I think the idea of guerilla knitting/crocheting is pretty badass. If ever there were a victimless crime, this would be it. I support any sort of vandalism that beautifies the world, instead of assaulting the eyes.
It’s February. How the heck did that happen?? The world seems to be moving too fast for me these days. I’ve also been lazy about posting (and after I’d started off so well). What have I been up to? Just hanging with family and friends and knitting. Here’s a hat that I made for myself. I am ridiculously proud, especially of the pompom. My mother and Satanski have already put in orders for similarly awesome hats. And if you know anybody with a gigantic head, I accidentally made a slightly massive one first, so that’s up for grabs (pompom optional).
I don’t visit knitting blogs a lot, unless I’m looking at a post related to a specific item or technique. Today, though, I was looking through Ravelry profiles and decided to visit the knitblog maintained by a friend from college because I was fascinated by the post’s title: A Scarf for Haiti. And that’s how I learned about HeartsforHaiti, an Etsy store where craftsters donate all of the items, and all proceeds (minus Etsy and Paypal fees) go to Doctors Without Borders. What a great idea!
A friend of mine had emailed me this morning to suggest that we get together this weekend and knit a spiral scarf, and I always work better with a specific goal/recipient in mind, so now I can make this scarf and donate it to this shop. Also, now I can buy something nice for myself and know that I’m supporting a good cause while doing it. Win all around!
After what seems like years of legal wrangling between Lifetime, The Weinstein Company, and NBC Universal , Project Runway’s first season on Lifetime starts tomorrow. I’m really excited, but aside from briefly looking at the photos and bios of the new contestants, I haven’t tried to find out anything about this season. I want to be surprised, and not to hate any of the contestants until the editors have provided me with a reason. I’m starting a new scarf, so I’ll have something else to focus on if the first episode is as underwhelming as PR season openers usually are.
I am 99% of the way finished with my socks, and I will absolutely NOT have to take them with me on vacation. I’ll be able to start blocking them before I leave for the airport, and I trust my mom enough to send them off after they’re dry. I’m bringing another pair of socks to work on while I’m away, but I’m not sure how much knitting I’ll get around to once I’m off the plane.
I’m going to be suffering at work for a few more hours (hey, I’m happy to have a job, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t find it annoying every now and then), and then I go home to take one more look at my suitcase (why do I feel the need to pack so many shirts? I will not appreciate that when I’m the one hauling that suitcase all over Ireland and the UK), and then I go the airport to make my way across the Atlantic. I’m so stoked!!! I haven’t been on a long-ish vacation since August, and this time I’m going by myself, so I’ll definitely get a chance to recharge my batteries.
I’m bringing my computer because I am a hopeless geek, but I’m not sure that I’ll be posting stuff to this site.
I’ve been really busy for the last couple of days, getting ready for my grand Irish adventure. I’m leaving tomorrow night, so it’s really crunch time. I’m ALMOST finished with these socks, which are coming out well. I’m actually knitting now, so chances seem good that I will not have to finish them and then mail them back from Belfast. All before, my “knitting” consisted of doing a couple of rows while watching a lot of tv, so now I’m actually knitting more than anything else and seeing the results really quickly. If I didn’t have to work right now, I’d probably be finished by 9:30. I have to do as much as I can here, though, because I still have to pack once I get home. Good thing I already finished my laundry!
These Delman shoes are awesome, but I did not buy them! They retail for $195, and were going for $68 (thanks to the always awesome Gilt Group), but I can be honest enough to admit that they were a want, not a need. I’m trying to be strong, but the world is full of lovely things that can be bought! Right now, I’m about to blow over $100 on yarn, but that is always money well spent, and I will definitely use it!
Also, it’s a good thing I finished those booties and gave them to my coworker on Thursday, because his son was born on Friday!
I go away for a few days and Wordpress goes and changes everything…including my avatar, which was formerly a photo of my adorable nephew. Weird. I’m still angry with the Mets right now, and do not prefer to have their logo represent me on Wordpress.
I haven’t been doing too much lately. Except for knitting. I’ve been doing a lot of knitting. And frogging. I’m never so OCD as when I’m knitting, and then I get this perfectionist streak that is completely at odds with the fact that I still don’t pay as much attention as I should to what I’m making. That’s because I need to watch something when I’m knitting.
