Weeeee, I’m switching webhosts! Er, right now. Like, I’m going to go change the name servers over now.
So things may be mildly b0rked for the next, oh, 24-72 hours. Not severely b0rked, though, because I’m just going to re-upload my Blogger blog to the new host for now. The severe b0rkage will come when I switch it over to WordPress, but that isn’t happening quite yet.
b0rk!
I’ve decided what to do about the monster hat. I’m going to rewrite the pattern completely – instead of trying to match my hat exactly – and then test-knit the new version. Because the only thing better than owning one ridiculous head-eating monster is owning two ridiculous head-eating monsters.
Of course I have no yarn. Some stasher I am. I rummaged through my yarn bin and the only appropriate thing I found was a gold-ish ball of Elann’s Highland Wool. Thing is, I’m not sure 109 yards is enough for a hat with earflaps and i-cord ties, and if I buy another ball I’ll have to place an Elann order, and if I place an Elann order, I will buy EVERYTHING.
I have to go to Michaels to get some giant googly eyes, so I suppose I’ll just pick up a ball of Patons Classic Wool. Yes. Must be good. *twitch*
Maddy is almost done. Its pattern is, um, not.
Fifi is nowhere close to being almost done, possibly because I’ve been ignoring it and it stubbornly refuses to knit itself. But I’ve at least split the sleeves off and started the body.
My ball of Royal Bamboo has spontaneously sprouted a mouth (not pictured), and is using said mouth to yell at me for not knitting with it yet. But I have promised myself that I won’t start anything new until Maddy is done. No bamboo headband, no Monster Hat II: Electric Cliché-a-loo, no doing evil Diamond Mesh Lace type things to that skein of Mini Maiden in the yarn bin. I will be good. I will be good.
P.S. I fail at being good. It’s Sunday and I ordered yarn again. I only spent $25, and got something I’ve wanted for a long time, so I don’t feel too guilty, but – what is it about Sundays? I wonder if I can set my computer to block all yarn shops on Sundays.
I’m not saying what I bought, because it should make for some lovely yarn pr0n when it arrives.
My completely unnecessary yarn order arrived yesterday. I guess I’m officially a stasher now. Is there an initiation rite to the Order of the Stash? Does it hurt? Does it involve The Paddling of the Swollen Ass… With Paddles?
The Euroflax is definitely brown, not red. But it’s a really pretty shade of brown, so I’m not too disappointed. I’d say that it seems to have a rosy glow from within, except that I’d clearly be insane. It’s yarn. It doesn’t glow. I’m just trying to convince myself that I don’t mind that it isn’t red, because it’s MAGIC GLOWING YARN. Which it isn’t. Shut up, brain. But it sure is purty.
And then there’s the Plymouth Royal Bamboo, which is a strange little yarn. It’s very soft and quite nice to look at, but it has sort of a flimsy, cheap feel to it. I’m not sure how well it’s going to hold up to the mess of cables and lace I plan to put it through.
What mess, you ask? Well, this mess:
Guess what: I know nothing about charts. I have used one chart, ever, in my knitting life – a cable chart for Rusted Root. I certainly don’t know how to chart things myself. So of course it seemed like a brilliant idea to chart an improvised headband design full of cables and lace and weird slip stitch edgings as my very first chart attempt. What could possibly go wrong?
Ha. I thought, oh, this will be a piece of cake. I just download a knitting symbols font, find a site with knitting symbol standards, and I’m set. Except, there are no knitting symbol standards. Apparently I could use a Hamburglar for knits, and a stack of blueberry pancakes for purls, and as long as I include a legend identifying those symbols, I’m good.
And then there’s the less-silly-making-but-equally-irritating problem of charting permanent increases/decreases (ie. not the lace-kind that are eventually evened out with decreases/increases) that aren’t on the edges of the chart. Do I use blank squares, or do I just allow rows not to line up right once in a while? I went for the latter, as you can probably tell, because it seemed ridiculous to have a chart that looked like a rectangle when the actual knitted object would be squished skinny at both ends. But isn’t the whole point of charts that stitches should line up? Aaarrrrrgh. No, the whole point of charts is to make me very angry. Now I know.
I do want to write up this pattern, assuming that the FO doesn’t look like ass – sorry, bamboo-based ass substitute – so I will have to get the chart sorted out somehow. I’ll write up line-by-line instructions but honestly visual instructions are going to be much easier to follow. Or they would, if they were charted by somebody who knows what they’re doing.
