Yoogly self-striping socks from last week

Ugh.

Whyever did I buy this yarn?  It's over now, whew, and I can perhaps move on to better yarn.  Say hi to Kirby.

*blows raspberry*

Just in time for preliminary World Cup call-ups, I present to you the most recent of the 2010 WC Collection by Dirtbunny:

The red and yellow there is for La Furia Roja (Spain).  The good part is finished, but I still have to weave in ends.  The green, white, and red is for El Tri (Mexico).  The blue and white is for Los Catrachos (Honduras).  It was supposed to have one more blue stripe but I ran out of yarn.  Aaaaaannnnd, the white one, which I started yesterday, is for the All Whites (New Zealand).

The All Whites got their name thusly:  The NZ national rugby team is the All Blacks, on account of their black uniforms.  When the NZ national football team came along, they wore white uniforms, hence, the All Whites.

I don't know if I'm happy about any of these.  Clarabelle keeps telling me that the Spanish kit this year is more black and red than yellow and red; the Honduras kit is not going to resemble the Honduran flag as it traditionally has; and the Mexican kit has a much heavier emphasis on the green than my rendition.  Clarabelle sez that no one would recognize any of the scarves I've done (except possibly the Albicelestes, for Argentina).  Clarabelle sez I am a failure as a designer and it probably would have been cheaper to buy team scarves than to buy yarn to make scarves, and the purchased ones would look better.  Clarabelle sez that if I can't even stack colors together in straight lines to make a decent-looking scarf, then how can I possibly expect the pink cable cardi (which I "designed" myself from a book of standard patterns) to turn out properly.  Clarabelle is some kinda pain in the ass, isn't she?

The FIGC announced the preliminary Azzurri squad yesterday.  We are most displeased.   The good news is that Idiot Il Mister (who has been testing me for a while and has now achieved official DeadToMe status) is so effing predictable that I scored 28 out of 30 in The Offside's WC Prediction Game.  Well, actually, I sacrificed JoeBeppe Rossi for, well, guess, but I never really expected it to happen, so the highest score I could have gotten was 29.  (If you care, I had Legrottaglie instead of Candreva, and I am not disappointed to have gotten that one wrong.)  Which means Dirtbunny, renowned football expert based on her lengthy association with sophisticated tactical analysis since October 2009, only missed one of Il Mister DeadToMe's picks.  



No, I've changed my mind.  This is not good news.  This is bad news.  This is very bad news.


Dirtbunny's list did not contain her assessment of the 30 best players, or the 30 players who, in combination, would be most likely to bring home the big trophy, or even her personal favorites.  Dirtbunny's list was based entirely on guessing what Il Mister DeadToMe would do, and it was distressingly accurate.  I mean, I love these guys, these Beloved Heroes from Days of Yore,  but on the whole they are old.  They are tired.  They are slow.  They are/have been injured this year.  They haven't been playing very much even for their club teams.  Or some combination of all of that. 


*sigh*


I could go on and on, but I'll do one brief rant and then I'll call it a day.

THERE IS NO WAY ANYONE CAN POSSIBLY CONVINCE ME THAT QUAGS IS SUPERIOR TO ADP IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER, AND CERTAINLY NOT IN SKILL, TALENT, CURRENT FORM, TEAM COHESIVENESS, INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE, OR LEADERSHIP.  NO FUCKING WAY.  OF ALL THE INEXPLICABLE CHOICES, WHY QUAGS?  WHY?  WHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHY?

Best Yarn Evar

The Bean blanket, he is done.  No pictures.  I think it's fair if Refried Bean's mom gets to see it before you do.


And here's the finished Bafana Bafana WCS. 

Still no guesses about which country Bafana Bafana represent?  I wove in all those ends and no one will hazard a guess for me?  Hmph.

Bafana Bafana

See if you can guess which country the Bafana Bafana are from:

Yes, I am going to use all of those colors except the non-matching green on the left, which I noticed before I started knitting.  And yes, I am still going to have enough green to finish.

That awesome little zippered bag in front is a replacement for a pink version of the same bag that Kirby ate.

The Man:  He ATE it?  *thinking about a trip to the emergency vet*
DB:  OK, he chewed it past the point of usefulness and repair.  It's dead because it was in his mouth.  Is that close enough?
The Man:  *if it's not going to hurt the dog, what does The Man care about precious knitting doo-dads?*

Brown Boot Sock Q & A

Q:  "Boot sock"?

