Tentacles & blood. It always ends in tentacles & blood.

Been nearly two years since I last posted? Inconceivable! I'm back, at the request of a girl over on www.ravelry.com. One of our mods (Glee Norto, into Cthulu & all things be-tentacled) was trying to reference old school rap & menstruation @ the same time. Yes, I know it's a knitting website. We're a little special. Any route, I mentioned that I'd thought it was about old school rap, myself & she confirmed my thinking. I was struck, gobsmacked with a vision. Here's what happened.

Kotex check, 1-2, 1-2
Yo, yo; listen up, Diva cup
I'm Glee Norto
Come check my flow
Got a bunch of tentacles
A multitude, identical

Let them caress you
Impress you
While I test you
And your ears' capability
To thrill to me
I gots a gory tale, you see

It's about that time
To bust a rhyme
About my redheaded friend
Every month, yo
My cunt's flow
Goes right around the bend

We don't need no stinkin' babies
So I go mad like rabies
Whining
Cuz my uterine lining
Done come out
Gone walkabout

Gimme the chocolate
Reach deep into you wallet
Run get that Midol, fleet
Or I'll bring about your downfall, tout suite

Nod & smile when I be ranty
Cuz there's a battle in my panties
Ain't nobody gonna win
Enjoy the fun, son
Cuz next month,
We gonna do this shit again

The Party's Over Now

So. I've been given a month to get out of my place. The little tiny room I've lived in for fifteen years, no longer even nominally mine. After a panic attack I have that weird ringing calm you get after an accident, where everything is brighter & clearer than you've ever seen it before. It's adrenaline, I know, but I'm going to surf the crashing blue green wave of panic before it closes over me.


So much has happened here in fifteen years. Everyday happenings and big deals. Snow storms bringing that perfect silence while painting the landscape white. Holidays and workdays, rainy days with soup in the pot and a new book. Learning to crochet, then knit, then spin yarn itself. Days where I lounged with the sun coming in the window. Breezes just as lazy as I, toying with my little wind chime, playing soft little notes to a song millions of years old and new as the morning. And now it's time for me to leave my little home. It isn't much a little one room bed-sit & it obviously isn't now & never really was mine. But it became home, my one little safe nest. Cluttered with books and yarn and everything that makes me me. And now I have to go. I'd love to prate on about my memories, what's happened here, good neighbors and bad, lovers lost and the simple joy of coming home to a secure place. But I can't cling to the past, not now and not anymore.

Problem is, I'm skint. Bust flat broke, and it's my own fault, I make no excuses. I'm already lining up what needs doing and of course my landlords will give me glowing references for fifteen years of minding my own business and paying on the barrel head.

But I need help. Not only do I need to move, I need to fix my car to move with. I simply can't do it alone especially not with this time frame, & my pride is going to have sit back & shut up. The DONATE button is right on this page, the yellow button to the upper right. Please donate if you can, repost if you can't. Also if you could please pray for me, light a candle, sacrifice marshmellow Peeps in the microwave, Boil a pot of linguini to FSM or just send good vibes, I need them more than ever before. My heart is sore within me and I hope and pray for any help that anyone can give. Holy Twelve Bless you and Keep you, everyone. I thank you from the very bottom of my broken heart.

For people allergic to wool, one's heart can only bleed

I have so many ideas for new knitting designs to sell, mostly shawls. Which if you'd known me growing up, would never have believed of my butch-ass self.

1. Tarot card bag - The idea for this will be knit on 000 needles (000 = reallyfreakinsmall, lol). Otherwise the bag will be able to fit a fairly healthy pony *and* one's tarot cards, rectangular
2. Tarot card Shawl - Of the Tarot suits, obvy, square
3. Tattoo shawl - Picking several of the classic tattoo images to make a square &/or semicircular shawl
4. Pennsylvania Dutch Hexen Shawl - To be named Yuscht For Schee or 'just for nice' in the Pennsylvania Dutch Dialect. The design came to me in a dream & has been pestering me ever since
5. Bat Shawl - No I'm not a Batman nut. I got it from a Chinese good luck symbol (just typo'd 'luck' as 'lick', it's been a while *shifty eyes*. This will be a short-row project so I can either a) Become proficient in short-row shaping once & for all, or b) Finally go truly bull-goose batshit (hah, see what I did there?) bargain basement crazy
6. A hat with cabled skull motifs - This idea is truly aces & the name of it is SO KEWL I don't even want to divulge it so it can't be nicked. No, I'm not paranoid, why? *Grabs you by the lapels* WHY? WHAT? WHAT HAVE YOU HEARD?!...*ahem*
7. Several varations on a Steampunk Shawl that I am working on including a Lovecraftian subgenre one (now with more Tentacles! *snork*) These will include gears (cogs), wrenches, lightning bolts, goggles & trilobites. So excited about these.

