Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! Here’s a quick sneak preview from Knitting It Old School. This is Speedway, it’s based on those super-cool hot rod jackets from the 60s. There’s a matching ladies version in red with black and white stripes. SO cute! The yarn is Louet Gems Sport Weight, so it’s a project, but the finished product will be a sturdy sweater that your speed demon will love.

Speedway was designed by Caryn Lantz of Fuzzy Noodle Knits. This and the sweater on the cover, Saucy Convertible, were the first two things I commissioned for the book. That was four years ago. Yikes! I can’t even tell you how amazing it is to finally have these projects ready for the spotlight.

There are more sneak peeks available at Caro’s Flickr page!

Photo by Denise Siegel

 

First things first, it seems Charlene wants to add something to yesterday’s post. She added it in the comments, but I figured I’d just put it here for ease of use.

From Charlene:

“Did Stitchy also mention a guy in his late 70’s beat us by about 10 minutes? We were much closer to death that day than he’s ever been. We couldn’t even win the raffle at the end…”

~ahem~ no, Chuckles, as I matter of fact I didn’t mention us getting out asses thoroughly kicked by a 70something-year-old man, nor did I bring up our stunning defeat at the raffle. I also didn’t tell them that you could only name 6 of the 8 Red Sox players on the raffle sheet for the Red Sox tickets. I mean, who doesn’t have Trott Nixon’s image burned into their mind? (ok, I knew the name, but I thought he was a rodeo guy or something. You know, like Tuff Hedeman.). And that other guy – whatsisname. Pfffft. So yes, we did good by showing up and eventually finishing. But everything in between? Well, we’ll do better next time.

And now on to something from a couple of weeks ago. Wendy had a Duct Tape Dummy party where we were invited to wrap ourselves and each other in duct tape, then snip each other out of our new shiny adhesive shirts. Sounds pretty kinky, eh? Well, I have to believe that somewhere, there’s a fetish for this kind of thing, there just has to be. Hey, you. The one who found this blog entry by using some keywords about your duct tape fetish, is this really a huge scene? Don’t be shy. I know this is a knitting blog and all, but we’re curious. Do tell. But tell in the comments.

Anyhoo, I brought all the necessary equipment to have Dummy Debbie made up, but I chickened out at the last minute. I ended up helping Ben and Cheryl do theirs. It was fun, like making a mummy without all that pomp and circumstance or the mess of coptic jars and brain hooks.

When I got home, Jon was disappointed that I didn’t have a carapace of myself for his amusement. Really disappointed. So much so that he insisted on making one right then. So pretty much as soon as I got home from the party, we got to work. I made sure he understood that this would not become a regular “thing”, so not to get too attached to the process, if you know what I mean. It took a while, but eventually, I ended up with this:

 

I immediately regretted telling Jon to just let the tape follow the curves, for follow it did. Check out the frontal pooching. Yikes! Is that a sack of ham sandwiches in your shirt or did you just eat a sack of ham sandwiches? But I must say, it’s an accurate representation of yours truly. It’s kind of hard to tell with the tripod stand and fake head and all. Here, maybe this will give you better scale.

 

 

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAA! Never let it be said that my husband does not indulge me. He was rushing out of the house the other morning when I needed pictures of this thing and he kept refusing to put it on (although he had put it on a few times before and seemed to like having his own set of boobs all to himself). He finally relented and is now totally nerve-wracked that I’m about to post it. Hee hee.

 

Honey? I’m posting it. Right . . . . NOW! Too late, there’s no going back on this one!

 

 

Are you sure you want to look? I mean, emotionally, are you ready to see the cutest thing you will EVER see? You might as well poke your eyes out after this, because there is simply no way for anything to even parallel it in cuteness, never mind surpass it. And yes, I admit it, I am just enamored with the inter-species love-in that seems to be going around the globe lately. (I’m going to regret using those words in that order as soon as Google sees them, I just know it.) This time, it comes to us from Malaysia.

You sure you want to see it? Once you see, you cannot unsee.

Last chance, folks.

Ok, you seem pretty determined. Here is the cutest freaking thing EVER.

Don’t blame me if you get despondent because you’ve been to the top of Cute Mountain and there’s nowhere to go but down, smacking your head on every rock that’s just not quite as cute.

