Remember Chaco?

What? You don’t remember him? Whyever not? It’s only been since July, after all…what do you mean, “that was nearly seven months ago” - that’s ridiculous!

Oh, wait. Hahaha. It is the end of January, isn’t it? Here’s a refresher:

…and a link to the original post where you will find more pictures (at the end). It’s quite difficult, you know, to take a decent picture of your own arm. Try it. I did. Many times. He’s cute, though, yes? You will be surprised (and, hopefully, pleased) to learn that this pattern is finally in testing! For all that I put it off, do you know how long it took me to finish it up? One day. That’s it. He’s in testing now, though, and assuming the pattern doesn’t bomb in tests you’ll be able to buy his pattern within about two weeks! Um, if I get the shopping cart on my site set up by then.

Sadly, this is the part of the creative process I hate the most. I’m trying my best to finish up a bunch of designs hanging in various stages of limbo - really, I am - and yet I have found myself drawn again and again in the past few days to my yarn closet. A few enterprising skeins that cannot be supposed to have anything to do with works currently in progress nearly seduced me into removing them from the closet! Obviously, I can’t be trusted. I have (A LOT of) yarn that needs winding (and afterwards, washing), a scarf that needs to be knitted, the Christmas ornament patterns to type up and test (balls and candy cane and sheep), more sweaters to frog and wind and wash, patterns currently on my blog to be typed up formally and transferred to pdf so they can be downloaded from their new pages at Inner Child Crochet (which don’t exist yet: must make more pages…). This is completely ignoring the fact that I haven’t finished the curtains, and I have a few patterns that I need to resize, various WIPs buried so deep I’ve half forgotten them, and many, many skeins of yarn that I promised special projects to when I bought them. You wouldn’t want me to break my promises to yarn, would you?

So, why do I have this urge to begin a sweater? Or better yet, an afghan! I could go for an afghan…

Sweaters, Sweaters Everywhere

Ah, this is kind of embarrassing. Ladies and gentlemen, I am almost ashamed to present:

…yet another Thrift Store Sweater. Hey, it’s not cashmere this time! This sweater is, in fact, 58% silk, 30% nylon (meh, a little nylon never hurt anyone), 10% angora, and 2% lambswool - $3.00. Hahahaha. It looks like it will frog out to a nice fingering weight, too, prompting some daydreams about fuzzy silk mittens. I have to admit to you, I’m falling a bit behind, here. You see, this is why I just don’t go to the thrift shop every week. We actually went because my sister was eager to rip into the green cashmere we found a few weeks ago. She’s never dismantled a sweater, though, and I suggested that she should practice on something…bulkier. They almost always have big ‘ol cotton sweaters for sale around here, and they are so easy to disassemble. When we got there, though, we found a nice big sweater made out of worsted weight wool (100%) - also red. I proposed a wool frogging / dyeing / felting extravaganza. She accepted. It will be awesome. Sadly, there are no photos of this (late) sweater, as it was quickly dismembered, frogged, and is now half-wound into skeins like the one seen here.

I suggested that in the future she may want to limit the yardage per hank to just over 100. You know. For ease of handling. We’re neither of us too big on red, but it seems like the best sweaters at the thrift store are a bright red! Red wool. Red lambswool. Red lambswool and angora. Red silk and angora. What’s with the red? We’re going to attempt an overdye with Koolaid and see if we can get orange, or purple, or even tone it down to a burgundy. If not, Valentine’s day is coming up, I guess, and we’ll see what we can come up with.

In other news, my sister has been pseudonymed! You know the question I posed - if you could name yourself anything, what would it be? Apparently for my sister, the answer is ’something obscure and bizarre.’ We hammered it out, though, and from now on we’ll be calling her Wren. This is a compromise.

And, finally, I’d like to announce that my website has been completely transferred over to the new format! I love it. I love it. I think it’s so much cleaner and more professional-looking than the original format. Now that I have a layout that I LOVE I can go back to transferring patterns from here on the blog to their new, more permanent home on the site. I’ve also installed some ads on the site. Apparently websites cost, did you know that? Anyway, it’s this new thing called Google Adsense, and it’s really cool. They choose the ads for your page based on their content. Therefore, most of the ads are for yarn, or crocheting, or knitting sites. I’m not allowed to click on them (the conflict of interest should be apparent) but I’ve seen more than one ad that has made me go “OOH!” and copy the url into another tab for a shopping visit. They’re so much less ooky and intrusive than I was afraid they would be that I feel better about putting them in. So yeah. Go wander around the new layout! Let me know if you see anything dangling or about to catch on fire, and I’ll glue it back up or toss some water on it, respectively. Woohoo!

