Life, Knitting and the Pursuit of Roller Coasters

Can’t make just one.

Wee tiny socks for the wee tiny sock swap. From left to right yarns are Sunshine Yarn, Lana Grossa, Claudia’s, and Fiesta Baby Boom. Now I just have to decide which one to drop in the envelope to my swap match on Monday. Or maybe I’ll just make a half-dozen more.

Thank you for the wonderful response to the blogiversary post! It’s amazing how a few little links and a teeny bit of shameless self promotion can spawn so many great commenters to come out of the woodwork. It’s by far the most response I’ve had to any one post on the blog to date. There are still a couple weeks to post (I set my drawing date the day after the Harlot is in Ann Arbor not thinking to look at the calendar and realize that that is still another two weeks out, but it’ll give some stragglers a chance to pop over and discover it in the mean time.) I’ve found some great new blogs to read through those comments too.

I haven’t really knit much since I finished up my hat. I signed up for the wee tiny sock swap on YarnMiracle’s blog and have been picking at a teeny sock, and I may pick up another project to pick at here and there in the mean time while we wait for the next round of Sock Madness to start.

Speaking of sock madness, specs for round two were posted today. STR, US1 needles. I used STR the last round for my zombies, but they didn’t specify varigated vs semi-solid this time, so I’m leaning towards using either the Fairgrounds colorway or the Knitty colorway. I’ll have a few more days to sort that out though, it looks like the pattern won’t drop in our inboxes until sometime on April 1st.

Instead of knitting, I’ve been working on getting the apartment back to some level of almost-orderly, and I’ve been experimenting with some advertising stuff behind the scenes on the blog. The site I signed on with seems to draw a lot of webcomics, but there are a handful of crafty advertisers poking around there and it makes me smile a little when they out bid the comics for my little ad spots. I’m trying very hard to keep the ads small and unobtrusive and off to the side or down in the footer. Let me know if they get annoying or out of hand.

I also finally replaced my ancient cell phone. It was falling apart, wouldn’t hold a charge for more than one call, and was making a clicking noise in the background when I talked. So yesterday when the screen display started getting flaky, it was time. My new one is an LG Scoop. It’s nice having a functional phone again and it’s so much newer than the old one that I have all sorts of new gadgets built in that are going to be fun to experiment with. I’ve finally joined the era of the camera phone. It just took me like 3 years to get here.

 And I’ve had another finished dishcloth laying around that’s ready for it’s day in the limelight. This one’s even more abstract than the ferris wheel was, but it should sort of look like steel coaster track.

Click here for the pdf file.

My blogiversary this year is falling today, on Easter. Happy Easter! Whether you celebrate the religious events of this day or you’re all about chocolate bunnies and eggs or it’s just another Sunday, enjoy!

It was today two years ago that I started my blog. I’ve also mentioned once or twice, that I started the blog within a couple weeks of my mom’s worst accident to date. She fell and hit her head and suffered major bleeding around her brain. She also somehow survived the whole thing with minimal side effects. She still has a bunch of medical issues unrelated to that accident, but she’s a fighter and she’s still here and I’m grateful.

Of course, it’s a blogiversary, I have to have a contest. Leave a comment on this post before April 12th and you’ll be eligible. So, what’s worth your comments? Well, for the knitters I have two prizes. Both will win a copy of my Kiss That Frog Mittens pattern plus their choice of two colorways of either Paton’s Classic or Cascade 220 to make a pair. As for the non-knitters, I pretty much expect them to be comprised of my coaster geek friends mostly (and I may figure out an alternate prize if the winner isn’t one of my coaster geek friends). So, the non-knitter prize is a set of one each of the amusement park themed dishcloths that I’ve designed knit in the colors of their choice including the three I haven’t quite gotten around to finishing up yet (a total of 6 knit dishcloths).

I also have a new FO to show off. I suppose it’s my Easter hat since I finished it last night. Shedir from Knitty in the called-for yarn, Rowan Calmer. I love it, it fits pretty well, but its a little too deep for my head. If I make it again, I’ll leave out a cable repeat on the sides. It was a nice not-sock interlude between sock madness rounds. I actually had started it before Christmas, and just picked it up and added a couple rows here and there over the last week or so. Fairly quick for the most part, and really lovely finished. It’s just hard to take photos of the top of my head!

It was in the 40s and sunny yesterday. I swear.

Sock madness. Their first goal this year is to turn all participants into zombies. In the hints we were told to think ’scary’ when selecting yarn. So of course, I found the palest softest pink yarn in my stash to knit this pair up with. Which, through a fluke still works fine because they are zombie socks and the pinks in my Rose Quartz socks that rock is really fleshy. Fleshy yarn paired with the dropped stitch undulating ribbed pattern and zombie theme makes these my brain socks. Or, in all honesty, my Brain Sucking socks. The late nights and lots of knitting time to whip out a pair of socks in ~3 days (when I had to work for two of them) pretty much made me into a complete dolt. But, they’re done now. I’m off to ice my arms for a few days before the round finishes up and we move on to round 2.

Pattern: Zombie Socks, round one pattern for Sock Madness

Needles: US1

Yarn: Socks That Rock Lightweight in Rose Quartz

Pattern received ~ 1pm Thursday, March 13th

Knitting finished ~12:30 am Sunday, March 16th

While I’ve been playing with other stuff this week, I had the scraps from the frog mittens looking at me from the couch, so I whipped up a quick pair of fingerless mitts. I probably still have enough left to do another pair with the stripes reversed. I basically just used the Ravelry pattern browser and found something free that accommodated the yarn weight and the set of dpns I had handy.

FO:  Fingerless Mitts
Pattern: 220 Fingerless Mitts (ravelry link) designer’s blog is here.
Yarn: Leftover Paton’s Classic Merino

It’s that time of year again, ramping up for Sock Madness. I fully expected to be swamped and less able to participate, but due to some work delays and other stuff that’s managed to happen sooner rather than later, I might actually be able to get into the full event again this year. I had so much fun last year, and the enthusiasm in this group is insanely contagious. I just can’t wait to see what all they have in store for us this year, there’s even a pair in laceweight!

I’ve not done too much stash diving in anticipation, but I still have several skeins pre-wound from when I had that monkey-sock-search frenzy before Christmas. I did place a knitpicks order to get a nice new set of pretty sock needles in the full range of sizes and get a second color of shadow laceweight. Of course I had to throw in a couple other yarns for good measure.  If I really wanted to, with that order included, I could likely do all of the socks in the recommended yarns from stash. That’s kind of scary and kind of nice. I love my sock stash.

I’ve also been playing in excel trying to figure out how best to represent the monkey mittens. I have a couple things sketched out, but I haven’t quite graphed up what I want just yet. In the meantime, I’m still playing with dishcloths and fully intend on the amusement park series to include 6 designs before my blogiversary near the end of the month.
I’m also brewing up a little contest for about that time, just haven’t quite sorted out all the details yet.

I suspect spring is going to be crazy around here whether I’m ready or not.

I’m really quite psyched and only a little nervous. Funny, the freebies don’t make me this anxious, but that little innocuous buy button has my nerves a flutter today. I snuck it up on the pattern page last night, linked it up to Ravelry this afternoon, and now am officially announcing it. The Kiss the Frog Mittens pattern is available for sale.

Go check out Jody’s pair  on her blog, she did an awesome job test knitting for me and picked some great colors. Hers turned out really really well and make me all giddy and stuff.

I look forward to seeing all the interpretations of this particular little brain blizzard of mine!