Recently, I’ve seen 27 Dresses, Enchanted, Step Up (I’m a bit ashamed about that one), and I started Made of Honor, but I find the pratfalls a bit much and haven’t yet resumed from Dempsey’s second face plant in a single scene. I finished up the third and final season of Veronica Mars, and I’ve now moved on to Cupid, which I just learned is on youtube. How awesome. I remember loving that show, but the details are blurry at this point. I’m pleased that it’s as smart and funny as I remember, and that the wardrobe and hair isn’t so dated as to be a total distraction. I’ve also been really into Chuck lately, and it’s gotten so good that I even watch it before Gossip Girl! Heroes is still stupid, but not as single-mindedly moronic as it was earlier in the season, so I’ve resumed watching it on Monday, instead of allowing several episodes to pile up and then watching them all at once.
I’m about to be single single again (as opposed to mostly single), so that should leave me even more time to 1) make socks and 2) not make any of the Christmas presents I intended to knit.
I cannot believe how quickly summer/autumn happened, and that it will be winter in just a couple of weeks.
I took this week off of work to decompress and just relax, and I told myself that today I would either knit or clean. You’d think that would be an obvious choice, but by 11:30 I still hadn’t done anything, so I made myself lunch and then set to cleaning my room. It took several hours, because my books all feel in love and bred it seems like, but I finally saw FLOOR at 3:45. Then, just for the hell of it, I changed my sheets and comforter. My room is never going to be spotless because 1) I’m neat, but not obsessive and 2) I’ve condensed a large part of an entire apartment’s contents into one room.
So I guess now there’s nothing stopping me from working on that blanket. I think I shall have to tell myself that if I don’t finish another color set on the blanket (probably 16 rows at this point), I will not be allowed to go out and play tomorrow. I may cheat a bit, though, since I’m going to a knitting meetup tomorrow, and it only makes sense to bring my major project along. BUT, I will have to do a needle/yarn inventory first, so that I don’t end up buying something I already own.
I don’t often post about knitting on this blog, but I saw something too funny not to share. I just finished making a pair of mittens for my nephew, and the drastic drop in temperature has convinced me that I need to make a pair for myself, too. I wanted to make a pair of convertible mittens, because although traditional mittens are warmer than gloves, they allow for less mobility of the fingers; I would hate to have to pull off a mitten to reach into my bag for something. I was browsing different mittens patterns on Ravelry, and found a reference to “Mittens of the Beast.” I had no idea what that meant, but the name itself is hilarious, so I Googled it and found this blog, which in turn linked to thisgem of a post.
It sounds too stupid to be true, but a Christian knitter saw a pattern for a pair of mittens that included a pocket on top for a Charlie card and wrote a post on the Ravelry forums about how these mittens were for those who had had their skin embedded with RFID chips. She based this incorrect assumption on an unnamed broadcast she claims to have heard that talked specifically about a mittens pattern for those who had been embedded with an RFID chip. One interpretation of the Book of Revelation states that a time will come when people will have to take some form of microchip in order to buy or sell things in this world. This is known as the mark of the beast, and will separate the believers from the hellbait.
Barring how impractical it would be for any municipal transit corp to embed some people with chips when the current crop of plastic cards don’t even work all the time, think about it: why would someone who already had an RFID chip embedded in his or her body need an external pocket in a mitten to somehow speed along the identification process? How could an extra layer of anything between the chip and the sensor be considered as desirable? This is why people should only denigrate technology that they actually understand. This same principle applies to PC users who wander into Mac threads on Engadget. See what I did there?
The thread on the Ravlery forum in which this discussion appeared is still hilarious to read, nearly a year after the fact (you will have to be Ravelry member to read the forum). It’s now closed, but after the first few Reading is Fundamental types agreed with the original poster’s interpretation of the pattern, some cooler heads prevailed and pointed out the exact purpose of the pocket. Of course, idiocy means never having to say you’re sorry, so no genuine apology or expression of remorse followed, although she did admit that she was wrong about this particular heathen pattern. Several people actually pointed out that this kind of thing is why some non-Christians get such a kick out of laughing at illogical, religious Christians, and why evangelicals get such a bad rap.
Anyway, I know that there is a dedicated subset of Christians who live for opportunities to tie the current world to the end of times (DUN DUN DUH!!!!), but these people (and their unbowed descendants) have been wrong for over 150 years, and I’m starting to think they may be trying too hard to connect unrelated things. In order to help them along, I leave them with one bit of advice.The book is called Revelation. I know you’ve been saying it with an extra “s” all these years, mostly because you’ve never read it, but I’m sure that, with practice, you, too can learn the name of your holy book’s final testament. If all else fails, just remember the commercials for 1-800-Mattres: Leave off the last “s” for sinners.
The story behind these mittens amuse me so much that I believe I will be making myself a pair.
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