Check out this Shrink Plastic Necklace. There are tips on page 3 to make your own:

…The colors come out so nicely because the Prismacolor pencils are so soft that they lay down a ton of color AND because I sand the surface in every possible direction before I start drawing. It gives the pencil lead plenty to hold on to.

Side Note: I installed Firefox 3 yesterday and it’s totally fast and awesome! Download it within the next 3 hours (that’s until around 2pm Toronto time) and help break a record!

Julie West designs some incredibly cute embroidery patterns. I love the bee and the cloud! They are the living end.

Over the past few months, this blog has become more and more popular. New people are always showing up, and I love that because it means more and more people to talk to and befriend. However, it’s not just new friends showing up but also new trolls. The frequency of personal attacks in my comments section and via email has increased exponentially over the past year, and yesterday my blog camel’s back was broken in this post, which was a quick but unintentionally offensive follow-up to this one. The post stepped on some feet, but instead of an “ouch” it got a three-page blitzkrieg on a web forum in response.

There is an interesting social phenomena that emerges every once in a while on the Internet. It’s best described by that wonderful phrase, herd or mob behaviour, and it involves antagonizing people with greater and greater vigour, buoyed by the notion that one is not the only one doing it, so it must be fine. The anonymity of the Internet makes it even easier to take pot shots at someone because you don’t have to worry about a reprimand. I don’t mean simply whether or not you use your real name; cyber-bullying is on the rise among high school bullies, who use the Internet as a way to mediate the things they say to people they know, with full disclosure as to who is doing the bullying. It’s easier to type mean things than to say them to someone, because they aren’t being verbalized and they aren’t face-to-face.

Take, for example, a group of people who all frequent the same web forum.* Because they share roughly the same set of opinions, they can feel secure in attacking a site they don’t like because everyone else is saying the same thing. While it may seem to each person as if their individual comments are relatively benign, they fail to realize that if 30 people all take part in this antagonism, it can be very frustrating and somewhat distressing for the victim to bear these comments. Think about it like a giant game of keep-away: if one person does it, they’re a jerk. If 30 people do it, they’re also jerks, but they underestimate their jerkiness because they’re just going with the flow. Additionally, the person in the middle whose toy is being tossed around will feel a greater amount of frustration with each additional place they have to run in order to get their toy back. In the end a large group of people end up victimizing a single person or site, perhaps without realizing the weight of these comments in summation. Many a blog has been rampaged by wandering forum trolls, and yesterday, that blog happened to be mine.**

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Facebook Lexicon is a lot like Google Trends in that it allows you to compare the use of two different words and consistently prove that Knitting is better than Crochet

See any orange? I sure don’t. More mentions must mean it’s better. (That’s sarcasm.) Take that, crochet!

There’s a great article about “Why You Can’t Bleach Sheep” at A Moment of Science (which is a great name for a science site):

It all boils down to simple chemistry. Household liquid bleach is a basic chemical, with a fairly high pH of about 10. Bleach whitens clothes by releasing oxygen that combines with chemicals in dye, making them colorless. The higher the pH of bleach, the greater the amount of oxygen that’s released–and the whiter your clothes become.

Like bleach, cotton fiber is also on the basic side of the pH scale, and cotton usually bleaches well. But wool is acidic. When you combine acidic wool with basic household bleach, you get a chemical reaction called a neutralization reaction–and the result is that the bleach dissolves the wool fibers into a goopy mess!

You can do it, but you have to be careful. You can follow these instructions, but you should test a small piece first to make sure it will be alright.

I’m assuming Kyuuto is Japanese for cute. And how cute it is!

These Fuzzy Felted Friends are the ultimate in cute. Just go to the link and view the images inside the book! Holy cow! That is some cute stuff.

The Summer Olympics are 2 months away, so I thought I would reblog the soccer ball pattern I wrote up for the Word Cup in 2006. The soccer ball pattern is here and the PDF is here!

If you want a nice soft indoor ball, knit this with cotton or wool and stuff with a fabric ball or ball form. If you want an outdoor ball, you can cut strips of plastic bag or some other water-resistant yarn and knit it around a mini beach ball. You can also use a thinner yarn to make a mini ball, key ring or hacky sack. The PDF includes a bunch of ideas for patriotic colours, in case you’d like to support the home team.

Go Canada!

PS: This is cool! How coincidental. If you don’t want to knit a soccer ball (anyone watching Euro 2008? Yay!) you can Knit an Inukshuk for the 2010 Winter Games in British Columbia.

They released a sneak peek at Eastlake just a few days ago, and now Berroco’s 3rd volume by Norah Gaughan is out! Talk about snappy.

I really like it, but there are certainly a few wacky patterns in the mix. The knit shirt to the right is called Peterhof, and looks like the model is being eaten by a triple-breasted plasma monster. The expression on her face reflects this.

If you don’t like plasmoids, perhaps you would be interested in Strawberry Hill. Instead of sagging boobs hanging from your waist it looks like your boobs are being cupped by a multitude of hands.

My favourite from this series is still Eastlake. Portrait is really innovative, but I don’t know if I would wear it if I knitted it. I also like Chisel and Cire-Perdue.

I love this page. You can make paper craft cars of all sorts, and for some reason, out of the blue, a cat. PDF here.

I wish I knew how to get good deals at a flea market. If you’re planning on getting into the fray this flea market season, check out this post on Planning Your Attack. I want to try a furniture refashioning project this summer! I’ll have to scan some markets and use these great tips to find a chair with some promise.