Last year I realized that it was scandalous that I’d been friends with Eric as long as I had and had never knitted him anything before. It was a situation that had to be rectified. Off to the yarn store I went for the makings of a superhero. I bought a skein each of white and black Classic Elite premier, which is cotton and tencel, and I got red and blue Berroco Comfort, a synthetic (all vegan fibers! w00t!). I had all the supplies…and no pattern. I’d e-mailed Hannah to ask if she had a pattern for the Hellboy figure, but apparently Marvel Comics, eager to protect their copyright, had already contacted her asking that she not share it.

Hannah has done tons of knitted action figures — Hellboy, the Joker, Han Solo, Freddie Krueger, Dawn of the Dead zombies — and I studied her photos for clues. I ended up knitting the Nightcrawler’s body, arms, and legs all in one piece from the top down. After about an hour spent playing with different wires at the hardware store, I made a little poseable wire skeleton. I dropped the skeleton down into the body, added stuffing, and topped it off with a blue head. The black hair is duplicate stitched on, and I added yellow bead eyes, chubby toes, and a wired blue tail. The outfit came last — a red Borat leotard always makes a superhero feel powerful, especially when knitted in garter stitch with wide, pointy shoulders.

It took quite a bit of experimenting — I have a little pile of body parts that didn’t make the cut because their proportions were off. The first torso had a duck butt, so that was quickly unknitted. The first toes were too long and skinny, and the first head was too small. A pair of legs was discarded, along with a leotard that was a couple of sizes too small for the chubby little guy. For the longest time I knew that something was wrong with his head, but I couldn’t figure out what, until my brother pointed out the obvious. The little blue guy didn’t have any ears!

I finally finished everything last night, and after a morning photo shoot on top of the barbecue grill, was able to give him to Eric today at breakfast. I’m so pleased with how well he turned out, and now I’m happily starting a new project that comes with a pattern.

In March I took a road trip, visiting all of my relatives in Mississippi and Alabama, and while I was at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, Heather suggested that we visit the yarn store in Tuscaloosa. We stopped in at Serendipity Needleworks on the way home from Moundville, and it was such a pleasant surprise! There wasn’t a speck of novelty yarn or bad acrylic in the place!

Ellen Johnson, the shop owner, is friendly and gracious, and she stocks only the good stuff. She has Jitterbug, Misti Alpaca Hand Paint, Mission Falls 1824 wool, Blue Sky organic cotton, Debbie Bliss, and Lorna’s Laces. She has a great selection of needles, and bags by Jordana Paige, Della Q, and Lexie Barns. (And that’s not even getting into all of the needlepoint stuff!)

I always try to buy something from good quality shops, so I got some Blue Sky organic cotton I’ll need for my next project, the knitted chickens, and Heather bought a lovely skein of rainbow variegated yarn and some bamboo needles, so that she can learn to knit. If she takes to it, her new yarn habit will be well-served by this lovely shop.

Awesome as he is, though, I still think cakeyvoice’s Hellboy is my favorite. He’s such a charmer!

More recently, when I have free time, it’s been Little Big Planet, the best feature of which is that it stars a knitted hero, Sack Boy. The first thing that springs to mind when faced with an adorable knitted character is, of course, I want to knit one!

The first one I came across was knitted by Sylvia, the mother of one of Little Big Planet’s artists. Sadly it had no accompanying pattern.

I was THRILLED when someone sent me the link to this pattern PDF by Simply Knitting. It’s at the top of my queue, and as soon as I finish the projects on my needles, I’m going to get started on him.

The little crochet Amigurumi guys you see below Sack Boy are the knights from Castle Crashers, another game we’ve been playing a lot around here. My friend Randy found them on a Cheap Ass Gamer forum.

As I said in that last post on May 15th, I bought four skeins of white cashmere and the Estonian Garden Wrap pattern, and immediately upon returning to Texas, I cast on for a shawl for my wedding. I was knitting two strands at a time to get gauge, and I quickly realized that four skeins wouldn’t be enough. I hopped on the Internet and ordered three more. Miraculously the skeins that arrived were from the same dye lot. Score!

I knitted and knitted and knitted on that eyelet lace pattern. In white. Repeat after repeat after repeat. To be honest, even though I was knitting an heirloom piece of lace for my own wedding, using a luxury yarn, it got a little dull.

By August I’d knitted about three feet of lace. And then one day, I looked down at the shawl pooling in my lap and realized that it wasn’t a shawl. It was a blankie. A beautiful, soft, fluffy blankie, but a blankie nonetheless. I didn’t want to wear a blankie at my wedding.

This posed a big problem. The wedding was in November, and it was August. I was going to have to start over, and the wedding was three months away. I logged on to Ravelry and started searching for shawl patterns. I found Eudyptula’s Wedding Shawl, a small white lace shawl big enough to warm the shoulders but not so big that it would overwhelm a wedding dress. I sent her a direct message asking if she thought it was doable, and within 15 minutes she’d written me back.

