Pretty cunning, doncha think?

So, ignore that I look like an unwashed psychotic hobo. I was up at 9, was abusing my new ballwinder for hours, knitting for hours, and watching movies on my computer, all day Sunday.

I made the pattern up as I went along, and there are some obvious errors that need tweaking, should I ever make another of Jayne's cunning hats from Firefly. Namely, the orange band is too wide. I think next time, I'll shorten it a few rows. The earflaps are a little too long, too - maybe shorten those by 2 or 3 rows as well. And the most obvious is that my hat decreases don't look like the ones in his hat. I went on a pattern search, found that other people made it look more accurate by doing k2tog through a whole row, instead of my more rounded 'do 8 decreases spaced evenly' style.

But hey, it's still pretty cunning. I think the colors are spot-on. Now, whether or not I'll wear it to the movie theatre when Serenity comes out...

In other news, I fucking hate lace with the fiery passion of 3000 suns going supernova all at once. 5 hours of knitting on the scarf for my granma - known now as 'the fucking scarf from fucking hell' - and I have 2 repeats... and then I notice that once again, I put a yarn over in the wrong fucking spot allllllllllll the way back at the beginning.

Right now I'm debating 3 options:

1. Rip everything out, start again.
2. Leave it and hope she doesn't notice.
3. Set it on fire.

How can you people who love lace deal with the 'extremely easy to fuck it up' factor?

In other news, I have started a pair of mittens for Dulaan. The pattern makes a pair that's big enough to get over my ridiculously sized hands, but is too short... so I would say it's good for older kids and some adults. Given that I'm sure the people it's going to are significantly smaller than me in stature, seeing as MOST people are significantly smaller in stature than me.

Skinny people, shut up.

Yeah, you heard me. Shut.UP. You're bitchin about the title of the Knitty book, "Big Girl Knits: 30 Big, Bold Projects Shaped for Real Women with Real Curves", saying that by using the word 'real' in the subtitle, that they're insinuating you're not.

Shut the fuck up.

Do you know how many lovely patterns out there I see on the internet that I can't make? How many patterns consider a 39" bust to be an 'extra large'? While I'm glad there's been a recent trend in making patterns for women who are larger (which, by the way, you know, is the majority of American women), most patterns still stop under a bust-size that I can wear (52". Maybe I could squeeze into 50"). Hell, most mens patterns don't go up that far.

And you know what? While a good deal of that may be fat, it also doesn't help that my bra size falls somewhere between a C and D cup. In fact, a lot of women? Can't make all those lovely, beautiful patterns because their tits are too big.

So shut the fuck up with your goddamn obnoxious whining about how the title of the book insinuates that the only real women are ones who are bigger. Fuck you. For once someone's acknowledging that most women don't wear under a size 12 and that we deserve some nice, fashionable, non-granny-esque patterns.

For once, someone's acknowledging that the Hollywood ideal of women isn't reality , and god, you just can't live with that, can you? I'm 6 feet tall and 250 pounds. I'm fucking glad for once that there will be patterns out there designed for someone my size instead of a 5'6 100 pound stick. You know what? My sister is as tall as me and probably 160 pounds, she IS a stick, and SHE still has a bust larger than 39". All of us people who need larger-than-standard patterns? AREN'T all fat. So. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

And for all you people who complain 'oh, but I'm smaller than average, none of the patterns fit me': You know what? You can get away with wearing something a size too big. I
can't get away with wearing something too small.

And you pay less in yarn than me anyway, so quit your bitching.

Ow

Ow. Okay, so, in my weekend knitting frenzy, I managed to injure myself. I completed 2 socks (no pictures because I've already posted ones of their twins, so it's not very interesting to see virtually the same sock again) and started 2 more. I apparently can't bear the thought of having sock needles without socks in progress on them. On the upside? I now only have one sock that is without a twin, yay! That one, is of course, on needles. Er, but as I was saying... all that knitting has made my arms dreadfully sore. But this maybe is a good thing. Exercise through knitting, cause god knows I won't get it any other way.

I also dyed up two more skeins of sock yarn! To go with my Gekiai Lida socks, I need... Gekiai Aya socks. In various shades of blue and pink. At this rate, I'm going to end up doing the whole band... too bad Gekiai Yura-sama socks would look like Christmas and Daishi's would be plain old black and white. So, maybe not.

