I never thought I was going to be one of those people...

I've read about other knitters who forgot to wash the sweater they were going to wear until the last minute so they are stuck trying to get it to dry faster. I told myself to wash the sweater last Sunday, but then I didn't. I told myself to wash it on Tuesday, but again I forgot.
I finally washed it Thursday night. I was pretty sure it was going to be dry the next morning to pack and come with us to New Jersey. Now, still very wet. I wrapped it in a towel and threw it in the car. I was fairly sure it was going to be dry this morning to wear to a wedding.
Nope, we are at the damp stage. First I attacked it with the hair drier, but that didn't let me get anything else done. Now it is on the vent.
Before anyone freaks out, I put the vent on cool.
There is about an hour before we have to leave, so fingers crossed.

I'm famous!

Okay, not technically, but my name and link to this blog is going to be in something in print!
I donated to the Kickstarter for the webcomic Worsted for Wear to get a book printed.  Everyone who donated over a certain amount got a little 'thank you' by having your name put at the end of the book.
Well, I got my digital copy a while ago but forgot to check to see if the 'thank you's were in there.  Turns out, they are!

Tada!  That's me!  Well, that's my old last initial.  I wasn't sure if I should have given them my old one or new one...oh well.  It's still me there!
Now don't get me wrong, while it is super awesome that I'm in there, there are also lots of other awesome people in there.  I think everyone should head over and get their own copy of Yarnvalanche: Worsted for Wear -volume 1 so you too can check out all the other people who either also love knitting/crochet/spinning/yarn stuff or who loves someone who does.

 

Hat is also coming along nicely.  Still no one believes that it will be a hat when it grows up.

I survived!

It wasn't as scary as I was fearing.  The 12 hour day followed by the 11 hour day sure was tough though.  I'm very, very glad I won't be doing that again anytime soon.

I'm more than half-way done with the scarf thing that will become a hat.  I like the idea of it a lot.  Though the stockinet areas are curling really badly, I hope they will block out.  As I've been knitting I've been playing around with the idea of treating the pattern as a base and doing something fun with it.  Instead of large amounts of stockinet I was thinking of adding a lace.  Since I wouldn't want the lace to look odd I had to do a bit of fiddling with it in my head.  You couldn't use a pattern with too many stiches because the gaps in the pattern, where you add or take away four stitches) are near the top and would be noticeable.  While some people might not care, this was not the look I was hoping for.
Most of the time when you are adding more ribbed areas or taking away, you are changing the stockinet area by four.  Though you wouldn't be able to just use a pattern with four stitched across without having two plain ones on the end.  So here is my idea: Use a pattern that is divisible by four stitches, but have one stockinet stich on either side.
For some reason I didn't think it was going to work for a while until I picked up the knitting and just looked at it.  It will work perfectly.  There won't be any awkward stockinet gaps and there won't be this strange band of stockinet on one side.
Here comes the hard part...picking the stich pattern.  I have looked through a bunch and also decided that a lot of them were not what I was looking for.
Here is a list of stitch patterns I have narrowed it down to:

• Elm Grain I like the idea of this one because all the exciting stuff is done on the wrong side
• Star Cluster It has the word star in it and already has the side stitches built in
• Lace Background Seems interesting
• Diagonal Scallop I was thinking of doing a *yo, k2tog* pattern at first and this reminds me of it
• Zigzag Lace 2 This one just looks like a lot of fun

The website I found all of those on is also a very good one.  I am going to have to poke around on it some more.  You can search patterns by stitch count or even use their drop sleeve Gansey sweater pattern maker!  I'm so glad that I got too lazy to look through the tons of books I have for a stitch pattern and checked the internet instead.

