I've got STEAM HEAT!

Otto is finished! After what seems like days of sewing (about 3 hours in real life), Otto is alive and touring the neighborhood. He seems to like Harry Potter, but is quite concerned about the conditions in which the delivery owls live. He likes trees, but hates getting dirty. He likes waving at passers-by on sunny Thursday afternoons.

Pattern Particulars
Needles: Clover Takumi Straight needles sz. 8

Materials: KnitPick's Merino Style in Cinnamon, Vanilla, Asparagus, and Cornflower. Fiberfill.
Time: 9-ish hours?

Loved: The short row wings and tail.

Hated: Sewing all the pieces together. In the future, Otto will be knit in the round.

When we First moved into our current condo, Dave's boss had given us a fancy wok with steamers and tools. I've used the wok a million times, but tonight I gave the steamer a shot. I was a little aprehensive, because I tried to use one a long time ago to make a steamed egg cake and burnt it, a lot. (the steamer, not the cake). I googled bamboo steamers and ended up at the same site where I get all my cooking advice. Thanx Martha! I made a quick spice rub with some of the organic parsley growing on the deck, and tossed some orange roughy on top of some sliced lemons. I put a second steamer on top of the fish with green beans in it. Awesome! Dinner on one burner! It took about 20 minutes and absolutely no-fuss. I wonder what else I can steam??

I casted on for my Seamless Hybrid today, I've only knit about 6 rows, but that damned Malabrigo is sooooo soft! I can't wait to knit some more. I need to pick a color for my hems and decide which yoke I'm going to do. I hope this one fits and looks good, I can't bear to throw another sweater under the bed.

<3

knitxcore.

If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a cake.

FlintKnits showed me how to make an awesome photo mosaic.

Let's go clockwise from the top left.

Elizabeth Zimmermann's Ganomy Hat from the Knitter's Almanac: I'm going to try to do each of her monthly projects, in order, to have Christmas gifts ready when the time comes. The Ganomy Hat is one of June's patterns and a bunch of cool kids have already made them. I'm pretty much playing catch up.

Strawberry Cake: This comes to us from MarthaStewart.com. Lately, I have become obsessed with her website and consult it before I do pretty much anything. Why stress out about how to do something, if someone else has already done it perfectly? You can trust me that this cake is as simple as throwing strawberries in store bought cake mix and layering it all with fresh whipped cream, or you can go straight to the source.

Speaking of food, has anyone seen the Hungry Planet book and photo essay? It's amazing to see what people are eating, how much they spend, and how much it varies from culture to culture. Lupinbunny suggests that we should start a Hungry Planet Meme, where everyone takes a picture of what they buy in their weekly grocery shopping. No cheating! Be honest and have fun, we are not here to judge. I'll do mine the next time I go shopping. I can't wait to see what everyone does with this.

Seven Skeins of Malabrigo Worsted in Lettuce: This is the beginning of my Seamless Hybrid. I bought it from Misocrafty's Amazing De-stash. Hopefully, I'll get around to swatching it up this week, so I can start doing my math. Rodger from Over Abundance will be knitting his Seamless Hybrid at the same time, so when we're finished you'll get to see how 2 different knitters interpret the design.

me: i like trees.

<3

knitxcore.

WIP..... monday?

This is all I have to share today. Kinda sad, eh? It's the front of Otto the Owl, and I'm pretty happy that it doesn't look as crappy as I thought it would. It's still 999 bajillion degrees in my house (well, not tonight, which is why I'm going to be quick), and it makes knitting almost impossible. Knitting wool with sweaty hands is gross and it's not really much of a pleasure. My Elizabeth Zimmerman books arrived and I've also been admiring those for the past couple of days. I even took them both to work today, so I could read during my lunch break. She's actually quite funny whilst being EXTREMELY informative.

Alright, like I said, short and sweet. It's cool tonight, so I'm going to go knit while I'm not sweating.

<3

knitxcore.

Where did this week go?

I hadn't realized that a whole week had went by without making a blog post. I guess I'm just a jerk. Sometimes, time really escapes me. I mean, I like to sleep a lot, but there are full days that just go right out the window. Ravelry isn't helping with this complete loss of time, either. It's funny how you don't realize you been looking at knitting patterns for hours on end. Luckily, I do have a few things to show for this whirlwind of a week.

It was raining outside, these pics were my plan B.

Pattern Particulars

Needles: Clover Takumi DPNs sz. 8, Clover Takumi Straight needles sz. 8
Materials: Plymouth Jelli Beenz Yarn , some red buttons from my awesome button stash.

Time: about 3 hours.
Loved: The yarn, the ease of the pattern, the buttons!!!
Hated: trying to figure why the second flap didn't work out right (it was my fault).

Knit.1's Spa Socks are finished! When I started them, I wasn't that excited about them but I did want a worsted weight pair of socks that were kinda slipper-ish. After finishing them up I've decided that they're kinda fun and the buttons are really cool. I'm really into the yarn, too! I'm using what I had left to make the Umbilical Cord hat From Stitch n' Bitch. Someone on Ravelry had made it out this exact yarn, and it was so cute that I sort of did a lil' dance when I realized that I had enough left.

A while ago, one of the cool girls at our lil' (sorta defunct) stitch n' bitch, had an awesome book by Lucinda Guy (And so to bed...). Midnight Purls and I immediately fell in love with Otto the Owl, among other things. All of the patterns were really cute and the sizes went up to 5 years old, so I'll have plenty of time to make everything in the book. The only "issue" (it's not even that extreme) is that every pattern calls for Rowan Cashsoft DK or Baby DK and while I love the yarn, a ton of colors have been discontinued. I used YarnDex and checked to see what other things I could use and decided on KnitPick's Merino Style. They had a billion colors and it was too cheap to pass up. It came the other day and while its pretty soft and the colors are great there is one discrepency... What color (exactly) is cornflower? I've used crayons and seen Fight Club, so I was very confident when choosing this color for my owl's blue eyes. According to KnitPicks cornflower is in fact, the lightest purple I've ever seen. I'm not ordering 1 ball of yarn and I'm almost positive there's no blue in my stash. It looks like Otto will have light purple eyes.

I bought some more flowers for the "deck jungle", as we're now calling it. The crazy flower is Fuschia (I think), it didn't have one of those stakes in it. The other is a Dahlia of some sort. The bulbs I planted we're just taking too long and I really wanted some color out there. We picked up some Petunias also, but they wouldn't photograph well for some reason.

<3
knitxcore.