Life, Knitting and the Pursuit of Roller Coasters

I actually posted the pattern on Saturday after reading all the comments, but to make it official…

Ferris Wheel Dishcloth pdf

I’ve also got all my free pdf’s up on Ravelry.

And check out the cool color’s Jody is using for test knitting the frog mittens!

I actually resorted to blocking a dishcloth. It still seems a little bit oval squat and I’m not 100% positive it’s as identifiable as it should be. Plus, it required blocking before it truly took on it’s intended shape. Maybe this one will just be a prototype and I’ll tweak it some more before writing it up. Does it look like a ferris wheel to you? Am I just being too much of a perfectionist over a dishcloth pattern?

A bit of randomness today.

1) I’ve had a membership on wheresgeorge.com for years (at least since ‘03 or ‘04) and every once in a while if I remember that it’s there (like twice a year) I’ll mark up the bills in my wallet and add them to the site. I’d never received any Where’s George marked bills in all the time I’d known about the site. And yet in the last month I’ve had two bills find their way into my wallet. I’m not sure where I got the first one, I just noticed it as I was cleaning out my purse one day and logged it in. The second one I got last Friday in the cafeteria at work and spent again getting dinner on Sunday from a local Chinese place.

2) Those trekking socks I started last month are slowly coming along, I’m working on the second sock now. Random seemed like a good time to photo them and get the project added to Ravelry.

3) Book MeMe… Tandaina and her mom both tagged me for this one.
Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. Find Page 123. Find the first 5 sentences.Post the next three sentences:

I’m sitting next to a bookshelf full of books, so I just grabbed one at random (since it’s a random day). So, from The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank…

“Walk me to the door?” she says to me.

As soon as we’re out on the landing, she says, “Don’t tell me to go easy on him, Nina.” She looks right at me, into my eyes. “He comes flying in here like Supersperm. And we’re all supposed to congratulate him.”

LOL, apparently I chose the right book for an absurdly out of context snippet. I’m not going to tag this one as I think it’s made it’s way through the knit blog world two or three times over, but if you haven’t done it, feel free to consider yourself tagged.

4) This weekend I finished up the most embarrassingly long lingering project (I have other long lingering projects, just none that I’m as embarrassed to admit sat for so long) in my basket. I had a scrap ball-band dishcloth I started way back in July. I got it mostly finished shy of maybe 10 rows and transfered it off the needles to use them for something else. And it sat just like that until Friday night when I picked it back up and finished it. The other issue with this one, since I did each strip in a different color, there were about a million ends to weave in. I like how it came out now that it’s done, and it was a decent use of a few scraps, but that’s far too much effort for a dishcloth.

5) One thing that crossed my mind while brainstorming pattern ideas… it’s hard to come up with a good way to chart and/or dishcloth other carousel animals without it just looking like the silhouette of an impaled animal.

6) Another thing from the brainstorming, it’s also hard to think of other potential animal motifs for other possible split-palm mitten ideas without ending up with an ass in one hand.

7) That doesn’t mean I’m not trying, nor am I restricting myself with those constraints. Although, my mom wants monkey mittens now that I’ve done frogs. I have an idea, I’m just trying to figure out the best way to execute it. She also wants a hat and more doll clothes. As soon as the prospect of potentially making a little money slipped into the picture, she is all over the idea of “helping” me come up with designs now. That’s one thing we’ve always differed on… she’s always looking for a way to support her hobbies financially with the results of the hobbies, I’m a little more cautious stepping into that arena. I tend to withdraw once obligation starts to step in, however, the pattern thing is a little less hands-on and I’m hoping the “obligations” are within reason and won’t detract from the hobby itself.

8 ) I set up a separate Patterns page here and I’ve got the Carousel Horse, Coaster Rider and Inspired Scarf available in pdf form both there and on Ravelry. I still need to go back and add the pdf links to the original posts for the Carousel Horse and the Inspired Scarf though.

9) I have several more free dishcloth patterns in the works. Four of them relate to the amusement park theme of the first two and none feature impaled animals. I’m thinking I may try to work those up and release them one per week leading up to my blogiversary, but I reserve the right to change my mind if it starts feeling too workish. I have some other ideas brewing for other things as well (like those monkey mittens), but with everything getting crazy in March and April at work plus some other things brewing behind the scenes here, dishcloths seem like a safe and easy bet for now.

10) I signed up for the second year of Sock Madness… I’m not as convinced that I’ll get as far as I did last year. I think I’m overloading my March already.

Enough froggie talk for a bit. That process jump started whatever part of my brain it is that dreams some of this stuff up.  I finally figured out how I wanted to execute this particular pattern idea that I’m sure has been brewing in the back of my mind for a while now. I also had a bit of a brainstorm with a friend and came up with a nice list of other designs to attempt down the road, some of which should work up sooner than others.

