What Cheer, Netop?

I went to allysenthejust's CD release party tonight, which was fun. Also there was a friend (or relative?) of Allysen and the friend's young daughter, and at one point in the evening I loaned her the knitted "dolphin" that I made the other day.

Later I was told that there was a lot of debate at the table she was sitting at as to what it was. The dominant schools of thought were shark and whale. So, close enough either way.

I also started working on the long-abandoned cabled hat project earlier today, and that's coming right along ...

I've been working on a knitted hat for my nephew Ezra's fourth birthday (I know, I know: clothes for presents = worst uncle ever). He's really into the Pixar movie Cars, so I decided to put red cars on it, like Lightning McQueen in the movie.

I still have a bunch of merino (now carefully bagged away) in random colors, so I used the Luggy Bonnet pattern from Weekend Knitting again -- I've used it a couple of times before, so you may recognize it.

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His birthday is on October 13, so hopefully I will see him around then to give it to him. (Or I might give it to his parents before then since I will be out of town on the 13th itself, visiting a previous recipient of a Luggy Bonnet hat with a customized pattern. He will also get H.A. Rey's book about stars.)

The other day I was going through my yarn stash when I found what might perhaps be best described as a fossilized project. As I recall, after some missteps (involving ripping the entire thing out, then knitting one section too long, then ripping out too much, then having to calculate where I was in the pattern) I got sick of it, carefully packed the yarn, pattern, yarn lables, and receipt away, and then completely forgot about it until now. The receipt is dated October 2005, so I must have intended it as a Christmas present for Ezra -- but it'll be way too small for him now, so maybe his baby sister will get it if I don't lose it again. (Baby sister is due to be born sometime around October 10.)

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Anyway, tomorrow I think I will try to figure out where I stand with it and maybe I will start knitting it again.

Or maybe I will make this dolphin.

As I was leaving my apartment I ran into my upstairs neighbor Kasey, so I managed to get this quick picture of her wearing the skirt:



I'm psyched that it fits so well!

I finished the first two rows of hexagons on the skirt for my upstairs neighbor today. Two more rows to go, which hopefully won't take too long ... then I get to try to figure out how to attach the zipper. (Or maybe I will wimp out and make it use buttons instead.)

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So it's coming right along. I was hoping to get more done when I went to the New Wave Cafe earlier, but I left my bag of stitch markers at home, so I couldn't do much, alas! But tomorrow (Wednesday) is SnB, so I hope to get a lot done there -- provided I don't forget any vital tools at home again.

I ran the bag through the wash a bunch of times and here's what I've got now. (I'm including the pre-felting pictures on the right to make it easier to compare what it looks like pre- and post-felting.)

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You can see that the different yarns felted differently, particularly in the handles. Some of the areas still aren't fully felted, particularly the darker portions of the yellow stripe and the brown stripe at the very top, so over the next day or so I may devote some more time to running it through the wash.

You can click on the pictures to see larger versions.

Tonight, at SnB, one of the ends of the circular knitting needles I was using broke off, resulting in me dropping about 40 stitches and not having much to do with the rest of the evening. The immediate result was that I said "fuck".

Me swearing in this way (at least around other people) is uncommon enough that it was the source of a certain amount of glee among the other SnBers, so I swore a few more times for good measure. Later, I dredged up an oath I hadn't used in a while and said 'Land o' Goshen' in reference to something (I don't remember what), which confused everyone. (One person thought I might have said 'Atlantic Ocean', which would be a pretty puzzling thing to say.) So to clear things up: I picked that one up from reading Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath in high school. I guess it's a Biblical phrase.

So, basically, I am a dork, which probably is not news.

In other SnB-related news, the owner of Perkatory (the coffee shop we met in) told us that if our group came back there he would give us 10% off. So, good.

Here are some denim pants I knitted using a pattern from Joelle Hoverson's Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. They're for my sister's second child (who is due in September or October, I believe).

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The yarn is Rowan Denim; I got it on sale at A Stitch Above's going out of business sale. The colors are, um, 'Nashville', I guess, which seems to be the moral equivalent of navy blue, and black. I think I ended up using about 2 1/2 skeins.

I finished this hat at open mike tonight, incorporating suggestions from various people. I think it turned out pretty well.

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They're done. Guess I'll wear them for the show on Sunday (not that anyone will be able to see them).

I finished up sewing the corners together today while watching 'Lost'. I haven't decided whether I'm going to do a final round of blocking or not; I think I might put it through the wash once just to see if that makes it lie a little flatter on its own, and then take it from there.

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