It’s Furious Balancing

There is no doubt in my mind that this is the best time of year.    A phrase I recently discovered is Winter Finding – the time between the autumnal equinox and the first of November.  The intolerable heat and humidity of the summer is over and we’re running headlong into frost.  Light becomes muted.  The days smell cleaner.  I keep telling myself that I need to get out and photograph the changing leaves, but between doubting my ability as a photographer and the swiftness of the season, I don’t think that will happen.

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams.”

Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”

Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again — and she was a blade of grass.

And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves! They make such a noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.”  –Kahlil Gibran, The Madman

There’s nothing like autumn and its soft decay to bring out the pseudo-gothy Miss Havisham-y part of my personality.

This is the Vintage Velvet scarf I’ve been working on the past two weeks.  I cranked it out in record time — record time for me, in any event.  One of the reasons it went so quickly was because I truly dislike the yarn.  I wanted to be done knitting with it as soon as I possibly could so I wouldn’t have to handle it any longer than I had to.

It’s Muench’s Touch Me, a rayon microfiber and wool blend.  It sheds like a mangy cat, has no stitch definition to speak of and, being chenille, it worms.  While chenille yarn is pretty and plush, it is a bitch to work with — its tendency to worm being the major problem.  I can’t explain exactly why chenille does what it does, but there’s an explanation here.

In a fit of pique, I stayed up until all hours one night last week to finish this scarf and felt it.  I had never before thrown yarn into soapy hot water with such heartfelt abandon.  I was ready to drown this thing.  It was loose and loopy going into the washer, and I was praying that the Felting Gods would work their magic.

They did.

For this pattern, you need to use the yarn it calls for — not any chenille yarn will give you the same effect.   The wool core of the yarn constricts and tightens, and the fluffy rayon bits come together to give the scarf its crushed velvet patina.  A trip through the dryer lifts the nap on the velvet.

Project Notes  – Vintage Velvet

Pattern: “Vintage Velvet” from the book, Scarf Style

Size: After felting – 54 inches by 5 1/2 inches.  Since I stretched and pinned it for the final blocking, there was remarkably little shrinkage.

Yarn: Muench Touch Me, 5 balls, in Slate Blue

Needles: Denise Interchangables, U.S. Size 8.  They are my least slippery needles, which is important when working with chenille.

Mods: None

Other Stuff: I would gladly pay through the snout to buy this yarn in another color for the same project.  However, before that happens, I need must let the horror of my first experience fade.

Copper dragons…are born tricksters and jokesters. They are quite devious and clever, but their intent is purely benign.  They do not seek to harm  ‘lesser’ creatures, but merely wish to impress them with superior intelligence and wit…. When it comes to combat, copper dragons prefer to avoid it.  Rather than fighting openly, they prefer to taunt, humiliate, and tease their opponents until they simply give up and run away…. When forced, however, a copper dragon will fight to the very end, and is an incredibly devious antagonist.  (Source:  Dungeons & Dragons Wikipedia)

I’m a quiet person, for the most part:  Introverted; decidedly not flashy; dressing primarily in black, gray, and shades of blue.  Every now and then, however, I want something outside my comfort zone.  The last time this happened, it was yarn.

Yeah, yeah;  I know.  “Yarn?  You’re really riding the razor’s edge, aren’t you, Laiane?  Yarn?  Big whoop.”

This yarn was different.  This yarn sang to the deepest, darkest corner in my heart.  It was a precious metal, sunlight on gemstones, the color of the treasures of the earth.  It was Alchemy Silk Purse in the Desert Song colorway, and it made me think of dragon scales.

I wanted a lightweight scarf to go with my lightweight leather jacket, and the pattern I chose was perfect.

PROJECT NOTES – Copper Dragon Scarf

Pattern: Dragon Scales Scarf, a free knitting pattern from Heritage Yarns.

Size: After blocking, 6 inches by 42 inches.   I got to block lace for the first time with this project.   I bought lace blocking wires and everything.