So as a little work of off-season coaster geekiness, I present my Coaster Rider dishcloth. Whip one up for the enthusiast, park employee or carnie in your life. (If this doesn’t get me openly mocked on ARN&R, nothing will.)

Download the PDF here.

The mittens are all finished and dry from blocking. I absolutely adore them and very well may make another pair for myself.

FO: Kiss That Frog Mittens

This is my own pattern which will be available for sale on this blog (and/or on Ravelry) sometime in the next few weeks.

A blocking preview… all pinned out like this, they remind me of dissecting frogs in school though.

Look for a FO post with better photos this weekend. I should also have the pattern cleaned up enough to send to testers early next week.

I don’t usually post these blog quizzes when I do them, but I couldn’t resist sharing this one borrowed from Tandaina. It’s totally fitting. I’ve spent my whole life fighting the night owl thing and trying to conform and if it weren’t for work, I’d have given up long ago.  I was actually giddy at the prospect of working this last weekend because it was specifically going to be an all-nighter, but we were canceled due to weather.

At the same time we were getting major snow flurries outside last week, I’d been having a nice knitting brain blizzard. I love how some simple task can cascade into a whole flurry of activity and take me from a very passe knitting funk right back into a finger flying obsessive state in a matter of days.

So, the little nudge? I’d had a couple Jo-Ann’s gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, and they had Ott lights at 50% off last week, so I stopped by on Tuesday to spend some gift money. Conveniently they also had Sugar & Cream and Patons Classic wool on sale, so I got one of the nicer table lamps and 9 skeins of yarn. Well, when picking out the Patons, I had a little spark that lead towards a gift idea. I picked up a few colors and headed home to play. I knew what I wanted to make, who I wanted to make them for, and the ideas just sort of snowballed. I spent most of Wednesday evening with excel open charting my idea and tweaking it as I found more and more inspiration. I found a few resources that lead me in the right direction for charting what I wanted the finished outcome to be and I cast on.

During the day at work on Thursday, I kept fluttering back to that spreadsheet and tweaking it more here and there. I changed my mind regarding my color choices, simplified a few things, changed around a couple other ideas, and rushed home to rip out what I’d started and start over. I knit half a mitten Thursday night and finished the first mitten on the train to Chicago on Saturday.

I’ve received permission to ruin Christmas from the recipient, and I’ll probably put out the call for test knitters once I’ve finished this pair and made some more tweaks to the pattern. I’ll also have to look into what it will take to publish-for-sale on my blog (whole new territory there). Also, feel free to assist with brainstorming clever pattern names in the comments, everything I’ve come up with so far is sorta lame.

So, here’s the Christmas-gift-ruining preview, excuse the unblocked quick-and-dirty photos, it was cold outside. My sister-in-law has a plethora of obsessions, but generally anything pink or with frogs is a solid choice. The pink Patons wool jumped out at me and I wanted to play with stranded knitting some more, so these mittens are a pink and green frog love pattern. However, unlike the other critter mittens I’ve seen around the critter is almost a hidden surprise. The back of the hand has the mod circle motif, and each mitten will have half of the frog on the palm. So when the wearer puts her hands together like an open book, she’ll have a frog in her hands.

I didn’t have the right set of needles with me to cast on the second mitten on the train, otherwise I’d likely have a pair to show off already (did I mention? Totally psyched about these mittens). I do have a different pair to show off finished today though, as I also had my Rosy mittens with me on the train and finished up the thumb of the second mitten while watching the Giants win the Superbowl last night.

Rosy Mittens, Pattern: Generic Norwegian Mitten Chart, US 3 needles, Dale Heilo Yarn in a dark magenta color and a natural/khaki color. My gauge was on the tight side. While these do fit, they feel a little small on my hands and once I’ve got a few more pairs (including the froggy ones shown above) under my belt, I may try to find a smaller handed person to give this pair to. Not bad for my first full scale stranded project though.

Oh, yeah… I was in Chicago this weekend. We had our annual off-season Whirlyball get together on Saturday. When all the crazy weather rolled in on Thursday night/Friday morning, I booked the train last minute so I wouldn’t have to drive. It was interesting. I’ve actually never taken the train before. I’ve been on a few subways and obviously more amusement park trains than I can count, but even with an Amtrak station within walking distance of campus while I was in college and the local station here literally across the street from work, I mostly felt it was easier to just drive or fly. Especially when trying to take quick weekend trips. But for these occasional off-season Chicago trips, it was nice to avoid the weather. And it was comfy to just sit with the iPod and knit for the 4 hour trip. Whirlyball was a blast as always and I have the bruises and aches to show for it along with plenty more great memories of a fun get together with great friends.