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…