Help! There are alligators in my knitting!

Hey everyone! It's a miserably wet Friday afternoon here at Purdue, and I've spent it reading, beading and even knitting a little bit!

Adam had a test today so he came over after that go out and we worked on a couple rosaries for tomorrow night's Superhero party. He and his friend are going as the Boondock Saints, and so between Adam and myself, we came up with a couple rather awesome (and very cheap) rosaries for the party. I'll be sure to get a couple pictures of them tomorrow in full ammo, tattoos and Irish Catholic pride. I'll be going as Catwoman. Purr...

But anyhoo, then Adam left for work for the day and I decided that I wasn't quite done playing with beads, so I went down to Vons in search of a fun necklace for Catwoman to wear tomorrow night, and somehow ended up with alligators in my knitting. Six alligators in my knitting to be exact.

They're little glass alligators! Aren't they so cute! I saw them and just knew they had a future in stitch marking, so now they're mine! Love them! I also got some nubby blue beads which may end up as a future blog prize (that 200th post is rapidly approaching!)

That's about it for now- I've got to get a little Black Lit done before I go over to Adam's house to work on his costume for tomorrow (how do knitters with significant others get any knitting done? Seriously! I had to go to Starbucks for an hour yesterday and work on the orange sweater so that it would stop blogging!)

I'll post catwoman and Boondock Saints pictures after the party! Have an awesome weekend!

Have you seen Paige?

Hi everyone!

Unfinished Sweater #7 here, wondering if you've seen Paige? You see, all of us in knitting bag #2 haven't seen her in about 3 weeks, since this thing called "Adam" started. If you see her out being social, going to parties, or God forbid knitting something we don't know about, please tell her that I could really use a yoke. And sleeves. And everything else. And the ruffle scarf is making fun of me and if it could be moved to a different knitting bag, that would be great.

Thanks,

Unfinished Sweater #7

Ugh.

I'm going to be frank: the Swine flu scares me. There's a lot of cases at Purdue, and a few cases on my floor in my dorm. So after a week of fighting a fever, aches, chills, stomach-ache, fatigue and finally a cough and a newly-runny nose, I hauled my butt out of bed and to the doctor. And for once, I'm absolutely thrilled to have a sinus infection and tonsillitis. I got tested for strep (which at first said it was positive but then they called and said the second test was negative), H1N1 (which is a scraping of the sinus cavity which hurts like a #$#)(@ since I'm still hurting from the nose surgery in June) and mono (which I won't find out about until next Wednesday, but we thought we'd check for it since I was there.) So they're calling it a sinus infection and tonsillitis and that works for me. I'm already feeling a little better than yesterday. But I'm still totally exhausted and coughing a lot. So that's what's up with me.

Oh- and I might have to have another (but smaller) nose surgery over Christmas. There is a rather large hump in my nose that developed after the surgery to fix the original hump. The PA said either the plate they put over the broken bones to keep them still has shifted or the bones have grown back. So that's going to suck, so I'm not going to think about it for 3 months.

Adam is...still around. He's really awesome and I like him more every day. I forgot how awesome it was to have a boyfriend, it's been nearly 3 years. He's even going to help me make macho mix tomorrow, and I will be sure to get some pictures. There's nothing sexier than a man cooking in my opinion.

And I am...still not knitting. I worked on the orange cabled hoodie for a while in the doctor's office but ended up falling asleep waiting for the test results, so I only got a couple inches done on the hood. So I'm going to talk to you about my plants.

My Wandering Jew "Sparkleplant" is still alive! Yay! Not only have I succeeded in keeping it alive, it's also grown nearly 5 inches since I got it 3 weeks ago. Gotta love that Miracle Grow.
I gave my pepper plants some Miracle Grow too, and now they think it's time to start actually making some peppers! I still think the plant is entirely too small to start devoting all its energy into growing veggies, so I'm going to pinch the flowers off today to help the plant get a little bushier before it starts growing foods. It's such an itty-bitty plant! (3-inch heel included for scale) That's about it. I've got to crank out a few more pairs of potholders and hopefully finish a ruffle scarf fairly soon...too many October birthdays!

Hamlet & Neon Paints 4-evah!

So when my knitting mojo dissapears, my other artsy mojoes surface and demand a little attention. And right now my pottery-painting mojo and I are having disagreements on how much studio time is too much studio time. Especially since it's not one of my fortes. And it's a lot cheaper to just knit. So yesterday the pottery place called and said Ben and my stuff was ready to be picked up, so today he and I had an adventure to Starbucks to talk about stuff (his student teaching, my new boytoy- oh, it's facebook-legit now btw and ftw!, the pregnant girl at Harry's last week and silly thinks like that) Then we hit up the pottery place to pick up our masterpieces. I didn't have my camera with me so I didn't get a picture of his mug, but it turned out really cool. He did a geometric pattern in earthy colours, which I love. I finished a plate (pictured below) and did a bowl (not feature below because they chipped it when they brought it out of the kiln and I need to go back and fix it and re-fire it). But here is one of the first things that has pretty much turned out like I wanted it to.
The picture isn't great- because let's face it, if something is really shiny, it probably doesn't photograph well. It's a speckled royal blue plate with my favourite Hamlet quote, "and this above all- to thine own self be true" and then all the empty space filled in with paisleys in all my favourite colours. Love it! I even did a little paisley on the bottom (it was my tester-paisley).

