Morgana and Morgause

Last night's costumes were certainly a success: 

Gosh... what awesome costumes. From the top left, Morgana, Morgana, Morgause, Morgause. The hours of hard work we had to go to were well rewarded. 

The halloween party was phenomenal. All of the costumes rocked- from Crazy Cat Lady to Black Widow, but I only got a couple of pictures. Well, I didn't get the pictures. Someone else did, though.

Look! It's a Druid boy! 

Morgana with the giant Domino that's my sister Rebbeca...

My sister in law dressed up as her husband. She looked just like him- freakishly so. 

What fun we had, all topped off with an episode of Merlin with my friends Rose (Morgause) and Atheena while the big people watched a horror movie. 

Hallowe'en

You may have noticed my slightly different header... hopefully it isn't too distracting in its spectacular Halloween-ness.

Though Halloween isn't actually until Wednesday (which is of course the scariest day of the week, made more so this year by it being the celebration of All Hallow's Eve), we are having our Halloween party tonight.

Our Halloween parties started a few years ago. My brother Nate felt sorry for our neighbors, who couldn't go trick-or-treating, so he started up a big fire in the back yard, carved five jack-o-lanterns in about twenty minutes, and got out an array of food including marshmallows and apple cider. We sat around the fire, burning our tongues on hot apple cider and catching marshmallow after marshmallow on fire.

We did that for a few years, the parties slowly getting more and more extravagant (I remember, the year before last we made cupcakes and decorated them to look like monsters, using sliced almonds for facial features... that was a lot of fun). Until last year, when it became, not so much a gathering to eat food and talk, but a party of people eating food and talking and wearing costumes. There were also a lot more people; still just the neighbors, but there were also a few guests; my sister's husband (who was just her boyfriend at that point), said sister's best friend, my oldest brother's wife and her daughter, etc. There were over a dozen things you didn't see on normal occasions: a couple hippies, a gypsy, a puppy, some Disney characters, and Darth Vader being among them.

Now I have to go and make some finishing touches to my costume (I'm one of the few people who actually knows what they're dressing up as)! Happy Halloween!

Ruffle Scarf

Ruffle Scarves seem very in right now- or maybe they aren't and there are just patterns left on Ravelry from when they were in and now they are most definitely out, to use Lemony Snicket's fashion vocabulary.

Even if they are out, I still like the way they look. However, with Christmas fast approaching (Less than two months! Good heavens) I didn't feel I had the time to knit one, not without risking an overload of guilt. But for some reason, crochet is placed in my mind as a craft used for creating circles and quick guilt-free projects. How can you feel guilty when what you're making will only take a day?

Actually my scarf took two days in all, but if I'd sat down and worked on it straight through without taking breaks, I could probably have finished it in just a few hours.

Is it not lovely? When my sister saw it, she said, "Did you make that?" and then a few hours later, she said, "You seriously made that?". These two comments lead me to believe that she was impressed. I would put a smiley face after that but sometimes I find emoticons beneath me. 

While I crocheted, I listened to a great deal of the book Coraline, by Neil Gaiman. I watched the movie Coraline a few years ago and was terrified by it, really really terrified, but despite this I picked the audiobook up from the library, because Neil Gaiman wrote an awesome Doctor Who episode and so I thought, 'surely his books are pretty good.' (He also wrote Stardust, the movie adaption of which is one of my favorite movies ever.) The book is read by the author, which is something one should always be wary of, but Gaiman does a surprisingly good job. Maybe it is the writing style, but something about the way he reads make the book seem very calming. I'll be doing a book review soon. 

There, this picture better shows off the twirly ruffles. 

Almost as soon as I finished this scarf and wore it for a few hours, I cast on for a new cowl. Which is really something I shouldn't do, but I struck a deal with myself: throughout November, I can only, only, only knit Christmas presents. (although I do have a sister whose birthday is in November and she has requested a hat, but that will be an exception.) This will ensure that November will be a terribly stressful month with no rewards (except for a novel and endless bragging rights, of course). Why do I do this to myself? 

Cabled Hat

Until last night, I had never knit a hat before. Or at least, I'd never finished a hat before. All that changed yesterday at about ten o'clock PM.

On Ravelry, I found a pattern for a very simple cabled hat that used bulky weight yarn and big needles. You can get the pattern for free here.

The pattern says to use size 13 needles but I didn't have those, so I just used size 15 and made the smallest size. However, last night at a quarter to midnight when I tried the hat on (I was on the last couple of rounds by then) I found that it was far too short. 

So, this morning I ripped all the decreases out and did another repeat of the pattern, and then finished it up. It's still a little bit short, but only by a few millimeters, and it's very comfortable. 

As I knit it, I wasn't actually thinking about it being my first hat and it wasn't intimidating at all, which was good. I just did what the pattern said and tried to avoid making any alterations to the pattern. I succeeded pretty well I think, and didn't make any mistakes but at the end I had 8 stitches instead of only 6. I can't see anything the would suggest I messed up. 

As this hat only took a total of 3 hours or so, I will definitely be looking at more bulky weight hat patterns. Maybe for the next one I'll even get the gauge right!

Cleanliness... At Last

For the last few weeks, my lair has been a complete mess. It's been so filled with knitting projects and tangled yarn that I could barely get to it. However, i have spent the last two hours cleaning it.

My lair is the space under my bunk bed. It has a desk, a bookshelf, and a massive throw pillow, and the ceiling is so low you pretty much have to be sitting down in order to not hit your head.

But it is the one part of my sister's and my room that is completely mine, and it is my job to keep it clean. I'm very bad at that part. But now, it's clean and hopefully will stay that way until it gets cold and i can actually hang out in there (it's way too stuffy in that cramped space to do so much as a lesson on geometry).