Anyway. I also have another idea And I'm somewhat reluctant to post it, because people might get spitty about it. Not that I think I'm anywhere famous enough that people will even notice or it'll make local let alone national news or something, really. But it only takes one pebble to start an avalanche, ya know?

I want to design knitted veils. Not wedding veils, veils like harem or Moslem veils. my fae was HELLA cold last winter & I thought a pretty laceweight wool veil, with a silk cord tie or even a fine silver, gold or copper chain would be prettier, downright sexy, honestly, & more breath-permeable than a big chunky scarf. Not that I don't love me a big-ass scarf. I just think that the veils would be interesting to design & wear, & totally available for cosplay as well. BTW, research cosplay further @ your own risk & probably with Safesearch ON. There's some pix out there that would make Caligula blink, lol.

I don't have a fear of controversy, controversy usually means people are kicking against a change that is usualy going to happen whether people damn well like it or not. I do have a bullshit level that's nadir is WELL below sea level & listening to someone's rant about me 'stealing' someone else's cultural artifacts for my financial benefit, &c, will make me eyeroll myself into a migraine. I get it, I do. I would guess Irish people visiting an "Irish" bar decorated in Early Leprechaun Kitsch probably want to gag on their Guinness. The inspiration is indeed from that culture & those items, but I feel the need to create my variations of it & yes make money off the idea.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just having preemptive hypersensitivity about the whole thing.

Sometimes you just have to cast on.

Dub T3h Efffffff....

So. I come into the library to check the intarwebs, because I didn't feel like toting my laptop around. It's crowded but there's a station with cleaning supplies in its chair. Now I go to the library all. the. time. It's shouting distance away from my house. Everyone that works there knows me. I know full well those cleaning supplies are the library's to clean the computer keyboards when there's a moment free. So I ask the guy @ the computer next to the cleaning supplies if they're cleaning it.

"Oh, no. Someone's sitting there." he hastily assures me. I KNOW full well the freezedried wackaloon is lying. but I'm not in the fucking mood. So I sit down to wait. Behind him. He turned & said something about 'ten minutes' yackity smackity blahblahblah. I looked him in his beady eyes & firmly told him I was waiting where I was supposed to to be next in line for the computers & went back to ignoring him.

Well.

He promptly became Chary McSuspicious, photo evidence ->here<-. Because wearing cardigans on your body is SO fuckin' passe, haven't you heard? Nahhh, it's all about the thriftstore sweater flung ever so nonchalantly over your greasy combover while you do everything short of monkeyhump the computer monitor so noone can see your flavor of kink. You are SO subtle, sir. No one would EVER think you might be looking at something illicit, oh, say, gay asian teen midget bestiality snuff porn or anything. Noooo. Because NOTHING says 'casual' like A SWEATER OVER YOUR HEAD while you surf the internet in public, while fidgeting & casting terrified glances over your shoulder every 1.34 minutes and/or whenever someone walks behind you.

Sure enough, once he got done looking at long lost nude pix of Minnie Pearl or joining the GOP or whatever, he takes the sweater off his head, takes the cleaning supplies out of the chair next to him & scampers off nonchalantly.

I cannot make this shit up, I can only display it to prove that I am NOT the batshitcrazyloon in this scene...

Your Daily Dose of Fiber In One Sitting

Hey kids. Sorry I've been so lax about babbling random nonsense at you. Grab a snack & a drink, hit the bathroom, then let's get right down to it, shall we?

I made it to 39 years old with only minor damage, thanks for asking. My birthday was nice & quiet & the cake was NOT a lie. My friend Paul who is an awesome cook, made Pork Florentine for my birthday dinner, as I am a slave to the swineflesh. It was, of course, delicious, with asparagus & wild rice. Mom made me lemon bars & Paul bought a Carvel strawberry ice cream cake that was quite good.

Writing: I am thinking of rifling through my older blogs & picking out OBG's (Oldies But Goodies) editing & reposting them. I think it will give me practice in editing, obviously, but also trying to have a less tangential way of writing. Maybe not, as the old saw is that you should write what you know & there are very few people who know more about rambling on about nothing much like I do. But to tell stories to a bunch of strangers over the intarwebs, I need to be less scattered so I don't get a Greek Chorus of “WTF?” & accompanying baroo faces.

