Happy Monday!

I know, I know. I've been a bad blogger. So to make up for my lack of recent substance, here are some fun things to get your week started right.


Cupcake Jokes
Need I say more?

Blog Gender Predictor

You can find it here: http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

I ran some of my posts through it and these are the results:

WTF is a Mocha Latte? = Male

Goodbye Hedera = Male

Book Review: Sexy Little Knits = Male

Experiments With Socks = Female (whew! finally)

Alright, so it's apparently not the most accurate thing ever, but it's fun to play with.

There's more to share but some important work just landed back on my desk so I've got to scram. More to come later....

Look what I made!

www.flickr.com

These are yummy, delicious, vanilla chai tea latte cupcakes. I can't post the recipe yet as I'm entering it in a contest and it can't be previously published (and some places count blogs as published). They are topped with creamcheese frosting and a dash of cinnamon. I'd like to try a lighter, fluffier topping more similar to the foam you get on a real latte....so stay tuned.

Experiments with socks

I'm blaming Shadkitty. From a very long way away, this woman has managed to infect me with her sockophilia. So instead of casting on for my second Hedera like a good knitter, I decided I had to try the Child's First Sock in Shell Pattern by Nancy Bush. I have 1 skein of self-striping sock yarn and since it won' t be enough to make 2 Carissa-sized socks, I thought maybe I'd make socks for my littlest sister who turns 10 in July.

So after playing around with gauge swatches for an hour so I could make them fit her wee little 9 year old feet, I then spent about an hour and a half just doing the ribing on the size 0 needles. But then I started the pattern. The pattern was fun and easy but you couldn't really see it through all the stripes:

I think maybe I'll frog it, get another skein and just make jaywalker socks or hiking socks for me to wear on our impending cross country move/camping trip. I guess I will just chalk this up to a "learning exercise." *sigh* Oh well. At least I'll get cool hiking socks out of the deal.

But let's talk about something happy. Did you notice the cool background upon which I shot the above picture? If not, here's a close-up:

It's a bandana with little punk rock cupcakes. How friggin' cool is that? I got it in the mail on Thursday from the very sweet and oh-so-thoughtful Shadkitty. Thank you Shadkitty!!! I totally love it. :-)

Finished Object Alert!

Rember this sad little sock?


With its sad little one-sided yarn overs? Well after a partial frog and a total yarn over makeover, my sad little sock has grown up and turned into this:

Ooh la la. I am very happy with how this sock turned out. My only previous sock attempt was very sad. I was a little nervous about whether or not this time things would turn out well (and therefore whether or not I would just have to call this one a "learning exercise" and never knit its mate) mostly because I have never knit lace before and also because I didn't use traditional sock yarn.

These are my sock's stats:
Needle size: 2
Gauge: 15 sts / 2 inches (little different than called for in the pattern)
Yarn: Moda Dea Baby Talk a 3 weight 55% nylon, 45% acrylic blend
Color: Lilac

Why did I pick such odd yarn? Well, on an impromptu trip to the craft store to kill time, I decided I wanted to knit socks. Being an imprompu trip, I had mot previously researched things like what weight or materials make good sock yarn, so I thought I'd just look around to see what the store had.

They had a section with some self-striping yarn that said you could use it to make socks. The yarn wasn't very pretty but it was 3 weight and 100% acrylic so I figured I needed 3 weight yarn and it was okay if it was acrylic. So I looked around at the baby yarns because they were the lightest weight yarns in the store. I thought this color was pretty and the yarn is SO soft and it wasn't 100% acrylic...so I bought 1 skein.

About half way into knitting the sock (the second time) I did some reasearch and realized I made a rather stupid sock yarn selection and was prepared for it to be awful....but now that the first one is done, I LOVE it. It fits nicely without falling down and they are so so so soft. So laugh at me and my rediculous yarn selection if you will, but I've got me one (soon to be two) of these:

And some of this...

Happy Easter!!

Does the hat look familiar? It's my cute little nephew wearing his Christmas sweater and bunny hat from Auntie Carissa. Awww. So sweet.

Happy (belated) Easter, Everybody!

Goodbye Hedera

At first this was going to be a post about the wonderful Hedera sock. Shadkitty is a sockophile and she inspired me to try socks again (my first pair have some issues. They make good hiking socks but aren’t very pretty). So after scouring the internet trying to find a beginner-friendly pattern, I happened upon Hedera on Knitty. It’s a Cookie A sock, so it’s beautiful but it didn’t have a confusing lace chart I was going to have to figure out how to read.


So I swatched up and jumped in. After finishing the ribbing (which I hated….mostly because I had decided to try and knit elastic into the cuff which made it both boring and time intensive…yeah, that was dumb) and got to the fun part, it became rather addicting. The pattern was easy and it looked really neat. I’d work on my sock before bed, dream about my sock, and couldn’t wait for lunch time at work so I could work on it some more. But after 2 repeats of the lace pattern, I began to notice a problem….the holes on one side of (what was supposed to be) the symmetrical eyelet were nicely defined and the holes on the other side were very, very tiny. I figured maybe it just needed to be blocked? Hmm. So I kept going.

After 5 repeats of the lace pattern, something looked off. The lace was really pretty but it didn’t look like the picture. (see figures A and B)

So after some research I realized I was making my yarnovers the wrong way….which apparently didn’t matter for half of the holes but did for the others. !#$?!%&!


I didn’t know what to do. If I start doing it properly now, the sock will look funny. I suppose I could always finish this sock and then do the second one wrong on purpose so they match? In the end, I came to the sad realization that I was going to have to frog. So today during lunch I said goodbye to my good friend Hedera and began anew on Hedera II.


This is Gertrude helping me with Hedera II:

Hopefully Gertrude will be better at this knitting thing than me.

Thanks PRGE pal!!!

My PRGE pal is the best. Seriously. She makes me feel very spoiled. Not only did I get the jellybean pooping Easter Bunny (see below w/Gertrude), but I got fun yarn, a punk patch, a yummy smelling candle, and the BEST lip cream ever (seriously. I've only had it for 2 days now and I have no idea how I lived without it before).

Thanks punk pal!!!! You are the best. :-D

Gertrude and the Easter Bunny

This is just a sneak peak at all of the wonderful surprises my PRGE pal sent me.


I brought Bunny Rabbit to work today to be Gertrude's new pet and did a demo for the editorial department. There was lots of laughter and slightly disturbed looks as I twisted off his head to fill his body with jellybeans and wound him up so he could walk about pooping brightly colored candies. It was great! My boss was a little weirded out but it was SO funny. Thanks PRGE pal!


(more to come on my PRGE pal presents after I return home and have the use of a proper camera)

Some secret knitting revealed…

Bunny Hat modeled by Ja-Zeppe the Frog

This is one of my secret knitting projects. I finished last week but couldn’t show anyone because I didn’t want my sister (my nephew’s mom) to see it before it arrived at their house. It’s the Bunny Hat from Stich ‘N Bitch Nation in an uber soft acrylic yarn, knit on size 7 dpns with embroidery (I also embroidered my nephew Elijah’s name on the back of the hat above the ear flaps). Cambria (that’s his mom again) tells me that she was going to bring it with them for his Easter pictures last weekend so I may have professional bunny hat pictures soon (which is good because the frog looks kind of funny wearing the hat).