Sigh

by Melissa // January 11, 2007 // 5 Comments

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!

by Melissa // January 5, 2007 // 3 Comments

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 thisâ€¦

by Melissa // January 3, 2007 // 4 Comments

…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.

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