Yarn: The aforementioned Alchemy Silk Purse, a 100% silk yarn, slubbed and highly reflective.  My only complaint with silk is that it doesn’t have a lot of “give” to it, so it’s almost like knitting with cotton.  Almost, not quite.  Silk is much sexier.  The silk also presented a blocking challenge to me, since I didn’t want to do my usual wet blocking.  I had read that silk becomes very fragile if you soak it, and I wasn’t taking any chances with this scarf.  I used the blocking wires to stretch the project first, then I sprayed it with water to “set” the stitches.  I did this on the futon in the Cat Room, after carefully covering it with towels to avoid the transfer of cat hair.  I covered the blocked, stretched, wet scarf with a bed sheet.  Cats and lace knitting is An Accident Waiting To Happen.

Needles:  Addi Turbo Lace Needles, 24″ circular, U.S. Size 6 

Mods: None.

Challenges and Stuff: The aforementioned blocking of silk.  My first real lace project.  The Rose Red Beret had lots of what I call “lace elements,” but it wasn’t a super-fiddly charted pattern with fine yarn and lots of yarnovers and ssk’s and k2tog’s and such.  You know – Real Lace.

I’m going to doom myself right now and declare that Lace Knitting is Fun.  Well, taking something that looks like ramen noodles and transforming it with water is the fun part.  The actual knitting part of the equation isn’t so fun since it requires higher standards of perfection on the part of the knitter.   You can’t fudge a few accidental yarnovers and expect your scarf to look like the FO pictures that come with the pattern.

Not too much, anyway.

Well, to tell the truth, it’s not so much writer’s block as it is paying far too much attention to the Presidential Election.  I’ve been hanging out in the Knitters for Obama Ravelry discussion forum, obsessively checking the polls, and generally reading all the political news articles and watching all the political videos — satirical and otherwise –  I’m able to find online.

I’ve been busy, in other words.

I’ve already decided to take the day off from work on Wednesday, November 5th.  I plan on being up for most of the night on the 4th.  I won’t be able to sleep until Obama gives his “thank you” speech.

I do have some Election 2008 knitting projects in the works, but I’m not posting them until they’re done.  You’ll just have to wait until then.  In the meantime, here’s another finished object for your knitting consideration:  Jen’s Chica Scarf.

PROJECT NOTES

Made for: Jen, my manicurist of many years.  Jen’s much more of a friend then a “manicurist.”  I’ve been seeing her a few times a month for the past seven or eight years.  After He Who Buys Large Diamonds and I were engaged, I wanted my hands to look nicer so I could show off The Rock.  Jen is also The Husband’s hair stylist. 

Pattern: Chicabean Scarf by the Kelly Green Rogue.

Size: After blocking – 60 inches by 8 inches.

Yarn: Paton’s Classic Wool Merino in Paprika (approx. 350 yards)

Needles: US size 8, Pony Pearl 20″ circulars

Mods: None.

Challenges: There wasn’t a chart for this pattern, so it went slowly for me.  I’m not an absolute beginner with cables and lace, and I prefer charts over line-by-line instructions.  There are a few spots in the scarf where I fudged some missing or some extra stitches, but the pattern’s complex enough to cover it.  I hope.  Jen, thankfully, doesn’t expect perfection.  She’s known me too long.

Orange really isn’t one of my favorite colors.  I’m drawn to almost all the shades of blue there are, and I’m growing more fond of burgundy and darker greens, but orange just hasn’t done it for me.  I think it’s because if I wear anything with yellow undertones, I look like I have a bad case of jaundice.

This is all a preamble to the many photographs I’ve been taking in the past few days. First up, chrysanthemums:

I’ve been saying every fall for the past six or seven years that I want to put mums in my garden, but I’d never gotten around to it.  One day last week, I got a wild hair to go to Downtown Home and Garden during my lunch hour — it was only a block away, for Pete’s sake — and buy a plant.  The orange-copper flowers are my favorite color for mums.  This one seems to start out with a fresh yellow blossom which changes over time to a darker shade of orange.  Of course, I threw out the plant identification tag when He Who Does Manual Labor Since He Wife is Made of Spun Glass  helped me plant these. 

Next, some knitting WIP’s.

