Sheep friend

A friend of mine from work is moving away to start a new job. Yesterday was her last day at the office, so as a farewell gift and travel companion, I made her a teeny sheep friend using this pattern by Katie Christy. Tiny sheep friend sits comfortably in the palm of your hand, so s/he is a perfect thing to give to someone who has already packed up everything they own and is worried about how it's all going to fit in the U-Haul.

Teeny, tiny, delicious

Overnight it snowed, then it immediately turned to freezing rain, so we woke up to a gross frozen cold world. Since it's also Saturday, clearly the only thing to do was stay in and play Skyrim and make teeny tiny cinnamon rolls.

Surprise! Granny square

Somehow I combined my least favorite skeins from my yarn stash with a pattern I thought I'd never want to do, and ended up with a project I love.

It's more "country" both in the colors and the style than something I'd normally pick out, but I'm surprisingly happy with it. I really do like this color combination, and I love how fast the granny square pattern is going. I have to say that I always avoided granny squares - the name is bad enough, and it conjures up all those dated afghans that someone's elderly relative made, or worse, granny square sweaters.

But when I was planning what to do with this yarn, I had to admit that if I wanted 1) a one-piece blanket that I didn't have to seam, 2) something that was worked from the center so I could stop whenever the yarn ran out, and 3) something quick and easy, the only option was a granny square. And I'm happy - it's meeting its goal of using up my old yarn so nicely. Seriously, every time I work on this I'm amazed that something so acceptable is coming out of the yarn I thought I'd have stuffed in the bottom of my yarn box for twenty years. And so quickly! It's already 32" on a side, and while the white yarn is almost exhausted, I still have enough of the other colors to add at least another 8". Nice little afghan.

It's almost too bad that this is so fun to work on, especially combined with episodes of How I Met Your Mother, because I have two other time-sensitive crochet projects I need to finish soon...

Donut Day

I've had this blog for almost a year, but I think I've neglected to explain the name I gave it. It's the number of donuts I eat in a year (give or take a few, realistically). My work schedule is such that I have every other Friday off, so to get me through the week and make the work-Fridays bearable, I get myself a donut. 26 work-Fridays per year = 26 donuts. It's silly, but knowing there's a delicious juicy donut waiting for me at the end of a five-day week really does make me happy, and the gleeful anticipation usually starts somewhere around the Sunday evening prior. Donut Day is a really big deal for me.

Today was the first Donut Day of 2012, and here is the first donut:

I'd give it about a 6.5, maybe a 7 on my 1 to 10 donut quality scale. Not bad.

Maybe a little too hungry

The Wool Eater blanket is, as many people on Ravelry pointed out, aptly named. I was prepared to be surprised by how much yarn it consumes and, well, I was. I got this far:

(i.e., only about halfway through the second color) and realized I had used up what felt like close to 1/4 of the white yarn. So... I'm thinking maybe a more appropriate stash-buster for my admittedly rather meager stash is something like a smallish granny stripe afghan. In fact, although my collection of skeins that I never touch seemed offensively huge a few days ago, I really don't have that much to get rid of. Except that purple.

But speaking of that, it really isn't a bad yarn. It's acrylic, but not nasty scratchy acrylic. I still want to use it up, but maybe I should be using it more for things I might actually want to wear than an afghan (or a small lap blanket, realistically) that I'll probably donate when I'm done with it.

Frogging day

I haven't started this year in the best of moods. Everything feels like it will take too much effort and energy, so instead of starting on any of the 500 projects I have lined up or doing the more serious, more boring real-life stuff that needs my attention, I've been blobbing around the apartment and staring at various screens.

Today was my day off, and I managed to hit on the only project I wanted to do and fit my mood: frogging stupid old crochet projects. First up:

My "Float Away" scarf. I didn't curve it like that for effect, that's actually how it wants to curve. Not only did I obviously crochet the starting chain way too tight, but I also didn't understand the pattern (it's supposed to be ribbed), it reminds me of a summer vacation with an ex that I'd rather forget, and the yarn is so scratchy that as soon as I put it on I knew I would never wear it. The only question is why I didn't frog this as soon as I finished it three and a half years ago.

Now the deed is done, and I am extremely pleased with myself. As I expected, the yarn got very fuzzy, but I'm hoping I can maybe felt with it. It's still better as fuzzy recycled yarn balls than as that scarf.

Next up:

My "Josephine" hip scarf. I thought it would be fun to make myself a hip scarf to wear for bellydance practice, but I realized pretty quickly that having a wad of thick acrylic around my waist for an hour of dance practice would be the opposite of fun. Shortly after that, I realized that the pattern, as it was written, was turning out too big for me and rumpled-looking. I made a few attempts to fix things but since I didn't actually want this anymore, it also went in the frogging pile.

Pride & Prejudice and frogging: the perfect cure for any bad mood.

The unfortunate thing about that scarf is that I somehow believed I would need four skeins of yarn for it. It was becoming clear even when I still thought I would finish it that it would take less than two, and now I have all that yarn back again. I really need some project to eat it up. Currently I'm thinking about doing the Wool-Eater Blanket, using these other yarns that I also would love to get rid of:

But looking at those colors without the purple, I almost feel like I like them better on their own, which is arrghh because the whole point is to kill the purple yarn:

Or are they all heinous anyway? Dunno...

New year, new calendar

Every January when I go back to work after the holidays, one of my first projects is finding a little printable calendar for the new year. I don't have enough space on my desk for a larger calendar, so I like to use one of the free mini ones that pop up on blogs around this time. This year I'll be using this beautiful calendar from Skip To My Lou, which you can download for free after liking them on Facebook. I love the color combinations and I think I'll hang on to the pages after the months are over for future inspiration.

Last year my calendar was from Creature Comforts and had Ez's pretty watercolors. She's doing another calendar this year, on a month-by-month basis for newsletter subscribers.