I Heart Tutorials

There are so many fabulous tutorials floating around the internet right now. I find myself overcome to make things I have no need for. Like plastic shrimp.





Not exactly a tutorial, but a video on Youtube that shows how to make a shrimp with just a drinking straw and a pair of scissors. I found the link on a thread on Craftster, and was turning my kitchen upside down last night looking for a straw. They only take 5 minutes to make, and now I have a handy party trick (or at least something to keep the kids entertained while waiting for our food to come at a restaurant).

Another great project with a tutorial is these cute little owls from Moonstitches. The tutorial doesn't have a pattern, so I had to draw my own. The next time I will make the beak shorter and fatter, but this one only took 30 minutes, and didn't turn out too bad considering I had a 3 yo "helping" on my lap the whole time.



I have cast on for ANOTHER sweater, a second try at Sizzle. This time I am knitting a smaller size, and using Louisa Harding Kashmir Aran in a pink color. The yarn is wonderfuly soft and a pleasure to knit with, even though it is cabled and therefore tends to catch on the needles every once in a while. I think this one's going to work out well. One of my favorite little tricks that I have picked up from one of EZ's books is how to deal with decreases in the arm hole.




Isn't that beautiful? The curve is perfect, no jogs or stair steps. The trick is to decrease one of the cast of stitches in the last two stitches of the preceding row. So for instance, if you are supposed to cast off three stitches in the next knit row, You would purl two together on the last two stitches of the preceding row (decreasing one stitch), and then only cast off TWO in the next row. The change in the line of decreases is amazing, and so much easier to sew up that all of those stair steps.

Is there a little too much of me around here?

Please excuse the mess, I am pretending to know what the heck I am doing when it comes to changing things around on this blog. The header at the top isn't permanent, just a quickie I made up to figure out how to change it. As I look at the finished product, I am noticing that there are like 10 pictures of me on the page right now, what with the hat pics and side bar one. I'm not vain, I swear! The picture in the current header was taken by my friend Molly, a fabu photographer who kindly took some flattering pictures of me last time I was 8 months pregnant and feeling like a slug. As soon as I get a yummy knitterly pic, I'll stick that up there.

My confession

I've decided to stop lying to myself. For many weeks, this has been going on, and I have deceived my loved ones, myself, and even you.

You see... I hate my sweater.
I have proclaimed my love for it on this blog, in my home, to everyone. But ever since that hellish sleeve took 3 weeks, I just haven't felt the same. I've even hidden it's flaws from others, trying to make it seem better than it was. But no more. It's truth time.

First of all, the sleeve.





The sleeve cap is wonky, and the decreases didn't work out right. I knew I was going to have to rip this out and rework it, even as I was binding off. It's way too shallow, no way was it going to fit into an armhole. And.. Its too wide. Did I mention this ONE sleeve took me 3 weeks?

Moving on to the back. The red fair isle doesn't even show up against the maroon background. I made a mistake in the green pattern, but thought, "Oh, I'll just duplicate stitch over that later. Umm..yeah. It was too wide, so I decreased down one size a few inches in, cause, like, no one would notice right? And NO shaping, which I didn't notice till I was about 5 inches in.



I ripped it all out. All of it. And it felt SOOOO good.




I'm free.

Le Slouche

Hey Plumber! What do you think of my new hat? It's a Le Slouche that I knit from
some Woolease I had lying around.


What? You don't like it?


What if I do this?


Or this?


Come on, what about this?



Fine.

4 Miscellaneous Things, 3 knitty, 1 not

1. I just started a KAL here for fans of Japanese Knitting Patterns. You can post questions, new pattern finds, or a symbol that you finally figured out. I will list links to helpful information as I find them.

2. We recently had a visitor to our backyard.



One of the very cool things about living in Alaska!

3. I knit a thong. You know, the one everyone either loves or hates from Interweave Knits? I LOVE it! I used Cool Crochet from Bernat as the yarn, and threaded elastic behind the ribbon to keep them up. The pattern calls for a silk yarn, but I don't like the idea of having to hand wash my skivvies! These knit up in about 2 1/2 hrs.



4. One of the reasons I haven't posted very often lately is because I have been trying to finish this. (It looks wonky in the picture because of the boobs of my dressform. It's actually normal sleevy shaped)


This sleeve has taken me 2 1/2 weeks, and I'm still not finished with it! I hope to finish tonight and start on some of the more interesting fair isle. If there was ever a place called bobble hell, this would be it.

Ice Sculptures

Here is the completed ice sculpture that The Plumber worked on this past week.



And the winning sculpture, which is SO amazing!

I made a baby, and The Plumber didn't help at all

The Plumber has been gone this past week. He got a great opportunity to participate in the World Ice Art Championship in Fairbanks. He has never actually done any ice carving, but a man in our church does it for a living, and asked if The Plumber could come and help out. Temperatures have been as low as -30, but he says he is doing ok. Judging is tomorrow, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they are going to win. As soon as he gets back, I'll post some pictures of their sculpture.
After the kids have gone to bed, I have had a lot of time by myself, and I have been using it to roam the internet and get pretty much nothing done. I found this tutorial (I don't remember how) and decided that I had to try my hand at it.




I carved her from Sculpey, using an eraser, a pin, a knitting needle, and a knife. I already have some ideas of things I would do differently next time, but I am pretty happy with how it turned out. The hat was made without a pattern, I just kind of winged it. I was crocheting a little dress for her, but it wasn't turning out so great, so I frogged it. Horror of horrors, her arm broke off earlier from a kiddo stepping on her, but I have glued it back on, and you can hardly tell. (I actually AM knitting, but the sleeve I am working on has taken 2 weeks and counting, and I'd prefer not to talk about it right now.)