I want to try knitting with beads.
No good will come of this.
Listen to me. I want to knit with beads. This means obtaining beads. Lots of them. Little baggies containing hundreds upon hundreds of small, shiny objects. I will never actually make it all the way to my yarn, or my knitting needles, because HAY SHINY OBJECTS LOOK SHINY SHIIIIINY WEEEEEEE!
Shiny.
Okay, but see, I have this yarn.
Don’t worry, I have not gone on a forbidden yarn binge; I bought it a while ago. It’s Dream in Color Smooshy in November Muse. That’s sock yarn. I do not knit socks. Nope. I won’t do it and you can’t make me. I have very well thought out reasons for not knitting socks, and I once typed them out on Ravelry, and because I totally can’t remember what they were, I’m just going to go look up that post:
Well, I’m afraid of knitting socks because then I’ll have to buy sock yarn, and then I’ll want even more sock yarn, and hand-dyed sock yarn, and sock yarn with a bit of silk in it, and seventy different kinds of teeny sock needles, and then some more sock yarn, and then ALL THE SOCK YARN IN THE WORLD because it’s just so darned pretty, and soon I’ll spend all my money on sock yarn and sell my clothes for sock yarn and stand on a street corner with a sign saying “will knit socks for sock yarn” while people hurl mass-produced dirty socks at me in disgust, and then I’ll be living in a box, a box lined with sock yarn and decorated with curtains made of sock yarn, and I’ll be all cold because I sold my clothes for sock yarn but at least my feet will be warm.
Ah, thank you, Ravelry’s search feature. See? Perfectly logical and not at all unreasonable.
So I don’t knit socks, but I do knit lace, and I want a brown lace scarf.
And then I saw – okay, here’s the thing, I stalk my patterns on Ravelry, don’t judge me. I just think it’s cool when people make ’em and I like to look at the FOs. So I was stalking and I saw a beaded Serpentina. Shiny! But I can’t make another Serpentina. I already have a Serpentina. How sad would it be to knit my own pattern twice? I resisted making a Malabrigo Serpentina and I can resist this too. So there. But I can make a different beaded scarf. And I can go through Ravelry’s entire list of lace scarves and decide that I don’t want to make any of them. And then I can bang my head against a tree a few hundred times until I annoy a nearby squirrel and it starts hurling acorns as me, because that’s just about as productive as my “nope, I don’t like any of these three thousand scarves” sessions.
At this point a beaded squirrel was starting to sound like a good idea, so it was time to just pick a scarf already and stop the madness. So I did. Beaded Lace Scarf II by HeartStrings FiberArts. Well, maybe not exactly. Maybe just something that looks somewhat like that. Yeah, the madness never stops, it only takes quick coffee breaks, but at least now I sort of have a plan. And I need beads. Shiny ones!
But not brown ones. I don’t want sparkly little polished turds on my scarf. I’m teal-obsessed lately so clearly that’s the way to go. Unless it isn’t. Maybe red would be a safer choice with brown. But I want teal! But maybe red would look better! But but… are hobbies supposed to be all anxiety-inducing like this? I’m thinking not so much. Especially not when said hobby involves handling sharp, pointy sticks. This isn’t going to end well. Okay, but two minutes in Photoshop ought to solve this dilemma.
Hmm. That’s not giving me the answer I wanted.
The easy thing to do would be to buy some teal beads, and buy some red beads, and play around with both. Beads are cheap. But this would mean that I’d end up with at least one baggie of beads that I would not be using for this scarf. And then I’d have to do something with them. Oh yes. I couldn’t just put them in a drawer and forget about them. Shiny things simply do not work that way. The shiny must be enjoyed! Shiiiiiny. What could I do with an extra bag of beads?
I wonder how hard it would be to catch a squirrel.
I Still Don’t Wanna Blog And You Still Can’t Make Me
I has a computer!
I schlepped the 4.5-year-old dying PowerBook to the Apple Store, where the genius type people told me exactly what I didn’t want to hear: “logic board”. Oh lord. Not this again. In terms of repair costs, that roughly translates to “bend over!” followed by a maniacal cackle. Ah, well. It had a good run. So I am now the proud owner of a shiny white MacBook. Well, mostly proud. We’ve had a few fights already, but I think with some time and some counseling we can make this relationship work.
One would think that without a computer, I’d get plenty of knitting done. Er. I made… a hat. And… um… nope, just a hat. Which my camera seems to hate, because it won’t take a proper picture of it, but once I smack some sense into it soothe it with loving calming words, I’ll throw up a FO post for the hat. It’s a cute hat. But really, all that time and just a hat? Huh.
Well, then, one would think that I’d be eager to get back to blogging, at least. Eh… not so much.
I started this blog about a year ago. No, it’s not my blogiversary (oh god, that word) yet. I know I won’t remember when the actual date comes ’round so let’s meta-ramble about it now, shall we? Obviously I was not so much into the blogging thing at first. I just wanted a place to dump project info. Hence my blog name, which I guess is a bit of a misnomer now, because I’m using a good three-quarters of my ass. But I’m not changing it. I heart that little half-donkey.
So I took a liking to knitblogging. I still like it. But, full disclosure: I was glad to have a legitimate excuse to ignore the blog for awhile. I’m not sure why. Just needed a break, I guess. I’m still behind on emails and PMs and such. Probably because I’ve been ignoring them and they refuse to answer themselves. You’d think that with today’s advanced technology they’d answer themselves. Who can I complain to about this?
Anyway. I’m back now. And I’ll have to go back to using lame, stupid excuses when I ignore my emails, since my legitimate excuse has been replaced by a MacBook. Woo!
Er.
Um…
How do I write a knit blog entry with no knitting content? I need pictures of something. I’ve got pictures of… something. I have a new toy.
Eeeee! I’ve wanted a tablet for years, and I spotted one on sale last week and finally took the plunge. It’s just a little basic one but it’ll do just fine. It arrived yesterday, and thus began the fun time of learning how to draw with the thing.
Snerk.
Yeah, I clearly had a whole lot of learning to do. But pretty soon I’d progressed from the drawing skills of a 4-year-old to the drawing skills of a 7-year-old. (Not a particularly talented 7-year-old, mind you.) But there was still a problem. The problem was Wrongcat.
Let’s meet Wrongcat!
Wrongcat is wrong. It’s easily recognizable as a cat, but there is clearly something wrong with it. And yet, I sort of love Wrongcat. I drew a wrongbunny, and a wrongflamingo (actually the flamingo itself was quite nice, but the speech bubble coming from it saying “I (heart) green condoms” was the wrong part. Er. Long story…), and various other wrongcreatures, and even a second Wrongcat. It was an improvement on the first one…
… but you know, it really lacked the creepy charm of original Wrongcat.
By the end of the day, I had reached the skill level of a moderately talented 12-year-old (no pics, because they’re not bad enough to mock… heh), so I am confident that pretty soon I’ll be able to draw things that are actually good. Maybe I’ll redraw my half-donkey. The current one was drawn with a mouse, and that’s just tragic.
Now, since I went and bought a pricey-even-on-sale toy, I am officially on a yarn diet. Well, I’m kind of always on a yarn diet, but now it’s more of a strict, unhealthy starvation diet. Yarn anorexia, if you will. I’m not much of a stasher, but I’ve got enough yarn on hand that I probably won’t go mad. What this does mean is that I definitely won’t be going to the Knitter’s Frolic in Toronto this month. While I love my new toy, I still need to sulk about that for a moment.
*sulks*
Okay, I’m done now.
Next time, back to your regularly scheduled knitting content!