The Thrifty Knitter

I got my coloriffic swap today, and look how freaking cute!

There’s a handmade wristband, which I am wearing even now, an adorable–I don’t know what he is? A fat mushroom? An egg in a beret?–jar with a gasketed lid that will be home to something delicious, three spool of printed ribbon, 2 darling little red aluminum tins, a wooden pen with an animal head, another pen with flowers all over, a little stuffed mushroom bobble that I think I’ll use as a zipper fob, hand-dyed yarn, polka-dotted fabric, printed fabric that’s begging to be embroidered, a foam N (for Nikol! Yay, me!), and yummy candy! Hooray!

   

Finished the potholders for my potholder & recipe swap! They’re drying on the fabulous new blocking board my mommy gave me for Christmas. The deadline is tomorrow, so I’m just in the nick of time. I still need to photograph the potholders I received, which arrived a week ago.

One has a basketweave pattern and a seed border (all worked in my fancy new continental knit/norwegian purl combo!), and I put hang lops on both sides. I don’t know why, exactly. It just seemed like the thing to do.

The yarn is Briggs & Little, and it was Kool-Aid dyed by the nice Canadian lady I bought it from. The color isn’t precise, but there are pinks, oranges, yellows, and a few nice little pops of lime green, very pleasant and sherbety.

The mate is just stockinette/reverse stockinette stripes with a garter top and bottom. Simple, but shows of the yarn nicely and they’re both reversible.

My swap partner sent me a very nicely quilted set with a teapot and a teacup, very impressive. I know nothing about quilting, so it seems impossibly complicated. I promise to photograph them when I’m not incredibly sleepy. I still have a couple of hours of knitting to finish the Katamari Prince earmuffs I’m making, but I don’t think I’ll even make it to the shower. I wanted to shower before I went to sleep, because I just washed all the bedding and it’s all nice and fluffy and fresh.

I joined runagogo & I’m starting tomorrow! I’m dying to run, just so I can watch the little status bar grow. I am so embarassingly motivated by charts and grades. My health and fat ass don’t motivate me, but a status bar does. No wonder I live in a school.

Incoming potholders, as promised:

Aren’t they fancy? They even have little steam squiggles!

First finished object of the year, but it’s not for me. They’re a custom order of the Katamari Damacy Queen of All Costmos earmuffs I designed for Shojo Beat. They’re going to a girl in Las Vegas.

She wanted a little tag saying I made it, so I machine embroidered a cute ribbon tag with my name on one side and ART CLUB on the other. As soon as it’s February, I’m going to order some of those “Knitted Especially for you by NIKOL LOHR” woven/printed labels. I’m not allowed any personal purchases for January, and while I could rationalize the labels (because this and the other Katamari muffs I’m finishing today are actually custom orders, so it’s a “work expense”), I know they’re really just a vanity item for me.

I’ll be finishing my 2nd 2007 object tonight, the Prince of all Cosmos custom muffs, which are going to a fella at Texas A&M.

I made this balaklava for Ron for Christmas. The green one is Kraemer Summit Hill (merino supewash), made with this pattern. I made the bottom ribbing about an inch an a half longer, and the crown about half an inch shorter.

The gray one, I think I made pretty much to pattern, but I wish I had made the neck longer on it, too, because it doesn’t really do dual duty (neck warmer) like the first one. It’s Plymouth Galway in charcoal heather (darker than it looks here). I originally started it for my dad, but he didn’t seem very interested, which is just as well, because he probably couldn’t be trusted to hand wash and dry it, and it’s not superwash like Ron’s.

Living with me has made Ron very sensitive to handwashing woolens, so I’m not worried about him.

I highly recommend the pattern. Except for the face opening, it’s totally movie knitting. The only part I thought could be clearer was the decreases at the sides of the opening, and I’m not eniterly confident that I did what the pattern intended. When I make another one, I’ll probably decrease six to eight times on either side of either corner. I believe I made 4 decreases on either side of either corner here. Since I’ll proabably wear it over my nose, the extra decreases will get rid of the little gap you see on the picture with me.

It’s very comfy and toasty, and I’d like to make myself one in some kind of girly pink. Maybe that Knit Picks Swish. Oh, wait. I’m not allowed to buy any new yarn until my stash all fits in the glass cupboard. Which proabably means no new yarn this year.

The Webs Year-End Clearance sale would like to have killed me. I can’t begin to describe how tempting that was. And yet, here I am, with no new yarn.

