School craziness

I'm sorry that I haven't posted anything in a little while. As you may or may not know, school has begun, and with it all the fun little time-sucks. I'm teaching three tutorials a week for the first-year astronomy course, the first of which were this week. I'm also attempting to finish up my summer research project since my defense is next week, while getting together my grant applications, and attempting to help organize a massive astronomy event, which will take place the weekend after next. For some reason, I also volunteered for two jobs for the students' associate (webmaster and public tour director)... Needless to say, I haven't been avoiding the blog because of a lack of things to talk about.

I haven't been idle on the craft front either. I'm almost done the second boyfriend sock, and I've been working on a second granny square blanket, this time with that fluffy green and white yarn that I just can't seem to get rid of. I've also started my Christmas crafting, but I won't talk too much about that until after the holidays when I can show stuff off. You never know who might be watching and I don't want to ruin the surprise! *Looks around all paranoid-like*

At any rate, I have a camera full of pictures just waiting to be uploaded, and after the craziness has slowed down a bit, I'll write lots and lots of entries and post lots of pictures and everything will be wonderful!

And now a random picture of a spider I took in L-ville when I was visiting a month ago!

A few finished things...

I'm not really one for the type of knitting that some would call "the new yoga", that is, knitting simple and repetitive things for relaxation. My favourite type of projects are those where I learn a new technique, or where I have to give a little bit of my attention to it. I also like projects that are out of the ordinary or that incorporate some sort of clever construction. That's why I liked working on the following two projects: because they taught me new techniques and yielded a hilarious result. (The second one might not be appropriate for work. Not that you should ever be looking at blogs at work... you bad bad people.)

First of all, there's Celine (the Diva Squid) who has been know to have her way with Strong Bad. It's the Skylla design by Dale Hwang from the Anticraft book. It was especially interesting because it starts off with a back and forth double-knitting design, which produced a little pouch, and then when the decreases on the head do-hickeys is finished, you put it on double-pointed needles and work it in the round. There's also some interesting i-cord work for the tentacles, and some fairly complicated sewing for the lining (which I had to do twice because I cut the wrong size of fabric the first time). I'm very happy with the result!







Secondly, just for the hell of it, I decided to try out the Knitted Boob pattern by by Marte Fagervik from Shhh! I'm counting! It's pretty damn awesome as well. Besides the fact that it's a boob (teehee!), it also incorporates some previously unknown techniques such as the provisional cast-on and short-row shaping (unless you count the heel of that sock). It turned out pretty well too, except maybe if I were to make it again, I would use wool or acrylic instead of cotton because the fabric wasn't as tight as I'd want.





Thirdly, I cheated a bit and worked on something that was super simple and mindless... Though the real purpose was just to use up some yarn. It's a 1x1 ribbed scarf with alternating colours every two rows. It was really easy, but I added a bit of interest to it because I put fringes on it, which I had never done before.



And finally, since I needed somewhere to keep all my notions, I quickly crocheted myself a little baggie. It's more or less from the Crocheted Notions Bag by Pam Grushkin (Ravelry link), though I started following the pattern and then abandoned it because it was just too simple to need a pattern. I guess it's good for beginners, except for the mistakes... Anyway, I'm happy with the bag, and I got to use up the rest of the yarn from Celine.



Next on the hooks and needles will be Christmas presents! Hurray!

New toys!

The swift has arrived! (And quite swiftly, I might add... har har!) My parents brought it along with them when they drove into town to move my brother in. Thank you, parents! It works beautifully, I might add. Thank you, Stevie! I've already wound one ball with it, and I plan to use it to wind many more. Here it is in all its fantasticalness:



And here are some close-ups:





And just because I'm THAT nerdy, here's a video of the swift in action...



The end product is this beautifully and efficiently wound ball. I thought about getting a ball winder, but I think I'm just as fast doing it by hand...



Since the title of this post is "new toys" (in the plural), I'm not just going to leave it at that. I recently got my first (and definitely not last) package from KnitPicks. The first goodies in the package were two books:



My favourite is the crocheted edgings. It's just so inspiring... I want to figure out how to use as many of the trims and edgings as possible in the next projects I make. The 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders is good too, with tons and tons of projects. There are some really nice lace patterns, and a few baby things that I'd like to make. There are definitely some duds in there too, but when there are that many patterns in one book, I don't really have the right to complain.

I also got this amazing, world-shattering device that will ensure that I will never get stabbed by those tiny little double-pointed needles ever again when reaching into my bag.



