunday, a group of like minded individuals (read: knitters who like to drink and smoke too much) meet at a local bar to drink and smoke and knit...it started out as just a couple of us last fall, but is quickly gaining popularity. We call ourselves the Knotty Knitters.

These pictures are from last sunday...we just met for the first time in a few months, so it was pretty fun and laid back. this weekend we are knitting beer cozies! expect lots of pictures...



lauren with what she managed to have me convinced for the first hour
or so was a "cock-cozy"...in actuality? it is going to be coiled up into a
seat cushion.


...gross...




Niki and Lauren...




kat


heidi




we are soooooo silly!


sometimes i hiss at things when they piss me off...


what a tard...

Testing testing one two

Howdy sports fans...you're in the wrong place!! now, knitting fans on the other hand...pull up a nice comfy chair, grab yourself a beer and make yourself at home! you have blindly stumbled upon my little knitting brag book...slash pattern posting area...and general all around knitting rant blog.

ummm...lets get started, shall we?


alrighty then...thanks to the joys of knittinghelp.com, i have found myself completely 100% adicted to intarsia knitting. i've been wanting to try it ever since i found the pattern below...i don't remember when i found it or where it came from, i just know that i saved it ages ago and it's been floating around on my harddrive ever since!


>>click on the pattern to view it full sized<<

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so anyway...i decided to make it into a hat...




^^you can see in this picture the annoying little strands going back and
forth across the back of the project...the internets in all its wisdom
informs me that these are called "floats"...i hate these damn things...




^^i eventually got sick of the floats...they bunch up the design, and get
in the way. so, i strategically cut a bunch of them and tied them
together to prevent unraveling.


almost done!


aaaand the final project. do i look proud? because i am pretty damn proud. after all, i knocked this baby out in a day, a DAY! the plan had been that if i made the hat too small, or it didn't turn out quite right, i would "fix" it to the best of my abilities and give it to my little brother for christmas (he has a tiny head and isn't as picky as i am...sorry, bro!) but it turned out better than i thought, so it is mine! :P


you can see the skullbones better in this one...

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all of this excitement got my knittin fingers itching, so i decided at 2am this morning to make a beer-cozy/coffee-sleeve/wrist-warmer (i have GOT to come up with a catchier name for those...suggestions?) while watching the Postman on AMC...horrible movie...never seen it? don't bother...anyway...i used the smaller skull in the pattern above, and put a little ribbed border along the top and bottom, but in my standard fuck-up-not-planning-ahead fashion, i didn't think to put another row between the image and the border, so where i purled above the skull, rather than having the top of a skullbones head, i got these weird little eyebrow looking stitches...gives him character, i suppose.

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ok then...i guess that's all for now...i'm off to design a beer mug pattern for another one of those cozy-sleeve-warmer things...wish me luck! thanks for reading...