Not mine but others

So a long time ago (almost a year! holy craaaap) this blog started out as a joint effort in crime against humanity. However, after a while there was still only one post by someone who was not me, so it just became my blog. My blog about me. Not even about knitting because according to John this blog isn’t about knitting it’s about a knitter who does things and sometimes happens to get some knitting done. (so.true.)

Still, while I am breathing, I don’t think I can post all about me me me right now… at least, this second, give me a minute to warm up by showing you this

Well shoot! It’s a picture of me. Looking like a total doofball yokel. Ronanda knit the hat and while I gave her instructions on felting (check the hat every two seconds! Are you checking it? ARE YOU CHECKING IT?)… somehow it felted into that thing. She said she didn’t wander away, she just stood there over the washing machine and daydreamed. Well, I can’t fault her on that one since I don’t have any FO’s to show due to my constant daydreaming. Still, this isn’t about me, it’s about Ronanda:

She’s a beautiful laaaaydy. This is her holding her very first sweater! It’s the Men’s Dressy Sweater from Suss Cousin’s Hollywood Knits and she made it in Wool Ease. She made this sweater for a boy… who is kind of a jerkface… but I guess he’s going into a cold cold monastery to become a monk, so hey. Now he can wear Neo’s sweater and it might give him Kung Fu. There was a slight problem:

It turned me into a hunchback!

No, the hole for the head was a bit on the ri-freakin-tiny-lous side, so it was hard to get the noggin through. Everyone is finishing things though:

Cath finished her socks.

Mollylouhoo finished a baby blanket AND discovered she had an armpit. Just one. Oh! She also had a birthday, which means she’s a whole year older!

This is her being all cute with the yarn at her retro themed birthday party. This past weekend was a lot of fun, we saw the fireworks near us which were pretty amazing and sweet… then we went to John’s families house and played in the backyard like real grown adults do. Here’s a picture of his sister having me eat a wooden watermelon:

Delicious.

“would you like to purchase a care plan for your sneakers?”

I have been such a bad blogger, I’m sorry. In my defense… well I don’t have one. But knitting has been happening and I’m kind of close to being done with some things. Maybe. Depends on how slackery I get. Although I don’t feel like I’m being slackery because I feel like I’m reading books but then I don’t have any books to prove my point because I am a slow reader. So when I say I’ve been reading books, what I mean is I have been reading one very intense book. Called Cloud Atlas. Which, if you come to my library you will see that it’s on the recommended reading list for summer.

Anyways, here are some pictures that I finally got off of my phone and wanted to share with yous alls.

Last week I taught my friend Heather how to knit. Look at how much fun she’s having! Although I’m pretty sure that she already knew, otherwise she’s one of those genius people who catches on at light speed.

Speaking of Heather, sometimes during lunch we go to the Cupcakery and make some cupcakes. This one I was proud of because I didn’t go completely overboard with it:

Aaaand because you come here for the yarn and not the cupcakes (well maybe you come for the cupcakes too because cupacakes ROCK!) here is a picture from a trip John and I took to Medina:

This is a yarn shop called Studio Knit and it was a lot of fun to check out.

Ideal Stores

So I’ll just randomly start this post out by saying that tomorrow will mark a year since John and me tied some sort of knot in infamy and looked at each other lovingly and said “sure”.

No, he’s a pretty stand up dude. Don’t let me fool ya. I still have no idea what to get him though. I guess anniversaries aren’t as big of a deal as I was building them up to be because everyone I’ve asked can’t remember what they got their sig. oth. for their first ann.

Does it bug you when people constantly abbreviate things that don’t need to be abbreviated but they do it to be cool or something?

Yeah, me neither.

What does bug me is that sometimes I get the shaft when I go into stores. Well, both John and I get a lot of crap. I think a good majority of the disdain radiates because of our baby faces. Although John is growing something on his face to cover up the baby smoothness.

This photo isn’t even completely current because I did make him cut the hair and trim up the… yeaaah. Well, once his hair got cut, something happened and it was like he magically morphed into Abraham Lincoln to me. Which, I don’t know if anyone here has ever seen Robin Hood: Men in Tights but the other night I was like “Hey, Blinkin” and he was like “Did you just say Abe Lincoln?” Then we tittered. OKAY WE’RE YOUNG. (And pretty damn weird.)

But does that mean you have to belittle me when I come into your store? My crazy baby money is just as good as snooty old jerk money.

There is a yarn shop around here that I pretty much refuse to go into anymore because they’re just complete snobby aholes. Or at least the woman who owns it and was always magically there when I went was mean to me and just an unabashed beeeyotch. Which isn’t to say that the yarn shop I go to now isn’t completely filled to the brim with snobbery- oh, it is. However, I usually get over it because of the amazing selection and fact that they’ll leave you alone and not follow you around like you’re a thief… Hrmph.