A:  Yeah well I don't know.  The pattern says "boot" sock, but I don't know what is particularly bootish about them.



Q:  Since you crossed this off your list some time ago, how come we are only hearing about it now?

A:  Check out my handsome monkey in an Azzurri scarf!

He's not so sure he wants to be wearing anything, but he looks pretty great, huh?


Q:  I asked about the boot sock, not the Azzurri scarf.

A:  Here's one where you can see the scarf a little better:

A little better, anyway.  That Tiki sure does love the sunshine, doesn't he?  What a cutie!


Q:  Bunny, we are not amused.  What are you not telling us?

A:  it sucked  and I had to start over


Q:  Pardon?  Speak up please.

A:  I SAID IT SUCKED AND I HAD TO START OVER, OK?


Q:  It couldn't have been that bad.

A:  Oh yeah?

Q:  That doesn't look so bad.

A:  Puhleeze.  Look at all that fail!  The one on the left is one pattern repeat too short in the leg AND one pattern repeat too short in the foot, because I just counted pattern repeats (badly) instead of measuring.   Measure?  We don't need no stinkin measure.  It's not like I haven't already been taught that eyeballing it doesn't work.   *sob*

Q:  So you're only here for confession?  Has Clarabelle been bothering you again?

A:  No.  Well, yes, she is.  She never leaves me alone.  But no, I'm not just here for confession.


Q:  Then......?

A:  Well, I stewed about the messed up sock for a while; weighed the possibility that no one would ever notice; rejected that because I just can't foist crap knitting on other people; considered keeping them for myself; rejected that because the messed up sock is uncomfortably short on my gigantic feet; considered giving the whole thing the heave-ho like I did with the crap yarn blue socks; rejected that because this is nice yarn and also expensive yarn; took a deep breath; ripped it back; knit one more pattern repeat on the leg; did the heel flap, heel turn, and gusset; and re-knit the whole effing foot until it was exactly the same length as the other one.   I just finished yesterday.  Looking at them fills me with shame. I gave them to The Man without taking a photograph.  They aren't worth the pixels.


Q:  OK......   Wait.  What happened to the crap yarn blue socks? 

A:  Um, so I finished the first one and then I weighed it to see how much yarn it took and it took more than half the yarn so I didn't have enough to make a pair.  So I ripped it back some, weighed everything again, divided the yarn in half and rewound it into two balls, and reknit the first sock using up half the yarn.  Then I went to cast on the second sock, but I had lost the second ball, so in a fit of rage I threw the whole goddamn thing in the garbage along with two other skeins of crap sock yarn that were likely going to cause the same sorts of  problems.  (No, I ripped it off the needles first and kept the needles.  My impulsiveness only goes so far.)

Q:  Well, that's OK.  Who says you have to finish everything no matter how it turns out.

A:  We aren't finished yet.  LATER THAT SAME DAY, The Man comes in from runnng errands in the car and presents me with the second ball of yarn, which had escaped from my knitting bag and fallen on the floor of the car.


Q:  Oh.  Yeah.  We kinda saw that coming.  So did you fish it out of the garbage?

A:  Oh I thought about it.  You betcha.  Clarabelle was screaming at me to rescue it from the garbage and finish.  It was the only thrifty choice.

Q:  Um, OK.  So what happened next?

A:  I THREW THE SECOND BALL OF YARN AWAY TOO.  It is gone!  It was so liberating! 



Q:  Good for you!  Did you tell your therapist?

A:  Nah.  We got bigger fish to fry than yarn neurosis.



Q:  Um, OK.  Hey, how's Kirby?

A:  Thanks for asking!   He's been watching futbol with The Man:

And sleeping like he do:

Grr

I have just finished paying a buttload of bills, including an escrow shortfall, and I am very cranky.  Very  cranky.  However, the knitting goes on.

First up, we have two socks, both plain mindless monkey knitting and suitable for commuting.

Please, please.  Try to contain your excitement.  You are disturbing the others.

Next up, a Bean Blanket for the Refried Bean, poorly represented here as safety cone orange:

It's lace, and it's pretty.  See?