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Thanks to Cute Overload for the link, and to the original photographer, Kazzie*, for taking them. In her comments about the photos, she says that she spent an hour just hanging out with these two and the kitten was purring like crazy. Seriously, what more is there after this? I’m just an empty shell now that I’ve attained Cute Nirvana. I have achieved supreme encutenment, I’m ready to move on to the next level of existence. No, wait, Owen and Mzee are still out there! I can’t leave yet.

In knitting news, almost done the Clapotis scarf. I would have finished, but I lost the piece of paper that had the pattern on it and I didn’t know how the last 12 or so rows go. Argh! Soon it’ll be off to Iowa. Hopefully it’s still a little chilly there.

In other news, Melanie is still in the hospital but doing ok. They’re still fiddling with her innards, but things aren’t as dire as they were a few days ago. Hopefully they’ll fix her up for good this time and she’ll be home in a couple of days. Cross any and all appendages available to you for luck. I printed out all the comments left for her with me and on her blog and she was so touched at the outpouring of support and good wishes. She sends her love. Now, give me some good blog gossip (real or fake) to give her.

 

 

Spring has sprung and so has Melanie! The babies have arrived and everyone is healthy and well. Melanie and Dean are in the most amazing state of blissed out exhaustion I’ve ever seen. She asked me to let everyone know that she’s lost complete track of blogland, not only because she’s now at the beck and call of two squirming, cooing little balls of cuteness, but her computer has gone and contracted it’s own version of the bird flu. She sends her heartfelt thanks for all the good wishes and feels badly that she hasn’t been able to get to her email or blog to thank people herself. But she did send a little visual message to let you know just how pumped she is about motherhood:

 

She’s my new blog hero for allowing me to post this. Of course, she’s ridiculously sleep deprived and probably isn’t in any state to make such decisions. I took the liberty of touching up the more provocative bits in the photo. (Jon said the flower itself looks like a breast, so it didn’t really help, and possibly made things worse. I like that it looks like she’s wearing a big yarn flower pastie, so there.)

The pump she has is a modern wonder. It has a clear casing so you can see the mechanism working. I’ve never seen one in action and I just have to say, I’m impressed. Not so much with the pumping machine, but with the Melanie machine. Milk really does shoot out of there! Crazy, man.

And here is a fantastic family portrait taken at one of their many dinnertimes. I love this photo. Dean is holding Scarlett and Melanie is holding Blu. (See Scarlett’s tiny little hat? Kellee made it in the car on the way over. She made one for Blu while we were there. It’s fun to knit for itty bitty people!)

 

Scarlett is a little smaller than her brother, but they both pack a mighty diaper! All in all, I’d say that mom and dad are handling their new “Family-of-Four” status really well. Smiles far outweighed the tired sighs. I just couldn’t stop looking at the babies, then looking at Melanie and trying to figure out just how they fit in there. They’re not any bigger than they were a few days earlier, so there was some major baby origami happening. There’s no way we’re getting them back in there.

I predict that we’re all going to be fighting over who gets to push the carriages at Rhinebeck this year . . . ME FIRST!!!

 

 

 

It’s that time of year again. March. It was gorgeous outside on Friday, wasn’t it? Stop nodding! It wasn’t! It was just a trick, an illusion, a fetid carrot dangling on a twisted stick. You’ll see, we’ll be up to our noses in snow before you know it. So what does one do during the month they like least? Get hitched! That’s right, battle the blahs and give yourself a good reason to escape from March once in a while.

Last Wednesday, Jon and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary. I intended to post on Wednesday, but I ended up working late all week. I decided that since I’m always doing everything else late, why should a celebration of our love be any different? Last year I posted a bunch of our wedding photos. This year, I figured I’d take a look at the post-marital festivities. No, not those. The other ones.

Since we pretty much had a do-it-yourself wedding, we had a lot of preparation and cleaning up to do. I had a lot of help and couldn’t have done it without everyone who gave us a hand. But still, by the end of the day, we were exhausted. Turns out, committing to an eternity together really takes a lot out of you. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from the whole day. They make me smile because I just remember what a great day we’d had and how tired we were, and how excited we were to go on our honeymoon cruise the next day. It was such a good tired. They also make me happy because they’re so silly.