This is the scarf I’m making for my friend, Jen.  I started it in early August as part of my “Help Keep Laiane Relatively Sane During the Summer” program.  Well, I’ve since determined that winter is coming and I need to wrap this one up.  It’s almost 40 inches long now, and I want it to measure 60 inches before blocking.  I’ve once again entered the Knitting Black Hole where I knit and knit and knit and knit for an hour and it measures the same as it did before I picked it up.  The pattern is the Chicabean Scarf from Kelly Green Rogue and the yarn is Paton’s Classic Wool Merino in Paprika (Color 238).

That is the back of my second More Stripes vest by Amy King, and I’m actually following the pattern as written this time around.  I did my first version in only one color of Noro Kureyon, but this is done with two dramatically different colorways.   I know I couldn’t get away with using the bright orange-pink Noro on its own, but I think that the neutral colors help tone it down.  I’ve decided that I’m addicted to steeking.  I get some weird adrenaline rush, I think.  I’m going to do a crocheted steek on this vest so I can truthfully say I did it all on my own.

The last WIP is made with the Alchemy Silk Purse I got at the Lansing Shop Hop.  Like I said, orange usually doesn’t appeal to me, but this yarn yelled at me from across the room.  I think it’s the autumnal colors.  Click for big.

Eventually, this will metamorphsize into a Dragonscale Scarf to go with my leather jacket.  The key word here is eventually.  It might be next autumn.  Working with 100% silk takes patience; I have to slow down my knitting speed to avoid splitting the yarn.  It will be drop dead gorgeous when I’m done, though.

Finally, a gratuitous kitten picture.

Chrissy needs to wear a bright orange collar when we go out in the backyard to nibble grass.  Well, he nibbles grass; I just supervise.  If he doesn’t have his collar on, I can’t find him if he dives into the bushes.

Don’t let the cuteness fool you.  This cat ate a ton of bricks for breakfast; he is very dense and I swear he weighs 20 pounds.  One of his nicknames in our household is “Kissy Lardbutt.”

Welcome to autumn, cats and kittens.  Happy (Belated) Mabon.

Capital Area Yarn Shop Cooperative’s Back-to-School Shop Hop, September 5 – 7, 2008.

I stayed within budget.  That’s all I’m going to say right now.  Pictures.  Thousand Words.  Click for “biggy sized.”  And so on.

Unfortunately, not quite.  September has started off with days in the 90°F range, if not hotter.

I hate the summer with the fierceness of a thousand burning suns.   By the end of August, I’m ready to sell a majority of my possessions and take up reindeer herding.  Or a lighthouse job in Newfoundland.  Or hanging out with the scientists in Antarctica.  I’m not of a scientific bent, but I make a mean cup of coffee.

Autumn means wool.  Wool sweaters, wool vests, wool scarves, wool hats, and all manner of sheepy goodness.

Autumn, this year, also means Election Season.  I’m sure I could offer all sorts of snarky commentary about John McCain and the rumors surrounding his choice of Sarah Palin as a Vice President, but I’d rather concentrate on the good qualities of Sen. Obama.  The man has class.

Well, that and commenting on the Republicans is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.

I’m sure many of you have been thinking, “Laiane, what’s up with that steeked Noro vest?”   Cats and kittens, it is a done deal.  I used the three-day weekend to wind up some projects, and I have Finished Object pictures.  I also have a close-up shot of some kitten toes,

but I digress.

The Steeked Vest.

Pattern:  More Stripes by Amy King, Knitty (Spring 2007).

Yarn:  Noro Kureyon, Color No. 195, approx. 4.5 skeins (approx. 500 yards)

Modifications:  I used only one color of Noro (the pattern calls for two, alternating the stripes), knitting from the bottom up until I divided for the armholes.   I raised the v-neck a considerable amount.  I prefer a tighter fitting vest than the one modeled in the pattern, so I made the smallest size and in a clingier yarn than suggested.

I love it.  I think the blue in this colorway is the most perfect blue imaginable.  I can see myself wearing this frequently this fall/winter.  I want to make another using two Noro colorways like the pattern calls for, one in neutrals and the other in brights.  I need a TV Watching Project, and that sounds like just the task.

