Put Your Needles To Work

While reading Margot’s blog I discovered the Dulaan Project. I may complain about how cold it is here, in VT, but it’s nothing compared to Mongolia. They’re asking for all sizes of warm, knitted items but the need is greatest in for sizes fitting children aged 3-10. This is going to be such a great stash buster; I have a ton of Lamb’s Pride bits and pieces.

Eat Hufu™

Thanks to Ami for bringing this new (or should I say very old and rediscovered) cuisine to my attention.

I don't know what's worse, that people interested so much time and energy into this project, that there's a demand or that they are currently out of stock and all new orders are backordered. The founder of Hufu™ used to be a practicing lawyer. This is the spot where a lawyer joke would be appropriate but it just seems too easy. The biggest question I have is how do they know that Hufu™ tastes like human flesh? Who, exactly, are their taste testers? That very same question is addressed in their FAQs but not, to my tastes (sorry about the pun), satisfactorily.

I understand that it's my cultural identity that make me abhor the thought of consuming human flesh (fake or not) and that in some cultures it is perfectly acceptable but the very idea of this product gives me the heebie jeebies. That's all I want to say about this.

Big surprise, the Iranian government doesn’t like blogs. I read a post about Hossein Derakhshan and his blog in the June 2005 Wired. It seems that in 2001 when the Iranian government closed the doors of 12 newspapers many journalists were left without an audience and many readers without their preferred news source. In 2001 Derakhshan, living in Toronto and missing his Iranian audience, found a way to combine Blogger’s free tools Unicode to display Persian characters. His discovery helped fuel the more than 100,000 blogs in a country with a population of about 5 million. Unfortunately, once the clerics finally figured out what the blogs were and what they meant, they took action. Wired states that, “last June the Iranian judiciary put in place a more sophisticated filtering system that blocks Iranian access to political Web sites and blogs.” Two months later they started interrogating and jailing bloggers, two of whom, Mojtaba Saminejad and Mohammad Reza Nasab Abdolhi, remain in prison.Wow, it’s easy to get steamed up about the censorship issues we face here and it is equally as easy to forget the censorship issues faced in other parts of the world. I found an older, more in depth Wired article as well.

Holey Moley Part Deux

Check out Miss Elah in her spankin' new poncho and matching headband. Enough procrastinating, time to go back to my first sock.

Same old here, work is a little busy because it’s summer registration. Elah’s not home until Saturday and in the good old days I’d be out with my girlfriends but mostly I’ve just been staying at home, catching up on work and knitting. Tonight I’m going to trivia night at a local bar with a friend I never see (we work opposite shifts). When Elah does come home we’ll be going to the nightmarish purgatory known locally as ‘Kids Day.’ weeeeee

It Puts The Lotion On Its Skin!

This is quite possibly the creepiest knits I've ever seen. They are originally from a 1965 McCall's Needlework & Crafts Magazine but I found the pics at Swapatorium. While all disturbing I think the little girl is the creepiest of all.

In The Navy

As promised here are the before and after pictures of Drew's going away present.

Before:


After:


It wasn't all that hard but it was definitely time consuming and I should probably apologize to Helen for giving her a hairy chest. The important thing is Drew loved it and I'm happy to send him off to Chicago with a picture of the admin staff he worked with. I think he loves it even more than the fellowship he got. That's what I'm telling myself...

Happy Birthday!

Reba's birthday was over a month ago but tonight we had her surprise birthday party. Even though almost everybody involved was a terrible liar we managed to pull it off. She got so many gift cards for one of our lys I think she'll be well supplied for the coming months.

Check out the card I made.

42

Reasons that I loved the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie:

1. Knitting
2. The first computer game I ever played (on our old TRS-80) was a text hg2tg game. It was loads of fun to sit there typing thigs like, "get robe" "wear robe" look in right pocket" "get analgesic" "take analgesic" "go NW" etc...
3. The Guide has the best GUI ever.
4. Mos Def is my boyfriend.
5. Nostalgia, plain and simple. I loved the books and it was great to see what I had been imagining up on the big screen

Holey Moley

Here's that picture of Elah with her backpack. Too bad I've already been trying to talk her into letting me use it. Looks like I'll be making another one...damn.

