What are you doing here?

Those colors can be only one thing. Well, two things. A big mess o' color, or a Doctor Who scarf. This is the latter.

I really really really really really love Doctor Who. Well, I love Russell T Davies' Doctor Who. Watching old episodes of Doctor Who just mostly makes me fall asleep, which I realize makes me a heathen in the realm of Anglophilia. But I want a scarf.

Well, except for that I don't want a scarf, because that sucker is 15 feet long. No. I want some arm warmers or wrist warmers, and a scarf of moderate size. So I'll be heavily modifying the pattern. I'll be using smaller needles, less stitches, and I am halving the number of rows per color colour.

If there's one thing I'm really good at, it's looking at a guide or instructions or the rules and saying "Well I'm not doing it that way." The Doctor totally digs that. And, I think I did okay for completely forgetting the list of colors when I went to the store. Not only did I get pretty darn bloody close/close enough on all my colors, I actually did not even forget any colors! Er, colours. Colours!

New sweater!

Now that I've done two sweaters, each being sort of an albatross around my neck, I felt a little anxious about 12 hours into my new sweater-less knitting status. So I started another one.



It's a Jaali! I've knitted three gauge swatches, and none of them came close to what I needed for the row count. You know what, I'm just not gonna worry about that too much. Let's see what happens.

Fall is officially here!

I've been cooking turkey in the slow-cooker, wearing lots of Samhain (and my vintage is from 2005; this stuff lasts and lasts, folks) and Holy Terror, drinking a little Octoberfest, and knitting a bat. And a pumpkin.



Ya gotta love that outside lighting! Overcast skies can be the perfect diffuser for glare.

Bat and Pumpkin. This pattern I found to be a little easier than a Hansigurumi pattern, but some things had me scratching my head anyway. For one, I'm not happy with the holes that M1s will leave, so I used a variety of knit-left-loop and knit-right-loops on the upper half. Seaming seamlessly still evades me to some point, so I just make it sloppy and figure that nobody will see those parts but me. The pumpkin was much easier and I modified it to make it shorter and plumper by running the brown strand through the center top and bottom stems and tightening. Squish!

My purple sweater is still blocking. I might get to wear it this week, though!

Blockingks!

Vine lace cardigan is blocking! All ends woven in, armholes seamed up, soaked and now stretched out on some towels.

Possibly related, it smells like wet dog in here.

The Sweater in the Low Light.

Purple sucks and I am tired of trying to get it to photograph right.



Sometimes it looks like this.



This is probably most accurate.

COMPLETELY related, I do not like it when a pattern tells you to "pick up 5 sitches, then 58, then 5 more" on the cast-on edge, oh and also, the amount of stitches you cast on at that edge six months ago? 64. I guess this thing happens a lot! Because I see a handful of other projects in this pattern on the Ravelry, and nobody else mentions this problem. Like, it happens with every pattern and people just accept this? Or there is something glaringly obvious that I am not interpreting in these instructions! Finally I ripped the collar out and started over with just matching the stitches I had cast on originally. And now I have a collar which is JUST FINE, THANK U VERY MUCH.

Last night was spent around a little bonfire, and now Arwen smells kinda smoky. I KNOW the yarn is called "superwash" and I've gotten it wet once before to block it, and again, superwash, but the thought of washy-washing it is making me a little nervous. It's my first sweater! And I'm going to WASH it. Scary!

Leetle Adipose

I have been very, VERY busy doing things* which are not knitting! Alas, I have not forgotten you, Bloglandistan. I am back with the first of what will be MANY posts updating you all on the little projects I've managed to finish.

This is Adipose attempt #2. After about TEN attempts to get the feet right on Adipose #1, I abandoned him entirely and started over with this lush Andean Silk**. A few notes!

One, I managed to do a proper provisional cast on for the top of the head, making the seaming up there kind of a piece of cake. I'm much happier with this one, even if he does have a bit of a Frankenstein scar going on up there like his predecessor.

Two, I totally made up the hands AND feet this time, loosely basing them on the original pattern*** but going with more tube-like limbs instead of the flat ones. I like! I could not re-create if I tried, because improvising and not taking notes is how I operate best.

Three, I was not able to replicate the awesomeness of Adipose 1's face, but I guess that's okay. This one is pretty cute too. Embroidered, instead of knit & sewn on.

Next up: A NESSIE! Maybe. Also a bat.

*Painting, painting, smelling BPAL (The Buggre Alle This Bible is my current fave, god bless Terry Pratchett), gardening, and being taken out for happy hours numerous times by all my awesome friends. Also looking for a job and I do believe I am in the midst of Career Assessment Test #94.

**AHMG, I want a sweater out of this stuff. But I kind of don't. I know I'd manage to shrink/felt it somehow. I'm already questioning the entire bulky sweater that is almost done, of which I made using non-superwash Cadena (pics to follow, maybe). That was dumb. But this, this is awesome and definitely worth the money.

***I thought a revised, BBC-sanctioned version of this pattern was going to be released soon, but I haven't heard anything yet. I really, really, really wish I had jumped on the Test Knitters bandwagon. Curse my shyness!

Oi!

It's been a while! I've made a squid.



This one's for me. The main yarn is Moda·Dea silk & wool blend. The visual effect is perfect for this little guy, but it's kind of a pain to work with all the shaping.



It's pretty cute!

The eyes are the palest Cascade 220 pink I could find. I also did a slight modification to the eyes— cast on 18 in light color, join in round, switch to dark color, k2tog entire round, k entire round, k1 k2tog last round. Break, run tail through remaning sts. I like that it made the eyes a bit more bobbley. This is probably not actually correct, as the awesomely talented pattern designer tends to lean towards accuracy over exaggeration. (Unless it's a Nessie!) Mainly the original specs made the eyes too big to fit in my allotted area. For this squid anyway... I didn't seem to have this problem with the teal one.

It's hard to knit now that I've discovered Boomshine. No joke!