My bowl that got chipped was pink with polka-dots and another favourite Shakespeare quote, "Love is a madness" which Rosalind said in As You Like It. But that bowl needs help before it can make it on to the blog.

And in efforts to get myself doing stringy things again, I will be doing a 200th post giveaway fairly soon (this one is 192 I think). I'll probably do a set of potholders, but who knows! I could do something crazy like a knitting uterus or a small triangular shawl at the last minute! Want to get it on that? Comment. Say something funny. Say something dorky. Say something about your dog or your pets or your boyfriend. You can even say something about the blog- I don't really care! But heads up- there will be a giveaway soon to celebrate my 200th postiversary. I'll let you know when you need to start dropping comments in order to win yourself a super sexy set of potholders. Oh yeah...

Potholder tutorial

Hey there readers! I've got two pieces of big news: 1- I am finally going to do the much requested potholder tutorial, and 2- I met someone.

Let's start with #2, because that's more exciting for me. (I think we're far enough in that me talking about it isn't going to jinx it) His name is Adam, he's pretty much my age (so he's not the ogre-man from Granite City or the Cougar-bait from Swing Dance). Met him at Swing Dance and have hung out with him every night since Tuesday. It was so weird, just this instant connection and boom! It's great. Now I'm OCD checking my phone for texts (and they're actually there!) and last night I met some of his friends at his place, which wasn't as scary as I thought it was going to be. I did break the ice with my killer-mojitos, but that's beside the point. Good guy, nice friends, and he's actually really cute. And sweet. And most importantly: he likes me back.

So: potholder tutorial. I appologize for the bad pictures, I just didn't really feel like taking my potholder of various stages of progress on a photo-shoot around campus. So you get my big fluffy blanket as a backdrop.

1. Get yourself some yarn. A 2 oz ball of dishcloth cotton will get you one big potholder, a 3 oz ball of dishcloth cotton will get you 2 smaller but totally functional set of 2. Which means they match. And I hear thats important for some people. You'll also need a crochet hook. When working with a rougher yarn like dishcloth cotton, I prefer working with metal hooks, the plastic ones break too easily. The hook I'm using is an I/9, 5.5 mm hook, but you might want to go smaller if you crochet loosely.

2. Chain 33-35, or desired length. Keep in mind that the chain will be across the diagonal and you potholder will not be enormous. I promise.

3. Single crochet into the second loop from the last chain. Single crochet your way across the top of the chain row, putting 3 single crochet stitches in to the last chain of the row. This will give you a nice round turn and set you up to crochet across the bottom of the chain row. These potholders are worked in the round.

4. Single crochet back across the bottom, doing 3 sc stitches in the last chain and then very tightly doing another single crochet or a slip stich to join up in to the round.

5. Single crochet in the round (don't do anything fancy, it's seriously just sc). Eventually you'll get a floppy pouch that looks something like this:

6. Fold your potholder so that it sort of looks like a wonton. When your sides touch, it's time to single crochet to what will soon be the new corner, and then add a couple more inches of very tight chain stitch for your loop.

7. After you've made your loop, it's time to do the tricky part: take the single crochet stitches on both sides of the loop and slip stitch them together very tightly. Keep single crocheting the opposite stitches together. It should look like this after a little while:

8. When you're all out of opposite stitches to slip stitch together, pull your yarn through and tie a nice little knot. Then cut your yarn a few inches out and then hide on the inside of the potholder with your crochet hook.9. Rinse and repeat. We've got a drawer full of these at home and my relatives routinely steal them when they come over. So for everyones X-mas presents, they're all getting potholders. So stop stealing mine!If you have any questions about the process of the potholders, let me know via the comments below the blog or emailing me at peaceloveyarn@aol.com, and I'll do my best to help you out. I'd also love to see your finished pictures! That sort of thing always makes my day!

Frenemies

Most of you have probably been able to tell that I've just not been up to par with my usual creative self. I have been in a most terrible creative slump of epic proportions, which has started taking over other aspects of my life, like my creative writing, baking, beading, and sometimes even getting out of bed. So I am diagnosing my slump as a general panic slump. I believe that this so called panic slump has been brought on by a variety of crazy things all happening at once. Things I am holding responsible for the slump:

Leaving England

Nose/Sinus surgery

December Graduation Anxiety

Yarn Shop Failure

Inability to find work for after graduation

Too many knitting projects

Horticulture failures

Being called "snotty" by one of the knitters in my group (she's totally mean and it really shouldn't bother me, but it is bothering me- and way more than it should)

Back to School for the last time

Seeing all my friends getting married/have awesome relationships

Loneliness and doglessness

I've been moping around for months, knitting a bit, ripping it back, painting a bit, throwing it away, beading a bit, never putting the clasps on, and sleeping a lot. So now that I have decided just what you are, slump, I am kicking you out. I am taking my life and creativity back, one project at a time. It's so much easier to fight an enemy that you know than an enemy that brings you down namelessly.

Here's my first happy project in months, the color-me-happy socks.

They are plain, they are boring, but darn it, they're working. Yarn is Regia, Kaffe Fasset colourway. 68 stitches around on size 1 needles. Since this picture I've knitted the heel flap, turned the heel and finished the gusset.

And here's some nummy handspun that I made while thinking things through. It is Verona on Ravelry, about 120 yards/4 oz of BFL/Mohair/copper glitz. I kinda love it. This picture is seriously my wallpaper on my computer right now, and that makes me happy. Everyone needs a little orange handspun in their life.