The ugliest thing I’ve made in years. April 13, 2008

Story time!….

So, once upon a time I bought a cheapy thing of yarn from Walmart because I thought the color changes in it might make an interesting scarf. Then I knitted a swatch, hated it, and let it sit in a box.

Meet Shandi:

See what happened when Shandi met my yarn:

Goodbye yarn.

The most tangled yarn covered in the most white cat fur and other random bits of garbage you will ever see. Gross.

So since I could clearly never salvage this for any other project, I decided to make Shandi a toy out of it. She was apparently very fond of it for some reason. So I found a pattern online for a knitted ball and made it up in a couple hours. Then a couple hours after that, when I had finally finished putting in all the stupid little fringe thingies, this thing was born:

It SO ugly that it’s almost, almost, ALMOST cute. Haha, yeah. But so far, I think she likes it! Some action shots:

Lol, plus she uses it as a pillow sometimes. *awww!*

The end.

• Link to Project Details page for Amazingly Ugly Cat Toy!
• Link to Ravelry project page for Amazingly Ugly Cat Toy!

FO: My First Sweater!!! March 25, 2008

Well, my friends, I’ve done it!!! My very first sweater is FINISHED!!! And here I thought making a sweater would be scary because it would take forever… (lol I’ll ignore the fact that I chose a beginner’s pattern….)

So since this is one of the bigger projects I’ve worked on (I actually did start a blanket once, but that’s a UFO for another story) it soon became the target of many kitty attacks. Here is one such instance. (She thinks she’s so cute! Look at that smug face! Grr!!)

Anyways, so the only real change I made to the pattern was the sleeves. I didn’t really want cap sleeves as I prefer the way ¾ sleeves look on my arms. So the first time I knit the sleeve, I didn’t make any decreases and just made a straight tube with my size 8 dpns and guessed on the length I should make it. But then when I tried it on it looked so strange.

As you can see, it was baggy in all the wrong places and the bottom rows of ribbing did the weirdest thing! I didn’t knit them long enough, so where they sat was exactly on my elbow. So any time I moved my arms, it would fold in this permanent crease halfway down the ribbing so it would just constantly pucker funny. Yeah, that got frogged fast.

So my next go with the sleeves went perfect. I decreased 4 stitches per stripe (13 rows each stripe) and managed to keep them lined up underneath the arm so they stay hidden. Yay!

Yeah, so here’s the picture! What do you think?

• And since I’ve started doing Finished Project pages, here is the link to the details of this sweater.
  
• And while I’m at it, I’ll even link to the Ravelry page for it! Wow! Fancy!
  

Oh yeah, on a different note, I just got Microsoft Word 2007 on my computer, so my blog posts might start looking a bit different since I’m using it’s “New Post” feature to see if it’s much easier than editing from straight inside of WordPress. I dunno, I might not use it again if I don’t like how the posts start looking. Plus I don’t like that I can’t use external photo hosting sites when I want to post pictures. They all have to get uploaded into my WordPress account, which might fill up kind of fast. Hopefully not. I haven’t looked into how much storage they allow you to have with your free blog.

If there’s anything you like or dislike about the way pages start looking, let me know and I’ll see if it’s something I can fix. Sorry if the pictures take a long time to load.

My New Toy! March 13, 2008

So I’ve been wanting a new digital camera for a while now, but I’ve been to cheap to invest in one. But then my old digital camera did something I will never forgive it for:

{Enter Micaiah, front row of awesome concert, digital camera in hand and pointed}

{Enter Colby, guitarist from awesome band Bidwell, who also happens to knit (sexy, right?)}

{Colby: runs in front of Micaiah and makes an awesome face/pose for her camera}

{Micaiah: frantically clicks camera button, flash goes off, gleefully pulls up saved pictures to pridefully stare at the awesomest picture taken at a concert ever, when:}

Micaiah: “NO!!!!!! HOW IN THE WORLD DID IT NOT TAKE THE STUPID PICTURE??!! THE FLASH WENT OFF!!! CAMERA, I’M GOING TO PUNCH YOU IN YOUR STUPID FACE! I HATE YOU!!!”

Um yes. So now that you have relived this painful memory with me, look at what I got when I “stretched” (I hate to say blew, since that would make it sound like I wasn’t in control of my spending…) my camera budget (and ignore how horribly I take care of my nails):

And look at how beautiful the pictures are that it takes! :

YAY!!!

So I would like to say:

1- Look forward to MUCH better pictures of my projects, as I will now be able to actually focus on them up close without washing them out with flash. YAY!

2- Sorry if the pictures take longer to load now as the megapixels per picture have almost doubled what the old ones were.

XD YAY!!! So I still absolutely love my 35mm Canon way more than this one (I’m a dark room girl all the way) but for the speed, convenience, and VERY pleasantly surprising picture quality I am SO HAPPY about this digital camera.

Wish me luck on my next Bidwell concert this Friday. This thing had better take fast pictures of Colby, because I would hate to have to punch it in the face after I just spent what I did to buy it…

Scrunchable Scarf February 7, 2008

So I know I kind of swore off scarves last month, since those tend to be the only thing that I knit. But after the shrug was finished, I still had 3 unopened balls of green yarn! lol, I was thinking about making a shrug for my tiny friend Chanel, but then I found out it would probably take 4 balls of yarn. And then I also found out that she hates bright green. So, yeah, that idea was out of the window.

Anyway, I ran across the pattern for the scrunchable scarf and I really love it. It has knit up SO fast. Plus I like that it gives your basic ribbing a more sophisticated look. Plus, it’s such an easy project to work on that I’ve been doing it almost constantly because I can do it while I watch TV or surf YouTube : )

So I had left the scarf on my couch while I was gone, and apparently my cat Benny had decided to attack it. But apparently it was such a “scrunchable” cushy scarf that he ended up taking a nap with it.

How cute!!! Haha, I took about 35 pictures of him. But I didn’t think I should force you to look at all of them. Only the cutest!