Stuff n junk

So, I’ve been doing stuff. No, no, really - I have! For one thing, I’ve been redesigning my website. Please bear with me, as it’s transitioning right now - plus, the layout looks a little funky if you have to use the second-choice font. I’m working on it. I think the new look is cleaner and more professional, and it eliminates the nasty side-scrolling if you have your computer set to a low resolution. So I’ve been doing thaaaaat…
I’ve also been working on Liesel some more. It’s taking me a ridiculously long time to get through it, but I think that it’s due to the fact that this is my first time knitting lace. It’s my first time with all of those yo and sk2po and ssk and k2tog and all of that knitting mumbo-jumbo. At the beginning I kept losing yarnovers, which was fun. Now I almost always have the correct stitch count at the end of a row, but I still can’t read the lace to see what ought to go next the way I can with cables. It makes it take longer. I got through a repeat in half an hour last night - my fastest one yet, I think - so I do have hopes that the scarf may be completed someday.
In other news, I’ve decided to submit my pattern. I think. I mean, I’ve crocheted a swatch to send off, which makes it look like I will. So perhaps I shall. I mean, I will. Of course I will! It’s not that much trouble. And they probably won’t ridicule me. One hopes. That would be very unprofessional behaviour.
So….yeah. All of that hardly makes for interesting blog updates. If you’re bored, though, you can cruise on over to Inner Child Crochet and see if you can find the edges of the background repeat…

Hey, Look! Content!

That’s right, folks. I’ve added some new, exclusive-to-the-site content to my little pet project, Inner Child Crochet.

That excellent photo is courtesy of my sister. Nice, right? I asked her if she would like me to use her real name on my blog or if she’d prefer to be pseudonymed along with the rest of the cast. She opted for a pseudonym, and I told her she got to pick it herself. She hasn’t gotten back to me on that, yet. Honestly - what would you name yourself, if you got to pick any name you wanted? I have no idea. I like mine quite well.

Anyway, I’ve come to realize what aspiring e-zines already know - even a little content looks more impressive if it is all presented at once. Not that I have any plans to become a publication, but I think I’ll add new stuff about once a month. I decided to go with the middle of the month because - honestly - it doesn’t get enough love.

Aside from the things I worked up for the site - which was very relaxing, by the way, just tearing through those swatches of single crochet - I designed something this week. I’m putting off showing it to you, because I’m dithering over whether I ought to submit it somewhere. I have a rigorous set of standards when it comes to my patterns; in order for me to sell it it has to be 1) totally mine (not derivative), 2) a clean, professional-looking design (no gappage or lumps), 3) not too simple (I would feel ridiculous and a bit dishonest trying to sell a pattern for plain circular coasters), and 4) tested for accuracy. If you look at my free patterns (with the exception of my designs for Crochetme, which are Awesome and do meet the requirements), you can probably guess which requirement(s) each of them fails. Well, I mean, I know exactly where each design falls short. But this design I did this week, I would totally sell. I will sell it if I decide not to submit it - or it gets rejected (unless they laugh at me and tell me it sucks, in which case I might burn it and never speak of it again…). So I really - I think I want to submit it. I’m just a smidge intimidated because I’ve never tried to sell a design before. Plus, nobody accepts emailed submissions. I mean, come ON!

Sigh

Well. Greg is gone - off for a few months of tech training that will, we hope, qualify him for a job that will have us sticking around here for a few years. Wait, did I say hope? I mean - well - I’m confused. We had better move somewhere fun after this - and by fun, I mean someplace where the leaves change colors, and it might snow once in a while, and you can play outside in the summer during daylight hours, and you don’t have scorpions in your bathroom. That kind of a place.
Anyway, my older sister has agreed to come and stay with me while he’s gone, to keep me company. She may (if she so chooses) be featured on the blog at some point. Since she’s here and all. I’ve been very busy since Greg left on Sunday working on a (non-yarny) project and various pressing issues, but I haven’t gotten much done - of the wooly variety at least.

While the four of us were out yesterday, we stopped by the thrift shop ‘just for a minute.’ I started poking through the sweaters. Like ya doooo. My sister may have voiced a comment disparaging my mental soundness as I scoured the racks, but then I shoved this into her hands:

And she said, “Ohhhhhhh.” No more giggles from her! Isn’t that color gorgeous? Well, you can’t really see it, but I love it. It’s not so brown, much greener. I may replace that pic later. It’s like…it’s like a forest green heather, one of my all-time favorite of the colors. I love it way more than I love the sage-y seafoam of the other one, and I like that a lot. And, of course, it’s 100% cashmere. What? No! Stop it. Be quiet - what do you want from me, it was two dollars! You think I could just leave it there? I turned my face from the wool, the lambswool and angora blends - even the angora and silk blend! So what if I don’t have the other sweater wound yet - I do have it frogged, just not wound and weighed and washed. I will. It’s not like I’m going to start this one before I finish the other, I just had to get it. It’s a sickness. No, thank you, an intervention is neither welcome nor necessary. No! Don’t even think it. If you try to get between me and that sweater, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.

Keep your hands out of my cashmere. I’ve got a seam ripper, and I will cut you.

