You All Make My Day!

Three different people nominated me for the You Make My Day Award. I feel so honored! Thank you again to Monica, Bogie, and MollyBees.


Here's how it works: Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times.

Here are my ten, in no particular order.

HypKNITized -- Always full of inspiration. Who wouldn't be happy casting on all those new projects!?!

Land Unknown -- Yummy yarns, sushi, kitties, and teacher school. Live, from Canada!

Monkee Maker -- Knitted monkey mayhem. 'Nuf said.

Ruthless Knitting -- Incredible original designs with fantastic results.

Sock Pr0n -- Great pictures and stories and spinning and socks and etsy fantabulousness.

Knitspot -- More amazing original designs, a lot of lace, all from NE Ohio. Sweet.

Lickety Knit -- There might not be a lot of posts, but you get a lot in each one.

Monica Knits ... A LOT!! -- I have to give it back to Monica... I can only dream about knitting all those socks. And she created the Mini Pretzel Twist pattern!

Molly Bee's Attic -- And back to Molly Bees for awesome stories and a bonus recipe blog!

Knit Flix -- And back to Janice for nominating me and turning me on to some blogs I didn't know about.

Thanks again, everybody.

P.S. Teeny baby beanie brim! Eee!

Speaking Of...

My biggest knitting accomplishment in the past week or so? I started the second Monkey sock. My second sock syndrome doesn't usually start until I'm past the heel of the second sock, but this time I couldn't even get the dang thing cast on. Ha! I showed you, cast-on-second-sock-not-wanna-do-it-syndrome! Observe:

I'm already past the ribbing already, too. I'm halfway through the first pattern repeat. Yeah. Take that.

And speaking of pattern repeats, one more and I'm calling it a cuff on my first twisted pretzel sock. That will be a grand total of ten pattern repeats on the cuff. I re-he-heally like this yarn. And this pattern. I just feel guilty when I work on it because I should be working on deadlines. It's too bad you can't hear me say "deadlines". I say it in a very sing-songy-sarcasticky voice. You would like it.

And speaking of deadlines, I'm halfway done with the University of Kentucky baby sweater. I thought I'd clarify for those of you not from around here who might think that "UK" stands for United Kingdom. I mean, it does, but not on this sweater. I think this baby is due in February. I did make one bootie, but it looks like it might fit an 8 year old, so I, umm, might make two more.

And speaking of babies, a friend of mine at work is expecting a baby boy soon, and asked if I could knit a hat with Rasta colors to match his daddy's hats. I used Kelly's super-cool hat pattern as inspiration, and with some tips from the legend herself, came up with this tiny gem:

Look how teeny! Unstretched, the diameter is less than 10 inches. Stretched, though, it's around 17 inches, so it ought to fit the little tyke for a while. It still needs a little teeny brim to finish it off. I don't think I'm going to put an insert in the brim (I've been thinking seriously about this for at least... an hour or so), so that solves that. I used size 5 needles, Cotton Classic (mercerized cotton), and cast on 80 stitches. Knit 1, Purl 1 for four and a half inches, then decrease to 10 stitches, and pull the yarn through.

And speaking of solving things, this bowl solved my problem of not having a baby head to try the hat on. Maybe I'll get a picture after the baby is born. That would really make my day.

And speaking of making my day, thanks for the awards, Monica and Bogie! I'll pass it along soon.

Danger Danger!

Well, the truth is out. Knitting is three and a half times more dangerous than blogging. Knitting is also 100 times less dangerous than skydiving. These are good things to know. I learned them on xkcd.com.

Here are two more non-knitting-related comics from xkcd that I've enjoyed recently:

(We have some of these signs at work. I snicker every time I walk past them.)

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By the way, for those of you who might wonder, Drunken Monkey Knits will remain Drunken Monkey Knits. I will not be changing the name to Drunken Monkey Knits And Sometimes Crochets (Even Though She Is Still Mostly Crochet-Racist) Like Around The Attachment Panel Of The Sheldon Pattern Or If The Pattern Is Too Cute Not To Make, Like, You Remember, That Frog Pattern, And Oh By They Way This Title Is Way Too Long To Fit In Any Of The Blogger Templates, Okay Bye.

Frochet

What did you do today?

I steam cleaned some spots on my carpet.