I don’t think I posted anything earlier on this next project, except in passing.

Mr. Greenjeans, Now in Teal

Pattern:  Mr. Greenjeans by Amy Swenson, Knitty (Fall 2007)

Yarn:  Cascade 220, Blue Teal Heather, 4 skeins (880 yards)

Modifications: When I first started this sweater, my cables looked awful.  I did the sweater in plain ribbing instead of the alternating ribbing/cables.  Now that my skill with cables is improving, I would make it with cables the next time around.  I used two buttons instead of one, and made the button band wider.  I used single crochet to reinforce the buttonholes and even out the band at the bottom of the sweater.

For the record, buttonholes suck, especially when you’re making an item with slippery metal buttons.

This cardigan was part of the Mr. Greenjeans Knit-a-Long (KAL) for one of my Ravelry groups.  I finished it on the very last day of the KAL.  Considering my poor showing in the Ravelympics, I wanted to make at least one deadline.

I’ll put a picture up of my actually wearing this sweater soon — like when the weather cools off.

The recipient of the Baby Viking Helm was pleased.  The following is a direct copy-paste from her email to me.

I’m not even going to begin trying to explain this to non-gamers.

Textured Woven Valkyrie Helm of Dryness and Agility

RARE MASTERCRAFTED

Required level: 1

Mitigation: 200

Weight: 1.0

Frequency: Mythical

+50 health, +35 power, +15 intelligence, +15 wisdom, +50 agility

+150 vs. poison, disease, divine, heat, magic, and mental

+300 vs. cold

+200 resistance to diaper rash

+50 drool avoidance (applies to self and canine opponents only)

Effects:

• Casts Dispersion of Baby Powder when activated, creating a defensive shield against wetness and blinding all opponents in the area.
• Looks DAMN good.

On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore.

The Viking Baby Hat is now – officially – an FO. A Finished Object. Completed. Done. Stick a fork in it.

My highly cooperative model for this photo shoot is Socks the Cat. He usually sits on the back of our living room sofa, looking out the front window. Our other cats sit up there with him sometimes and watch the world go by. I wonder what our mailman thinks.

Socks is also responsible for all the Led Zeppelin lyrics scattered throughout this post. If you’re totally lost, go check out the Viking Kittens. (WARNING: Plays Led Zeppelin music and a Flash animation.)

We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.

The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde — singing and crying:
Valhalla I am coming!

This was my first FO for Ravelympics 2008. If you’re a knitter on Ravelry, you may have heard about this. The idea is to complete a challenging project, or several challenging projects, during the Beijing Summer Olympics. You couldn’t cast on before the Olympic flame was lit at the opening ceremonies, and you need to finish before the flame is extinguished at the end of the games.

Knitting events were named after “real” Olympic events, and I signed up for Baby Dressage and the Glove Decathlon. We also joined up in teams, either by geographical region or Ravelry Group.  You didn’t have to pick a team to participate, but I did.   I’m a member of Team Obama and Team Michigan.

This is very loosely organized. You can be a member of multiple teams, but you must limit a project to one team only (i.e., I couldn’t count this one baby hat for both Team Obama and Team Michigan.  I had to choose one of them). You are competing only against yourself; you aren’t out to “beat” other knitters. Once you finish your project, you get a bloggy widget thing at the end of the games.  It’s sort of like the Special Olympics – all participants get a medal.

PROJECT NOTES

Ravelympics Team:  Obama

Made for:  A gal in our old EverQuest 2 guild who is expecting her first baby.  I don’t know when she’s due, but it must be soon!  Edited to Add:  Baby Nicolai will make his appearance on or about November 3rd.

Pattern: Baby Viking Hat Kit from Bella Knitting.

Yarn: Karabella Aurora 8, Dark Gray (approx. ¼ ball, 25 yards); Brown (approx. ⅔ ball, 65 yards); and Cream (a teeny, tiny amount; they didn’t send a full ball of yarn with the kit).

Needles: US Size 6, both DPN’s and 16″ circular.