I’m going nuts trying to figure out what I’m going to use for my We Call Them Pirates hat (3 more days to join the knitalong!). I have some leftover Merino Style and I’ll aslo have some Telemark from the Katamari muffs I knit to order, but not enough of any for the whole thing. If I find a full ball of something to use for the base color, I could do three different colors on the rows of skulls. Hm. That sounds pretty good. Black base and 3 greens for the skulls? That might be a good plan. But do I have enough black? And I don’t really wear much green. I wear a lot of red. Red and black? 2 reds? I like the popping skulls, though. Red and white? Oh, crap. I don’t know. Hm. Maybe red and light blue. I have a powder blue coat that would look good with a red hat…

I just took the greatest knitting class. It totally blew my mind. After two fun-filled hours, I’m completely confident with continental knitting and Norwegian purl (purling with the yarn in back, held continental style). AND I can now do that two-handed colorwork thing where you knit English with one color and knit continental with the other color, just in time for the We Call Them Pirates knitalong. I’m giddy with power!

The class was at The Studio in Kansas City, taught by…Karen, maybe? Sadly, the schedule doesn’t list the teacher, but I would HEARTILY recommend anything she teaches, because she’s a crackerjack teacher! In fact, I think I’m going to call tomorrow and see what else she’s teaching. She was so fabulous, that we all pretty much had it by the end of the first class, so she’s going to teach us a whole other technique (entrelac, probably! entrelac, bitches! I’m a superstar! well, future tense) in the next class.

Obviously, I’m going to need lots of practice, but I can already tell this is going to make me knit WAY faster. I’m just beside myself.

The one thing I couldn’t grasp was two-handed colorwork purling (because our practice was flat), but nuts to that! All the colorwork I want to do as of right now is in the round anyway, so who cares!? Not me! I’m all sassy over here with my fancy new technique.

I’m at Kelly Sue’s tonight, because it was late and I didn’t feel like the 2hr drive home. But I couldn’t sleep, and now it’s 2am, so I’m going to be just as tired either way. Fiddlesticks. At least I got to hang out with sleepy KS and Miss Laurenn for a bit (plus, hilarious one-sided ranting from Matt, playing network video games in his headset, the big dork).

Ooh! And Kelly Sue got me a flat iron, so I can do hairdos, and hopefully even straighten out those three weird crumpled witch hairs I always get.

I started a We Call Them Pirates knitalong, which could easily also be considered a Day of the Dead knitalong (thanks, Suzanne!). I’ve been wanting to make Adrian’s brilliant hat forever, but the stranded colorwork was so daunting. So I thought a knitalong would get me all revved up. Yay!

I’ve been trying to figure out what yarn to use. I must use stash yarn, as am destashing. I was going to use some of that weird Russian yarn I bought ages ago, but I swatched (look at me, following directions! what next?) and it’s WAY too fine.

I think I want red and pink or red and white, but the whites and pinks I have don’t go with the reds I have. The pinks are too cool/lilacy and the whites don’t match the cushiness of the reds. So.

I could also do black with red. I have some Knitpicks Andean Silk, I think it is? The one with alpaca, silk & merino?

At once point, I had an extra ball of Merino Style in natural (when I made the original Katamari Queen earmuffs, they sent me an extra ball of each color), but it seems to have vanished. If I were organized, I’d be all set instead of bellyaching. Speaking of Katamari Queen earmuffs, I just finished a beautiful pair that I’ll be shipping off to their new home on Wednesday. Pretty, pretty!

Oh! And I just got my camera back today! I’ve been waiting forever for it. I’ve been hogging up Ron’s camera, but it’s for shit in low light. I need to shoot and post my 2006 Finished Objects. I forgot to photograph my mom’s Loop-d-Loop Yoke vest, and I made 2 balakavas, one for Ron and one for my dad (but it will probably become Ron’s, too, as my dad seemed pretty uninterested).

My uberlist this year is almost 25% crafty:

1. #6. FUN: Finish 10 Dirty Needles projects $$$
2. #10. FUN: 2 swaps $$ (after first two, swap participation is only a reward for checking something off überlist)
3. #11. FUN: Start a We Call Them Pirates knitalong
4. #13. FUN: Take a class $$$
5. #14. FUN: Knitted Burlesque show $$$
6. #15. FUN: Make needlepoint portraits of Kiki and Herman $
7. #17. FUN: Make real Art Club etsy site
8. #20. FUN: Add book reviews (or really, reports; because who am I, a critic?) to Thrifty Knitter & Out of the Frying Pan
9. #22. FUN/TCB: Make and send Ashley’s critter $
10. #23. FUN: Photograph and post all 2006 FOs by the end of January; generally, post FOs within 48 hours
11. #FUN: Try a new recipe/dish each week (so far: broiled sweet potatoes with leeks, Kung Fu Noodles with pork & vegetables)
12. #28. HARVEYVILLE/FUN: Yarn School $$$$
13. #30. HARVEYVILLE/FUN: Dye Camp or other fiber workshop $$$$
14. #31. HARVEYVILLE: Organize Home Ec Room $$$
15. #67. NEST: Repair carving and attach to wardrobe $$
16. #74. NEST: Make hanging circular needle case
17. #76. NEST: Repair tear in comforter
18. #84. SIMPLIFY: Reduce yarn stash so that it fits just in glass cupboard by end of year
19. #89. TCB: Submit 4 patterns to yarn companies & knitting magazines/sites
20. #98. TCB: Work on 2008 calendar one day each month so that I’ll have it finished EARLY
21. #99. TCB: Ask people who have sent me very nice emails about book to post them to Amazon
22. #100. TCB: Finish and ship Katamari earmuffs by the second week of January $
23. #102. TCB: Finish and submit Yarn School proposal by the end of March
24. #104. TCB: Add outstanding info/patterns to naughtyneedlesknitting.com by end of January
25. #106. Send out Yarn School packages by end of January

Here’s my swap gift, ready to go (except I added some tea, postcards, a magnet & Pocky). I wanted to send it today, but couldn’t reach Swap-bot to find the address, so I’ll have to bring it with me to Texas.

There’s dyed Rambouillet roving, undyed wool and nylon blend sock yarn roving, a DH mug, 2 sk. Noro Kujaku (used here), a printout of Hello Yarn Adrian’s free worsted sock pattern, Art Club color-your-own-tattoo notecards & Crayolas set, a little spining journal like the ones I made for Yarn School & haven’t sent yet (RESOLVED! I’m sending out Yarn School packages the first week of January, as soon as I get home!), and a mousie cat toy.

The Mousie is from Odd Ball Knitting. I stuffed it with catnip and a bell.

I let Skinny Cat test it out. He immediately attacked it mercilessly in a blur of rage, so I had to snatch it back very quickly. I guess it rates a good cat toy.

My Mug of Yarn swap arrived a few days ago, and I finally got a chance to photograph it!

There’s a “too much coffee” mug, a giant, super light and soft skein of kettle-dyed merino, some girly tissues, and a great vintage knitting book from Australia. My incoming partner was a man, and he was very sweet and self-effacing. I think he did an excellent job!

Here’s a closeup of the yarn.

It’s called Malabrigo. Sort of like Manos, but loftier and softer. I’m not sure what to make of it yet. 214 yards. One of those Hello Yarn neckwarmers would probably be smart. Or maybe a neckwarmer based on the One Skein single-cable scarf I like so well.

Vintage knitting books are always fun, but this one actually has a pattern I’d like to make, a little boy’s sweater that would be perfect for Ron. I reckon I could just use a thicker yarn/bigger gauge.

Cute, huh? Basic sweater with a contrast collar and stripe along the top of both of the sleeves.

Speaking of Ron, anyone know of a good men’s hoodie pattern? Pullover hoodie, not zippy. Lisa made a Rogue and Ron’s been admiring it. Dropping hints, really. I explained to him that it has girl shaping and would look stupid on him. He pretended not to be crushed.

I finished my mom’s Loop-d-Loop Yoke Vest, but haven’t started my matching one. I did weigh the yarn, though, and I’ll certainly have enough. That will be a good project for the drive to Texas. Assuming Ron’s driving. 

I’ve got to work on the Naughty Needles site tonight and box up my own Mug of Yarn swap gift. It’s my first swap, so I hope it’s good. My outgoing swap partern is a woman, but I can’t tell that much about her from her blog, because it’s fairly new. I’m sending her 2 skeins of a really bright Noro (she seems to favor brights) in a DH mug, plus Adrian’s Cable Twist Sock Pattern (she’s a sock knitter, and which should work nicely with the Noro), some roving (she spins), and if I have time, a few cat toys (she has cats) and a little spinning journal I made for Yarn School. Holy hell, that reminds me: I never sent it out to the Yarn School girls. Yikes. I’m leaving in a few days, so that will probably have to wait until I get back, as will sending gift copies of Naughty Needles to the rest of my knitting elves.

Which also reminds me: I forgot to call Book People and Hill Country Weavers and see if either wants a signing while I’m in Austin. I didn’t exactly forget; I was mostly too shy to call. But I need to suck it up and promote my book, dammit.