Charting and Ripping

Leave a comment

Well, not that kind of ripping. Except maybe a little. Charting increases can get a little frustrating.

Don’t let this picture fool you, either. Ive gotten to, and past, that point at least three times by now. I stopped counting how many times I had to redo it. I keep getting to a certain point and having to rip the whole thing out and start over because I get off in the stitches and can’t figure out where.

This is going to be a Christmas present, so on one hand I have time and on the other I don’t. Once I get done with the crown increases it’s just simple knits and purls. It’s this crown that’s giving me the problem now.

NaBloPoMo November 2014

Gutting Pumpkins

Leave a comment

For some reason, the pumpkins that got carved on Sunday rotted by Wednesday. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen. But, to help the five-year-old feel better, we carved a new one today. The one that rotted was Good Cop/ Bad Cop from The Lego Movie, so we replaced him with Lord Business.

I was in charge of scooping the insides out. I think that might actually be my favorite part of carving the pumpkin. Except this pumpkin had a non-existent stem to pull the lid off with.

Luckily this house is full of wine bottles and cork screws. Best makeshift stem ever. And of course we had to cook his guts once they were removed.

And we ate them all within the afternoon. While those cooked, the five-year-old “helped” me carve the face. As in he held the knife while I actually did the cutting. But he tried to do it on his own a couple times. That’s just a really difficult (and dangerous!) thing for him to do on his own.

In the end, we have Lord Business as he was falling into the pit. That happened in the movie, right? I’ve seen the blasted thing at least five times and can barely remember anything past Milhouse and quoting Batman’s “I only work in black. And sometimes very, very dark grey.”

Happy Halloween, Everybody!

Bit By The Socktober Bug

Leave a comment

I had a post all ready to go to tell you about my little sock starters that are only toes. But I obviously can’t post that one because (if you’ve been following along on Twitter) it’s obvious that these are not just toes anymore.

https://twitter.com/caseykayb/status/524650606154088449

This is where I was on Tuesday, when I started the original post and

https://twitter.com/caseykayb/status/525063777536856064

this is where I was the next day. I honestly didn’t know I would get that far, but now I can see why so many people are addicted to the sock knitting. It goes so fast and starts looking like recognizable things very very quickly.

See, it was really strange that I wasn’t a sock knitter. I have an extensive collection of socks, but only one pair I had made myself. And I’ve been knitting for over ten years! Ok, I have knit quite a few socks (you can see some of them here), but they aren’t all for me. Every knitter’s plight, eh?

So this time I’m winging it…kind of. I have Wendy Bernard’s excellent guide, Custom Knits Accessories, for basic guidance. But I’m doing these toe up rather than the top down example in the book, so everything goes backward. Plus I’m just putting it on my foot to check measurement instead of actually measuring anything. Makes it go a whole lot faster. Well, except for having to take of my shoe and socks multiple times at jiujitsu Tuesday, but that’s a completely different story…

Aside from weaving in the ends (which will probably take me another two months to get around to because…meh), I think these might be done tonight. I’m so close, I can feel it! And for the first time in my life I will have made a pair of socks in October for Socktober. Yippee!