Onto the Fiber Nerdery!

Embroidery is going slow, as I've only been doing it for a few months & nature of the beast. Working on a steampunk sampler, just a cog with some varied stitches circling it. I'm working from the outside in. If I should be working from the inside out,don't tell me, my illusions are all I have right now. No, seriously, once I finish the outer twiddly bits I shall work from center outward on the actual cog itself as it's obviously the central motif. Varying shades of brown, gold & copper with a little kicka-POW of electric blue.

Knitting; I so love it, but I need more focus, definitely. I need to throw down some stash-busting basic knits, finish some secret prezzies (shifty eyes) and hammer out some designs so I can start pimping them online, as this 'broke while doing something I'm right tired of insteada broke doing something I love' schtick is working my last nerve. I have a brief fingerless glove-hat recipe here, cause I'm original like that. Yer mileage may vary:

Sandy's Basic Recipe for Hats & Fingerless Gloves

• 
  Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted Weight (85% wool 15% mohair) color of your choice and/or yarn that you like that swatches up the same. I knit from tight to on gauge, loose knitting makes me all spitty
  #7 circulars in 16” & 8” or DNPs

Hat (fits my 23” squash head snugly):

• CO 72, join for round, PM to denote begin/end of round making sure not to twist your stitches
• 1”-2” k2, p2 ribbing, depending on whether you want to roll this up for extra ear-warmth
• 4”-5” stockinette or until you narc out from boredom
• k6, k2tog to PM, then k5, k2tog next row &c.
• BO when you get to 8 or less stitches, thread tail through final stitches & pull tight, weaving in ends

• Gloves (make 2 unless you only have 1 hand for whatever reason, fits my 8-9” paws/man hands snugly)
• CO 28 join for round, PM to denote begin/end of round making sure not to twist your stitches
• 6 rows k2, p2
• 7-8 rows stockinette
• This is where it gets a little hinky:
  Now knit/purl back and forth for the thumb hole, slipping the first stitch of each row, 9-11 rows in all, thumb size depending
• on the last row k2tog to join back into the round & KFB (knit front & back of next stitch to get back to 28 stitches.
• 2 more rows stockinette, then 5 rows k2, p2, binding off in pattern, weaving in stitches, &c

Spinning: So, Paul was @ the local Saturday Arts' Market recently (overpriced tchotchkes galore). He texted me to let me know there was a woman there with her spinning wheel. I am learning to spin on a Spindolyn & enjoy it immensely. It's one of the only spinning options available to me due to space/financial restraints & with a little patience (stop laughing) I can actually spin quite a bit on it before it has to be unloaded off the shaft. So I shimmied down there to see her in action, stopping here & there to pat people's dogs & kvetch about the heat. The spinning lady (I'm sorry her name escapes me but the company/LLC/whathaveyou is called Canterbury Spinning. After chatting her up a bit & throwing some of the Gordon charm at her, she dug briefly in a Rubbermaid container & handed me a big fistful of mohair wool. SCORE! Thinks I, & giggling maniacally I crammed it in a ziplock bag I had handy & scampered home. While I am not a mom, I do have several 'mom' purses which, as I have theorized before is probably the D&D basis for the item 'Bag of Holding' in which people can store up to a ton of equipment & suchlike & pull it out as needed.

O to the MG. This was an uncarded clot of wool, straight off the goat. Lovely shine & beautiful crimp, but...It was tangled. It had random foliage in it. The goat it came from coulda done with a Selsen Blue dip, as there is a lot of dander in it. But I forged onward. Using my own hairbrush I began plucking & twitiching & prying this mess apart. Being one of life's 'Pickers' this was actually quite fun for me. And before you ask, no, I'm not using that hairbrush for myself again, I never really used it in the first place, which is why I commandeered it for duty.

This fistful of wool turned into a cookie tin about 3” deep & 7” across full of shiny white floof, like milkweed seed tufts, silky & dainty. Spinning it has been completely different from spinning the Colonial top I've been working with. First off, no one will tell me what sheep it comes from, so I'm as clueless as you. But the Colonial spins up with at least an arm's length of draft before I have to wind on. It's easy to see that the Mohair comes from a goat because it's STUBBORN & FUZZY, SRSLY. It's a short draft and even with all the pre-drafting it's a bit of a struggle. I'm assuming the minimal processing (koff) is the issue & a commercial/professionally prepared top will go a lot smoother. But, oh, it's shiny & foofy & coming up from a flat white in the tin to a pretty creamy white in a laceweight 'S' twist. & I still have about a 1/3 of a handful to clean & draft.