Anyways, I started thinking about my ideal yarn shop. Which made me realize that I’ve had this problem before I got into knitting… oh yeah, that’s right- I had this same problem with comic book stores! Now, I don’t pretend to be some sort of comic expert or even comic novice, I just like to read em because I like the art and I like the storytelling sometimes.

So there was this store near where I used to live and they were pretty awesome. They always had recommendations that really hit home and the guy who worked there was bald, which completely fascinates me- oh, and he also happened to know what he was talking about 100% of the time but without being pretentious about it. This guy really hit a home run with me. However, after every recommendation he would look around and say, oh yeah, I guess we don’t have that in right now but I can order it in for you. So two weeks later I get a call and I’m like, wait, what’s in? Whatever sense of being amped up I had was pretty much faded by the time the comic got in.

That made me run to the other store, which usually had everything that I’d ever wanted… and then a totally brain dead zombie running the cash register. It’s a scary thing when you’re contemplating checking somebody for a pulse and then expecting correct change, let alone recommendations.

I needed a middle ground!

That’s how I feel about yarn shops too. There’s a really great yarn shop (heh) and the people are awesome and will give you all kinds of advice on how to save money even. Then there’s the shop that actually has the yarn that I want.

Also, speaking of store snobbery, I got a new computar!

My last trip to the Apple store was pretty disastrous. However this trip was FRIGGIN AWESOME!

Oh yeah and I also got a promotion at work! So things here at Baby Face Central are pretty awesome. Or at least when people at stores aren’t being jerks. C’est la vie and also psycho killer, qu’est que c’est.

Perspective

Okay, so this might meander a little, if you want to, feel free and skip down to the one knitting related picture I’ve taken lately.

There’s a book:

And I’ve wanted to knit a particular something out of this book for a long time… but I couldn’t justify buying the whole book because it’s expensive and I just don’t think I have a whatever body to make anything in this book work. There are also some ladies that I knit with:

(Thanks Betty for letting me use this photo!)

Well the one lady on the right, three people up or two people down depending on how you look at it is the Molly that I feel like I’m always talking about, or at least always all of the sudden. When she saw that I had finally decided to take the plunge and knit something from that book, she said that she loves the patterns but wouldn’t make anything because she would look “lumpy”. Which I thought was funny later on that night because I showed John that picture so he could see who all of these “Mollys” were… he looked at it and when I point out Mollylouhoo, the first thing he said was “she looks like a knitter” and the second thing he said was “she could eat a sandwich or two.” Which is his way of saying, Jesus, she’s skinny.

I don’t know what it is about us people but we all have sort of ‘innocent’ (and often not so innocent) ways of making judgments about peoples appearances and then saying it to that person. Like one time I was on a plane with a Woody Allen impersonator.

(I stole this image from here.)

Anyways, while this guy was telling me about how many jigawatts his first computer had and how he got his first neurotic tendency, he said “well you don’t have any piercings or tattoos, so I guess I can safely assume you’re not one of those ska girls.”

Which takes me back again to this time where I was in high school and a girl I didn’t know very well randomly said to me: “You know, your nose isn’t actually too bad. It’s not big, it’s not small, it’s actually kind of cute.”

Er, gee thanks. I think?

So, yeah, my point is that everything is a matter of perspective. That Woody Allen guy thought he could talk to me ad nauseam because I wasn’t one of those dreaded ska girls. Whereas my mom’s family is a bunch of jerks who say intensely hurtful things about my appearance pretty much nonstop. A reason I will never go back to being a red head. LOL, okay, that was probably a bad decision in the first place but honestly, they have no room to ever make criticisms about appearance. Oh snap!

Also! I feel the need to share a spur of the moment type thing… I got a new bike!

It is a red Schwinn Passage.

I don’t know anything about bikes. I just told my dad that I wanted a cheap bike that was light weight because I’m a puss and won’t ride anything that’s heavy since that’s like extra work and stuff like OMG. Well I guess someone he’s working for who does triathlons (just typing that word makes me sick a little) just got herself a new (kickass-er) bike, so I get her super sweet Schwinn… which according to the bike dude at the bike place is “a really nice bike.” (He said that about 20 times and I swear I thought he was going to get my address to come and steal this thing from me.) Actually, the bike dude almost fainted when we told him I was getting it for free because apparently… it’s a really nice bike.

Which is a shame honestly since I have no idea how to ride a nice bike. Every bike I’ve owned until now has been bought from Meier and came with a free air pump, like nice basketballs sometimes do.

So yeah, I’m knitting that Corset-Bodice nightgown from that book, in case you were getting curious about knitting…

I’m getting excited about it. This picture shows all of the yarn that I had invested in that Yosemite. Which goes to show that one mans broken half of a sweater is that same mans almost finished holey top thing. I mean, it’s all about perspective right? Oh, circular!