It looks fancy, but it's not so hard as long as you don't poke a hole in your finger with the lace-tip circular needle.  And there are more socks, a nice brown patterned one that you can't really see at all,  and a blue lace patterned one that you can't really see at all.

But wait!  There's more.  I finally started the Azzurri WC scarf.  Tis beautiful, but there's a long way to go (the Azzurri had a friendly last week against the Indomitable Lions from Cameroon, and played like ass in a boring nil-nil draw).  And finalement, I have been working on the pink cabled cardigan for some months now and have yet to finish even one crappy piece.  *sigh*

If I ever finish it, it's going to be lovely.

Isn't "Indomitable Lions" a wonderful team name? 

Snow Days = Finishment

Since I've been trapped in snow of apparently biblical proportions, and freed from the necessity of earning a living during that time, I have had much more time than usual for knitting.  I was happily knitting away on the Viola scarf, and I finished it, but there were umpteen hundred ends to weave in, so I set it aside and picked up Juno Regina.  I worked the boring part mindlessly for a while, decided to take a measurement, and discovered I was finished with the boring part.  So's then I switched to the lace part, and I knocked off four charts of lace in a day, and then I blocked it, and then I took it outside, and that led to this:

Isn't that pretty?  Here's a detail:

Yeah, so close-up, those are only diamond-ish, not diamonds.  Who cares?


And then I thought, Man!  I am getting really tired of the Bird's Nest Shawl.  I want it done.  So I finished it:

As you can see, if you're into noticing that sort of thing, the Bird's Nest Shawl has fallen victim to Yarn Bandit's hair.  I know it was him because he likes to sit on my lap when I knit and this was a large item that kept brushing against him.  The washing and blocking helped a lot, but it's still hairy.  That's OK.  I tried it out this morning, and it works.

And then I thought, Crikey!  Champions League resumes next week!  I better finish the Viola scarf so I can wear it during their match with Bayern Munich and impart good karma!  So I wove in umpteen hundred ends and finished it:

That really is a nice shade of violetty/purple, just like the Viola kits, although it photographs blue.  And it also features the white and gold of their logo, and the red of their third kits, which they wore this weekend when they got clobbered by Samp.  I am concerned that the Viola scarf might be broken.  Either that or it's a bad karma scarf that makes teams lose.  Or maybe it's like the Bianconeri Scarf of Drunken Champions League Woe, which works sometimes, and other times not so much.

And then I thought, well, my oldest remaining project is the November sock club socks.  I hates it and I wants it to go away, and I'm a bit compulsive, so the way to make disagreeable knitting go away is to finish it:

The pattern is nice, but a little fussy.  The problem here is the yarn.  The dyer over at Blue Moon likes the effect when you take a multi-colored yarn and overlay the whole thing with black.  It's a nice idea, I suppose, but in practice, it creates a slightly sticky feeling yarn that turns your hands purple because the black dye rubs off.  I've had purple fingers for a week.  I hate that.  I want my hands to be clean!  I may grow to like these socks once they've been washed a half-dozen times and I find out what color they really are. 

And that's it for the sock club.  I decided not to renew this year.  Which is not to say that I am no longer knitting socks, cos I am.  Here is one that happened to be handy when I decided to take photos:

It's brown, and the dye stays in the yarn.  However, I dropped a stitch in the middle of a cable, so I've had to rip them back and inch or so.  Bummer.  Now I have to carefully thread the needles through the stitches again, get them all lined up and purty, figure out where the row begins (shoulda thought of that before I ripped it off the needles, huh?), and THEN figure out which row of the pattern I'm on.  Shudder.

Yup. Still knitting.

Still learning Photobucket and it's messing up my formatting.  Please be patient.


Anyhoo, Ima knitting socks.  Here are three very exciting pairs:

So you have here your plain blue sock in a child's size, the cuff of a plain self-striping sock in a grown-up size, and the November sock club sock, which is actually a variegated red/green/gray combo and which doesn't photograph well.

And this is La Viola scarf.  They are in the Champions League round of sixteen and their next match is February 17, so I have to be finished by then.   I kinda like them, so they get a scarf, which will be worn during matches for its positive karmic properties.   Now that Adi Mutu has flunked another a drug test, they're gonna need it.  I can't believe I found the proper shade of violet yarn!