Mods: I made the hat ½ inch shorter (3½” instead of 4″) before beginning the “every other row” decreases.  I started doing the “every row” decreases for the crown about 4 rows earlier than the pattern called for.  I wanted to shorten the length a wee bit.  I saw too many FO pictures where the hat looked more like a stocking cap (or the Pope’s mitre) than a helmet.

Challenges: Sewing on those damned wings was the hardest part. Making 21 bobbles on the same row was the most tedious knitting I’ve done in a long time.  I consider overcoming Bobble Boredom a challenge. My personal preference is No Bobbles Whatsoever On Any Knitted Item, but the hat really needed them to get that certain je ne sais quoi that says “Viking Helmet.”

How soft your fields so green,
Can whisper tales of gore,
of how we calmed the tides of war.
We are your overlords.

My next Ravelympics challenge is the Welig Gloves from Robin Melanson’s Knitting New Mittens & Gloves for Team Michigan.

Those bobbles have got to go.

That should read “Baby Hats and Moose Burgers,” but my mind tends toward the alliterative.

The moose burgers appear in my wee little head courtesy of The Yarn Harlot’s blog post from yesterday.  She and her family are visiting Newfoundland, and I am profoundly jealous.  Curiosity compelled me to look up the average monthly temperatures for St. John’s, Newfoundland and in August – August, mind you – the average daily high temperature is 67 degrees Farenheit.

Sweet Jesus, book me a flight for Newfoundland.  Now.  I knew the Canadians were culturally and spiritually ahead of us when I discovered the existence of poutine.  I am convinced I was born a bit too south and bit too west of Heaven on Earth.  Well, I would still need a high-speed internet connection, but we’re talking lighthouses, sheep, rugged coastline, and french fries with cheese curds and gravy, not to mention the Canadian wonderfulness of curling and Tim Horton’s doughnuts.  Cold weather, carbohydrates, and wool.  Sign me up.

But I digress.

Today’s post is about a current knitting project and some past knitting projects that haven’t made an appearance here yet.  Baby Hats.

Even though I am Child-Free By Choice, I do love knitting up cute little baby hats.  For the most part, they’re fast, Instant Gratification projects.  I’ve made a few Umbilical Cord Hats from Stitch N’ Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook:

the first in red

and the second in cream.

Then there was the hat resurrected from the yarn I tried to use for the Baby Nemesis Jacket:

And then another with cables.

However, my all-time favorite Bebeh Hat, until now, was the Pumpkin Beanie  I modified from Crazy Aunt Purl’s pattern:

Yes, yes, very cute, but none of them have anything over the Viking Baby Hat:

It’s a Work of Art in Progress and my first project for the 2008 Ravelympics, which is yet one more blog post in and of itself.  I’ll write that one up later.  I want to keep knitting.

You know you spend too much time at I Can Has Cheezburger when you start thinking in LOLspeak.  You’d never know I was a Phi Beta Kappa English major, would you?  Well, the title of this post does derive from a Robert Burns’ poem,  so it has a small amount of literary merit.  I’m not claiming much.

My Red Red Rose is actually a handknit beret — Rose Red — designed by Ysolda Teague.  I’m sure she was referencing the fairytale character Rose Red, but my searches on the fairytale didn’t yield much I could work with in a humorous vein.  I mean, the girl marries the brother of the prince bewitched into the form of a bear; her sister, Snow White, gets the prince.  This isn’t the Snow White with the dwarf fetish, although a dwarf does appear in the story, but another Snow White.  Oh, go read the whole thing here.

But anyway.  Rose Red.  Knitting.

This is not the first Ysolda Teague pattern I’ve done, and it most definitely will not be the last.  I love her designs; her patterns are well-written and clear.  Even though there are tons of free patterns on the Internet, I most happily will pay $6.00 to $7.00 for one of Ysolda’s.

I did my first Rose Red in Cascade Cloud 9 yarn in the Chili Pepper colorway.  The Cloud 9 was perfect for this project.  Even though it’s an angora blend, I had very little shedding.  It did shed quite a bit when I had to frog and re-knit a part of it, but not excessively.  It has an understated angora “halo” and the red did not bleed when I wet blocked it. 

