…and boy are my hands tired.

No, really, folks.  My fingers are going to fall off.  I’ve given myself knitting-induced finger-gangrene.

Oh God, oh God, the eternal pain.

These socks will so be worth it.  Because they’re not only my first real socks, and also pretty plain and normal socks so I’m guaranteed to wear them, but they’re also nerdy Harry Potter-inspired socks.

Also, instead of “pretty plain and normal,” I just typed “bwrzy awnwo fet wrmzsz.”  Oh, how I love you, post-knitting carpal tunnel.

*weep*

EVERYONE!!!!! I AM POSTING A LINK TO MY FRIEND STRING BEAN’S BLOG!!!!!

She complained to me the other day that I hadn’t linked her yet. Then she admitted she hadn’t linked me yet either. So now I’m being snotty about it to prove a point.

If you look under blogroll, you’ll see a link to “String Bean” - that’s her!!! EVERYONE GO LOOK AT HER BLOG! LOOK AT IT, I TELL YOU, LOOK AT IT!

:::| end snottiness |:::

Now that everyone’s got their presents, I can show pictures of what they got. The long-awaited “My Goddamn Face” scarf got finished in the nick of time, but I wasn’t 100% happy with it. But Tommy likes it, so it doesn’t really matter what I think. :P And, Erika seemed to enjoy her Slytherin scarf, which makes me happy. I’ve been working on that thing forever. I really enjoyed the glass etching work I did, and I’m pleased with how Josh’s Jack Skellington doll came out. Click on “More” below to look at all the goodies.

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Until Christmas, I won’t be posting any pictures of finished objects, because they’re all pretty much presents. And they won’t all be knitting, but they will all be awesomely radical.

Meantime, check this out, I thought my result was depressingly accurate. Although I don’t bow to all authority figures, and I do think about things SOMETIMES…

Your Score: Romeo

41% Intellectual, 76% Impetuous, and 58% Trusting

Oh dear, you are probably quite pleased with this result and you really shouldn’t be. You are an unreflective hothead, always following your heart in mad pursuit of what you want without caring in the least that you are getting yourself into all kinds of trouble. Quick to love, quick to hate, you make all of your decisions on instinct and are quite proud of that fact. But then it comes as a surprise to you when things blow up in your face. On the off chance you’re not already aware of what life holds in store for you, read this for a quick reminder…

Your Intellectual score was low because you never use what little good sense you’ve been given. Every decision is made from and out of pure emotion and even though you know this you don’t care. In fact, you are actually quite proud of the fact that emotion and instinct are your guiding principles and openly scoff at people who use their heads: “overthinking” you call it…but notice how much more stable their lives are…

To make matters worse, you also scored high for Impetuous: so not only do you allow your emotions to guide you, you make these decisions in a moment. You rarely learn from your mistakes.

Finally, you are Trusting of others to the point of child-like naivete. You give your heart and faith to people instantly and passionately and never really think for a moment that this trust might be misplaced. Authority figures have a tremendous sway over you and you rarely question their opinions.

If you are ever going to get out of the scrapes that you keep getting into you are going to have to stop thinking that there’s something wonderfully romantic about making snap decisions based purely on instinct and emotion. It is good that you find it easy to trust people and confide in them, because you are going to need a lot of help from your friends if you are going to survive. Before deciding on a dangerous course of action, seek out solid advice from people a bit more reflective than yourself — and get that advice from more than one person so you can compare and decide amongst the best courses of action: don’t just go with the opinion of the first authority figure you ask.

Can you believe with my knitting obsession that today was the first day I looked yarn up on eBay?

I was googling the yarn I used for The Blue Mittens so I could post about it on Craftster and Ravelry, and they were selling some from the same brand on eBay. I clicked over. There goes my day.

I’m typically not interested (well…not yet…) in awesomely cool yarns made of awesomely cool stuff. I like plain ol’ worsted weight. The yarn I used for those mittens (Yarn Bee Mosaic Twist, incidentally), was on sale for 99¢ at Hobby Lobby when I went there looking for supplies for everyone’s Christmas presents. It was pretty, so I couldn’t pass it up. In fact, I went back and bought some more in a different colorway for someone else’s Christmas present. But if it had been its regular price of $6.64, I wouldn’t have given it a second glance. I am a poor college student, and I’m still getting used to how different yarns knit up, so there’s no real reason for me to go out on a limb and spend $30 on yarn for a scarf when I could make the same scarf for $5.

That being said, I do still have some cool furry yarn in bright red and ribbony-furry yarn in light blue in my stash. But I bought that a long time ago, that doesn’t count.

Just one little experiment at a time, that’s all. Anyway, when I have a good paying job and I can afford to buy expensive yarn, I’ll go to my local yarn shop and support the little people. But until then, much to my chagrin, Hobby Lobby gets my money. I die a little inside every time I walk in there. Especially when I need 5 size 0 double-pointed needles, and all they have is one package of 4. Bastards.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

I altered the “Funky Fur Mittens” pattern from “The Knitter’s Bible: Knitted Accessories,” by adding ribbing at the bottom, instead of a rope tie (the reason they had no ribbing in the pattern is because novelty yarn often has no elasticity, or loses it the first time you wear it). I also sort of had to jank up a few of the stitches to continue from the thumb to the rest of the mitten, because it was leaving big holes. And by “jank up” I mean randomly pick up stitches and pull them through the stitches already on the needles, almost like I was picking up a vertical dropped stitch. For non-knitters, obviously, that doesn’t make sense.

Below is the first mitten I made, too small, and with 1×1 rib on the cuff instead of 2×2. You can’t really tell in the pictures, but it’s definitely too tiny. It was uncomfortable. Failure.

Man, I’m not good at blogging about knitting.

Yesterday (Saturday) was the most productive day I’ve had in a long time. I got up at 5:00, coached a speech tournament until 2-ish, then I went shopping for groceries and various other sundries, came home, worked on a knitting project that will be a gift for someone, and finished another crafty-type item that’ll be a gift for some other people. I baked brownies (unsuccessfully…they didn’t cut so well…but they’re still brownie-tasting!). I also watched most of “White Christmas,” all of “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t,” all of “A Christmas Story,” and most of “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” (the animated one).

I’m going to attempt to update more on my blog (hahaha, yes, I know, that’s a good one). Seriously, though, I think what keeps me from blogging more often is that I think, “Pah, nobody will care about that, nobody will care that I did this,” or whatever. So hopefully, I can write more often and then I’ll start remembering how awesome my life is. I know this isn’t making a lot of sense…I’ve been up for 22.5 hours. Either way, hopefully, I’ll post more often. And after Christmas, I’ll be able to post pictures of what I’ve knit, and be able to tell you what I knit for whom…but until then, you’ll just have to wait, spending your waking hours wondering if it’s you getting the crafty-type gift…

What an unfortunate book title.

I walked by this book in Hobby Lobby today, did a double take, and walked backwards back to look at it. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, she is still stripping after 25 years, and is proudly displaying this fact in Hobby Lobby.