I didn't take any 'before' pictures, but I got plenty of 'after' pictures:

Here's my lair in its entirety. Isn't it amazing? So very cozy. 

My roll top desk, that used to be my sister's. It has a bunch of Shiner bottle caps super glued onto the side, but I don't mind. See all the little bunnies I made?

I made this Merlin paper airplane over a month ago, and it was just sitting on my desk waiting to be tacked to the wall. Its mission in life is now complete.

My reading nook, complete with Doctor Who and Harry Potter posters. 

This is my 'Nice Yarn' yarn drawer. It has all of the yarn that's not Red Heart or I Love This Yarn!, and all of my WIP's (works in progress, for non knitting readers). Don't look too closely at the picture; there are Christmas spoilers contained within it! 

Thicker than Thin

I am very, very, very good at spinning fingering-weight yarn. I thought that I was incapable of spinning anything else. Until a few weeks ago.

You may or may not remember my post Plant to Yarn, which described my previous attempt to spin cotton. This yarn was weak, thin, uneven, and had a tendency to snap if you tried to wind it into a ball.

I pretty much gave up spinning cotton after that. I was fed up with the stuff. However, the other week I had a new idea about it.

What if I spun thick cotton? Instead of drafting it out, what if I just split the roving and spun that?

It worked beautifully. A morning full of spinning cotton with ease.

Having a drop spindle this full of yarn would mean a few hundred yards if I were spinning fingering weight yarn, but with bulky it was equal to 31 yards I believe. 

As you can see there are a few places where it got a little bit thin; don't know how that happened. But for the most part, it was glorious bulky and oh so soft. However, with only 30 yards, I didn't know exactly what to do with it. 

Last night, I picked up a crochet hook and just started crocheting it. I was hoping for maybe enough to make a small cowl or something, but not quite. 

It's double crochet, a little more than a foot long, and five or six inches wide. I have no idea what to do with it. It is incredibly soft, so I want to do something with it, but don't know what. Ah well. If you have any suggestions, feel free to comment below. 

Washcloth of Death

This morning I got a feeling of not being able to finish any knitting projects ever. So I asked on Ravelry what people's favorite patterns to knit in a couple of hours were. I got tons of responses almost instantly, all of them tempting. But one of them was better than all the others, no question.

A quick and very easy Dalek washcloth. it took me about 3 hours, and it had enough complicatedness to keep it interesting for all three of those hours (except for the five rows of seed stitch at the beginning and end. That part was a little boring). 

Also, I learned a new technique- bobbles. Bobbles are absolutely necessary if you want to make a Dalek. I used them in the crocheted Dalek, but those were crocheted and I learned them ages ago. Knit bobbles, though, those were new to me. Well, not anymore! 

There were so many suggestions, I don't think I'll be doing any Christmas knitting until Monday- but who doesn't like to take the weekend off?

I've Done It Again

If you visit my blog frequently, you'll notice that it's been changed again. Hehehe. I know, I know, I shouldn't change it this frequently. But think about it: before, it looked like every single other blog in the Universe. Now, I've gone to brand new extremes: I went beyond Blogger's own selection of backgrounds and found something new. My background is from Hot Bliggity Blog, which has tons and tons and tons of free backgrounds which are all gorgeous. And my header, well, nobody could ever have a header like mine. I designed it myself, using Pic Monkey, a free photo editor.

Hope you like the new look! Cos it's gonna be around for a while...

Flower

When I can't sleep at night, I tend to read a book, or maybe knit. Occasionally I climb down from my bunk bed, get a drink of water, and try again.

Tonight, however, I was struck with the sudden urge to do something I haven't done in years (actually, it's probably only been weeks): Draw with crayons.

Crayons; the strange, waxy little confections that taste fabulous. Just kidding. I don't think I've ever actually eaten a crayon. But I do believe that they occasionally say non toxic on the box. Why would the manufacturers bother with that if the crayons didn't taste good?

So I got out a piece of paper and our big box of broken crayons and set to work. Half an hour later:

Hmmm... is it perhaps a plant that grows only in the rain forests of Monaco? (Are there any rain forests in Monaco?) Maybe it's from Raxacoricofallapatorius and will kill us all if we so much as sniff one of the many colored petals? 

All I know is that my artistic talent certainly blooms (no pun intended) at one in the morning. 

My Statistics!

I am in the depths of despair! Well, not really. I'm actually quite happy because I just watched an awesome episode of Merlin. Although, it was a very sad episode of Merlin so I shouldn't be happy exactly... but anyway.

For some reason, don't ask me why, Blogger has decided to erase all of my stats (my amazing stats that were showing off about 600 page views in one day, thank you very much). They have done stuff like this before; on my old blog, all of my gadgets disappeared.

I just wanted to let readers know that the reason there's a little number that is not even three digits under my page views gadget is that there has been a computer malfunction and I am most certainly not to blame.

In the mean time, you can help make up for it by viewing my blog even more than you already do! (refreshing the page and clicking on as many posts as possible helps. now might be a good time to reread some old posts?) Boost my self esteem by becoming a follower, if you aren't one already. Leave as many comments as you can, and then some. Thank you for your support in these desperate times of technological failure.

And I am more than a little bit disappointed in blogger. It's been doing so well the past few months. :'( I think I'll go and break the nanowrimo rules and write a few snippets of my novel.

EDIT: They are all back now. Hmm.... strange things are afoot. Magic must be involved somehow. Summon the guards.

P.S. Have I been watching too much Merlin?
P.P.S. Please still pay special attention to the paragraph involving you following my blog and leaving comments.