A few people came back to the house so we could hang out, chat, and open our gifts. We were getting really punchy.

Observe:

Clearly, Jon loves this radio. I do, too. We use it almost every day. I loved it when I opened it, so I’m not sure what the face is all about. Oh yeah, I was reeeeally tired.

It’s all class with us. This is actually the picture that I put in the little silver frame on the cover of our photo album.

And here we are on our honeymoon, hanging out with the luxurious cruise ship décor.

And lastly, here is one of my favorite portraits of us. So warm and sunny, little minnows swimming below . . . ~sigh~ It’s what March should be.

Happy Anniversary, Jon! I love you, baby!!

 

 

 

We are sock knitter. Our singular goal is the consumption of sock yarn. We seek to amass all the sock yarn in the universe into our collective for the purpose of sock knitting. Adaptation to various methods of sock knitting is inevitable. We will use our hive mind to knit socks until there are no more socks to knit. Our socks will be of all colors, patterns, and size. We will not be stopped, we will not be swayed, we will not be conquered, we will only knit socks. In this version of sock knitting, we used KnitPicks dye-our-own sock yarn. We dyed it at Julia of Nine’s yarn dying party some time ago.

 

We encountered a small technical glitch with this little side piece which we believe is identified as the gusset, but we’re not entirely affirmative. It’s the sector in which we reunite the heel with the sock. It appears that we need to adapt our skills to avoid future iterations of this irregularity.

We will now focus our laser eyesight on the background of the initial visual representation of the socks. They are cat. More accurately, they are large cat in a small box. They are silly and cute. Soon they, too, will be sock knitter.

 

Resistance is futile.

 

 

 

Well, I’ve done it again! For the second year in a row, I’ve won a coveted spot in the Second Annual JenLa Best of Awards! The ceremony was very touching, especially their warm and sincere invitation to kiss their collective asses if the winners wanted a “twee little button” to display on our blogs. But I didn’t cry. There was something in my eye, it was a cat hair or something. I won for the same thing last year and I’m deeply touched. I must say, it looks like I may win the category every year. Maybe they’ll rename it the Stitchy Award in honor of yours truly. And what honor did the dishy divas of da blogs bestow upon me?

Blog We’d Most Like to Pressure to Post More

That’s right people, I’ve managed to disappoint Jen and La for the second year in a row with my half-assery. Last year, I shared the honor with Skittermagoo and this year, it seems that The Scottish Lamb has been slacking off. Nice work, Scottie. Last year, I was in a three-way tie for “Blog We Most Wish Had a Button”. Well, wouldn’t you know that I am truly motivated by a public shaming, so I immediately created a whole array of dazzling buttons. I think I also promised to blog more. Heh, one out of two ain’t bad, right?

So this year, having only won a single category, I am more able to focus my attention on my duties. I hereby promise that I will renew my commitment to blogging. I will restake my claim on the internets. I will take my rightful place as the bestest, most prolific and interesting blogger that has ever existed. Next stop – World Domination!! At the very least, I swear that I will try to try to post more. And considering that the awards ceremony was almost a week ago and I’m only getting around to blogging about it now, I’m off to a mighty fine start.

Honestly, I really am flattered that they like me enough to want to read more. Thank you so much, gals! I will do my best to impress. Maybe I’ll start swearing so I can usurp Rabbitch next year!

Moving along, I’d like to thank everyone for all their helpful comments about dpns. I love that I got a nice mixture of detailed hints and eh – don’t worry about it’s. You guys are awesome. I printed them all out and put them in my knitting bag in case I ever feel compelled to have another go. I think maybe I should try the two circs with Addis or Denise needles, I think I was using your basic Boye aluminums and they have a big, fat lump between the cable and the needle. I haven’t given up, but I’m not beating myself up about it, either.

And someone asked how I was able to see the Google keywords that people used to find my site. I use StatCounter to track my traffic. It’s free and Blogger mentioned it in their help section about tracking software. I like it, it’s pretty basic and was easy to set up. Sometimes you get a really creepy keyword search and you can’t help but try to figure out why your blog showed up in that search.

I just listened to the Courtship of Eddie’s Father song while looking at Owen and Mzee again, and as it turns out, the closer I get to my period, the closer I get to crying. Damn, but those little dudes are cute. Here are some more pictures.