She compared it to the shawl I had been working on, and thought that it might be too challenging. She suggested the Shetland triangle shawl, which I’d previously discounted because I hated the points on the edge. A quick Ravelry search turn up this one by Loopy, who had omitted the last two rows to remove the points. I sent Loopy a message, and she replied back that she thought it could be done by November. I had a new plan!

A lunchtime dash to the yarn store netted two skeins of Euroflax Linen and Wrap Style, the book with pattern, and I was off. By the big day the shawl was knitted, washed and dried eight times, blocked on wires, and ready for the wedding. And the Estonian Garden is carefully sealed in a ziplock bag in the closet, waiting for a bound-off edge and its destiny as a receiving blanket.

Well, last Friday Jamy and I packed our bags and hopped a plane out of Austin, headed for West Friendship, Maryland. After a very bumpy flight to Detriot and an extra hour sitting on the next plane waiting for the bad weather to clear, we finally arrived in Baltimore. We picked up our rental car (a VW Beetle, a.k.a The Girl Mobile) and headed to the Columbia Sheraton, where we were staying.

The hotel was a funny one — it looked like the original building had at some point gobbled up the buildings surrounding it, resulting in a hodgepodgey summer-camp warren of wings. All that mattered, though, was that our room was clean and the beds were comfy!

Dinner that night was at the Iron Bridge Wine Company, about 10 minutes from the hotel, where we had flights of Shiraz, two tapenades (the tomato one was awesome), Cioppino, pizza, creme brulee, and lemon tart. Back at the hotel, I didn’t even make it through the movie we rented. I crashed out immediately.

Saturday we set out early for the festival. Driving through Maryland is gorgeous. The fairgrounds are surrounded by the most charming farm houses, and that early in the morning a little fog had settled in between the hills. I almost decided to move to Maryland, but Jamy reminded me that they have the dreaded “winter” there. *Shudder.*

We got to the festival as it was opening. It was already a little crazy, and it only got more crowded as the day wore on. The number of great yarn vendors was amazing, though, and it was easy to see that the trip would be worth it. We shopped for a while before settling down for a lunch of gyros and ribbon chips, which were thin spiral-cut ribbons of potatoes fried into chips and then covered in nacho cheese, sour cream, chives, and ketchup. Yum!

Mid-afternoon I had what, after reading the Ravelry message boards, sounds like a classic first-timer experience. I realized that I hadn’t bought much, panicked a little, and bought a whole bunch of stuff all at once. Looking back, it’s all very pretty yarn, but I wasn’t very focused in my shopping and now will have to plan projects for the yarn I got, instead of buying yarn for projects I already was planning on doing. Jamy, on the other hand, was shopping off of her Ravelry queue print-out and was much smarter in her purchases.

My big score of the day, though, was a pattern and four skeins of white cashmere destined to be my wedding shawl. It was the one project that I really wanted to shop for, and I succeeded.

The other thing I really was looking forward to at the festival was the working sheepdog exhibition, which was fantastic. We got to see several border collies, ranging from 1 year to 12 years, each guide three sheep to do certain tasks. One dog would drive the sheep down the field, one would bring them back, and at the end, one of the dogs encouraged the three sheep through a funnel and over a little bridge, which is something that they really did NOT want to do.

After wearing ourselves out at the festival, we grabbed dinner at Sushi Sono, which was a quick walk from the hotel. We realized on the way back that both the hotel and the restaurant sit beside Lake Kittamaqundi, and there’s a lovely walking path along the edge of the lake.

That night Ravelry threw a big party for its users, which was fun even though Jamy and I are both totally shy when thrown into a big group like that. We had wine and knitted and made a few new friends, and Jamy left the party with an awesome door prize from Webs — a pattern and enough burgundy yarn to knit a really cute sweater.

We headed back to the festival on Sunday and found much smaller crowds and a more calm, enjoyable experience. We bought yarn at Brooks Farm and at Tess Designer Yarn, two of the must-see vendors at the festival.

We walked through the sheep barns again, stopping to take pictures and coo at the animals, and we met a charming gentleman named Jim Robison. Mr. Robison introduced us to his Jacobs Sheep lambs, one of whom was born with five horns. We got to take pictures with the special lamb, and then Mr. Robison walked us over to the neighboring barn where we met the lamb’s mother, the 2007 New Jersey State Fair Grand Champion Jacobs Ewe. Our visit with the Jacobs sheep and Mr. Robison was truly one of the highlights of our trip.

For lunch we headed to downtown Frederick, a 50-block historic district packed with shops, restaurants, and gorgeous architecture. We ate at Acacia Fusion Bistro and wandered around being tourists.

Sunday evening we drove into Baltimore where we met my aunt, uncle, and cousin at Philips Seafood, where we all dined on crab cakes in front of a gorgeous view of the harbor. I’d been waiting all weekend to have some Maryland crab cakes, and coupled with getting to see family that I love and haven’t seen in years, it was a real treat.

I had SUCH a great time on the trip, and I really hope we get to do it again sometime. (Did I hear someone say Rhinebeck?)

More photos are on Flickr.