So simple, yet so effective! I wish I'd had one of these ages ago.

The Knitting vs. Crochet Rant

What's up with that? Why is it a versus thing? Having done both crafts, I wouldn't say that one is better than the other. Both have their pros and cons. I wouldn't want to make a knitted bag if it has to be very sturdy, but I wouldn't want to make a luxurious sweater with crochet (too expensive! Crochet takes up three times as much yarn as knitting). There are claims that crochet is easier than knitting (though some of the knitters in my knitting group would disagree), and others say that crocheted items don't look as nice. I'd have to disagree on both fronts (though I do still find knitting much scarier than crocheting because of the risk of dropping stitches). In some ways knitting is easier because you don't have to worry about where to put your needle to make the next stitch... the loop is right there on the needle. And anyone who claims that the finished product of crochet doesn't look as nice obviously hasn't seen some of the fabulous crocheted lace out there.

Anyway, the point is that neither craft is the better one. Why is it that it bugs me when the uninitiated confuse the two crafts then? When I was just a crocheter, it used to bug me a LOT when someone would say, "What are you knitting?" I mean, obviously I wasn't using two needles, so how could they think I was knitting. I guess most non-yarncrafters see yarn and something pointy in your hand and just assume it's knitting. Then again, I was working on boyfriend sock #2 on the subway the other day and a guy accidentally bumped me and said, "I'm sorry. I don't want to mess up your crochet." I didn't bother correcting him, but it was weird that he would mistake knitting for crocheting when it seems to me that knitting is the more well-known craft. Or maybe it's just that people keep mistaking crochet for knitting, and so people over-compensate... sort of like the I vs me thing (e.g. "Did you see Ashley and I sitting in the back row?"). That really bugs me too...

That being said, I think that knitting and crochet work best when they work together in a hedonistic mind-meld of pure love. Crochet makes for great edgings around knitted items, for example, as well as a way for joining items. Or you can make a knitted ribbed edge for that lacy crocheted sweater. Or you can make a sturdy crocheted base for a bag with floppier knitted sides. The possibilities are endless!!!

And now, because I don't like posting without pictures... here's the first cappuccino I ever made myself!



Yum yum!

One sock down!

... and one to go. Fortunately, this second sock seems to be going a lot faster, which is good because the first one took me a month and a half! Also fortunately, it appears to fit the boyfriend perfectly! Hurrah! The heel turning and toe turning went really well, without any real hang-ups, and I was able to complete my first successful kitchener stitch seam. I guess this officially makes me a sock knitter!

By the way, sorry about the fuzziness of the picture. The boyfriend wanted me to hurry up and take it so that he could take the pictures of that Modest Mouse concert he went to off my camera.

Gateway drug

They say that knitting is a gateway drug (or gateway craft, I guess, though that's much less dramatic-sounding) to other addictive yarn crafts. That is, you start knitting, then you start spinning so that you can make your own yarn, then you start dying your yarn, and then you start weaving... Before you know it, you have a six-foot tall loom in your living room and a dozen spinning wheels. In my case, I started crocheting, then taught myself to knit because there were a lot of nice patterns (and because it takes less yarn to make a garment), but I haven't really delved into anything else, so far.

I haven't been at it long enough to have been exposed to all those other yarn crafts, but I think I'm going down that path. I say this because I signed up for a drop-spindle spinning class at the Purple Purl. It's my first extra-curricular class in Toronto, which is something to be excited about in itself. It's even more exciting because I get to keep the drop-spindle, and I'll know the basics of how to make pretty pretty yarn... I hope to get good enough to make some gorgeous sock yarn... yum.

But I am NOT filling my living room with looms and spinning wheels!

Holy Crap! It's Strong Bad!

Strong Bad is the hero (or anti-hero) of the Strong Bad Emails created by the geniuses at HomestarRunner.com. His cartoon has been around since before I started university (in 2005), and I remember watching them in CEGEP (starting in 2003), so I'm not really sure when they started, but they're still being made, so that's awesome (times eleventy billion).

Anyway, I found a pattern for the masked mayhem maker (I just like alliterations) by Aleta Fera here, and just had to make it, since Strong Bad had such a strong influence on my formative early adulthood (especially the Trogdor episode).

So here's my version!



AHHHHH!!!





He tried answering my emails, but passed out because there are too many.



And then he was attacked by a squid... what a tragedy...