Polgara Knits

As I sat here all freakin’ day waiting for an overnighted delivery (4:30, they showed up–4:30!), I worked on my first amigurumi animal, Aiko the bunny.  It’s been a little frustrating, as the pattern has a couple of mistakes, and the body appears to be half the size of the head, and shaped like a vase, and looks nothing like the picture.  Maybe it’ll all become clear once I’ve stuffed the pieces (no polyfill in the house), but at the moment, I’m looking at it all and wondering if I’ve wasted my day on something that can never work as written.  Poop.

I realize I am way late in finding this gem, as it was originally posted in March of 2006, but now that I’ve found it, I want to make sure I remember where it is:

Needles & hooks: Knitting Blog Drinking Game

So clever!  And so true–lordy knows I’m guilty of more than one of those drinking triggers myself! 

I finished a hat!  Didja see the hat?  I spent the weekend staring at its perfect stitches and bright colors, and wishing it was just a smidgen bigger.  Well, ok, maybe not the whole weekend.  Riding high on the success of my first crocheted hat, I wanted to try something new, something different, and I wanted it right then.  So I grabbed more yarn–Lion’s Jiffy, this time–and flipped through The Happy Hooker for a different pattern, and settled on something with a granny square (can’t remember exactly what it was now).

I made it through one round…and gave up.  Poop.

For one thing, the Jiffy was totally the wrong choice–it was too thick, I couldn’t get the requisite number of stitches into the ring, and it was so tight I couldn’t tell one stitch from another.  Also, I didn’t understand “corner space”.  Now that I’ve googled it, I understand a little more what it is (and I realize now that using something as thick as the Jiffy was probably a bad idea), but I’m still not sure what to do with it.  Do you work stitches in the space like when you’re doing a ring, or into one of the chain stitches?  I don’t believe this was covered in The Happy Hooker.  And finally, “slip stitch to the (whatever) stitch”?  If I’m understanding that correctly, wouldn’t that thicken some of the stitches more than others?  Seriously?

So yes, I gave up.  I’m not permanently in the given up state, though; I prefer to blame my failure on the heat of the weekend, and now that I’m googling techniques (and easier patterns), I’ll try again.  But it sure did deflate the beanie-high a bit on Saturday.  (Not completely, though, ’cause–BEANIE!)

I may be the lamest single gal ever for spending a Friday night practicing my crochet, but regardless, I sit here at my computer wearing my first ever crocheted beanie!  Woot!  Like my first ever knitted beanie, it’s a bit on the snug side, but who cares, it only took me two and a half hours to make!  (Very unlike my knitted hat.)  Oh, and note the ugly–purple with red and white stripes (stash yarn that’s been taking up space).  It’ll probably go to charity at some point, probably one that clothes 10-year-old heads, but for now, it’s My First Ever Crocheted Beanie. 

I can’t decide if today is a good day or a bad day.  On the plus side, a former coworker that I absolutely adore stopped by for a visit today; lunch was yummy (Green bean day at the cafe!  Woot!  Sounds weird, I know, but they make good green beans, trust me!); I finished all my projects this week, so today is slow enough that I was able to peruse one of my new books (more on that later) and catch up on my favorite knitting blogs; and, um, I think that’s it.  On the minus side, there’s the uber-pain in my back that wasn’t there yesterday; my throat has that I’m-getting-sick-and-you-can’t-stop-me feeling; one issue I wanted to handle today can’t be handled, because I don’t have the necessary paperwork with me; another issue is being ignored by an online entity for whom I have no phone number (Can I vague that up a bit?  Probably.); and yes, the whole throat thing sucks enough that I feel it should be mentioned twice.  So you can see my dilemma as I try to decide, is this a good day, or a bad day?  (Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?)

Since the jury is still out, and probably will be until I wake up tomorrow either sick or relieved not to be sick, I’ll move on to the books that arrived from Amazon yesterday: Knit 2 Together and Stitch ‘n Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker.  (New books! Squee!)  My first impression was, Damn, these books are heavy!  I had no idea the K2T book was going to be so dense!  I’ve since leafed through each book cover to cover, and even managed to read a bit (”hooking” is no longer an innocent term just because it refers to crochet!), and I can say that I don’t regret buying either book.  I am glad I only paid $5.50 for the K2T book, as most of the patterns are really not my cup of tea, but I think I might actually make a pair of those slippers (no DPNs required!).  The Happy Hooker, on the other hand, I’m positively gleeful about!  I can’t wait to expand my crochet horizons beyond the Log Cabin blankets I’ve been focussing on.  Crochet is so much quicker than knitting, which is a huge plus for my instant-gratification needs.  And, no DPNs!  I can make all kinds of cute hats (I assume) without DPNs or seams!  Yes, I love this book, and as always, I love Stoller’s writing style, and I can’t wait to try all the techniques beyond the single and double crochet stitches I’ve already mastered.