We usually ate lunch together (she laughed watching me separate the peas out of my fried rice), and I’d hang out with her when she took a smoke break. We talked a lot about our families (she raised five kids) and my future (she was pretty insistent that I plan for kids of my own), we collected Jack balls, and we both started dyeing our hair red.

We also played a lot of pranks on our coworkers. She and I once hid a guy’s truck. We moved it to another parking lot and created a Hotmail account for it, e-mailing him and letting him know that it had run away from home. When she followed me to the Web team, we welcomed her to her new cubicle by wallpapering it in saltine crackers. She’s probably the reason that I’m still a prankster at work.

When my husband and I bought our first house, she showed up on moving day with a huge spread and fed everyone who was helping us. When I was in the hospital with a blood clot, she brought a goodie bag full of nail polish and perfume, so that, even though I wasn’t allowed to shower, I’d still be able to feel pretty. And when my husband walked out on me, she was one of the many friends who helped me survive it.

Terri was first diagnosed with breast cancer about ten years ago. She did radiation and chemo, and went into remission, where she stayed for five years. As often happens with cancer, though, it came back, this time in her bones. She fought it again and we thought she’d beaten it, but last summer it came back a third time. It was in her liver as well as her bones.

This last year she went through a lot and fought really hard, but we finally lost her last week, two days after her 54th birthday.

The charming fellow you see here is the gift I knitted for her birthday. He’s a giraffe from Mochimochi Land named Terrence. I knitted his body from Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran in Sunflower, his feet and horns from Misson Falls 1824 Wool in Raisin, and his spots in gold Tahki Torino.

Terri’s only been gone for a week, but I miss her already, and I know that I will feel her loss throughout my life, in big moments and in small moments. But I know how lucky I am to have had her as a friend.

Spherey is, of course, a Jess Hutch Unusual Toy to Knit and Enjoy. I knitted him out of the same Debbie Bliss Stella silk/cotton that I used for the robots. Except for the tendency to split, I really love that stuff. It makes the softest squishiest toys.

His eyes are my standard flat black buttons. I worked really hard on his mouth, though. I tried every different kind of yarn I had, finally settling on eight strands of DMC embroidery floss worked in a backstitch. I laid the thread across his face in the shape I wanted, marking the holes between knitting stitches that I wanted to use for the embroidery. I was really pleased with the results. Doesn’t he have a great smile?

CuttleContest

Someone had posted the photo of my cuddlefish and written a poem about it! That resulted in a lot of squealing on my part, let me tell you.

The site is called The Digital CuttleFish, and is a fantastic union of science and poetry, the likes of which you can really only find on the Internet.

The blogger had been inspired by an anatomically-correct knitting project, and a commenter directed him to the cuddlefish I knitted for Mandy last year. S/he posted the photo, wrote a poem, and started a contest for crafted cuttlefish.

Here’s the poem:

Of all the creatures in the world
Deserving to be knit (and purled)
I think it’s clear, we all would wish
A cute and cuttly cuddlefish.

A comment-writer, “Impolite”
Has, very clearly, got it right
So now, the screen of my computer
Shows a pic that can’t be cuter

It’s beautiful, this much is clear,
So huggable, so very dear,
So soft and cuddly, cute and charming
Lots of arms, and yet disarming

A knitted brain cannot compete,
Nor teratoma, bearing feet—
The cutest creature of them all,
And made of yarn—so have a ball!

But still, the cuddlefish I see
Does not have eight arms—only three
(No tentacles at all, I think,
Nor any way to shoot its ink)

And not that it should trouble you—
It’s pupils should go “W”.
Small details, sure, but that’s the fun
So here’s the deal. Another one…

S/he goes on to add a a contest. So, if you’ve been doing any cuttlefish crafting, go post it on The Digital Cuttlefish. And hey, leave me a comment, too!

I learned while knitting it how decadent garter stitch can be. I’d always considered garter stitch to be very ordinary. It’s the first stitch pattern a knitter learns. There are no yarn-overs or cables or even purling, and you certainly don’t need to be following a pattern to crank out miles of the stuff.

When I saw garter in this scarf, though, I was smitten. The yarn is Blue Sky Alpacas Melange, and when knit up in garter it’s super squishy and comforting, but classy and elegant at the same time. I really just love it. (The baubles don’t hurt, either.)

As usual when knitting a birthday gift, a small crisis arose with this scarf. Two skeins of Melange was the perfect amount of yarn for Jamy’s, but on Lee’s I came up short. Two rows short. I spliced together whatever leftover bits I had (I had overestimated the tail needed to cast on 120 stitches), but I still ran out of yarn on the bind-off. Infuriating!

I pillaged the stash looking for anything close enough to use on the bind-off. I even considered using a contrasting yarn on the bind-off, and then undoing the other edge and redoing it to match, but nothing worked. In the end, I went back to HCW and bought a whole skein to bind off about 20 stitches. They had two in the same dye lot in stock, so I went ahead and bought both. I figure it’s the universe telling me I have one more Huckleberry Ascot to knit, and I’m ok with that.