Also for anyone who remembered when I was talking about doing writing prompts from the book I bought, don't worry.  I didn't forget about that whole thing!  Since I was given permission to use 32-62 prompts, it got me thinking.  There are 52 weeks in a year, so why don't I do one per week?  That sounded good, then I thought, why not start it on a new year?  This whole blog thing was started on something that was done in a year.  So I hope to start those writing prompts in the (shortly) coming new year.  The fact that I can do up to 62 gives me some wiggle room incase I'm feeling extra writerly.
Now I'm off to go finish the hat.  I can't start the new fancy one until I finish this one (or it will just never get done)

Today was pretty awesome, and here is a list why:

1. One of my old co-workers I really like working with is back.  I just keep telling everyone "Richard is back!!" even if they don't know who he is.  I asked him, he is neutral on being back.
2. It snowed some today!  It didn't stick and was raining half the time, but I still saw snow fall out of the sky.  The act of snowing is my favorite part.
3. I went through the line after work to get some fabric and I was the next in line.
4. Even though it was after 5pm I braved the grocery store the night before Turkey Day (Thanksgiving) and found an empty register line to go into.
5. It stopped snow/raining as I was driving home, so people weren't as crazy on the road.

Okay, so that was only five things...but they seem like pretty big-deal things to me.  One of my good work-friends might also be spending Turkey Day at my parent's house with us.

Here is something some people might find to be odd, but I found it amusing.  I started watching a show on Netflix because I thought the name sounded funny.  One of the main characters has a guy friend who is her best friend.  This guy is also straight, so they refer to him as her gay best friend who is straight.  I realize that I have one of those!

Here is what will someday be a hat.  Oh, you weren't going to guess that it was going to be a hat?  Thought it was some sort of sleeve? Nope, I promise you that it will turn into a hat.  I'm also planning on making another soon after this one with a few fun changes.

Also, expect to see that couch for a bit in the background.  It is starting to get cold in my area and this is the only room upstairs that has a couch and TV.

 

If I don't post again before Thursday: Happy Turkey Day to everyone who celebrates it! (and happy Thursday to those who don't)

Ranty Rant Rant-Rant

There is a pretty picture near the end of the post, so if you don't wish to read the ranting, feel free to scroll on down.

(Rant)
So let me start with the fact that I work retail.  Most of you probably know, but a few might not.  I also work retail in the US.  This means that I get to experience things like Black Friday.
I know a lot of people like Black Friday, where everything is on sale.  I do not.  I don't see the point in it really.  People tend to go crazy and buy a lot of things they don't need.  You can get these and sometimes better deals on the same items between Black Friday and Christmas if you just pay attention to ads.
Another part of Black Friday I don't understand is why stores feel the need to open early.  A lot of the sales will be from 4am-1pm.  I know the lack of sleep might get people to buy more, but is it necessary?  Why couldn't the stores just have the sales at different times?  Or even (like where I work) all day sales.  That way people aren't tired and cranky.  For crying out loud, someone died one year! He was trampled by his fellow shoppers!
That just doesn't seem right to me.
Another thing that gets me is why the store I work at also opens early on Saturday.  It is supposed to be Small Business Saturday.  If you have over 800 stores I don't think you can be counted as a "small business" anymore.  That could just be me though.  I do sometimes have radical ideas.

The best Black Friday and sequential days I've had since being out of school was a few years ago.  I had been laid off from my previous job in Oct.  On Thanksgiving I spent a nice day eating too much food with my family.  The next day (Black Friday for those who aren't in the US and might not know) I slept in and spent the rest of the time with my boyfriend hanging out in our house and eating leftovers my mom send me home with.  It was wonderful.
 (/Rant)


And now to the pretty thing I promised.

This is the scarf I made based on a pattern I saw briefly in a magazine I told myself I wouldn't buy.  It could probably use a shorter title than that.  I've been calling it the Wibbly Wobbly Cable Scarf.  It is based off of Swaying Cables Scarf(Rav. link).  Someone had left a copy of the magazine in the break room at work.  I was flipping through and saw the pattern.  I thought it looked nice, but I didn't like how it looked like it had reverse stockinet stich (mind you, I didn't read the pattern, just saw the pic) on the sides of the cable.  I like my scarves to be completely reversible, with both sides being nice to look at.

Later I saw a few more patterns in the magazine and I did end-up buying it.

