CURSES Frogged Again

Yet again the dastardly frogs have thwarted me. Due to a point protector slipping off in my knitting bag, and 3 partial rows unwravelling it has become necessary for me to frog my beautiful lace shawl... after spending days and hours kntiting the meager 4 inch wide piece. There is too much damage to salvage it. BAWL

Firefly rulez

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Inara Serra
You live in a world of sensuality and spirituality. You are skilled at manipulating those around you, but you do not use this talent for ill. Despite this skill with the emotions of others, you seem rather inept with your own feelings, and often attempt to pretend they simply aren't there.

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The beginning is the end is the beginning

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Dimentional Rift
You are a strange and often enigmatic person. Your complexity and ambiguity is quite the norm in a DIMENTIONAL RIFT APOCOLYPSE, where all the rules are changed, altered, modified and then dumped on a duck and toasted. Normality, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.

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As promised... Shawl Pics!

Here's what I'm working on. I fiddled with the color a bit so you could see the texture better.
Here's A closer view:
And here's the back:


And a view with light behind it:

Cheap ass needles

Well... I've concluded that I really don't like those birch Brittanny needles i picked out. They're just... mushy. I think the fiborg den mother was right about me being more of a metal needle kinda gal. After fighting with that lace pattern and frogging it 4 times I went and got some cheap ass size 6 circular needles and no more problems... it's going quite well. (Knock on wood)

When I get back to where my scanner is I'll scan the lace so far and post pics. It's coming out really pretty. It should be lovely and fluffy and warm, although I'll have to figure out how to block it before I can wear it. The only downside of the circular needles is that I can't really lay it flat to get a good look at it and plus it's coming out all bunched up hehe. Ah well... at least it's working now whereas before I was just getting pissed and ended up throwing it across the room and shrieking in frustration much to my darling boyfriend's suprise. LOL

And in other news... I have decreed the alpaca to be the cutest baby animal on earth:

About.com = Useless

Soooo... all the pictures in the stitch library on about.com vanished. I hassled the tech support people and they were just like "The lady left and took her pictures with her". Very helpful. Thanks. Love ya too!

So, I got annoyed and just did a little poking around and a little googling and found the knit stitch library WITH pictures. Same content... different site. Might have helped if the About.com people had mentioned that the woman's site was here.

Once again, the mighty fiborg prevail in the face of blatant capitolistic greed. Resistance is textile. Knit on ladies!

Frogginated

So the frogs got my scarf. I made a boo boo and was unable to recover and had to frog like 20 rows of really tiny (I mean TINY) stitches (103 per row to be precise) of one step above lace weight alpaca... which then proceeded to mate with itself (it wove itself together with a fuzzball and I had to perform a fuzzballotomy to finish ripping it) and WAHHHHHHHHH sonova stinking bastard whore damn those frogs!!!!

I found this crazy site just now when I googled "evil frogs". Y'all should take a look... it's a photoshop contest site. The frogs and evil animals are cool as hell. That's where I stole frogginator up there. Here are the links:

Chop A Frog
Evil Animals

Also check the drop down menus at the tops of those pages for Chop a Frog 2 and Evil Animals 2 through 6. There's some crazy stuff there.

DAMN THE EVIL KNITTING FROGS!!!!! *bawl*

Pepto Bismol For The Win!

The uber-lacy scarf of doom is under way finally and looking lovely, although I may have to break down and get a pair of circular needles to work it on since the scarf is gonna end up being alot wider than the needles I'm working on. If I don't go blind or insane before I finish it, it will be lovely.

My kid gave me a stomach virus darnit. Thank goodness for pepto bismol.

Unfortunately my stomach isn't the only thing feeling dismal. It's also the 1 year anniversary of my dad's death due to an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Cancer is a bitch whore from hell. *Sigh*

On the upside though I've got my wonderful boyfriend to curl up with tonight, I've got alpaca to knit with, and a great son to boot.

Eep

So I met with a personal trainer today to try to learn some exercises for my knee and my fibromyalgia. It went pretty well till I was walking back to my car and stepped funky on a curb. My kneebrace saved my ass though... I guess it really WAS worth $80 after all. All my knee did was pop and crunch when the brace locked and I didn't hit the pavement face down, cream my knee horribly, or make a damn fool of myself.... so... money well invested I have decided. Yay knee brace!

I've actually managed to successfully execute the lace pattern I was attempting once and I'm going to keep swatching till I get it down pat... then all shall be glorious and I shall bring out the sacred alpaca and the fancy birch needles. (Wahoo)

Now... for something completely different:

New Purse

Oh yea and here are some pics of my new messenger bag purse thingie. It's really cool for my knitting with all the organizing pockets and sections and stuff. :D Plus, it has a fairie on the front and moon and stars inside and florentine\gothic flowery stuff too!