So bottom line is, when I get home tonight, Knit 2 Together will join my other pattern books on the shelf, and look very pretty there, and I’ll probably take it out every once in awhile when I’m looking for inspiration; and The Happy Hooker and I will be spending some quality time on the couch with a few boxes of yarn while I look for the perfect project to take on.

So maybe not such a bad day after all?

I was surfing Amazon, as I sometimes do when my work projects are stalled until other people get me the stuff I need*, and I found Knit 2 Together: Patterns and Stories for Serious Knitting Fun there, for only $5.50!  Um, what?!  Confused, I looked at the other books on the knitting page, and saw that three of the top five sellers were marked down to under $6!  Sale? Data entry error?  Not sure, but in case you’re looking for some new books, hurry on over to Amazon and check out:

Knit 2 Together for $5.50
Knitting for Peace: Make the World a Better Place One Stitch at a Time for $3.99
Stitch ‘n Bitch Nation for $3.19

*Necessary disclaimer in case my boss is reading this.

I’m ridiculously happy with my new header graphic.  As much as I liked the old one, it was still the generic header that came with the pre-made theme–I didn’t want my laziness for design to prolong the initial launch of the blog, way back when.  Fortunately, my laziness with regard to laundry meant I finally took the time to at least change the header.  Not sure what else I’ll change–so far I like all the presets with the Leone theme. 

In other news, I was in Barnes and Noble last week where I picked up Charmed Knits: Projects for Fans of Harry Potter.  Harry Potter! And knitting patterns!  Two of my favorite things, all wrapped up in one package!  There wasn’t enough squee in the world when I found this little gem.

I haven’t read it cover to cover yet, just flipped through it, but so far I like it.  I’m not so sure I’ll be knitting any of the patterns, though.  My attention span is too short for any of the sweaters; I don’t like DPNs, so the socks and mittens are out; and the needles sizes are so small for most of the patterns–I may have missed it, but so far the largest needles I’ve seen mentioned are nines, yikes!  (ETA:  Wait, no!  Just saw that 13s are used for Ron’s Animal Crackers Hat, page 144.)  The Clock Blanket (page 29) is tempting, though.  And a huge plus can be found on page 141, where the author has included a row-by-row stitch pattern in addition to a chart for the cables on Hermione’s Cabled Hat–books so rarely include the row-by-row breakdown for those of us who are chart-challenged!

So yes, my initial impression is SQUEE!  If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.

I know, it took way too long to get these up, but I finally got around to it, and now, yay! Pictures!  All blankets below were crocheted in the log cabin style featured in Mason-Dixon Knitting.

First is my favorite, Noah’s Buffy Season Two Blanket, so named because that’s what I’ve been watching while I’ve worked on it.  I picked up the yarn two weeks ago at Handmade–five shades of Plymouth Encore, as it’s one of the easiest yarns to work with, has neato bright colors, and is washable.  There are two blues, one (bright) green, one purple and one variegated.  I’m very happy with it so far, I think the colors work together beautifully.  It needs three more sections to be complete (i.e., the same size as Grace’s).

The second is Grace’s Sorcerer’s Stone Blanket (named for the audio book I was listening to while working on it).  While I adore the bright oranges, yellows and pink of this blanket, I think I failed on the execution.  The problems:

1.  I used the same color for two consecutive sections each, which worked great when I only had three colors, but not so much with five.

2.  Each section is made up of nine rows–way too many, it turns out.  Five rows worked so much better with Noah’s blanket.  This problem, mixed with the first problem, meant I ran out of pink when I was only four rows from being finished, requiring me to buy a whole new ball.  Bah.

 3.  I didn’t order the colors very well, and the two oranges that look really similar–but aren’t–ended up too close in the order, which meant switching things up.  I don’t think this mistake hurt as much as the other two, but it offends my own anal-retentive need for order and symmetry.

This blanket will be finished when I finally get around to adding the last four rows of pink (plus a border, of course).  So, very close now.

The final blanket is just a hodgepodge of the leftover yarn from the other two blankets.  No clue how it’ll look, as I’m really not planning it at all; nor how big it’ll be.  I might go out of my way to make it larger, large enough to give it to my aunt for a lap blanket for Christmas.

I’m really enjoying the log cabin styled blanket, and crochet in general.  However, I don’t think I’m spacing my stitches very well when I’m picking up along the edges, hence the weird puckering in all the blankets.  Just when I think I’ve figured it out, I lay it flat and voila! Puckers aplenty!  Fortunately, I don’t think the babies will care.