Sheldon's Career Outfits

I've had a number of people email me or ask on Ravelry for the patterns for Sheldon's outfits that used to be available on Knit Picks. The link below will take you to the PDF on Google Drive with the policeman, cowboy, beach bum, pirate, and superhero costumes. If you have any trouble downloading the file or making any of the costumes, please leave a comment or email me at brooketyler2002 at yahoo dot com. Thanks for all of the interest!

Sheldon's Career Outfits

Drunken Monkey Sews, Too

My good buddy Kara has inspired me to sign up for a few swaps lately, so I thought I'd better post a little bit so the other participants know I'm still breathing!  One of the swaps is a handmade holiday swap hosted by Kara herself!  I have big, exciting knitting AND sewing plans for my swap partner, but I'm not ready to show anything yet.  The second swap is a crafty Christmas swap among my Green Club peeps, and I have AMAZING AWESOME-NESS planned for that swap partner, too... but I have to keep that hidden just in case she knows who she is.   

The last swap is a fat quarter fabric swap, and I got my color assignment last week!  I have to send in 8 orange fat quarters and I'll get one fat quarter of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, and gray in return!  I'm super excited about some mystery rainbow FQs! (My other two orange FQ's are on their way even so now as we speak!)

I've been a teensy bit obsessed with this drawstring project bag tutorial lately, with EIGHT finished project bags, FIVE more in progress, and TWO more cut out and ready to start.  I think I might be done after that.  (There are only six in this picture because two of the finished bags were snatched up by my mom the last time she was in town... except now I'm thinking maybe I've finished NINE bags, because I think she actually snatched up three of them...)

There are plenty of quilts in the planning, in-progress, and finished stages, as well.  Along with at least two quilts that are in the planning/gathering fabric stages, I recently finished a 46" x 66" quilt...

And the top for my pirate monkey quilt (86" x 86") is finally finished!  I have to piece the back together and get it to my favorite long-arm quilter on Thursday this week.  I'm SO excited about this quilt!  Chaka has already gotten some practice sleeping on it, and it seems to have passed inspection.  

To completely mix things up, I also threw a cross stitch project into the rotation!  Kara (Again! I have got to stop following her around!) inspired me with some fun, modern cross stitch projects, and I had to try it for myself.  I found this awesome Etsy shop and went to town.  Here's my first finished cross stitch project in more than ten years!  I already have plans for more cross stitch excitement.  (Just don't tell Wendy!)

Phew!  Just imagine what I'll be able to accomplish when I'm NOT in grad school anymore!!  Just kidding... I'm planning on getting back together with my couch after next March... :)

Stuff With Yarn

It's been so long since I've done anything here that I almost started a whole new blog instead of just writing a new post.

You'll be happy to know that I made some stuff with yarn over the weekend.  It's not so much that I haven't made anything with yarn lately, it's just that I haven't *finished* anything that I've made out of yarn.  I can't remember the last thing I finished.  Maybe a shark?  I don't know.

Anyway, I started a new project over the weekend and FINISHED IT in the same weekend.  Amazing, I know.  Wanna know what it is?  Of course you do.

Sock monkey booties!!

Ravelry linky here.

I used Lion Brand Cotton Ease in Snow, Cherry, and Taupe.  I used a 3.5mm crochet hook and found buttons in the button box to complete the booties.  Everything came from my stash!  Sorry, I hope you were sitting down.  Now I just have to find somebody's 6-9 month old to force them on.  I mean, uh, give them to.

I've been working on a Hitchhiker Scarf off and on for a while now, but it's still a skein and a half from being finished.  I might have another unfinished project or two around here somewhere, but I doubt it.

Since I started grad school I've actually done more sewing than knitting.  Something about cutting out fabric makes me feel less guilty about not doing homework than knitting does.  I currently have three quilts in progress and a slew of tinier quilted projects in the works.  Sweetwater's Reunion line is my current favorite fabric in the whole world.  Click that linky to see lots of excellent photos of the fabric.  Click through the rest of that blog while you're at it... I love their stuff.

Okay. We now return you to this episode of American Ninja Warriors.

Knitting 101

Please please please watch this video. It's really all you ever needed to know.

Thanks for sharing, Barbara!

