Let the wild rumpus...be scheduled for a little bit later!

I've been busy working on something that's destined to be a pattern soon. I'm really, really pleased with it. Here's a preview:


Needs final touches and number crunching. I've never done sizing for a sweater before, so we'll see how long that takes!

Also adds +2 Charisma and protects against lightning-based attacks

I finished some things!

Introducing my +5 Scarf of Awesome:


Look at this thing, will you? It's gorgeous. It's Bex's merino/seacell handspun in Kirsten Kapur's Rickenbacker Scarf pattern, which was evidently a perfect storm of pattern and yarn. I mean, look at it.


"I think it may have some neat striping," Bex said when she handed me the skein. Yeah, uh, less with the striping and more with the gorgeous frakking color transitions. Even aside from the amazing colors, this was some of the nicest yarn I've ever worked with. It's lofty, silky, and so nice to the touch that I've been wearing this scarf around in 70-degree weather just so I can grope it when nobody's watching.

I did make one slight error on this scarf. The pattern suggested it be 52" long. I misread that as 72". And then I said, "Eh, fuck it, I'll just keep going until I'm not entertained by the pattern anymore."

Here's how far it falls when I don't have it wrapped around my neck twice:


And to answer the questions I'm sure are on your mind, thank you, they were $4 at the Girls' Clearance section at Target, and yes, I do have astoundingly tiny feet.

I also knit up Ysolda's Ripley as an instant gratification project but haven't had a chance to wear it anywhere yet.


You can't tell from looking at it, but that hat was mostly knit during a Supernatural drinking game. Turns out I can drink and knit lace (which is funny because I always mess lace up when I'm sober). I think it's a superpower.

So, now that I've got the world's most awesome fall scarf and a cute new hat, what next? Christmas knitting!

Here's my Christmas knitting yarn stash. It's missing a hat or two worth of yarn, I think.


And then, there's something for me.


That's going to grow up to be a Snapdragon Tam, if I can stop staring at it long enough to cast-on.

Progress has been made on my Where the Wild Things Are hoodie, but that really deserves its own post. For now, I'll leave you with this. Go watch the featurette and have a smile.

Yeaaaahhhh, about that...

Remember how yesterday I said had just started this Where the Wild Things Are-inspired hoodie?

Well...



I honestly don't know what happened here, but that's two and a half days of knitting, and now I've got some sleeves with half-fingers on them to design.

Oh boy.

Drive-by graping

This weekend I started my Where the Wild Things Are-inspired hoodie, which I hope to have done by the movie's premier date. Considering I have 8" of the body done already, two days in, I think that's a reasonable goal. (Basic construction + big needles and Eco Wool = the illusion of productivity!)

But what I really came to post was this.

Grapes. Look at these fucking grapes. LOOK AT THEM.


These are growing in my yard. Scads of them. Epic amounts of dusky purple, astonishingly delicious Concord grapes.

Let's see some more grape pictures!

THESE ONES ARE ALL DIFFERENT COLORS!


NO USE TRYING TO HIDE, GRAPES! I'M GONNA EAT YOU!


I...may be a little too excited about grapes. But you haven't tasted them. They're the best grapes in existence.

I have about half a gallon of these in my freezer right now, thanks to a trick Bex taught me last weekend. Toss a bag of grapes in the freezer, and you've got a bag of slushy grape treats!

Grapes, man. GRAPES. So excited.

Not dead!

The last week at work has been insane. Box-on-head, coworker-in-a-toga, can't-sleep-sticky-notes-will-eat-me insane. It's the beginning of the school year, and while this time of year normally belongs to the chaos demons (Have you ever met a chaos demon? They're all antlers and slime!), this year is the worst I've seen by a long shot.

The other thing that's been eating my life is fan fiction. I figured out this week that fan fiction is the perfect palate cleanser between novels - it's low-investment, the characters come prefabricated, and instead of waiting weeks for beta reader feedback, you toss a first draft up online and get comments with tiny cheering emoticons back almost immediately. \o/ I have a tendency to drift toward depression when I finish a lengthy writing project, so writing fic has turned out to be a bit of a sanity-saver. I will definitely be relying on it in the future.

In conclusion, I'm at the level of braining where this seems like the best thing ever created, so you should probably be grateful I'm not blogging regularly right now.