However, since it’s red, it means that my pictures simply don’t do it justice.  I think the second photo is the closest to the yarn’s true color.

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My photography is getting a smidge better.  Not phenomenally better.  A smidge.  A tad.  An infinitesimal degree of better-ness.  I’m home from work with stomach issues, so I’m afraid there’s not any photos in natural light today.  It’s also 86°F outside, which is a little warm for a wool-angora beret, no matter how much I adore it.

Adore it I do.  I want seven in different colors so I can wear one each day of the week.  I would use the Cloud 9 all seven times, too.

This is my first finished project with cables, and it’s beautiful.

/sigh

I wish it were snowing.

Steek (stēk) To pierce with a sharp instrument; hence, to stitch; to sew; also, to fix; to fasten.

From a knitter’s point of view, that’s an extremely tepid definition.  It concentrates far too much on the fixing/fastenening/sewing side of things and says far too little about taking scissors and hacking apart an almost-finished sweater.  The Wikipedia entry is more enlightening:

In knitting, steeking is a shortcut used to knit things like sweaters in the round without interruption for openings or sleeves until the end.  After completing a tube, a straight line is cut along the center of a column of stitches in order to make room for an opening…. The steek itself is a bridge of extra stitches in which the cut is made and is usually 6-10 stitches wide.  This technique was developed by the knitters of the Shetland archipelago and is particularly associated with Fair Isle sweaters, although it can be used for solid colors as well, blah, blah, blah.

The magic of knitting is that you can create a garment out of a length of string. The horror of steeking is that you must make a Leap of Faith and cut into the garment, praying all the while that it doesn’t unravel before your eyes.

Steeking is the one technique most likely to cause knitters to self-impale on their own needles.  It is seriously scary stuff.  Worse than turning the heel of a sock.  Worse than p3togtbl with Rowan Kidsilk Haze. Worse than, oh, I don’t know what, but I think that cutting a steek is the one technique most likely to cause a Major Knitting Freak Out.

To tell the truth, it really wasn’t all that bad.  I didn’t even need alcohol or chocolate cake to fortify myself beforehand — just a hot bath.

I think part of the Lack of Panic is because I chose a steek-appropriate yarn for my project.  I’ve been working on a Noro Kureyon striped vest the past few weeks.  The original pattern over on Knitty.com called for alternating two different colorways of Noro, but I fell in love with Colorway 195 (blue, black, olive, gray) and wanted a vest made entirely with that.

Steeking is best done with rougher, stickier wool, and Noro Kureyon is definitely sticky.  I wouldn’t have been so confident with something smoother (like Noro Silk Garden) or a less “rustic” (i.e., more processed) yarn.  The Kureyon, however, is perfect for steeking.

Despite this, I did have The Husband sew in a reinforcing zig-zag on either side of the line of knit stitches to go under the knife scissors.   I have heard of knitters who don’t use sewn or crocheted reinforcements and just cut a naked, unreinforced steek.  I might be crazy, but I’m not that crazy.   I basted a line of red yarn through the stitches to be cut and he obliged me with his l33t sewing skillz.  Click the Pic for “Really Big” Size.

I must apologize for my horrible pictures.  There is something about this colorway that defies a decent shot.  I think the “gray” stripes, which are an amalgam of purple, green, and silver, throw off the color balance feature on my digital camera.  I have not yet been able to take a halfway acceptable photograph of it. 

When it came time to actually take scissors to my knitting — the knitting I had worked on for 3 weeks, the knitting made with my favorite color of Noro Kureyon — I was quite calm.  I’m the sort of person who doesn’t see much sense in making a fuss about inevitabilities.  The vest was knitted; the steek was sewn.  What’s to be gained by wringing my hands and whining about it?

Not much, aside from looking weak and/or foolish.  So I just got ‘er done.

I get to use my nifty Addi Cro-Hook to pick up stitches for the neck and armhole bands once she dries from her wet block.  I should have Finished Object pictures soon.

Permission to look smug?

