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This is some intense post-sewing action. It just barely makes the cut for a knitting blog, but it’s too cool not to post.

I want to try it but I would undoubtedly set myself on fire.

I’m not sure I love the illustration on this t-shirt, but I love the expression on the front sheep’s face. They’ve even got a wolf and sheep combo in the clouds! Actually, now I love this t-shirt. Ba-a-a-ah!

Double points for being my favourite colour.

OMG, I love this too:

They’re Transfarmers! There’s something about farming that I’ve really fallen in love with recently. I think it’s my move to the big city, I miss rolling hills and sheep and 3-storey buildings.

Read the rest »

The origin of Shreddies cereal.

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I love the fastest woman. She’s got the hammer down! I wish I knitted Myrtle shawls as fast as she knits Shreddies. I wish she could be in my house to motivate me to finish the gauge swatch!

This is a bit of a patchwork post. First, check out this cute new t-shirt design from Threadless!

Second, this is a wonderful tip from bunchkinknits on shaping armholes that require stitches to be cast off at the beginning of rows:

The trick is to decrease one of the cast off stitches in the last two stitches of the preceding row. So for instance, if you are supposed to cast off three stitches in the next knit row, you would purl two together on the last two stitches of the preceding row (decreasing one stitch), and then only cast off TWO in the next row. The change in the line of decreases is amazing, and so much easier to sew up that all of those stair steps.

Neat! So if you have to cast off 5 stitches, you decrease on the row before and then cast off 4 stitches at the beginning of the intended row, creating a slant so you don’t have a “stair” effect on your sleeves. This is especially useful if you’re knitting a tank top or something that doesn’t allow you to hide the stairs in a seam.

Third is an update on some UFOs: I finished the February Baby Sweater yesterday! It’s officially my first finished sweater, even if it’s for a baby. I sewed on the buttons using this tutorial and I knit a flower for the front that looks like a daffodil. I’ll be taking photos this afternoon and I’ll have a post ready for tomorrow. I also finished a huge portion of my Dad’s scarf over the weekend (only half a foot until I’m done), and knit up a swatch for my mom’s Somewhat Cowl. No progress on Baudelaire this weekend, though; I had to read a textbook on Experimental Design and I have at least 20 papers to read and AUGH! AUGH! AUGH!

Ooh! And I caught four fish on Saturday. It was family fishing weekend in Ontario where you can fish without a license. The beau landed all my fish but at one point I decided I was going to land one but then it kept swinging back and forth on the line and I was afraid of hurting it and I touched it along the side and it was surprisingly un-gooey, but then I knew if I kept screwing around it would reverse-drown, so I let him land it so it could get back in the water as soon as possible. Le beau caught a fish that had a lure stuck in it, and the jerks had just cut the line without removing the lure. Stupid, stupid, stupid people.

I don’t want this post to end on a sad note, so here’s a video of a cute puppy. Arf!

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Via glittyknittykitty again, a “knitimation” called Do The Brane.

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Music by The Stabilisers. This song is really catchy, and it includes knitting, and it involves the brain! I’m not sure if I can forgive them for calling it the “cerebal cortex” instead of cerebral cortex, but then again that may have been a case of misheard lyrics. I won’t get revved up like a deuce about it.

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This is kind of inspiring. Not only because so much neat stuff was produced in just a week, but because the neat stuff was painted right on top of everything else. If I had produced some of these things, I would never ever ever paint over it! I’m squirming as we speak! And by speak, I mean blog.

Maybe the moral of this story is that we shouldn’t be so romantic about our work, treating it like it’s sacred. When I received my sweetgeorgia yarn* for example, it was so expensive that I was afraid of dropping it on the ground. But hey, come on Eve, you’re going to be wearing this stuff! It’s not like you’re going to float above the floor when you’re walking around in your socks. These clothes are meant to be worn, and when they become unfashionable or old, they’re meant to be reknit or packed away or *shudder* thrown out.

So no more. From now on, no yarn is sacred! Like smashing champagne against the hull of a ship before it takes to the sea, each of my projects will touch the floor at least once before being knit. Smash! Smash again! Floor-touch!

* namedrop!

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Baaaa!

Before I get to the knitting content… Aren’t these cute? I swear this is the last time I post about Threadless. But come on, they reprinted Rocketbird! Yay.

This is a new one, and I am so so buying. OMGOMGOMG.

For putting up with my love for Threadless, here’s a video called “Real Men Knit”:

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And now, on to the commentary.

Unfortunately, the only two video responses on YouTube either said “ha ha that must mean real men are gay/insipid women, ha ha” or “ha ha instead replace knitting with farting, lol omg bbq.” I think the whole point of saying “real men knit” is to say “real men don’t let themselves be tied down by old-fashioned gender roles,” but I guess you can’t expect everyone to be open-minded about that.

It’s kind of sad that knitting is sort of a stigma that both men and women now have to live down. Oh, for the days of the 1920s, when women were allowed to knit, and their husbands gave them monthly allowances of $20-$25 that they could spend on soap and ribbons and powder for their noses. Now that was a time when everything about being a woman was stigmatized, so at least you knew where you stood. Nowadays, we’re allowed to be strong and powerful, but only if we do men’s work. Women’s work, not so much. You housewives, you go away and watch Oprah and fold the laundry while we get the real work done.

Strangely, the tagline is “it’s not just women’s work, in fact, it never was.” As a matter of fact, for quite a while it was women’s work, so why are they ignoring that history? Do they think that they have to completely disassociate all femininity from the craft before it can become palatable to men? That’s not very fair to men, if that’s true. From now on, why not say it’s “human’s work”?

I found this sheep-knitting-a-sweater-for-itself video via Kate. It’s so cute!

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While reading about Kimberly’s contest at Some Bunny’s Love this morning, I discovered that Kimberly is a “Nascar Knitter.” A whole KAL devoted to Nascar!, I thought to myself. I wonder if there’s an equivalent to F1. I didn’t find one, but I did find this:

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P.S.: The alternate title for this post was “Spinni Räikkönen.”