FO Friday 11/25/11

A hat for The Doctor (Doctor Who):

I thought it matched the current Doctor's outfit. His outfit was auctioned for charity in the past week and raised something like 50,000 pounds. Crazy! Speaking of The Doctor's clothing, I nearly lost my tiny mind when I saw Alton Brown on that Food Network Thanksgiving special last week. He was wearing what looked like a tweed jacket and a bow tie the same color as The Doctor wears. I later saw a Tweet where he said that he was wearing a bow tie so he could look like a time lord. It's fun when fandoms intersect.

I kept knitting those Christmas balls until I ran out of red and white yarn. There is one more pair that needs to be steamed and stuffed.

Work in progress: I'm using my spindle to spin some gray baby alpaca for a Nerd Wars challenge. As a spinning break, I'm working on a garland for an advent ornament thingy. Frankie Brown is a designer I found on Ravelry. She's releasing a tiny ornament pattern every day from December 1-24. The ornaments can be hung from the garland. The pattern for that is already available. Oh, and the patterns are all free.

Christmas Balls

balls, a photo by Paula knits on Flickr.

These are my first attempt at patterns from 55 Christmas Balls to Knit by Arne & Carlos. The basic pattern's pretty easy. I haven't gotten the stuffing quite right yet, but hope to get there next time. Arne & Carlos recommend using wool roving for stuffing.

They are fairly quick to knit. This makes them fun for colorwork practice. You can try out Scandinavian designs without committing to a pair of mittens, let alone a sweater. They have a lot of potential beyond the book's nice patterns. I'm thinking of using some of the stranger textured yarns in my stash to see how they come out. You can make your own designs.

I got the book and a related kit from Paradise Fibers.

Drops Christmas Advent Calendar 2011

I noticed that a bunch of people were checking out an old post for the Garn Studios/Drops Christmas calendar. They're doing it again this year and here's the link for the American English version. There's a British English version as well as a number of other languages. I am really impressed by any site that offers their information in lots of languages. Garn Studios is in Norway.

The calendar gives a free pattern every day in December leading up to Christmas. There are lots of other things on their site including patterns and yarn. I'm going to head back and check out their Christmas Studio patterns to see if there are any I need to make.

By the way, there are both knit and crochet patterns in the collections.

Yay!

I figured out how to make the editor save my changes after months of not being able to do it.

Now the big challenge is to find out why the Ravelry project slideshow doesn't work.

FO Friday 11/11

wtdia, a photo by Paula knits on Flickr.

I've got more stuff done than this but no pictures of it. This is the latest from the Wee Tiny sock club. It's a Day of the Dead sock. That's a skeleton head with marigolds in the eye sockets. It's kind of hard to tell.

I'm really tired of the lace scarf I started for my Nerd Wars dissertation. I was telling someone on my team that we were in the same boat. She wanted to work on her challenge (monthly) projects more than working on her dissertation. Someone implied that we were letting the team down by not working on the dissertations. That made me decide to not work on it at ALL unless I felt like it. Which I don't right now. This is a game, not negotiations for world peace.

I get emails from lots of fiber places and am usually able to delete them without indulging myself. There were two recent exceptions. Amy Gaines released a pattern of crocheted Christmas ornaments. There are reindeer and mushrooms and other things you'd find in the forest. I went into the new Michaels that opened near me and bought a bag full of Red Heart. I've been working on these instead of Nerd Wars stuff.

The other indulgence was from Paradise Fibers. They featured a pattern for felted bunny slippers that I had to have. One of my many odd obsessions is with bunny slippers. This may finally get me to tidy the house up enough to get a repair person in. My washer's been broken for ages (required for felting the slippers). I also ordered some yarn and a book for making these Dale of Norway Christmas balls. Do I need these things? Of course not. They are lots more fun than the same 24 row laceweight repeats in that darn scarf.

FO Friday 11/4/11

hearts, a photo by Paula knits on Flickr.

D'oh! I posted this on LiveJournal by mistake. Oh, well.

I worked on a lot of different things this week, but this is all that was completed. A Nerd Wars challenge was about anatomy. Since The Doctor has two hearts, my choice was obvious. The picture shows the back and front of the pattern.