And while I was searching for pictures, I discovered an entire website about Owen and Mzee. You can read all about their friendship from the beginning. The blog begins on the fifth day that they had Owen.

I don’t know why, but these two have just captured my heart. That’s such a dopey sentence to type out, but there’s something about these two guys. Not classically cute, one is a baby, the other is over 100-years-old, one is a mammal, the other a reptile. They have nothing in common besides enjoying a dip in the lake now and then, but they’re buddies, dammit. Oh man, there’s another cat hair in my eye.

 

 

 

I wish I could get everyone who did these Google searches and ended up here together for a party.

johnny damon / micky dolenz
knit pom pom fetish
my headgear pic
pills mistaken for candy
why crochet scratchy
how to make a beer hat
farrah faucet naked

‘Nuff said. Internet, have I told you lately that I love you?

Oh, and here’s something that will soften even the most cold and brittle of hearts. If this doesn’t make you smile, you may want to check your chest for a circuit panel becuase I think you may be a robot.

I can’t help it, I have to include the picture from the story I linked. It’s just too much cute to resist. When you look at it, play the theme song from “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” and you might just going into a diabetic coma. But it will be totally worth it.

*I just wanted to add my prediction that these two will be made into a Disney or Pixar cartoon and I’ll have toy versions of Owen and Mzee by 2007. I can’t wait!

 

And the crowd goes wild! Stitchy was a long shot this year, with many convinced she’d be outwitted by the twitchy little rodent. It’s long been known that her biggest weakness is a furry critter of any kind, and if the first two rounds of the Squirreled Series were any indication of things to come, Stitchy was going to get owned. But in a stunning upset Tuesday night, it was the squirrel’s weakness that was his eventual undoing. As rumors of the squirrel’s taste for peanut butter surfaced, Team Stitchy hatched a cunning plan to exploit this vulnerability. The trap was smeared, sunflower seeds were embedded, and although he had denied his addiction vehemently, the interloper was unable to resist the rich, creamy goodness.

Unfortunately, there is no photographic documentation of the victory as Team Stitchy was actually in the car on the way home from work when the game was won. Team Brother was, however, on the scene and provided a play-by-play recounting of the events. It is reported that the squirrel was on the small side and looked rather scruffy. It is surmised that said scruffiness occurred during the critter’s stay in the basement as he looked fluffy and clean when he leapt out of the ceiling just days ago. Early reports also indicate that the squirrel departed with a belly full of peanut butter and seeds as the food tray was completely clear of residue. Team Stitchy finds the idea of the little squirrel licking up all the peanut butter to be adorable. All parties involved felt badly that it was such a rainy, windy night, but upon his release into the yard, the squirrel headed straight up a nearby tree. No doubt he has already drawn up a crude map and is devising a new plan with a growing squirrel army. Chances are good that he is actually, at this moment, wearing an army General’s hat and has taken to using a riding crop for gesticualating powerfully in front of his troops. Luckily, the homestead is reinforced with ten housecats just looking for something to chase.

Here is one team of four cats warming the bench, just waiting for their chance to join the game. Bring it on, twitchy.

 

*ok, I’ll admit it, they don’t look like the livliest or killiest bunch. But these babies can go from napping to deadly in seconds. Seriously. You just try and stop them. Sure, it would be better if the squirrel were to position itself directly below one of their paws, but no need. ~ahem~ They’ll wake up. Aaaaany minute. Mark my words. You can groom something to death, right? Because once they start that . . . hoo boy, ain’t no stopping them. *cough* Y’know, or they may just want to toy with the squirrel for a while. Bat it around, cuddle with it, make it feel comfortable. Then BAM! More . . . cuddling.

Anyhoo.

Here is some knitting. It’s a basketweave pattern from Viv Foster’s Knitting Handbook. Nothin’ heavy, just a simple knit/purl thing. But I’m really enjoying watching it come together. For all its simplicity, it looks pretty detailed.

 

And the back is even cooler! I love when my knitting treats me to little surprises once in a while.
 

 

 

I have now resorted to the big guns. Big peanut butter guns. Big peanut butter guns encrusted with sunflower seeds.

Your move, varmint.

(I fear this may reach Caddyshack proportions before it’s all over. I’m looking forward to sculpting the plastic explosives.)