Sin

Yep. I've decided that Hill Country Weavers is evil. Soooooo much gorgeous\soft\luscious yarn and so little yarn money. *sniffle* I did manage to escape (after spending only what I'd planned to spend *gasp*) with only 2 balls of fluffy pink alpaca\silk yarn and 2 balls of silk\alpaca in wine purple. Seeee? They're the ones at the top of the stash! :D Katy was a doll and got me one of the purple silk\alpaca balls (which is honestly the ONLY reason I made it out of there without going over budget LoL). I've decided that to buy regular alpaca, ebay is probably best, but the specialty blends, now THAT I can justify buying in a specialty yarn store for slightly exorbinant prices. The lace\alpaca blends are ultra soft and wonderful and light enough that if i do them in a nice lace pattern they might just actually be really wearable in Texas more than 2 months of the year. LMAO

We also went to Hobby Lobby for some basic knitting notions like tip protectors and row counters and i ended up getting sucked in by this GORGEOUS decorative chest\box thing which is now housing my yarn stash (previously scattered all over my living room floor, so MAJOR improvement). It ended up being 50% off and was only $15! Not bad for such a suitable vessel for the almighty alpaca.


























Isn't the brocade just lurvely? I was like
OOOOOO when I found it. Granted, it's like
2\3 full already, but hey... gives me an excuse to buy more pretty containers down the line. MUAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

SpLuRgE

So I was having a crappy day... so I went to the yarn barn to drown my sorrows. I dug thru the clearance bins and came up empty handed and so I began wandering (silly me) and got sucked in by 3 more balls of cherry brown crimson alpaca sportweight to match the ball of same said yarn in my stash left from a scarf project and ended up buying my first non-malwart pair of knitting needles. They are birch, made by brittany, size 5, and should be lovely with that aforementioned yarn.




The pictures kinda suck but then again they're captures from a webcam. Plus i laid out the yarn and needles on top of my bf's icechest in his dining area since it was the only area in the house with decent light. Then I tried to correct them coz they were way dark. Bleh... Oh Well. They give ya the idea sorta.

Oy vey... this picture about sums up my day. I stole it from the Museum of Bad Art website.


You really should go and look... it's hysterical. :)

On the upside I had lunch with my sweety and his parents and it went nicely and the food was good. Also, I get to spend an extra night with my sweetie and then tommorow I get to see my best friend since 7th grade so life ain't all THAT bad but oy... hehehe

Swamp Witch Shawl from Hell!

The swamp witch shawl project has been set aside for the time being. I am loving on my alpaca and hoping the shawl will envy the attention and finally begin to behave.

So far I'm happy with the way the alpaca is behaving. I cycled thru several different stitch designs till i found one I liked that didn't make the baby alpaca feel scratchy. I settled on a diagonal rib pattern. It's pretty but the photos didn't come out too well due to lack of lighting availablity here at my sweetum's apartment.


As you can see the scarf has survived a decent amoun t of time without being frogged. Here's a shot that kinda shows the texture of the pattern. It's fluffy and soft and loveable and I shall call it Squishy.

GAH!

Acrylic is evil! *cry*

I jumped into the frogpond since the single ribbing had no snazz to it and started attempting the lace pattern in the swamp witch shawl. It's a simple combo but geesh the total lack of stretch makes those k2tog stitches a pain in the arse! I think the frogs are conspiring against me... witness this revealing photo of their evil mastermind.... just look at that subversive, evil grin... the way he sinisterly steeples his hands in an effort to falsely gain your trust.... just like a miniature (but more shapely and less disgusting) Jabba the Hut!

I think the swamp witch shawl may be put on hold until the frogs stop conspiring against me. In the meantime I think I shall return to the alpaca scarf for my mom's christmas present. Praise be to alpaca.

swamp witch shawl

So far so good. Using the chunky yarn with the novelty yarn is working nicely but I'm tempted to try the combo on bigger needles to show off the lovely halo and texture the bobbly novelty stuff gives the chunky acrylic. I may even break down and attempt the actual pattern that inspired the shawl. LOL No pics yet since I'm still pacing the edges of the frog pond deciding whether I like it so far or not. Right now I'm just doing basic single ribbing, but it looks nice enough. :) I dunno. LOL

The blog hath been renamed

So I was staring at my blog and chuckling in great satisfaction and the new name came to me in a moment of brilliant epiphany. I finally thought of a knitting related word that rhymes with futile... textile! I am so smart.... or crazy... or sleep deprived.... or something...

For your contemplation we now have Yoda borg

Knit Happens

Yep.... knit's about to happen. I found the bobbley purple and black stuff (yea the photo sucks) in a clearance bin and the chunky black acrylic stuff was a malwart find. I'm aiming to create something similar to the swamp witch shawl on The Anticraft. http://www.theanticraft.com/archive/samhain05/swampwitch.htm

I plan to cast on tonight or tommorow, meanwhile casting off all directions and pattern. Who knows what I'll end up with, but hey... with 3 balls of bobble yarn, 2 skeins of chunky black yarn, size 19 knitting needles, and a pot of tea I'm bound to end up with something interesting.

PoP goes the cherry

and thusly, we the fiborg enter the great eternity of omniscient cyberspace... we are fiborg... resistance is futile!

we will assimilate you with our knitting needles, our crochet hooks, and our rebel gothic stylings.

in alpaca we trust