All Done

This completes my annual NaBloPoMo daily posting for a month. Sometimes the goal is to be creative. The last few months have not been good, so setting out to do something every day and actually doing it is a success.

It has been a day for finishing things. I saw the last episode of the original Doctor Who last night. I am (almost) finished with my sock monkey made from some of the leftover yarn from my mini Doctor Who scarf. I think I'm finally through with doing anything more with that yarn for a while.

Yarn from Amazon

Did you know that there are a lot of different kinds of yarn that you can buy via amazon.com? I was ordering a DVD from them yesterday. I always want to get free shipping, so I needed to put a little something more in my cart. I'd seen a few kinds of yarn there previously, so I did a search for yarn. Big mistake. I nearly got some really groovy Claudia Handpaints sock yarn when sanity returned. I don't need more sock yarn!

The Santa Cat will be bringing my felines a new scratching box. They sell pet supplies, too.

Organizing patterns

I have got to come up with a way of organizing my knit and crochet patterns. I've got patterns in magazines and books. Those are organized automatically by being entered in my Ravelry library. The problem's with the pdf/computer patterns and the miscellaneous paper patterns. I bought a duplicate pattern yesterday, which annoys me no end. Some of the pdfs are stored in my Ravelry library. Some are stored on my computer in the directory where they are meant to go. Some are printed out. Some are in all three places. Some are in none of these places.

Sounds like time to build a simple little database. Now if I could only remember to check it before I buy something, that would help.

Bears are ready to go

haitibears
Originally uploaded by Paula knits

Yay! The bears are ready to travel. they are going to Canada and from there they'll go to Haiti. I hope they bring some comfort and happiness to children who've been short on both of those things.

Monkeys and Santas and Bears, oh my!

I'm at it again. Nearly everything I want to knit has no practical purpose. Okay, the teddy bears are not totally in that category. They're nearly done and will be in the mail by my goal date of December 1.

Monkeys, specifically sock monkeys, are a relatively new obsession (I did not play with them as a child). Someone in a Doctor Who crafts group on LiveJournal was showing off her monkey the other day. She was making a gift for a friend who likes both Doctor Who and sock monkeys and combined the two. I am planning on taking her idea of using up leftover scarf yarn and knitting up a monkey from it.

Mochimochi Land is giving away a tiny Santa pattern with purchases over the holidays. It was the perfect time for me to buy that dust bunny pattern that I need want. It's for a little project. As long as I was there, I picked up one of the tiny thing collections (the one with the teeny garden gnome). I hope I've got sock yarn in all the colors I need for these.

Thankful

In honor of Thanksgiving Day, here are some fibery things I'm thankful for:

• I have all the tools I need for my projects
• I have more than enough yarn and fiber, and can afford to buy more if I have to
• I have more than enough patterns and ideas for projects
• there are four Local Yarn Shops within 20 minutes of my house
• there are a zillion (approximately) places for acquiring yarn and fiber online
• Ravelry and other places for interacting with fiber fiends

Mochimochi semifinalist

As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of Mochimochi Land patterns. There's a group on Flickr where people post pictures of things they've made with the patterns. Last year, a picture I did of slugs and snails was honorably mentioned in the annual Mochimochi picture contest.

I got another honorable mention this year with my candy corn. I was surprised to also make it to the semifinals with my bowling snowmen. I'm sure it won't go any farther than this. There are some pretty, clever, and hilarious pictures taken by people with far more photographic skills than I have. There are glow-in-the-dark bedbugs hanging around a sleeping child. There's a Boo the Bat with a gorgeous background. There's a tiny frog leaping between two cell phones. Go see them, they're a lot of fun.