randomly yours

This is Not About Stringtopia…yet

I keep trying to write about my Stringtopia adventure in Ohio, but every time I do, I just get sucked up into a whirlwind of Too Much To Put into Words Right Now. It was a grand experience, but trying to blog about it has kept me from just blogging in general, so I’m putting Stringtopia aside for now, to let it bubble in the back of my head.

Onwards.

It is, in fact Spring now.

I have proof.

I also have purple fingernails and toenails.

I went for a manicure and a pedicure, just because.

I have new Spring shoes.

I also have a wild batt carded by a young pirate whose name is, I believe, Ben.

Dread Pirate Ben, I’ll have you know that this batt was so much fun to spin that I spun it all up in two days.

There’s the yarn. I’m calling it Pirate Yarn in yer honour, Sir Dread Pirate Ben.

That was some of the best fun I’ve had in a while, spinning that batt. Thankee, sir.

More Mischief

I’ve been pretty busy after coming home from Ohio. I made batts for a friend.

She’s a wildlife biologist who likes dragonflies, so for the first time in my batt-making, I had a specific colour and effect in mind when I started carding. They are not quite as sparkly as I would like, but they are very pretty in person.

I also finished my woven tote bag.

I really like the rockin’ apple green lining, made from an old shirt.

Nicholas and I also finished a HUGE upgrade on the WiseSweater Widget which is part of our WiseSweater Project.

The Widget now generates custom patterns for the Fronts of the sweater. All that’s left now is the sleeves!

The WiseSweater Project is turning out to be so much more work and struggle than we ever imagined. The programming alone is making poor Nicholas whimper a bit; the creative thinking we both have to do to translate traditional pattern-generation methods from by-hand to by-computer is both frustrating and exhiliarating. There’s so much tweaking that one does when one is designing a sweater by hand to get each size to work properly; trying to coax a computer to take whatever combination of measurements a human being can throw at it and use them to generate a custom sweater pattern is waaaayyyy harder than it sounds.

But we’re almost done with the beta. Wooot!

Writing

The one thing I haven’t been doing is blogging. I feel as though Stephen King’s “boys in the basement”–or more accurately, my version of that, the girls in the basement!–have been moving furniture around and making changes, but none of it is surface enough to write about. It’s almost as though I’ve been thinking too hard to write, if that makes any sense at all.

But not-writing was really starting to bug me, so I thought I’d sneak in some blogging with a few random bits, just to see if I could do it before the girls in the basement noticed and kicked up a fuss.

Maybe I’m just waiting for the buds to open.

Chispas

I had a list of neato things to share with you and then my computer ate the list. Boooooo! So here’s a couple I managed to round up for you today.

Cutest Owl Babies Pattern Ever. I mean. Aren’t they?

What would you look like in a sari and a tiara? Would you look as regal as Lisa does?

This is KnitWit, aka Tiara-Rockin’ Mandie.

She dyes gorgeous yarns, many of them in Doctor Who colourways.

The tiaras above are handmade by me, and by popular request, I’ll be making a few more and putting them up in my as-yet nonexistent Etsy shop. Who knew so many people would want to wear sparklies on their heads?

And that’s what’s what this rainy Saturday. Hug your loved ones, do something you enjoy today, kiss a kitty head.

In other words: Live it up, fuzzballs.