Gnomenclature

This unfinished project has caused no end of trouble. Not the project itself, which is done with needle punch embroidery (a quick way to smile according to the French on the packaging) and allows me to stab something repeatedly with a sharp object. That part is great. I haven't even stabbed my leg yet and only have to finish that one mushroom.

The problem is the design, which I stole from someplace online. The free pattern listed itself as being a gnome. This is not how my beloved sees gnomes. I can see his point, but I know of gnomes like this. Then, we fight. So it is a battle ground gnome/man's land in my house. My sweetheart is such a troublemaker. Don't get him started on Santa's not-really-elves, either.


I think it's going to be a little pillow when it is done.

I've heard of Tipsy Cakes...

... but Surly Cake is a new one on me.

It makes me very, very happy, though. Surly Cake is adapted from this pattern. I'm very tempted now to go to various restaurants with Surly Cake and snap pictures of him with their dessert plates. Because I'm just that way.

Thanks for the birthday wishes. P.S. Rach, how do you bake a card? :)

Eventually I'll just start spinning yarn out of cat hair to cut out the middle man.

Kathy called me up (left a message, actually. Curse the need to mow the lawn over the weekend!) saying, "I've deviated from the pattern. Now I have a problem, but I think you can help me."

Well, I suppose that's exactly why we started this thing; now we can help each other out, and provide visual aids! Rad.

Let me provide a little back story, though. See, Kathy is a pastry chef. That means she has to be good at following recipes, because if you fail to follow a pastry recipe, Bad Things Happen(tm). Me? I am not good at following recipes. In fact, I actively chafe against recipes, and, as a general rule, if I want to cook something I've never made before, I look through 5 to 10 different recipes for that thing, get the gist of what I am going for, and then fly blind when it comes to actual meal preparation. This tends to work much better for me than actually following a recipe would. I'm not completely sure why, but I am guessing it probably reflects some general need to blaze my own trail. (Listen, it's not my fault I'm the youngest. And no, I don't buy into any of that birth order crap, thank you very much.)

Point is, Kathy made a beet instead of a heart. And I am very proud of her! But now the beet needs greens, and she's stuck. So she called me, and since she rejected my initial idea of latch-hooking (she wanted proper leaves, apparently), I had to invent a leaf pattern while we were on the phone. So here is one side of the resulting leaf:and the other side:Here's a closer shot of the leaf to show the neat little vein detail:Now for the pattern:
Notes - when I say "m1", I am referring to the make one back increase that you can see a video for here.
cast on 3
do a 3 stitch i-cord for whatever length is appropriate for your stem
k1, m1, k1, m1, k1 (you should now have 5 stitches on your needle)
k1, m1, k1, p1, k1, m1, k1 (it's a seven stitch palindrome!)
repeat the following two (marked in square brackets) rows until the body of the leaf is as long as you want it:
[knit across the row
k3, p1, k3]
k2tog, k3, k2tog (should be 5 sts on your needle now)
k2, p1, k2
k2tog, k1, k2tog (three stitches left)
k3tog (one stitch left!)
bind off your sad one stitch. So lonely!

That's it! Pretty easy, right?

Kathy also has been begging me to post an update on the status of my halter top for about a week now. So here it is:I swear he sat down and started glaring at me like that before I had even finished putting the damn thing on the bed. Apparently this particular item did not yet contain enough cat hair. For crying out loud.

I took this picture while holding him out of the frame with my left hand. No small task, that cat weighs 14 pounds, and it's all muscle! Well, and fur. And a shockingly large number of facial whiskers (seriously, check out the eyebrow whiskers in the previous picture. My cat practically has a cuttlefish growing out of his face.) Anyway:So, yes, I am, in fact, making progress. And I haven't started any other projects since I posted about my excess of projects!

Well, I haven't started any knitting projects.

...except for the leaf for Kathy. And that hardly counts, right? I SWEAR I CAN STOP ANY TIME.

As if I didn't have enough irons in the fire...

Okay, so for about 3 years now I've had this software collecting dust in my basement that will convert a digital picture to a cross stitch pattern. (It also has a sweater designer, and a personal pattern maker for children, btw). So I got the idea that I would use it to make a pattern for a latch hook rug for the kids' bathroom with Ernie from Sesame Street & his Rubber Duckie.

Like so:


Now, the trick will be in the fact that the software doesn't really do latch hook patterns, but it does let you specify the type of canvas you're working on, the number of stitches per inch/centimeter, and the dimensions of the project (in # of stitches.) So I think I can do it. I'll just have to muddle through getting the right colors of yarn. I'll also have to figure out the appropriate length for the strands of yarn & then cut it. *sigh*