P.S. Does anyone have any good bike resources or knowledge they want to share with me? Because I need some serious help.

P.P.S. Sometimes I look at myself and think “geez you’re fleshy”.

Quickidate.

Thanks so much for the suggestions on my previous post about the yarn baby’s deceitfulness. I wish I had a scale or something so I could weigh it because not only does that sound like the most resourceful and easy way to figure it out- it also sounds cool in a “something Bill Nye would do” kind of way.

Both the boy and I stayed home sick today because we have somehow contracted sars. We’re not dying, we just have tiny spurts of energy that last for about ten minutes and then we’re done for the next hour. All the while sniffling, coughing and gasping in large amounts of cat hair, which I’m sure is making us waaay better- it’s getting pretty lame here. Pity party over here, whoop whoop!

So, here’s a meme:

More info here. (I would like to see other peoples (I won’t name names but you know who you are), I got this one from Bittersweet.)

Conflicting yardage issue- Help!

So, my yarn baby:

It’s lying to me, so now I don’t feel so bad for wanting to eat it. Or if it’s not lying to me then someone else is lying to me and either way by the end of this- someone or thing is going to get eaten. Mark my words.

You see, the tag says:

60% merino, 40% bamboo approx. 600 yds/548 mts

Okay, sure. However, the manufacturers website and ravlery both say 1200 yds. Now, last time I checked approx. meant give or take a few yards, not give or take half the size. So what in the crap is going on? How do I know how much yarn I have and what I can even make with it? I’m appealing to you innernets- HELP!

My slow descent…

Into all things cute!

A sector of our knitting group took a trip the the Great Lakes Fiber Show in Wooster.

Sweet wonderful Wooster, which as we all know is home to… The College of Wooster. Ouch wikipedia.

All of my pictures are on my Flickr, so feel free to browse around.

I wanted to do a post that’s just as cute as Mollyloohoo’s but you can’t beat wanting to take a possum in, you just can’t. However that did make me think of this:

Still, not to be outdone, I have a cute story of my own. You see, yesterday I was making twice baked potatoes:

As I was putting them in the oven I looked out the window:

Which led to:

Yeah, sometimes life is pretty awesome.

shhhh! It’s a secret…

I want to sit down and have an honest heart to heart with you right now…

It has been very hard to not document every second of making this next project. You guys know me, you know that I like to give you almost up to the second progress shots of what I’m up to. I’m not a secret keeper but I kept that last post a secret (mostly because I was afraid that I wouldn’t get it done/mess it up horribly/set it one fire out of frustration) and I kept this post a secret.

It has been espeically hard because I want us to be honest with each other. Of course, hopefully you’ll only be honest in a totally positive and up beat sort of way and not a “Jesus, you sure are looking fatter in your pictures” sort of way. However I can’t control that and that’s cool! So, I just want you guys to know, it is nearly impossible for me to keep anything from you.

Okay, so what am I talking about already?

Bam! Total sock domination.

Although, if I were only waiting to post a sock, I would have done this two weeks ago, because I swear the first sock flew off the needles… it was that lousy second sock that tripped me up.

Still, I murdered that second sock:

I’m thinking that the first sock flew off the needles because I knit it starting out with bigger needles than I probably should have… which is also why the one on the right is all slouchy. Er, whoops. I think some elastic thread should clear that up nicely though.

This was all part of a Secret Sock group that meets at my LYS once a month… apparently. This was my first time going and I’d say it was pretty successful. What do you think?

Most people who know me have already heard my story about the meeting and I can’t really tell it over the interwebs, however, the clientèle at this particular LYS happen to be a very specific brand of swanky. The woman who designed these socks named them the Double Diamond socks, after a ski trail or something.

My first thought when she told us the name was of that Outkast song ‘The Mighty O’:

Maybe I should throw a double diamond party in the North Pole
Invite all the writers and journalists, even biters will tournament to see
Who can be me better than me?

I shared that with some of the ladies the other day and I’m pretty sure tabula rasa couldn’t be blanker than the stares I got. Ehn, it’s just a lesson to pick and choose your audiences… I think?

Oh! Hey! Remember these?

Yeah, I forgot about them too. I want so hard to take credit for these, but as you can see, I only finished the one. Then got so fricken mad at them that I shipped the suckers off to Granma, who was a nice gracious lady that finished them for me. She also added super cute buttons.

Also, because you love me, I’m sure you’ll tolerate a picture of my cat hamming it up for the camera:

Last night, when the pizza man came, she ran out the door. She seriously made a break for it. You’d think it wouldn’t be hard to catch a cat with a gimpy leg but dang she can run fast when she wants to! So, our solution to this problem (after I caught her and gave her a lecture like she could actually understand English) was to buy her a leash. I’m hoping the embarrassment and shame will make her never want to run away again.

