Corded Bag

I made some modifications to the original pattern, and I'm pleased with how they've turned out. I made it taller than the recommended 3.5 inches - about 6. I added a crocheted shoulder strap. I also put in a button hole, and then after the strap was done, I continued around the inside of the bag doing a slip stitch ridge near the top. As part of this ridge, I crocheted the button to the inside of the bag so when it goes through the button hole it looks all cool and stuff.

Sorry for the low quality pics - it’s after 1 in the morning and I’m not going to set up the light box now. I’ll take better pics later.

Tiny Knitting For the Movie, "Coraline"

Check this out! It's a short video showing the chick who did the tiny sweater and gloves for the movie, "Coraline." Sweet! Tiny Knitting

And if you haven't seen the movie yet, do so. It may be too scary for some kids but for adults it rocks. We saw it in 3D, which rocked even more. It's the first time I've seen a 3D movie where the effect wasn't the only reason to watch.

New Book

Yay! Got a 40% off coupon so I bought this book: "Crochet Motifs", by Edie Eckman. It has many cool motifs, very good explanations of how to do them and good stuff on how to design your own. I am pleased.

Death, Now With Scythe

Here we go. Blurry pic, but I didn't feel like setting up the light box tonight. The scythe is made from Sculpy clay, with SIL's help. I made the blade out of a mix of black and white clay, but it turned out as a dark grey. Fortunately, SIL had silver paint, so that solved that. Yay!

How Mom Knits With 2 Colors

Or, If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It

While we were in Vegas this last weekend for E.'s 40th birthday, I got to talk with Mom a bit about knitting. I made sure to ask her how she handles knitting with 2 colors of yarn.

I figured that since she used to sell Icelandic sweaters back in the day in Denver, she'd be the perfect person to ask. I thought she must use some especially efficient method, like knitting Continental with both strands on the left hand, or knitting Continental with one color and English with the other.

So I asked her if she preferred either of those methods or had another one I hadn't heard of. She looked mildly surprised and told me she just knits with the yarn in her right hand, same as always. And she just drops one yarn and picks up the other as needed.

Don't get me wrong - I still love learning new techniques. But this makes me happy on a level I can't quite explain.

Lots of Stuff

I set up the light box again, so here are pics of a bunch of things I've been meaning to get to.

This is a knitted scarf I did in December. I'm particularly pleased with it because it's one of the first times I've improvised something just because I wanted it. In this case, I needed a black scarf to go with an outfit for an Xmas party. I can wrap this around my neck a couple of times and still have enough length to knot it. It took me about 1 day to do:



Ravelry link for technical details.

And here are the better pics of the fez-wearing monkey amigurumi:





Ravelry link for technical details.

And improved grim reaper amigurumi pics. I still need to figure out the scythe, though:





Ravelry link for technical details.

And something new - a baby penguin! Addicted to amigurumi? Maybe. This one is for J.:





Ravelry link for technical details.

By the way, I thought the penguin eyes were blue, but be damned if they aren't green. I double-checked the yarn label and got M. to look at it too. Huh. I never have been all that good at telling green from blue.

And last, a crocheted dice bag I improvised for myself. I admit, there's a ball of yarn in there along with the dice just to show the shape:



Ravelry link for technical details.

Remind me not to let these stack up again...

BIG Knitting

Here we have a dude knitting with super big needles on something like rope: link.

And here we have big-ass knitting that could be used as furniture: link.

And here's a video of a couple of chicks (don't worry, it's not that video) knitting 1,000 strands of yarn in various colors on super big needles. This one's very cool: link.

Man, knitting like that last one looks like exercise!