A magazine to track down...

I need to find this today, I hope it's still where I can get it:


... and yes, it's not been a needlework productive week. Hoping to have something more interesting for Friday!

Hooray! It's THIS time of year!!

Arrrr.

This really should have gone up on Wednesday, which was Talk Like A Pirate Day, but I was sick Tuesday (well, most of the last week), didn't finish it, and otherwise had a Day That Went Arrrrrr.

It's my little Book of Heroes Pirate, and he's becoming well-armed:

Right Arm Started

Right Arm Done

Left Arm Started

I'm glad I kept the eyes from... DrusillaWormwood's owls, I think?... they were useful. Now I just have to make the vest, head scarf, and swords... and decide how the beard is going to work.

But it's slowly turning into a pirate!

More Ways to Get In Trouble

I don't remember exactly what I was looking for on iTunes - basic sewing books, I think - when I discovered that there is a Keepsake Quilting App. In other words, THERE IS A TINY CATALOG FOR MY PHONE!! It's pretty cool.

For example, say you're on this page of the catalog in the app:


"Oh, hey, that's a pretty cool table runner. It'd be kinda cool to make that. " So, stab the table runner with your finger... and suddenly you're on the Keepsake Quilting website, right on the page to order that table runner:


That's pretty darned cool. And it's probably going to get me in trouble before too long... For example, there's this bedspread...


Yeah. This is gonna be one of the more expensive Free Apps I've stumbled across...!

First, fail at video...

So, I've decided I really, really love the Blue Sky Alpacas Metalico. Not just because it's the only Alpaca I can handle without my hands turning bright red - although that's certainly a consideration - but because it is SO SOFT. And it's just cool. Here's a video of the Untangling of the Skein - I'm sure this is a perfectly ordinary normal way to arrange yarn, but it's the first time I've paid attention when I've come across it, and I was delighted. Sadly, it's very dependent on which end you pull first - so here's a video of the exact WRONG way to smoothly unbraid the skein:


The cameraman is laughing so hard that he can't hold the camera steady. Oh well.
Yeah, well. If it had worked, it would have been cool.

Anyway, once I thought a bit (and pored through several Ravelry pattern searches), I realized I wanted to make a Moebius-something. The Lovely L taught me a Moebius cast-on back in the dark ages (aka the 1990s), but as I've crashed several computers and lost any ability to recover things from 5" floppy disks, I had to re-learn with my 2012 brain. Luckily, the internet coughed up CAT BORDHI - Intro to Moebius Knitting, which was all I needed to get going. Originally, I was going to knit up her free Cashmere Moebius Cowl, too, and that's the number of stitches I cast on. Went happily along for quite some time (about five rows - which on a moebius is a LOT of stitches), and then decided to put in stitch markers every pattern repeat (which is 16 stitches for this pattern).

Then a fellow Black Adder put some of her patterns on sale, and while buying several of them, I discovered her Jolly Roger Shawl. The skull motif was just the sort of thing I was looking for. And by some miracle, my initial cast-on of 288 stitches (done at random, no real planning, just Seemed About Right) was ALSO divisible by 18 - the stitch repeat for the skulls. I didn't know this as I was knitting a row to move the stitch markers down - and you could've knocked me over with a feather when I got to the final repeat and I had the right number of stitches. Very, very nice coincidence, that!

So, I knit a few more rows, and started the pattern. Here it is on Monday morning, just about to start the third lace row - the one with the 1-to-5 increases:


And here it is today:


Okay, so there's not THAT much progress. But it's still very, very soft!!! Plus I figured out there were 550 stitches a row - so cut me slack. That's a lot of lace stitches!!