Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Who drops by your house when you're out, leaving two skeins of yarn on your doorstep? Seriously, who on Earth is that awesome?

My mom's best friend Miriam, that's who.

I'm going to make her a couple of summer hats with the Cascade Fixation she bought me, knit together (for elasticity) with this hand-dyed rayon demonstration of the divine. Still, yarn on
the doorstep. I'm not going to get over that thrill for a while.

In other
news, this last Sunday I talked to the owner of a boutique in town about making stuff to sell there on consignment. She's pricing headbands at $15, and told me to produce a small array of them before the weekend, just in time for the Drunk Yuppie Shoppers' Night (not an official title, of course). I figure that if headbands take me two hours to make apiece, and I get nearly $15 per each one, I'm basically making the soon-to-be-ratified new minimum wage. Which I'm cool with, especially since all the work is done when I'm forced to be in school anyway.
So since then I've come up with a small pile to sell:










































Here's what the headbands look like on (assuming that the purchaser doesn't look as utterly ridiculous in headbands--or orange, for that matter--as I do):


I showed the owner, Liz, one of the turquoise ones and she said, "Ooh, this color...this color is so in this year! ...And orange." (She talks like that, too, with the size increased on words she likes.) So hopefully she'll like what I've got.

I don't know. The pattern is excruciatingly basic, and loads of the same tiny thing is less than creatively stimulating. Sorry for a boring post. I'm just tryin' to *sniff* earn some money for college! Headbands/hats + a job at a landscaping store + giving knitting lessons to two people this summer (much more on that later) ought to at least put a dent in my room and board. :-/

P.S. John Steinbeck is my herooooooo

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Look at that.
Why, it's a hat.

This was my first ever attempt at a cloche-style cap. I commend myself on coming up with the stitch progression. The shape is a success, albeit a little small around the crown. I was getting impatient, because the yarn (cottontots) was a total pain in the ass! I rarely give yarn a bad review; I'm pretty cheap and easily impressed by anything fibrous and long. But this crap pilled everywhere while I was working with it, and it made my left hand ache. If I do use the remainder of the skein, I need to chill out and work with some fatter needles. 100% cotton. Every knitter's enemy.

You can tell it's been 70+ degrees outside; I've got my picnic freckles!

Monday, March 05, 2007

I'm finished with the squares. You hear me? Finished!!
Now all I've got to do is fold it in half, pick up all the stitches along the edge, and seam
.
It's great fun.

In other news, today was the first day in months that it has been warm and bright enough to take dreadfully sun-bleached pictures outside.
This is facing north.











And this half of a so-called mitten is an example of my perfectionism where you'd least expect it. My second attempt at using this happy yarn, it's going to get run over by the frog bus again real soon. The 3x3 rib is too loose this time (first time was 1x1), the stitch pattern is too sloppy, and, frankly, its parallel texture is just not visually complex enough for me. Next time through, expect cables or something.
Hey, I'm not sick of looking at this yarn yet, which is a good sign.