The Squid Has Landed!

The honeymoon of two eloping star-crossed squid is suddenly fraught with danger when disapproving aunt T-Rex finds them and gives chase. Run, squids, run! They thrash their trusty giant land-grub into a lather....

....which is my roundabout way of announcing that I've finally finished the squid pattern! It's rather gratuitously illustrated (there's 16 snaps, showing how to do just about every step), and you can get it the pattern in the shop.

...and, of course, it's also my roundabout way of offering a first peek at another big thing I've been working on lately - my giant grub! More squid lovelies:




Hooray!

Lili Marleen!

Bad news in the inbox yesterday - Knitty decided not to publish my boa pattern, so my dream of finding true love, escaping the drudgery of my day job and ultimately moving into a solar-powered hovering castle, all by designing and knitting fabulous objet (while simultaneously vermicomposting, fixing bikes, finding found art, cross-stitching pithy quips onto old paper bags and, of course, finally learning to tat!) has been deferred until at least the spring issue. My loss is your gain, fan club! I knit brushed alpaca in August just for you!

Meet Lili Marleen!

What if a feather boa could keep you warm at night? I’ve been obsessing over fringes for a while now, and came up with this stitch while goofing around -- why fringe the edge and not the center? Frills in all directions make this scarf wickedly fun to twirl yet seriously warming when wrapped, and bulky as a lion’s mane. Perfect for the glam gal or brave boy you adore.

Yes, this is knitted! It’s basically a big tube of I-cord worked in alternating colors, with periodic rows of fringelets. The fringe is similar to a picot bind-off, only without binding the whole way off – you use a third needle to make each fringelet by casting on and binding off stitches mid-row. It’s really fun and addicting to make. About the yarn – I used a bulky brushed alpaca (I love it, it feels like butter only fuzzy!) but anything bulky with some fuzz to it will do the trick.

The pattern is available as a free download at my website - www.moltingyeti.com.

I'm also ironing three knitting scouts badges onto my sash - the I got turned down by Knitty badge (obviously) the I will crush you with knitting-math badge (for anemone) and the Knitting got me through my divorce badge (for penelope - close enough)







Update June 11 '08: Knitty published Autogyro today, so I'm ironing my new knitty-published-me badge over my old knitty-turned-me-down badge. Yay me!



p.s. if you couldn't tell, that rambly bit at the start was bravado - leave me a comment and cheer me up!

p.p.s. the model is Beyonslay!

p.p.p.s. if you like my boa, check out my squid!

Belated Hooray for Doris

I finally got around to watching the youtube of Doris Lessing learning she'd won the Nobel prize. "oh, christ!" and plonk go the shopping bags. I'm still too technically inept to embed video here, but here's the link. If she weren't already my hero for writing such awesome, honest, emotionally frank novels and managing to maintain and hone her trademark, new-to-the-world shock at the varieties of human cruelty, she would be just for her response to this befuddled BBC fellow.

Update 12-18: Enthusia has posted the text of Doris's acceptance speech - read it here.

Centered Double Decrease (sl 2, k1, p2sso) Tutorial

Here's a step-by-step of my best fave decrease. It pulls both sides towards a central raised stitch, which looks super neat-o. It's featured heavily in the squid pattern (this'll be in the stitch dictionary when I finally put it all together), but here it is for all. I knit "british," so that's the way the tuturial goes.

Step one: slip two stitches together as if to knit:
step 2: enter next stitch after the 2 you just slipped ...
... and knit it.
step 3: With the left-hand needle, pick up the two slipped stitches and pass them together over the stitch just knit.
The result: