I finished the Glam Shells shawl yesterday evening and let it block overnight! Since I made it with Berroco Ultra Alpaca Pea Soup Mix, I’ve taken to calling it the “Pea Shells” shawl. She sells pea shells by the lake shore. Or something like that since I’ve got no sea shells and the only waterfront in Chicago is Lake Michigan. Get it? I am much too clever.
My little niece, Banana, has a little play kitchen that she loves. So for her third birthday, I embarked on a super secret project: STRAWBERRIES!
Banana loved her strawberries! More than I ever imagined that she would, really. I gave them to her with a set of play dishes, and she poured her knitted strawberries from bowl to bowl. She bounced from one party guest to another imploring us to take a bite. It was beyond adorable.
Of course, this means that I promised her cupcakes.
In other news, I am moving to a new apartment in the next couple weeks. Of course, this means that my knitting time will be replaced by packing for a little while. There may not be much to post until I’m settled in my new digs, but never fear, your fearless train knitter shall return.
All fans of “The Walking Dead” know, Carl is never, ever in the house like he’s supposed to be, which leads to large portions of any given episode being devoted to watching Rick and Lori and the rest of their post-apocalyptic tribe mates running around in a state of panic trying to find Carl. “Where is Carl?” has become one of the iconic lines of the series. It might even be classified as a catch phrase if it wasn’t so damn dramatic.
This is what led my friend Kayti to invent my new favorite game, a photoshop meme in the spirit of Sad Keanu and Ryan Gosling Hey Girl: Where is Carl?
You should go check it out, and submit your own photoshop of where you found Carl if you’re into that sort of thing. For an example, here’s Carl hanging out in front of the Von Trapp mansion with Julie Andrews:
Oh help... I think Captain Von Trapp's mansion has been overrun by walkers!
I’m kinda proud of that one, actually. Putting Carl behind the gate put my photoshopping skills to the test!
Since this is a knitting blog, and Where is Carl is definitely not about knitting, I thought it might be fun to pull together a collection of zombie-inspired knits. Because let’s face it: if I ever find myself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, I’m totally raiding the abandoned yarn stores. I’ll make my way in a post-apocalyptic world trading socks and hats for food and guns. Besides, you can always use a sturdy large gauge knitting needle to stab a walker through the eye.
I made this drop stitch scarf awhile back when I first discovered the Zombie BBQ colorway by Lorna’s Laces:
It is still one of my favorite projects that I’ve ever made. There’s a matching hat and a set of fingerless gloves, but they’re nowhere near as fantastic as the scarf.
Here are some other great zombie and post-apocalypse projects that were made by other folks:
A co-worker has a baby, I make a hat. That’s just how it works, you know?
The latest co-worker baby, a girl, arrived in February, and I have been trying to make a hat ever since.
Trying.
And, ohhh, is it trying.
The yarn was simple enough. I recycled a bunch of yarn from an old Banana Republic sweater, a soft and fuzzy fingering weight angora/lambswool blend that would be great for a soft and warm baby garment. I decided that I wanted to do something yellow with pink accents, and thus dyed it up like so:
Recycled angora/lambswool blend dyed with Kool-Aid flavors Pink Lemonade, Peach Mango, and Piña Pineapple.
It turned out much brighter than I had intended, but I like it. Still very girl-baby.
Then I set out to find a hat pattern that worked with the yarn.
And this is where everything has gone horribly wrong. Read more…
I signed a lease on a new apartment last weekend. It’s a pretty exciting development since it means I’ll be closer to work and friends, and won’t have to deal with a third floor walk up any more. The new apartment also happens to be within walking distance of Sifu Design Studio!
Well, okay, it’s a still a bit of a hike, but it’s definitely an easy bike ride. At any rate, it was close enough that I couldn’t resist heading over to celebrate, and of course I walked out with a skein of Misti Alpaca Hand Paint Chunky in the Jardin colorway. Because you can never have too much green yarn. It is like crack. Crack that I must immediately knit up as quickly as possible.
The pattern I chose for my impulse knitting is the Scrunchable Scarf, and I knitted it on big size 15 needles and attached the ends with a 3-needle bind off to make it a cowl. Is there anything better than than a chunky, squishy, green baby alpaca cowl? I think not!
Of course, in the same week, Chicago decided to go from Winter directly to holy freaking hot mid-Summer, so I’m probably not going to have an excuse to show it off for at least six months. Such a bummer.
My poor Oaklet Shawl. It has become obvious that I am going to run out of yarn. Despite the pattern’s claim, one skein of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport just isn’t enough to make even the smallest version. Truth be told, I wasn’t so fond of the way the colors were working for this particular pattern, so it’s probably a good thing it’s coming up short. So I’m going to frog it for now, and maybe it’ll become a pair of socks sometime down the road.
Last week was a crazy week. I had been trying to get prequalified to buy a condo, and that financing fell through, which has forced me to rethink my plans. At the same time, I made real progress on some things at work which have been a long time coming, which was immensely satisfying. Throw in tequila cocktails at a happy hour with my co-workers and red wine at a Girls’ Night with some friends, and I was too busy to knit a stitch most of the week.
After an action-packed week of dramatic lows and highs, I was pretty grateful to see the weekend and decided to treat myself to a pedicure, Thai food and a trip to Windy Knitty. To be fair, I did need some yarn for a Very Special Project, so there really was a practical reason to go. But there was no practical reason whatsoever to buy two skeins of Malabrigo Rios in the delightfully whimsical rainbow colorway “Arco Iris”.
Ooh, shiny...
I threw the Malabrigo on the swift and cast on an Amanda Hat as soon as I got home. My knitting needles had a furious swordfight and the next thing I knew I had this:
Knitting spam. I never would have thunk it, but I’ve been hit with a ton of it in the last week (when I was conveniently busy at a conference). The thing that just kills me is that there didn’t seem to be much value in it, at least not from an SEO perspective. Weird international email addresses, very on-topic about knitting though just off enough to obviously not be about the post, and no links. If there’s no backlink, and the spammers are just submitting highly relevant user generated content, then I should be the one to benefit, right? I mean, seriously I do this for a living. I get paid to understand crap like the value of comments and how spammy ones can hurt a site, and I am well and truly puzzled as to why anyone would do it without trying to slip in a few dirty backlinks.
But whatever, that’s all technical shit and not very much about knitting. Just know that it’s all been smited (smote? smitten?) and sentenced to eternal bannination with a CAPTCHA plugin. You hear that knit-spammers? YOU! SHALL! NOT! PASS!
Die, knit-spammers, die!
(Oh hell, now I want to watch the LOTR trilogy, marathon style. Thanks a lot, brain.)
Anyway, here’s the point of all that: To all the real life human not-bot readers out there who might be inclined to comment but hate CAPTCHAs, I apologize, but a few stupid spambots have made this the new Trainknitting status quo.
To make up for it, I’ve got work-in-progress photos from my weekend.
One of Dad’s pilot buddies apparently has an alpaca farm. So now that Dad has caught on to the fact that alpaca is one of my favorite fibers with which to knit, he’s been talking about going to check out the alpacas. I think it is absolutely adorable that he seems so excited to take me out to an alpaca farm like I’m still 6 years old and we’re going to the petting zoo. (And okay, I’m excited too.)
Anyway, I haven’t done much of anything knitting-related this week, so, in anticipation of this yet-to-be-scheduled trip to Dad’s friend’s alpaca farm, today you get a picture of some alpacas.
These alpacas are clearly plotting something. World domination, perhaps...
The Secret of NIMH is one of my favorite movies from my childhood. I found it on DVD a few years back and had to bring it home with me. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it held up all these years later. In the movie, there’s a black crow named Jeremy who has an obsession for collecting yarn.
I can sympathize. My yarn stash was piling up in my living room like Jeremy’s love nest. So today it was cleaned up and put away and I have a living room again!
I also finished two projects yesterday, which passes for exciting news around here. The first was the long awaited Pioneer sweater. The verdict?
I didn’t take this photo. I have no idea who did. I followed an attribution trail back to In-Public.com, but can’t find it there so it may be that the original post, and thus the copyright holder, is lost in the abyss. So sad, because the photographer deserves a trophy. Check this dude out!
Is he not the most fabulous train knitter you’ve ever seen? That is some serious head-to-toe action right there! The only plausible explanation is that he’s a superhero named Colby Jack, and this is his superhero costume.
I wonder what he’s making. It looks rather tame compared to the fantastic marbled yellow.
