Double Baby Blogger....

...something.
See, here's the thing about Ravelry, and I know I'm not the only one to notice it. It really makes you want to finish projects. There's something far more satisfying about entering in something as an FO than as a WIP. (For those of you not in the know, mom, that's Finished Object and Work In Progress). So I finally got around to putting the finishing touches on some projects that were almost done, but yet not quite.
These little guys were so almost done it wasn't funny. I made this scarf way back in February of 2006, according to the blog records. I even note in that post how I had some left over and made some baby booties. They just needed buttons.

Completely done, mind you, except for buttons.
So I picked these up at the secondary LYS last week. And it took the better part of the week for me to actually sew them on. But here they are.

Despite being blue, I think these are actually pretty gender neutral.

Pretty damn cute buttons though.
I also highly recommend this pattern. It's the One Hour Baby Booties from Stitch and Bitch Nation, and you really can make them in an hour. Go forth and knit.
In summary:
Yarn: Reynolds Blizzard (65% alpaca, 35% acrylic) 66 yards - less than one skein
Pattern: One Hour Baby Booties from Stitch and Bitch Nation
Needles: Size 6? Whatever the pattern calls for...it's small for the yarn size
Time: One hour to knit, over a year and a half to put on the stupid buttons....
Cost: Less than $10, including buttons

What is it about my cat that makes him think he belongs in every picture? I'm not kidding you, he hears the camera turn on and comes running.

This was the other project that was languishing. It also needed buttons, and little bit more embroidery. See, I started the embroidery around neck, just some simple little leaves in the contrasting green. But then, since one of my pet peeves is when the design on the front of something doesn't carry around to the back, I had to at least finish them along the neck too.

I could have done more, but mostly I just wanted to finish this.
The other issue was that once again, I could not find any buttons I liked. This time, I made some.

Only a few of these get used on this sweater, but as long as you've got the oven started up (which is rare enough in my house), you might as well bake up a whole pan. Now I have extra buttons, and nothing to put them on. Come to think of it, it's really the cyclic nature of the stash in general.

I made these little blue and green "rustic" buttons, which is artspeak for "amorphous blob". They're still pretty cute though, and I'm happy with the finished product.

With or without Worfy.

In summary:

Yarn: Lion Brand Kitchen Cotton (blue) and Bernat Cottontots (green), both leftover 100% cotton

Pattern: Loosely based on a Walmart baby sweater pattern

Needle: No clue anymore. Medium sized crochet hook

Time: Who knows? Probably two years or so

Cost: Two packs of Fimo Clay for the buttons

These are both going in the hope chest. Despite being a raging feminist, I am still likely to incubate an alien lifeform some day. Baby things are fun to knit and great for leftovers, so I might as well keep the ones I like.

How did I not know this existed?

Ladies and gentleman, there is now - Loop-d-Loop crochet.
I must have this book. I must have it now. If just one pattern winds up being as cute and versitale as the celebrated Ballet T, or if the photography is as good as the last book, it will be utterly worth it. I'm so glad there are cute crochet books finally coming out. The lack of wearable crochet patterns was the reason I took up knitting in the first place.

Maybe this will be my reward if I pass my....

MASTER'S EXAM TOMORROW

Panic sequence has been initiated. Which is clearly why I'm trolling the blogs while(by which I mean, instead of) studying.

Giant Afghan

Remember Pamela? Of course you do. No one could forget that shawl.

Well, she requested an afghan for her living room, and since she's a very nice person and a very good masseuse, I couldn't say no. She picked out the yarn and brought it to me, and we consipired on a design. Somewhat based on an afghan I had worked before (but with vast differences), I thought of the idea of a giant granny square. Pamela liked that idea, especially with the thought that it all seemed to emanate from a single, central flower.

She wanted the stitches and colors varied as much as possible, much like the previous shawl.

Well, here are a couple of quick pictures I snapped this morning before I headed off to work.

And it's certainly a giant granny square. Final dimension are about 66" square (167.6 cm, for the international readers) (that's a joke). Nerds think fast - what does that make it measure diagonally across?

She's absolutely going to love it. They're the kind of yarns she adores, and everything in her apartment is in these colors. And that's what I'm here for - to give the customer what she wants. Especially when the customer pays in professional massages.

In summary:

Yarn: Vast amounts of acrylic eyelash/fuzzy yarn

Needle: Size N crochet hook

Pattern: Giant granny square theme, making it up as I went along

Time: About 18 hours of work

Cost: She bought the yarn, and she's paying me in massages. This is a good deal, you have to admit.

No Words

There are simply no words to describe this shawl.

Well, maybe a few.

It was crocheted on commission for a wonderful lady who is paying me in massages. (She's a professional masseuse, so get your dirty mind out of the gutter.)

She wanted a ruana, which I had really never heard of before, but it is a rather nice shape for a shawl. She brought in all the yarn, mostly acrylic and fun fur, and she said to do lots of different open crochet stitches. She also wanted the colors placed randomly.

I think I achieved that.

It took a long time, and a lot of effort, but she's a really good masseuse. And now she's having me do an afghan. I...have not words for that either. It's still fuzzy acrylic. But she's still a really good masseuse.

In summary:

Yarn: Various acrylics and furry things in mass quantities

Needle: Size N crochet hook

Pattern: Choosing random stitches as I along, basic ruana shape

Time: 17 hours

Cost: Well, she supplied the yarn, so it was all profit massage-wise for me

Done enough to blog about

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the Rectangle Bobble Bag of the Geometric Accessory Bags from One Skein. It really is just one skein, with a little left over. I'm done with all the crocheting, but I still need to put a zipper in before I can actually use it. I probably didn't need to tell you that, and could have just pretended it was done here, but that would be lazy and wrong. Instead, I'll just stick with lazy.

This is some of the yarn that I dyed in Veronica's class. It's just plain old Lamb's Pride worsted, originally natural, then dyed with Kool Aid. I think the stitch pattern shows the colors off really well, though the flash from my camera doesn't.
I'm getting creative with the photos here. I think this one is a bobble garden.
I highly recommend the book, and this pattern in particular. I'm tempted to make the other little bags in the series too.
It's a vicious cycle, really. Find a great yarn, so then you have to find a good pattern for it. Then you find another good pattern, and you have to find the right yarn. On and on it goes, until yarn and pattern books are taking over your wallet and apartment like a pervasive creeper moss. Oh well. I surrender.

So Freakin' Cute

It's probably not legal to be this cute. This is the Sock Monkey blanket and hat from the Happy Hooker. It's on a size N hook, so it went really fast. Normally I get really bored with granny squares, but these were big enough that I didn't mind. And there are only 16 of them, so that minimizes the sewing up. The monkeys were made separately and sewn on afterward, but they were so cute, I didn't mind. Worfy wasn't all that thrilled though.
I actually made two hats, one of which is going to go to my friend Steph, who loves monkeys and has a hope chest.

The yarn is Bernat Softee Chunky for the plain colors and Denim Style for the sock monkey color (it's called Rodeo Tan, but I think Sock Monkey would be far more appropriate). I think I got most of it at Walmart, which is wrong because it's both acrylic and from Walmart, but it's actually what the pattern called for. I'm not normally a stickler for that, but if they're going to call for cheap but not too nasty yarn, I'm going to go for it. I don't know where else I would have gotten a color that good.
Of course, I've forgotten how much it actually cost. I bought it a long time ago and never got around to making it because I didn't have the hook that big. In the interest of cleaning up the stash a little, and because it was ridiculously cute at the trunk show at Fringe, I finally got it done. I'm glad I did.

FOtos

Okay, I've been a bad blogger recently. But here, to make it up to you in one big post are several pictures. I haven't been lazy. Well, yes I have. But I've also managed to knit a few things as well.
For mother's day, my mom got two shawls. One was going to be for her birthday, but I'm not very good about keeping presents once I've finished them. The crochet shawl in beige is the Sweet Pea shawl from the Happy Hooker. She's actually posing, so you can tell she likes it. Look at the close-up.
It's huge, and took a little while, but it was far easier than the other one. So of course she likes it better.
The other is the Sheer One-Piece Shawl by Iris Schreier. I really like the whole modular knit thing, but this had a lot of stitches and took a long time. Luckily, I had a lot of presentations to sit through while I was knitting it. I'm tempted to buy the book, but that requires money.
And rounding things off is the Big Bad Baby Blanket from Stitch and Bitch, made on commission for one of my mom's friends. She's very feminine, so I added some pink ribbon.