Behold: Crochet!

What’s that, you say? This ‘toomanyhooks’ chick appears to be a crochet-poseur? That, in fact, nothing crocheted has made an appearance on the blog for three whole weeks now, while knit items continued to feature? Pshh. What can I say? Knit is new. Knit is a challenge and a voyage of exploration into the unknown. Knit happens. Plus, I think it would be fair to say that my new site (yes, I am going to reference it in every post, it’s what I’m working on!) is one pretty darn big crochet WIP. Anyway - um, where was I going with this? Oh, yes.
My point is, I have been crocheting. Continuing in the vein of crocheted, kid-friendly, unbreakable ornaments of my own design (documented, interestingly enough, in the previously-mentioned most-recent post containing crocheted content) I have made these.

Here we have an innocuous set of balls, first a solid color, then solid with one stripe, then one with stripes of three seperate colors. Nothing too tricky. (Maybe I should attempt one with some sort of a fair-isle-esqe pattern on it. Hmm.) And here -

We obviously have a candy cane. The candy cane, while simple in principle, actually gave me a great deal of trouble. I had to frog the curve multiple times to get the right one, which I resented. You would be surprised at how often I get it (’it’ being a design) exactly right on the first try - it’s often enough that it surprises me when I don’t. Although, of course, I’m so used to getting my own way that I hate to go back, and sometimes if it’s almost what I wanted I let it slide. (Other times it irks me until I correct it.)

Anyway, Max is thrilled to have toys (his word, not mine) on the tree. He thinks it’s a great idea. Often, after putting him to bed or down for a nap, we will find other toys he’s decided should go on the tree. A block, a few magnets, a handful of puzzle pieces - all carefully balanced and cradled in the branches. Sometimes they’re all together and just shoved into a big cavity. The other day he got very frustrated because his truck (about the size of a loaf of bread) wouldn’t stay on the tree. Enough of that, though - I have things to do! Greg’s been badgering me to let him take down the Christmas tree, and now that I’ve got these pictures I suppose I’ll have to. In other news, the pages of Inner Child Crochet are now sheep-free! Each link now goes to at least a rudimentary version of the page it’s supposed to. Woohoo!

I just had to show you this…

…because I think it was a little silly. You see, I thought, ‘I wonder how big the skein would be if I were to wind the entire back of the sweater into one ball?’ As it turns out, pretty big.

I haven’t washed it yet, so it’s pretty kinky (which only adds to the bulk) but it’s 1020 yards long. One thousand and twenty. That’s more than the first three hanks put together. For comparison:

Oh, dear. Put together, the three hanks and the uber-hank are about 5 ounces. how do I know that? Oh, yes -

I bought a kitchen scale. It’s not the most precise thing ever, but it’s a heckuvalot better than the bathroom scale. So, that makes the Current Cashmere Count 1,772 yards and 5 ounces. By the way, did you know that karabella yarn charges almost a dollar a gram for their cashmere? Do you know how many grams are in 5 ounces? About 141. Whooo, fun! One hundred and forty dollar’s worth of cashmere sitting on top of my computer desk. I should be about halfway through the cashmere winding, too, so we’ll see some more final numbers soon.

Let’s see, what else…oh, yes! I picked up the winter issue of Interweave Knits the other week. I went to get a copy of Interweave Crochet (and that was before I knew Kim’s big news! Now we should all subscribe - it would be helping out a friend, after all…:wink:) but Barnes & Noble was out, and so I was lured into buying the knitmag. See?

So pretty. This is the Winter 2006 issue, which is the one that contains Eunny’s legendary Venezia Pullover (it’s the fifth one from the bottom). Despite the fact that it is a marvel of colorwork and construction, and unquestionably in good taste, it’s not something that I would wear. I’m more interested in the Rambling Rose Cardigan. You can see the front halfway down the page here, and here’s the back.

See? How cool is that? We all know I love textural knitting (I’ve had to revise my statement since, while my love for cables is still as passionate as ever, knitting Liesel may have sold me on lace. A little lace. Nothing crazy.) and methinks I like it.

This, on the other hand - I thought I might knit this:

- especially since if I hold two strands of my cashmere together, I’ll practically have the yarn called for, which never happens. But…you know what? Looking at the picture more closely, doesn’t it look like they have…baggy wrists? That looks like it would annoy me terribly, having baggy, dangly, not-holding-on the wristwarmer wrists. So that’s out.

Oh! Oh! And if you’re stalking my new website (am I the only one doing that?) there is now a page on the other end of the ‘patterns’ link. Not the sheep page - Greg says that sheep scares him half the time when it pops up like that - but a pattern page, with links that mostly work. Eventually all of my patterns will be moved over to my new site, but for now I am linking on my new site to their current locations. So yeah.

Erm, if the site looks terrible on your internet settings, would you leave me a comment and let me know? I’ve never designed a site before.