This is the beginnings of a secret project for Bean 2.0, who we are expecting to see in June and who we have have recently discovered is a male child.  This yarn is lovely, the color of a ripe papaya (the insides, duh, not the peel).

So that blue bit there was an Azzurri WCS.  Get a good look, cuz I've already ripped it out and started over. And the gray bit is the beginning of a sleeve of a cardi that is going to require steeks.  Steeks are too monstrous to contemplate right now, so I will explain them to you some other time when you're older and can understand better.

And this here?  This here is the big boy:

The telescope is not mine.  No, he does not use it to spy on the Steinmetz daughters across the street!  Gross!  How could you think such a thing?  Plus they've all grown up and gone to college now.  And I don't think their last name is really Steinmetz.  Yup.  This here is the Juno Regina scarf.  I started out loving it.  Now I'm in the interminable monotonous middle section.  If I don't die of boredom, in about 8 more inches, I can go back to fun diamond-patterned lace!  Woohoo!  DISCLAIMER: lace looks like ass before blocking

And it's fucking freezing in here because when the guys took the furnace out of the sun room closet as part of the Hellhole Rehabilitation Project of 2009, they left behind a hole in the floor of the closet that opens directly into the crawlspace, with only a screen and an old furnace filter to block the minus 3* degrees air pouring in from outside.  We're going to fix it, but not this afternoon.  And because it's freezing, my fingers are getting stiff and my feet are starting to hurt and I'm getting really tired of doing this, and I started about 90 minutes ago and have been stumbling through the learning curve ever since. 

*I need to learn the Celsius scale, because all the good football broadcasts give the gameday weather in metric.  Weren't we supposed to convert to the metric system back in the 80s?  Goddamn Republicans.  Oh.  So the translation into Uhmurrican weather is 26 degrees Fahrenheit.

This post powered by cold green tea and the fear of ending up like that guy in "To Build a Fire"

Old photo clean up, part two

Number Five

The first of the world cup scarves.  This one is for the Oranje.  I think I started it first because they qualified early and because I felt like giving the orange yarn a go.  I have learned a thing or two about striped scarves since then.  My later designs are much better, so I 'm glad the experimental scarf was not one of my most favorite of favorites.


Number Six

That's right.  Another Baby Surprise Jacket.


Number Seven

One pair of gigantic god-awful socks fashioned from the corpse of the dearly departed Ziggy socks.  And so I have tried Noro Kureyon sock and I need never bother again.  Ick.  Oh yeah.  There was snow last month.

It's not like I haven't been knitting, yknow

Cos I have been.  I just haven't felt much like writing about it, no one's listening, no one cares, and so forth.  Regardless, I feel the need to show the ether some photographs:

Number One

So this here be some red socks from nice Fleece Artist yarn.  They went to the Old Man.


Number Two

And this be a Baby Surprise Jacket made from leftover yarn that I used to make a Baby Surprise Jacket. 


Number Three

And this here be lace.  Better yet, black lace.  Since lace photographs badly, and black photographs badly, the ass-looking has layers.  This is the Birds Nest Shawl.  It has been on hiatus because I ran out of yarn and had to order more and it was back ordered.  The yardage requirements in the pattern lied.  And you would not believe how well the black shows off dog hair.  *sigh*


Number Four

And lookie!  More lace.  This is the Juno Regina scarf in fabulous aussie mohair blend laceweight.  This is going to be something when it's done and blocked PLUS the aussie laceweight is the oldest yarn in the stash, so that means a double sense of accomplishment.  I am well over half done wth this now, but I'm mired in the center section.  It's 42 inches of a simple vertical lace stripe.  Complicated enough to not be mindless monkey knitting, not complicated enough to be interesting, therefore, tedious as hell.

Final Inventory Tally

Accurate as of some time last week:

262 new balls/skeins
76 partial balls/skeins

Stash inventory

OK people.  I don't know whether I should be embarassed for you and your woefully inadequate guesses, or embarassed for myself and my wretched excess.  This is not a good way to start the new year.  Please try again.

2009 completed projects

5 small sweaters
5 adult sweaters
25 pairs of socks
4 pairs of mittens, mitts, and gloves
11 scarves
3 shawls
2 blankets
21 stitch and pitch squares
10 hats
9 pairs of mini-socks
1 dog bed