I've been questing for a ballwinder lately, too. This quest lead me to ebaying for the past 2 weeks, but I always get outbid. I went to my local shop (which I generally avoid for various reasons) and they didn't have any in stock (this is one of the reasons - they NEVER have anything I need in stock). Called the Thomasville store, but they wanted $56 for theirs... yikes. I ended up ordering one from Elann.com, which was cheaper than both the store in Thomasville and the one here in town.

And now I'm going to warn you about the dangers of yarn dieting. See, I had given myself this rule about the time the sockpal2za started up, back in June. 'I will not buy any more new sock yarn until the new year!' I swore.

... well, I held it for 2 months. Then I went apeshit. It was like putting a starving man down at a buffett table. I bought 2 different skeins at my LYS (including my first koigu). I bid on skeins of Lorna's Laces sock yarn in the Camouflage colorway on ebay - and just won the auction tonight. 'Hey, camouflage will match my Aya Love is Dead cosplay', I reasoned! And then, as I was ordering the ballwinder from Elann... FORTISSIMA DISCO. IT'S IN ALL-GREEN JACQUARD AND IT'S SPARKLY! So... I had to get some.

Le sigh.

So much for making my stash smaller.

I also ordered some of the Peruvian Highland yarn from elann in order to make Jayne's cunning hat, from Firefly. It's such a stupid hat, I need one. I figure I can just hold the yarn double to get the sort of bulky look to the hat. Most of the patterns I've seen for it have been rather unsatisfactory for me, so I may make it up as I go along.

'Peruvian Highland Yarn' always makes me think of that one episode of Home Movies where Coach McGuirk is going on about Scottish Highland Dancing.

Update をして

Finally. What can I say? I've got other stuff to do and I neglect this place. Work, playing City of Heroes, doing my translations - I actually finished three songs this weekend! On the other hand, I now have 6 new metronome songs in kanji form to work on *headdesk* - trying to sleep, and oh, yeah, knitting. And I'm lazy on top of all of that.

Not to mention, I've found that Centigrade-J has translated all of Shiina Ringo's Kalk Samen Kuri no hana album except Okonomide (DOWNLOAD ME, DAMMIT), which is one of the songs I'm really curious to know the translation of. So that means I will be undertaking dealing with Shiina Ringo-written lyrics, which is scary.

Yes, because I pimp my mp3s everywhere. Why not here as well?

But hey, my sockapal2za socks are done:


I have given up in my fight with blogger's picture-thinger. So if you want a full view, click on the picture. I even *gasp* blocked them. Which as always leads to the endless 'sockblocksockblocksockblock' chain repeating itself in my head. The sad thing is, these have been finished for over 2 weeks, and blocked for at least a week. But, hey, go back and re-read the first paragraph. LAZY, remember?

Ano saaaaaaaaa... oh, I finished one of my obnoxiously bright orange-and-green 'I stuck Lida's Gekiai Merry-go-round costume in a blender, WHEE!' socks. God, it looks like the seventies threw up on my foot. So, now I have 3 socks without a mate, just sitting around. And... er... 4 more socks on needles. I should probably finish some of these so I have a pair, huh?

Oh, and of course... I found the missing sock. I found the missing sock as I was getting ready to do laundry, after it magically fell out of a pair of jeans. Even after I had searched all through my piles of clean and dirty clothes after losing it. And of course, it would fucking reappear 3 days after Mango wears a hole in the other one which I had sacrificed as orphaned forever. So there was a lot of swearing and bitching about that on Saturday.

Finally, the shapely tee (god, I hate that name) - I pulled it off the shelf and made some progress last night! I may actually finish it before the year's out!


I need to find some sort of dyeing agent that I can use on wool without spending too much money that's black. See, kool-aid doesn't dye black, and wilton black dye doesn't dye yarn black. I NEED BLACK. I want to dye some yarn I have with black dye, goddammit, and I can't because I don't know where to look for something cheap, something I can do in my kitchen, and something that doesn't require mixing possibly dangerous chemicals (because I am not psychotic enough to play with that stuff, I'll end up killing myself, most likely).