Sweaters, Sweaters Everywhere

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

silk angora

…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.

red wool

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.

sc_hat

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!