My first attempt at amigurumi lasted about 3 rounds before I lost my place and couldn’t figure out the start of the row. If starting is your biggest problem, this post on how to start amigurumi would be extremely worthwhile.

Here’s an additional amigurumi pattern for a ghost:

I know this will not endear me to the pattern maker, but there are other pretty obvious negative associations with this picture, or am I the only one who is seeing this? Maybe if the point at the top of the head were more curved, I would be less afraid of accidentally crocheting Klan amigurumi.

I always appreciate a crafter with dark humour, and this Road Kill Carpet fills the bill quite well.

Natalie Dee via Knit-Marie, via med pinner.

I think this is something that all of us can agree on. Knitting is not this mysterious fancy thing that only people with golden hands can do if they boil a cauldron of newt eyes and frog beaks. I don’t understand it when I read people saying “I’m afraid to try fair isle” or “cables are too hard.” So this comic makes me happy, in a sort of asshole-y way.

Japanophile post!

Above is a still from Wool 100％, which looks like a great Japanese talkie about knitting and collecting things, which are two things that I do obsessively. I found out about it via Knit Buddies, and then later read a review at needled. Looks pretty snazzy.

And now I know that Wool is ウール in Japanese! It looks like [[Katakana]]. Am I right? I’m looking it up on Wikipedia and it’s saying that ウール is wuru in latin characters. Is that a phonetic transcription of the English? Surely they’d use the Japanese word for wool, wouldn’t they?

I absolutely love these images by Magdalena Bors. I know the Internet is for quick scanning of images and spending about half a second on each page one visits, but take a closer look at these. My Internet habits almost made me miss the last two images. I feel like I discovered a secret.

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I’m making a hat. I’m naming it after [[Frank Zappa]]’s Peaches En Regalia because there are lots of different patches of pattern in it and because the improvisational wackiness is very jazzy, much like the song. Also, I just wanted to refer to Peaches En Regalia because it is possibly the greatest song ever written. Aside from this one, of course. You go ahead and watch those, I’ll wait.

On to the hat! I’m knitting it because I have catalogued about 50% of my yarn stash and there are over 30 different yarns already. I need to reduce the pile because it is embarrassingly enormous, so I want to knit some of the one-skeiners instead of slugging away at sweaters. I am also bored, and I hate knitting with cotton, and Bubble has gotten too big for my travel knitting bag. So I’ve cast on with a skein of Merino & Fur, which is a 70% merino, 30% possum blend. I KNOW!! POSSUM?! AWESOME. (That rhymed!)

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Mac-O-Lanterns, via Crafty Crafty. OMG, I want to make these. OMG. Where is my orange paint?? I hope my dad hasn’t thrown out all our old macs. (And this was the year that I’ve been convincing him to throw out all his old crap!) I’ve got an Atari (admittedly motherboardless) that I could paint as well! Maybe I should dash over to Value Village and buy some $5 televisions, hook them up to a VCR, what do you think? THIS IS AWESOME>>>>

This is incredible work. A Sea Turtle from Tula Pink.

Halloween Boo Bat pattern, via Craft.

Hi guys! I just realized that I haven’t posted anything since last Tuesday, and I figured I should explain myself. It’s granting season, so I’m busy right now a) cutting a paper down fom 10,000 to 4,000 words for submission tomorrow, b) cutting down a grant proposal for submission tomorrow (it’s always three lines too long!), and c) submitting my masters research (which I finished a while ago, but couldn’t submit until yesterday). I will be working like a crazy person today, and then immediately crashing and/or watching the new episode of 30ROCK! So excited. The beginning half of Thursday will be the worst day of my life, and then second half will be the awesomest. Because I will be done, and then I get to moon over Tina Fey for half an hour. Anyhoo, while I’m away for a few more days, here is a cool honeycomb smocking tutorial via whip up.

Oh man, I just double-checked and apparently 30ROCK isn’t premiering until the 23rd. It’s premiering on the internet; isn’t that weird? I will have to torrent it because I don’t think NBC likes it when Canadians use their Internet.