Go knit stuff.

Nothing like a good heavy dose of knitter's irony to kick off a bout with Faulkner under my AP English teacher's unsympathetic negligence.

This sock, this darling sock, has served as a fine breather from this mess:























Why, oh why, am I simply incapable of picking a cable panel and sticking to it? That's twice, now, that I've changed my mind about the pattern 10% of the way through this design and ripped. I still don't understand the concept of commitment. Even worse, I have had more combatting opinions about bobbles in the past week than I even knew existed.

posted by Sally Sue @ 5:25 PM 3 comments

Here's the real problem: how about the social injustice fueled by mass produced goods? Has no one realized yet that articles of apparel sold in stores set a false standard of beauty for the general garment? Institutions such as the media and retail stores send us the message that, in order to be a beautiful glove, you must be perfectly machine-crafted and have no loose bits of string hanging off that precariously suggest the whole piece may unravel at a single tug.

















I for one, as a natural glove--a naturally beautiful glove, am here today to defy that stereotype. Let's face it: we all have ends, and we're not gonna just sit back and weave them in. Those flawless, wrinkle-free, "finished" gloves portrayed in all the magazine ads were probably airbrushed. The distorted falsities we are fed by pop culture must stop.


P.S. You want a brainful of cliches too? Go to an all-girls' school. Meanwhile, I'm going to cast on for 5874306 new projects and never pick up a crochet hook, ever.

posted by Sally Sue @ 10:07 PM 2 comments

My most recent urgent and time consuming WIP:
(and by time consuming, I mean, like, yesterday and today)


















"Ah," you think, "She's hitching a ride on the bandwagon and making herself a little pair of Jaywalkers."

Close! Guess again.























Whee!

You have no idea how many false starts I had on this glove. I was trying to find an interesting enough stitch pattern that wouldn't get totally swallowed by the haphazard dye job. I think I found the perfect one. The outcome of the pattern is really pleasing, I think, and the simplicity makes it good reading work.
I'm really proud of the shaping on this, especially since I am a glove virgin and have only made my first pair of thumb gussets not two weeks ago (I did it wrong then). The obnoxiously charming colorway (gotta use up those leftovers!) make it all the more exciting to get done.
I mean, check out that finger. It just makes me downright gleeful. My next pair are going to use self-striping yarn, all the way.

Hmm, I never did post a picture of that finished pair of wristwarmers, did I? Here they are:


















It took me an obscene amount of time to take this picture. I even tried balancing the camera on my head for a decent angle; I kid you not. :P

posted by Sally Sue @ 6:35 PM 1 comments

Perhaps a problem with being a Libra rising is that I want to make lots of tiny beautiful things, none of which will be of much use to anybody, but look how pretty!






















Luckily I'm a Gemini sun and know how to multitask. Look at that--muckracking, a brainlessly predictable thriller, homework, and a doily all at once! Before this pink, sweet bit of nothing came about I was working on a very large, more incredibly useless swatch of lace stitches, but that's going in the frog pond.

To contribute to this momentary lace spasm (who wears shawls, honestly? But again, I repeat to myself, look how pretty!) the new Knitpicks catalog came in the mail today... and, I ask myself, how is it that I haven't seen this yet? Most breathtaking lace pieces I see are quickly swallowed by that glimmer of logic, the saving notion that I have never known anyone to wear a shawl, not even my ninety-two-year-old great grandmother, let alone been compelled to don one myself. The Rona Lace Shawl, however, all but made my heart stop. Its intricate perfection is enough to set any logic into flames. I want to knit this. I want to spend a little bit of money and nearly one third of my lifetime following charts and getting frustrated over itty bitty needles and slippery yarn-overs just so that I can have the satisfaction of casting off this beauty, blocking it, taking pictures, and throwing the crumpled garment in to the corner of my closet to collect dust. Ooooh, I want.

posted by Sally Sue @ 2:36 PM 1 comments

The bag felted nicely, and I'm afraid I'm in love with it. The bass clef is actually chocolate brown. I wish the whole thing had pooled the delicious way the top three inches did, but such is life--splotchy stripes are whatever, too.


Here's a top that would have been mine if I'd ever bothered to make a gauge swatch larger than two rows of ten stitches. It's too small for me to wear practically, so right now it's chilling/making a colossal fashion statement on my half-mannequin Felika:


(I don't think "knit core" is copyrighted, since I've seen it several different places. Basically, I stole the term because it's awesome.)













Knitty's Topi, which was a very fast (and very purple) knit. Two days, biaatch!
Modified to have a much shorter brim and some decorative little X's on the sides.

posted by Sally Sue @ 1:41 PM 5 comments