Nerds and Birds

I have three whole FOs to show off! Well, one is something that I finished about a month ago but forget to take a picture of with every single round of yarn photography. But, ha. I remembered this time.

The Miniature Weasley Sweater from Charmed Knits:



As you can see, my duplicate stitch needs some work. I think it could be also due to the fact that I used a completely different weight of yarn to do the duplicate stitch. The first time I sewed this thing up I sewed it with the right side to the wrong side, so I had to rip out the shoulder stitching and do it again, so it's a little knobbly. The scale is kind of hard to see, but your average sized hair pick can wear this wee sweater comfortably.

Second nerdy knit of the day is also miniature! Yes, it's the first two of the promised legion of mini-Jayne hats:



This time I remembered to put something in for scale. The one on the right of the picture was the first one I made, and it was exactly to pattern. The second one, I did a 2x2 rib for the brim instead of garter stitch, and lengthened the earflaps by two rows. I like it better of the two. I'm just going to keep making more until I run out of gold yarn and hopefully get my orange and red down a bit, too. Have to pick up a few brooch backs and/or keychain rings to do something useful with them. Squish is the very first recipient of a mini-Jayne hat, as I popped Jayne Hat Prototype B into an envelope right after I took this picture. Enjoy, my browncoat friend.

And the nerdiest of the nerd projects (yes, they are ordered not only by size but by geek rating), is the now-completed Binary Throwpillow. Which was supposed to be a binary scarf, hush, but I listed my reasons for truncating the project in my last post.

It did, however, turn out really good:




I think it would add a touch of class and hominess to any nerd's cave. The tassels were a bitch on my fingers, though. I was using too small of a needle for the first half (I thought it was my bigger needle, but it wasn't), and that balck yarn is like knitting with barbed wire anyway. Tore the side of my index fingers to shreds, I actually shed blood over this thing. Would I knit a binary scarf in future? Probably. I would need better yarn, use bigger needles, and do thinner rows of characters - five would probably be the best width.

Haven't actually done any knitting today, though. Today I was dykey and butch and was scrubbing my dad's giant midlife crisis cedar deck with chemicals and a pressure washer to prepare for staining. I even managed to haul his giant midlife crisis barbeque out of the way and clean all the way around his giant midlife crisis hot tub. And, while I was cleaning, I found this:



There's actually two babies, you can see the second one's tail next to its brother. Dad Bird was hanging around while I was cleaning in case I got too close. That whole deck-cleaning adventure took a couple of hours and a broken floodlight, then it was a trip to Home Depot for the stain and brushes, and then more running around, and then some cleaning, and then I took out all my stash and organised it so all the stuff that I don't have a project for is on the bottom of the bag and everything else is on the top. Which, of course, gave me an excuse to stroke it all again. Mmmm. Yarn. I'm a little worried about my Sean Sheep armytage. It's all the same dyelot, but my three balls are all distinctly different. One is dominantly a much darker army green, and one is dominantly a very soft chartruese green. The third, however, is a middle-ground, so I might just start with either the dark or light one and cycle through. It won't all look even, but the joins won't be as noticeable. Of course, I could always go back to WalMart and try to exchange it . . . No. Bad Denise.

Though, I do have to go and return those needles. And get some pink cotton stuff for Super Grover's nose. Super Grover is my next project, for my mother for Mother's Day. I bought three balls of a slate blue Red Heart Fun Fur, thinking that was probably the closest blue I could get - and then I found two balls of a bright blue no-name fun fur that was absolutely perfect. At Dollarama, of all places. I forwent, though. I'm going to stick to my blue. I hope I have enough. I'm kind of winging it on this pattern, because I couldn't find a Grover pattern. I'm using a generic pixie doll pattern for the basis, and then enlarging the hands, feet, and head. I also need to add his pink nose. I'm thinking of knitting the eyes right in, as is done for the makkuro kurosuke. My sister's volunteering her sewing skills and scrap material for his cape. Suuuuper Groooooover!