So I thought to myself yesterday, “hey, I should take some pictures of my new yarns and WIPs so I can get back into this blogging thing”.
Me: *turn on camera*
Camera: Hay what’s u- *PICTURE DIES*
Me: WTF?
Camera: Look at my pretty flashing horizontal lines on a black screen.
Me: WTF?
Camera: You didn’t want a picture of what you’re actually pointing the camera at, did you?
Me: Yes, yes I did.
Camera: Well, you get horizontal pink lines instead.
Me: WTF?
Camera: Neener.
Me: *turn off camera*
Wait for it…
Me: *turn on camera again*
Camera: Look, your picture is back!
Me: Yay!
Camera: HAHAHA JUST KIDDING. Here, have some horizontal flashing lines instead.
Me: WTF?
So after an initial fit of “OMG WTF I HAVE NO MONEY TO GET CAMERA FIXED OR BUY NEW CAMERA AHHHHH FUCK FUCK FUCK, ALSO, FUCK!” I poked around on the internets and found out that maybe, maaaaaybe, it might be a known image sensor defect that Canon would fix for free regardless of warranty status (which, the thing is six years old hahahahaha warranty yeahright, so, sweet). Called ’em up, found out that yes, it could be that, but I wouldn’t know until they took a look at it. Luckily the service centre is not far away.
Of course, knowing that electronics are fickle, I took another look at it this morning before taking it in.
Me: *turn on camera*
Zombie Camera: Hi, here’s your picture!
Me: *waits for picture to turn into black screen and flashing lines again*
Zombie Camera: Nope, still picture!
Me: WTF?
Zombie Camera: Oh, by the way, here’s some flashing lines over your picture.
Me: WTF?
Zombie Camera: Yeah, I figured you missed them.
Me: WTF?
Okay. Whatever, camera. You may have returned from the dead, but until you give me a picture with no lines over it, you’re still broken. To the service centre you go.
Me: Blah blah flashing lines.
Lady at Service Centre: *turn on camera*
Zombie Camera: I am a perfectly functional camera. See? Picture!
Me: WTF?
Lady: Huh. It looks fine.
Zombie Camera: *on best behaviour*
Me: WTF?
Lady: Yeah, no flashing lines.
Zombie Camera: Flashing lines? What? I know not of what you speak.
Me: I swear it was broken half an hour ago.
Lady: Heh, I believe you.
Zombie Camera: I WAS FRAMED. Heh heh. Framed. I made a funny.
Me: I hope they dissect you.
Zombie Camera: *whimper*
The end result is, in three weeks or so, I’ll either get back a shiny repaired camera in the mail, or a phone call saying “neener it ain’t the image sensor, you have to pay $150 if you want it fixed”, to which I’ll reply “NOT GONNA”, and then I’ll get back a shiny non-repaired zombie camera that makes terrible puns. And will have no camera, until I can afford a new one. And thus will not blog, for a knitting blog without pictures would be some awful mess of incoherence and imaginary conversations with inanimate objects, and nobody wants that.
So. We’ll see. In the meantime, perhaps I’ll actually knit something.
We are sad to report that your always reliable blogger has been felled by a terrible misfortune.
Yes, that’s right, it’s as you’ve feared, HER HEAD HAS BEEN DEVOURED BY A COWL.
… yeah, okay, I’m full of shit, as always. But the good news is, I actually finished something. According to this blog, the last time I finished something was January of 2008. That can’t possibly be right, but I’m not going to try to dig up the date of the last time I really finished something, and then have it turn out to be February of 2008. There are some things that I’d rather not know.
Pattern: Nom Nom Nom Cowl
Yarn: Diamond Luxury Collection Mulberry & Merino in some colour that I’m too lazy to look up but it’s the only pinky corally colour it comes in, 2 skeins
Needles: US 7
So. I had this yarn, right? This merino/silk yumminess that I picked up at Romni’s boxing day sale and tried to enable the ladies in line next to me into buying some too. I think it almost worked. I was originally going to call the pattern “Enabler’s Cowl” for that reason, but once “Nom Nom Nom” got into my head it wouldn’t leave. Not unlike a brain parasite. But. I got the yarn, I knew it had to be a cowl, I scoured cowl patterns on Ravelry and nothing was right.
It couldn’t be too complex, because the yarn was single ply and fuzzy and would eat any fiddly lace or cable patterns.
It couldn’t be too simple, because that would be the sort of pattern I should save for variegated yarn, even though I swore that I won’t buy variegated yarn anymore, because it always looks like gorgeousness in the skein and then clown vomit when it’s knitted up and then you’re all, OH GOD WHY DID I BUY THIS NEVER AGAIN, and then three days later you see something else that looks like gorgeousness in the skein, and surely bright red and pea green and squirrel poop brown will look lovely when knitted together WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG.
So I found a nice simple cable pattern (from here), and painstakingly charted out a way to make the cowl increase in size from top to bottom without interrupting the cable pattern and OBVIOUSLY YOU KNOW HOW THIS ENDED because there ain’t no cables in the pictured cowl, but I’ll tell you anyway: I started knitting it and it looked like ass.
Shocking, right?
I went back to the usual obsessive Ravelry searching which of course was useless because I did it already, but then I stumbled on a knitted top that was just plain old garter with some vertical ridges. And it was knit up in some sort of shiny yarn that was not unlike my shiny yarn and what the hell, why not.
It’s mind numbingly boring.
It’s simple enough that a blind drunken monkey could replicate it.
And it’s exactly what I wanted out of this yarn.
So the moral of this story is that trying is the first step to failure. And that taking the easy way out is the path to success. I’m sure this lesson will serve you well in your everyday endeavours. And for the benefit of anyone who does not have a blind drunken monkey on hand to replicate the pattern, I’ve even written it up. Now you don’t have to try at all!
P.S. I’d apologize for having neglected my blog for so long, and for the coming influx of long-finished FO posts that will probably pop up over the next little while, but my head was devoured by a cowl, people! It’s all very traumatic.
P.P.S. I’d be a bad KAL-whore if I failed to mention this: the next round of Obscuriosity is starting soon. Nominations are open for two more days, and voting for another week after that. You know you want to come pet the pretty obscure patterns…