Nerd Wars

You know what I like to do?  Play stupid crafting games.  My favorite right now (and possibly ever) is Nerd Wars.  This could quite possibly because I am so nerdy, I could fit right in on almost any of the bajillion zillion teams.  Anyway, the current tournament just ended, and I wanted a bonus chance to show off my awesome dissertation sweater:

As you can see I am very pleased with it, and it fits just the way I wanted it to.  The sleeves are even long enough, which is typically a big problem for me, since by the time I start making sleeves I'm just ready for the freaking thing to be done already so I overestimate blocking growth.  In any case you should consider playing Nerd Wars when the next tournament starts in a month, because you will finish all kinds of things.

Another new pattern. Yay!

Just released my newest pattern, Warm Your Sweetheart Hat and Cowl.

It's in Knit Picks' cuddly new bulky weight Billow, and I'm really pleased at how it turned out.  Both pieces feature an all over reversible XO cable pattern.  It was a lot of fun to make, I'm making another of the hats in my husband's size!  Available on Ravelry.

Getting back on the wagon, again.

The baby is very lovely, and is full of baby-ish activities, like snuggling and crying in the middle of the night.

BUT!  I am back, for reals this time.  I have in fact published a pattern, and re-released some of my old patterns for sale on Ravelry.  You might want to check it out.  Hopefully, I will be able to keep going.  Because gracious, I think I missed this just a little.  ;)

I fell off the wagon

But I have a really, really good reason for it!  That reason is that it's hard to write blog posts when the morning sickness has you half convinced you're about to die.  Why yes, morning sickness.  We're having a baby in August!  I am however feeling much better now, so with any luck at all I will be able to, you know, post on my blog occasionally.

Happy Thanksgiving

Unless you don't celebrate Thanksgiving, in which case Happy Thursday.  Now if you'll excuse me, family has descended upon my house, and for some reason we spent most of our day at Ikea.  Sleep is required.  XD

Rip it, rip it...

I have done quite a lot of frogging today.  Thank heaven it was frogging crochet, because it's so much easier to do a partial frog in crochet than in knit, and if I had had to do the part before my mistake, I would have been really skeeved off.  But anyway.  Frogging, unfortunately, is an essential part of my design process.  I'm sure not everybody does this.  But for me, usually... I make a sketch.  I make a swatch or two.  Do some math.  Then I get started with the yarn.

This part rarely goes as well as the swatches and math suggest it will.  Stitch a little.  Doesn't look the way I think it ought to.  Rip rip rip.  Now things don't quite come together the way they're supposed to.  Rip rip rip.  Successful for a bit.  Then I measure things.  Things always go south when I measure things the first time.  Rip rip.  Then with any luck I'm past the gusset/yoke/insane part because I seem to always insist on one piece design.

But you know, ripping isn't always a bad thing.  Every iteration is better.  And yarn, if nothing else, is very forgiving.

My favorite thing about crochet...

...is that you can use very fine yarn, and still have a project finished this century.  Case in point: I am currently crocheting a sweater in fingering weight.  If I tried to do that in knitting, I don't think I would ever finish.  Maybe there are people out there for whom knitting is faster.  But I don't think I've ever met one.