I was looking at a knitting video yesterday, to verify that I had the right name for the cast-on that I usually use. A compatriot of mine looked over to see what I was doing, and when he realized what I was watching he gave me the biggest grin I have ever seen. “You’re watching a knitting video?” he laughed, and he twiddled his fingers in front of his face (which is his lightly mocking way of emulating my knitting).

Then he asked me if he should close the bedroom door so that I could… how shall I put this delicately? Perform certain recreations upon myself, of the kind that tend not to produce children. I was (I think understandably) horrified. You’d think he’d understand that a yarn snob doesn’t get aroused by just any low-budget acrylic video. I mean, even I have standards.

Get the PDF!

This pattern is great for people who have little time to do anything. It’s knit in pieces, with each panel (a pentagon or hexagon) created individually. Just pick up a few stitches, knit a panel, and put it away. It’s all very laid-back, and great for people with short attention spans. It is the “Garfield the Cat” of knitting patterns.

In total, you’ll have to make 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons. Don’t worry, though, each one takes about ten minutes, tops! It uses up less than a ball of yarn for each colour so it’s a perfect stash-buster, and if you knit it in your national colours, it’s patriotic, too!

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There’s some great shoe modification action going on over at pieKnits. Apparently, bleach pen + mary janes + infinite dexterity = the ultimate cool.

A few days ago I was talking about a great WordPress plugin that automatically links abbreviations to their translations, and about how that had great applications to the knitting community. A few people expressed their interest in the plugin, and for them, I have Uberknits: an adaptation of the ubernyms plugin that includes knitting acronyms! I spoke to the guy who wrote it, and he told me I could republish it. Yay! Thank you, Joel.

– > Download Uberknits here! < --

To install: unzip the file, upload the ubernyms folder into wp-content/plugins and then activate the plugin. This version has translations for tons of knitting abbreviations (you can see them at the end of this post). If you think of any other abbreviations that should be added to the list, I'd greatly appreciate you dropping me an email: eve at guzzling cakes dot com. Enjoy!
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Quick soccer ball pattern news: I haven’t been able to finish knitting the whole ball, so I haven’t been able to fully test the pattern. By the end of the weekend, I should have it up on my blog for you to knit during the World Cup!

I was just reading Clothesknit‘s Amazing Lace entry when I came across the acronym SAHM. I had no idea what it was, and I had to google it to figure it out. Subsequently I noticed that she had also used the abbreviation IK, for Interweave Knits. It was then that I realized how many acronyms knitting bloggers use. IK, WIP, KAL, FO, FP… How overwhelming it would be for a newbie knit blogger to google all these acronyms!

Fortunately, I use the flexiblest of blog tools: WordPress. And fortunately, when I googled “acronym plugin” I came across ubernyms. Ubernyms is a plugin that takes all your acronyms and adds a little tag that will translate them for anyone who doesn’t understand what an OSW is. All you have to do is mouse over the acronym to find out its translation. I’ve added a bunch of knitting acronyms to the library, and will keep doing so as I think of them.

How many acronyms can you think of? What are they? What’s your favourite? The Needle Exchange wants to know!

I just went to the Amazing Lace home base, and apparently comments are closed because the entries were due on the 4th of June, not the 5th of June as I thought. I feel like a big hunk of baloney, without the benefit of being America’s favourite meat.

I certainly didn’t mean that the way you’re thinking.

I still want to post an introduction, so hopefully at least some people will get to know me. I will come up with a name for my team and a witty team bio tomorrow during lunch, because right now I’m BEAT and lunch will provide me the energy I need to romance the blogosphere. I have a feeling lunch is going to be delicious, as I have prepared a salad composed of romaine lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms and havarti. There is also a pear and an orange and some carrots. The jury is out on which dressing I will bring, but there are rumours it will be balsamic.

I’m knitting a soccer ball for the World Cup! It’s my own pattern, but it’s quite simple to do. I’m in the process now of checking the pattern to make sure there aren’t any mistakes; by the first match, it should be available here along with many delightful country-specific colour schemes. If you have a favourite team you want to knit for, request it in the comments and I will whip up a colour scheme for y’all.

Finished Project #6 for 2006

I finished this about 2 weeks ago, but I didn’t have the chance to photograph myself. I finally got Les to do it for me but he kept on being like “this flash is not powerful enough” and I was like “that’s because you have to come in closer, there’s way lots you can crop from the photo” and he was like “stand in the sun, there’s too much shadow” and I was like “if I stand in the sun I’ll have to squint” and there was lots of fussing and you’re going to have to put up with a slightly dorky, blurry, shadowy shot of me squinting but wearing a very stylish One Skein Wonder.

One Skein Wonder, finished Mayish, 2006
Pattern: a modification of the One Skein Wonder.
Yarn: Red, 100% cotton, ripped from a sweater
Needles: 3.75mm circulars
Dimensions: Me-sized (second-smallest size in the pattern, oh yeah!)
Movies Watched: Wedding Crashers. It was okay.
Pattern Notes: I kept to about an inch of ribbing in the back, but I used short rows and increases at the armpits to make the neckline rib twice as long. I really like how it turned out!

I’m listening to the Pixie Purls podcast right now. I’m not really the hugest fan of knitting podcasts because a lot of people sound like they’re currently having THE MOST BORING DAY OF THEIR LIVES, but I really love listening to this girl. It’s like a good friend of mine left me a really long answering machine message. The iTunes store is slow right now, but as soon as it speeds up I’m going to download more and knit while I listen.