And I frocheted. It's like crochet, but you end up with a frog.

The pattern is from Lion Brand... There were a few little amigurumi animals in the last Lion Brand catalog that came to my house, and there are a bunch of free patterns on their site. Here's the frog pattern.

The yarn is handspun. I bought some roving at the Wooster sheep and fiber fest in 2006, and my friend Nicole spun it for me into a good worsted weight yarn. I thought the colors were perfect froggy colors.

Froger has already made some good friends... it's tough not to fit in when you're in a house full of toys!

P.S. Happy Birthday, Brenda!!

Twisted Pretzel Twists... and Booties

Yarn: Arial, 100% superwash merino from TwistedFiberArt.com, colorway Xavier. I found it on Etsy.

Pattern: Mini Pretzel Twists by Monica. I got mine at the Loopy Ewe.

Needles: US2 aluminum dpns, as always.

Last night I was studiously avoiding all of my deadline knitting. "What better way to avoid all that other stuff than to start something new?" I thought. So I pulled out the yarn, wound it up, and started knitting. I love the way this yarn stripes, and I love the tiny little pretzels in the pattern and I love knitting this sock. I feel much more like myself now that I'm avoiding my responsibilities. Honk if you just have to stay up until 3:30am sometimes in order to see how the first pattern repeat is going to turn out...

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A very sweet Saartje's-Booties model showed up at work this afternoon and wanted to show off her fashionable footwear all around.

Couldn't have matched that outfit any better if I'd tried. How cute!

Declaration

The Monkey King has declared:

There will be more posts soon!

I Have One...

Monkey Sock

And I love it. I have worked on this sock mostly during lunch at work, so it hasn't been the fastest going, but it has been fun and entertaining. I still love the yarn, and it still keeps me wide awake while I'm working on it. It's impossible to be in a bad mood while working on these socks!







Pair of Saartje's Booties (PDF)

Do baby booties get any cuter than this? This pair is for a brand new baby girl born just before Christmas, so they are tiny, but I already know that they fit! The red yarn is Dale Stork, and the orange is some that Brenda sent me for Christmas a couple years ago. I thought these turned out great, and it only takes a little over an hour per bootie. It's a great pattern if you know any brand new toesies. I've even seen some across the internets in more manly colors if you know some new manly toesies.

Extra Winter 2007 Interweave Knits Magazine

I got an extra copy in the mail for some reason. Would you like it? The first person to leave a comment saying that they'd like my extra copy AND including an email address can have it. Click the link for the preview if you'd like to know what's in it.

Edited to add: The magazine has been claimed, thanks! How YOU doin'?

p.s. My nametag won the nametag contest! I was one of only three people who actually made a nametag, but still. :) Thanks for all the votes of confidence!

Knitting Content

The yarn store where I teach classes and work part time is having the annual Christmas party tonight, and part of this year's celebration includes a nametag contest. We've kind of moved away from the original dress code for the store, so we were challenged to make nametags for ourselves that reflected our particular crafts and skills within the store.

Since I teach the basic sock classes and run sock club twice a month, I couldn't think of a better way to represent myself in my name tag than with socks. I used leftover yarns that I already had that also represented an array of sock yarns we sell at the store. What do you think?

From left to right:
Claudia's Handpainted yarn, color John B, leftovers from a customer
Cherry Tree Hill, brights from the current eye-searing monkey socks
Lorna's Laces, rainbow from the sample kids' socks I knit for the store
Lorna's Laces, hand dyed by my BFF Wendy
Trekking XXL, reds from my August socks
Crystal Palace Panda Cotton, from a TNNA sample skein

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I also finished the first Endpaper Mitt... I'll take this one in as a store sample and knit the other one during the classes as a class sample. Works for me. I test drove the finished one to see how it worked during some of my hand's favorite activities. It passed with flying colors...

writing email...

playing the piano...

even charting out the logo for my current commissioned sports-themed baby sweater.

I can't wait to wear these.

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Thanks for all the votes (and ideas!) on Knit Knack's shells. If you haven't voted, scroll down to the next post and cast your vote for his favorite shell! I'm not surprised to see that Captain Knack Sparrow is way out in front, but I have to admit I'm a little shocked that Tractor Knack is so popular! Thanks for all of your encouragement. I'm looking forward to the next shell, myself!