All right. I'm off to do arty things & write. That is all.

Before I Sputter Out

Hi kids. Here's the washed swatch. It grew about an inch wider, call it 7". But because I'm a twit I have no idea how much longer it got, but it's currentlehhh 4.75". I know, i need to be more exact in my measurements, because it's going to be the difference between a garment fitted for me or for the late great Andre the Giant. Either way, riveting, I'm sure. I am glad that I seem to be a very even knitter, as I read Recently in Stephanie Pearl-McFee's blog that 'rowing out' winds her up, & frankly it does me too, vis a vis my OCD perfectionist issues. So I'm happy with the cogwheel lace except for a few minor points:

1. Even one repeat is too long to use for the collar, because my neck is approximately 4x thick than it is long. Genetics, feh.
2. If I tack in another repeat on the wrist it's going to be baggy which defeats the purpose of lace, which, like insecure celebrities, is to be seen. I'm thinking about tacking the daisy lace if the repeat slots in because then i could put in buttons as a neat little design feature. Only problem with that idea it that the YO's in this yarn/gauge is that the holes are nearly big enough to put my pinkie through, so hm...

So I shall jack with more swatching, this time with the idea of the sleeve caps. Which if things go like they do in my head, will be brimming over with W1N. There might even be tuck pleating. Of course things in my head also progress with me being waited on with stern devotion by giant bald twins, so don't put too much money on my psyche.

For all my extempore knitting, I need to let go of the idea that something can only be constructed in one direction and only of one fiber art (only knitting, only crochet, &c). It literally makes me queasy to think about making part of this sideways, as I *insert jazz hands HERE* envisioned as necessary for the construction. There are times when my gut is sright & other times when I'm fairly sure it rides the short bus.

I need to get some rechargeable batteries for my camera. It's a perfectly decent, actually quite nice camera other than its rampaging case of gluttony. It was given to me by my darling Best Friend (International Division) Crystal, due to the fact that most Canadians are sweet like that unless you give them a hockey stick or take away their poutine.

Ok I need to go swatch & get in a little drawing & plan out a secret friend project. SO secret I can't even hint, as the recipient will totally twig to its making with even one of the factors *tiptoes away giggling*

Steamshrug Sketches

Okidoki then. My first swatch came out ok. Little short even after washing, I'll post links to those later, but first I shall post the sketches for the idea, thusly:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8188160@N08/4612098988/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8188160@N08/4612099094/in/set-72157624071815140/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8188160@N08/4611487993/in/set-72157624071815140/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8188160@N08/4611488171/in/set-72157624071815140/

I like the swatch, though after washing it's short about an inch for going around my wrist, so I'm going to tinker with tacking in a single skinny lace repeat to make up that inch & see how that works out. The length is good though. For the fiber geeks who like the technical side of things, it's Lion's Pride Fisherman's Wool in 'natural' & 'nature's brown'. That might only be for the swatching progress if I find something nicer & it doesn't cost a metric-ass ton of shekels. But LB is way cheap for a pretty standard, solid yarn. I think I'm just grexing over it because my ODC perfectionist thing makes me frog the everliving shit out of swatches, let alone actual projects to *grind teeth in perfectionist existential histronics HERE* make sure it's right the 1st time even though:

• It's a goddam SWATCH, it's supposed to be all eff'd up
• I have, oh, FIVE MILES of this friggin yarn, I can spare 1/10th of a mile for swatching
• They makin' that shit eeeeveryday. Both wool & the sheep it comes off of

I was worried @ first about people nicking the idea, or 'bitin' my steez' as the hip kids say. But where

1. I'm winging it
2. It might likely be a one-off
3. The pretty solid assumption that about 10 people read this blog

I'm not losing much of the miniscule amount of sleep I already get.

Other than that, nothing much new, posting this from the bagel joint, where apparently their hiring guidelines include somewhere near the top:

1. Hire the most miserable, pissy, overprivileged, currently societal accepted standard of pretty TWATS for public customer service
2. Insist that they make NO attempt to be personable at all whatsoever

K, I'm off for an espresso bean frappe & some more swatching. Talk amongst yerselves