MacGyver Missed His Calling

MacGyver made his first appearance on my blog in October, 2005. I really think he missed out on an entire genre of action/problem-solving-with-household-items by never learning to knit. I really wish I had documented all of the things I've fixed, altered, defused, stirred, eaten, and poked with knitting needles and other assorted knitting notions since I first started to knit in 2002. Nevertheless, tonight's feat will not go unpublished.

Let this post also serve as an open letter to the idiots in my apartment building. First, DO NOT put Canadian coins into the washing machine slots. Second, if you DO happen to mistakenly put Canadian coins into the washing machine slots, please call someone to fix it so that the next person who comes along will be able to clean clothes, too. Third, thanks for the other quarters.

Please note the bent red US0 dpn, the offending "quarter", and the ever-helpful attempt by a previous genius to keep this problem from happening in the first place. Don't worry, the red US0 dpn was bent before its MacGyver-ish accomplishment tonight. I bent it while making Shorty... SHARK!!'s little brother.



Shorty was made with Cascade Heritage sock yarn and size 0 double pointed needles. I heart him. Both Shorty and SHARK!! live with my mom. She says they get along fabulously with the octo-kids.

SHARK!!

So here I am enjoying my last free Wednesday for a while*, and wondering what I could show you that you would possibly have any interest in, but that won't ruin any birthday surprises later this year, and wondering in the meantime how in the world four weeks go by so fast with no posts... and I remembered. I have a shark.

His name is SHARK!!
I made him out of Cotton Ease.
I used size US4 double pointed needles (I think).
His teeth are pointy, but not so pointy that you can't toss him a fishy snack every now and then. And, he likes to cuddle.
I used this pattern: Natty Knits Shark
Here's the Ravelry link: Shark

Did I tell you his name is SHARK!! ?

And he has pointy teeth.

I also have a dilemma.
At first I thought that my awesome cowboy nephew might need a stuffed shark.
And then my awesome story-writing momma mentioned she might need a stuffed shark to enhance her octopus stories.
And then I finished SHARK!! and thought that I might need to keep him for my very own.
And then I decided that I wanted to make an army of tiny, sock-yarn sharks.
And then I bought some yarn for my shark army,
and then I didn't make any.
Sigh. What to do, what to do.

Regardless, SHARK!! goes very well with my BRAND NEW MESSENGER BAG for SCHOOL!!!


My AWESOME, MOST-FAVORITEST sister-in-law got this bag for me. I think it fits very well with my current underwater life motif.

*Registration for classes for the TAP MBA program is next Wednesday, May 18. On Wednesday, May 25, I start classes toward my MBA. I should be done in the spring of 2013, a gazillion Wednesdays from now. :) I can't wait to carry my books in my new bag!!

And As If That Weren't Enough...

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, if you had talked to me any time between last September and last Christmas, you probably heard about the octopi. That is, if you aren't my mom. At one point in November or December, a few of us went to lunch with a vendor for my day job, and I opened my big mouth about the gang of stunt octopi I was knitting for Christmas. The vendor jumped on it, wondering all about them, how big they are, and how much one would cost. I knew I was in trouble, but he wanted one for his girlfriend's birthday, which wasn't until the end of January, so at least I had some additional time.

This one presented an additional challenge, though... he specified not only the colors, but also that he wanted the head/mantle part to look like a yin yang.

I was somehow strangely excited to get started. The pattern calls for the head/mantle part to be knit in the round, so I looked up techniques for knitting intarsia (blocks of color) in the round. I even tried a couple of the techniques, but I couldn't get any of them to work on that small of a scale in a quick enough amount of time to satisfy my "hafta-be-perfect-the-first-time" mentality. So I ripped them all and knitted that part back and forth, adding an extra stitch on the ends to be able to seam him up. Once he was seamed, you couldn't even tell he'd been knit back and forth. (Thank you, drunken monkey, for learning how to seam for reals.)

He also wanted the bottom of the tentacles to be a mixture of colors, and my stash generously supplied some matching Cascade Quatro to fit the bill.

I had fun making a different colored octopus with a challenging design feature. The vendor wasn't nearly as excited or impressed as I'd hoped he'd be, but that's why I won't typically knit for cash. I knit for fun. I hope his girlfriend is taking good care of her octopus. He's a cutie.

I have two more octopi in progress in my projects bin. I have dreams of an entire fingering-weight-octopus army. But that's a lot of tentacles. And there are sweet babies in Washington that need some sweaters this year... :)