Every now and then, since I’ve watched the Lord of the Rings movies half a dozen times, I get bits of dialogue stuck in my head.  Gollum’s dialogue usually.  I wonder where this bit came from?

Sam:  What are you up to?  Sneaking off, are we?

Gollum:  Sneaking?  Sneaking?  Fat hobbit is always so polite.  Smeagol shows them secret ways that nobody else could find and they say “sneak.”  Sneak?  Very nice friend.  Oh, yes, my precious.  Very nice, very nice.

Sam:  All right, all right!  You just startled me is all.  What were you doing?

Gollum:  Steeking.  Sneaking.

The cat picture is gratuitous, but I told Kissy he would get some screen time.

Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

I’ve had those two lines of poetry rattling around in my head because I’m feeling quite smug about two new knitting tools I’ve discovered.  “New to me” anyway; they’ve been around a while.

The first will warm the cockles of anyone’s heart — anyone who has ever felt discouraged or apprehensive about those ubiquitous finishing instructions, “Pick up and knit 124 stitches around the neckline.”

That’s an Addi Turbo Cro-Needle — a 32-inch circular needle with a US size 2 crochet hook on one end and a US size 3 needle tip on the other.  I believe that the person who came up with this one should be beatified; I certainly think it’s a miracle.  In my Innernet surfing research, it appears that there was a Sticks & String podcast some 6 months or so ago that mentioned the Cro-Needle, but I found out about it on Ravelry.

Ravelry is also to blame for my next purchase, which arrived on my doorstep yesterday.  I’ve been looking for an organizational solution to the circular needle mess that is currently breeding in a shoebox in my study.  Perhaps if I contain the prurient little buggers in individual self-sealing PVC sleeves (sorted by size) things will settle down.

This was an inexpensive purchase.  A short Innernet shopping search found an equivalent knitting needle organizer for $34.99.  I paid $17.99 for this.  The explanation for the price difference?

Yes, cats and kittens, it’s a fishing tackle organizer.  I am the proud owner of a Bass Pro Shop Extreme Worm Binder. Since it came, I’ve been dying to write a faux review on the Bass Pro Web site raving about how the circular knitting needle mess on my boat is a thing of the past, how well it stands up to a salt-water knitting environment, and does it come in pink?

When I heard of “The Game,” my first thought was of Thomas Tryon’s book The Other.  “The Game” referred to the twins’ ability to psychically project their awareness outside of themselves and into another.  For me, there’s all sorts of malevolent overtones to the phrase.

However, The Game I’m writing about today is wholly different, completely innocuous, and gives me something moderately interesting to post on the blog since I can’t think of a damned thing to write about this morning.   The Game is an Internet Flickr meme that I discovered on Pierre, The Yarn Snob’s blog.

What you do is:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions in the Flickr search feature.
2. Pick an image on the first page of the search results.
3. Copy/paste the image’s URL into the Mosaic Maker, using whatever layout you desire — providing it shows the 12 images.

You’ll wind up with something like this (Click for biggie size.  It looks much better) :

So, here are the questions (with my answers).

1. What is your first name? [edited out for privacy reasons]
2. What is your favorite food? Chocolate
3. What high school did you attend? [edited out for privacy reasons]
4. What is your favorite color? Cobalt blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Michael Kitchen
6. What is your favorite drink? Latte
7. Where would your dream vacation be? Paris
8. What is your favorite dessert? Ice cream
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? What?
10. What do you love most in life? Quiet
11. What is one word you use to describe yourself? Introverted
12. What is your Flickr user name? Laiane (I find it terribly amusing there’s a supermodel out there somewhere who shares my name.)
    

Et voilà.

Here’s another version of The Game where you keyword search (your answer) + sign.  I think I like this one on a more aesthetic level.

There are some fun things you can do with Big Huge Labs and your uploaded photos on Flickr.   I’ve posted a mosaic of my raindrop laden irises, and here’s a mosaic of my yarn pr0n pictures.  Well, my valiant attempt at yarn pr0n pictures.

Ooooo…..shiny.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, cats and kittens.  I’m off to do some knitting.