It's funny how that works...

Just the other day I was looking at my totals for this year so far and my totals from last year.  I was wondering why they were so different.  Was I running out of steam for this blog?  Was I not as interested in knitting/crochet?  Did I fall into a coma and not notice?
Then it hit me.  Lately I seemed to have only been knitting at knit-night. No wonder I wasn't getting much done.  I was only putting in about 5-6 hours a week to something that takes a lot more for one item.  No wonder everyone around me was moving at a faster pace!
So I've gone back to my old ways.  I've started knitting/crocheting at random times during the week.  Turns out it is still fun, even if you aren't surrounded by other people who are doing the same thing.
I also realize that I don't have to finish something to update the blog.  I can just talk about my day in general and show a picture of a in-progress project.  I've certainly got enough of them!

I did have a bit of a crisis the other night.  I had mostly finished my dish cloth, I finished the fun hats I had planned in my head, so I got to choose something new to take with me. (I know I still have that double-knit scarf to work on, but it's not calling out to me loud enough.)
This is where I ran into troubles.  I had no idea what I wanted to knit.  Let me rephrase that.  I had too many things I wanted to knit, but none of them were standing out to me more than the others.  I had the yarn picked out to start a fun shawl with some color blocking, I had the yarn selected for a striped shawl with ribbing on the edge, I want to make a pair of owl-cabled fingerless mitts, there is a hat pattern floating around in my head, and I had seen a scarf in a magazine I wanted to make my own version of.  What is a girl to do?  So many things want my attention and while I know I want to knit them all eventually, I know I can't all at the same time.
After rushing around the house for a while it hit me.  I had some beautiful, slightly heathered, greeny-blue yarn that would look amazing as that scarf.  I say that it took me so long to realize this was because the yarn was in the basement, so it took a bit for it's calling to reach me.

Here it is!  I'm already on my second skein.  The colors don't looks right in this picture because of the lighting.
I don't think I will need the whole third one I have, so I already have a plan for that (assuming I can find the brown yarn I'm pretty sure I have an extra skein of).  I'm loving how it is going to be completely revisable.  It always seems silly when scarves have a clear right and wrong side.  I don't feel the need for scarves to look identical on both sides, but they should at least both be interesting and fun to look at!

 This is a baby-hat I just kind of made-up.  I did a 2x2 rib for the brim.  Then on the first row of the body of the hat I did a k2tog and then continued my 2v2 rib.  The decrease lets the spiral happen.

 

I thought of this hat when I was at the Hurray for Yarn day at Nature's Yarn a bit ago.  One of the lessons was to make these for your hair.  We were bouncing around other ideas for uses for them and I thought as a fake pony-tail or even pig-tails on a hat.  I plan on making a bigger hat with more twists on it.

That is it for now, time to keep knitting on a not-knit-night night.

Finally some finished items!

 Let me start out by saying that I am sick.  If anything in this post doesn't make sense, I blame the germs.

 

Here it finally is!  I've blocked it for the second time and I feel a lot happier with it.  It is the OpArt by Melissa D.  I didn't use as different of colors as she suggested, but I really liked the combo.  Though it is so big (since you knit from the inside out) I had a lot of fun making it.  I'm thinking of making another sometime.

 

As you can probably tell, I did take out what I started on the plane and tried again.  Instead of trying to use the combination of something in my head and a half-remembered pattern, I used Star Blanket.  I had one of those tiny pattern sheets you can get from various parts of the craft store.

It's acrylic, so I tried blocking it, but it keeps wanting to be rippled.  I'm also not sure why the picture looks a bit glowy, you would have to ask my phone that one.

 



 

This thing!  I really only had to weave in some ends and it was done!  The colors are better portrayed in the second picture.

I also don't know what to call this.  Simple Neck Scarf? Wait...what was that fancy term for things like these...I don't know, but I think it starts with a "C".

 

Anyway, I have a fun new hat design in mind that I have already started work on.  It involves both knitting and crochet!  I might have to start another category on my side-bar.