Also, if you don’t hear from me for a while it’s because I’ve hit another road block. It’s so bad that when I think about what I want to knit next, that crappy song from Evita pops into my head; “where do we go from here…?” Should I be proud or ashamed that I saw that movie in the theatre?

I made that!

I’m so pumped guys.

I saw something in my head that I wanted to make and I went for it. I ripped out the same couple yards of yarn a few hundred times, realized the silk doesn’t rip so well and did it in acrylic- but I learned and feel like I’m a slightly better person for it. So without much more ra ra ra, I give you the Face Punch Relaxation Mask:

Someone please pretend they’re proud of me.

I’ve been coveting some Debbie Bliss Pure Silk for months. However I had no idea what to make with it. I wanted to make a body suit but that would put us in some horrific debt. So I got a skein and what follows is the pattern.

Face Punch Relaxation Mask

CO 48 sts. (I used size 6 DPNs, gauge isn’t super important.) Divide evenly onto 3 needles. (16 sts on each needle.) Join in the round being careful not to twist. Place marker if that’s your thing (it’s my thing too).

Row 1: [p1, k1] 4 times, k16, [k1, p1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 2: [k1, p1] 4 times, k16, [p1, k1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 3: [p1, k1] 4 times, k16, [k1, p1] 4 times, p4, C4B, C4F, p4

Row 4: [k1, p1] 4 times, k16, [p1, k1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 5: [p1, k1] 4 times, k16, [k1, p1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 6: [k1, p1] 4 times, k16, [p1, k1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 7: [p1, k1] 4 times, k16, [k1, p1] 4 times, p4, C4B, C4F, p4

Row 8: [k1, p1] 4 times, k16, [p1, k1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 9: [p1, k1] 4 times, k16, [k1, p1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 10: [k1, p1] 4 times, k16, [p1, k1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 11: [p1, k1] 4 times, k16, [k1, p1] 4 times, p4, C4F, C4B, p4

Row 12: [k1, p1] 4 times, k16, [p1, k1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 13: p1, k1] 4 times, k16, [k1, p1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 14: [k1, p1] 4 times, k16, [p1, k1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Row 15: p1, k1] 4 times, k16, [k1, p1] 4 times, p4, C4F, C4B, p4

Row 16: [k1, p1] 4 times, k16, [p1, k1] 4 times, p4, k8, p4

Repeat all 16 rows three more times (so you do the pattern four times total).

Sew the first edges (where you cast on) together. Then take a stocking (I cut out the foot of some pantyhose) and fill it with flax seed and lavendar flowers… or anything that you like the smell of! The flax seed gives it some weight and makes it so you can warm it up in the microwave, for warmth. Or throw it in the freezer for a few mintues, for cool(th). Tie off the stocking or sew it up, stuff it into the pouch and either kitchener the last stitches or bind off and sew those together… I kitchener’d mine.

This is the type of project to justify buying one skein of luxury yarn and the cables are super easy, even for a person who has never done cables before.

C4F means: slide two stitches onto a needle and hold to the front, then knit the following two stitches then knit the stitches on the front needle.

C4B means: slide two stitches onto a needle and hold to the back, then knit the following two stitches then knit the stitches on the back needle.

Boys like it too!

Be warned though, depending on how much you stuff it full of flax seed, this thing can pack a serious punch:

However, what’s more relaxing than a nice punch in the face?

Let me know what you think… if there’s anything I can do to make the pattern better, let me know!

P.S. My favorite number is 8.

Mini nanner

Hope you guys aren’t tired of fruit yet! (If you are, that last line was a warning then to maybe not read this post.) Since I have no idea of what’s appropriate ever, I showed one of the bosses at my work my crazy wack blog and she humored me by saying it was cute. Then she asked me if I could make a banana for a baby kit.

Well what’s better for babies than a baby banana? I think George would agree.

This was my first attempt at crocheting on my own and I think it came out pretty stellar (let’s just ignore the nubbin on the top) so there. :p Nyaaaaa.

John and I agreed that Curious George has gotten way cuter than what we remembered. Or maybe being ugly kids, we just imagined everything else to be ugly…? I mean, I don’t know about him but I was definitely queen of skinned knees. Speaking of John, his facial hair lately has been a constant source of amusement to me:

I don’t know if the picture is doing the redness justice or not. I love it. I want to call him Big Red but even just typing that I’m afraid that I might need to sleep with one eye open tonight.

As far as blogging goes, I feel I’ve been pretty lame lately… especially since I never know when to use then or than. Also, I haven’t been knitting too much lately. I haven’t been reading too much lately. Or sleeping. I have absolutely no idea what I’ve been doing to be honest. I just hope whoever is abducting me isn’t using probes.

Kitty pictures!

Pattern: Baby Banana

See, it’s stuff like this that makes me thankful for Ravelry.