On another note Elah's been asking me to make her a dress out of sparkly red yarn. Unfortunately I have no desire to make a dress and the girl grows so fast that I think it wouldn't fit into it by the time I got it done. So as a compromise I am making her the holey moley poncho from Knitty. Pictures to follow.

Finally!!

Whenever I say "finally" I get that song stuck in my head. Damn it!

So I am finally done with the Punk Rock Backpack from the first Stitch 'n Bitch. I told myself I'd never do another one but it's so cute and now I want one for myself. The knitting was fine, even the intarsia, but I have to saw I hate sewing; both machine and hand of which I had to do both. When Elah comes home tomorrow I'll post a pic of her wearing her new backpack.

Pink!

Meet Sarah Sumner-Eisenbraun. Not only does she have the most wonderfully pink site out there but she is a fantabulous knitter. Go check out her site and while you're there definitely stop by the patterns section. I am particularly fond of Pink Ribbon.

Happy Dance

My classes are done, unh unh unh. I swear if I could River Dance I'd be doing it now. OK, maybe not but I at least feel like showing off my sweet dancing skills like a certain moon boot wearing Iowan of which I know. If I were a true nerd this is where I'd insert some robot dancing ASCII art.

I was also really excited to take the summer off and have no homework. That didn't last long, I signed up for two classes yesterday. But I don't have to write any papers for either of the classes and one is an entry level graphic design class - mostly Photoshop how to- and will be a cake walk. What exactly is a cake walk?

Elah is home from her dad's and I've been working on a Photoshopped going away present for Drew (I'll post a before and after when I'm done). I cannot wait for this weekend - not only do I get to Stitch 'n Bitch but Silk is coming to town and I haven't seen my little brother in a very long time.

Local Knit Nerd

I found another local Knit Knerd! Meet Holly, she has a website where she sells homemade crafts and hand spun and dyed yarn. She also has a blog that can be found here.

Intarsia Update

OK, so I love my art history professor because he lets me knit in class. I'm done with the intarsia and about half done with the back piece. It's coming along and I think I will never do intarsia again...well, maybe.

Mama Is A Yarn Ho

Filmmaker Thomas Florek says, "It's the inevitable convergence of knitting and hip-hop culture."

Gangsta Knitter, an independently produced short film/music video by Florek and his buddy Doug, who prefers to remain anonymous, made its national debut on August 27 at the Westcliffe Digital Film Festival in Westcliffe, Colorado.

Check it out here:
http://pisadesigns.com/GangstaKnitter.htm

*Text taken from knit.1

Intarsia Hell

So I'm I new knitter, right? 3 months and counting. I told my 4 year old that I'd make her the punk rock backpack from the first SnB but of course she didn't want the bunny or monkey face on hers - she wanted a kitty.

Using the knitter's graph paper I made I designed a kitty face for her and figured 'how hard can it be?' Anyway, it's going alright but it's definitely more challenging than I thought it would be.

My advice to other new knitters thinking about intarsia? Start with a square in another square - 2 colors, easy.

So, no homework this weekend but I did make a super cute bag. And really, what's more important? I followed the Meema's Marsupial pattern in the first SnB but used Cascade 220 so my finished product is handbag sized. I must say I'm quite pleased with myself. Thank you Emily and Ami for the needles and thank you Reba for the tutorial.

Queen of the Knerds

So, mostly I'm avoiding homework and web site updating I need to do but...
At our last SnB Emily was talking about how your pattern will come out looking different if you plan on regular graph paper because stitches aren't square. I had some trouble finding knitter's graph paper so I found a picture of some on line, estimated that the ratio is about 1.5:1 and made some of my own damn graph paper! Any way, I made 2 sizes in Excel and also made them available in PDF for anyone who doesn't have Office. I also threw up a knitting icon I found online. Any who, here's where you go:
http://homepage.mac.com/e_to_the_m/knit_nerd/FileSharing3.html

Say What??

So I've jumped off the cliff like so many lemmings (lemmings don't actually jump off cliffs, this is a bunk science myth, but you get the point) and started my own blog. Who the hell wants to read what I've written? Well you, for one, since you're sitting there right now - most likely wasting time in front of the computer to avoid what you should be doing (homework, housework, calling your Aunt Mabel in Detroit).