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Tag: Sod’s law

by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting 2 Comments

So, after knitting the Cthulhu mittens for 3D printed Nerf parts, I was inspired to knit myself a “sensible” hat!

Its sensible in that this is possibly the only hat I have made for me without cat ears…and with it being fair isle, it’s so warm and cosy! A must for the recent cold snap we’ve had. The pattern is free and can be found on Ravelry, Lovecraft’s Bane – Cthulhu Hat by Lisa Wilt

Engel decided to share a photo of it with the Nerf 3D printing guy and…

Not one, but two more Cthulhu Hats were requested! One is in the colours of the Cthulhu mittens just made, and the other in khaki green and dark grey for a more muted version.

Want to see them all together?

So much Cthulhu!

On the downside, as I was casting off the rib portion on the final hat, I snapped one of my favourite dpns…such things happen, especially when working on 3mm needles, but I was not impressed!

Ah well, invoking the elder god’s do call for sacrifices to be made…

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 18 (2 this week!)
Wool bought – 13
Wool given – 4
Wool gifted – 0

Total – 575 (Woohoo! Finally getting the stash numbers back down!)

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting, Little one, Uncategorized No Comments

Let’s get the sad news over with first.

My wool count. I screwed it up royally about two and a bit months back and only just realised. I typed out this post, went to do the wool count, looked at the numbers and thought ‘wait a minute…’

Yeah…a number of weeks ago I was given 80 balls of wool from Engel’s grandma, well, I forgot to add that to the overall count. I also, on two occasions afterwards, mucked up the number of balls used and the number of balls bought.

So what does this mean? It means the rather proud achievement of getting my wool stash below 600 (566 to be exact) was wrong. Very wrong. I have 639.

I was off by 73 balls of wool. I could actually cry. Especially as I got wool this week as a little pat on my back for doing so well…

Sigh…I’ve gone back and fixed the totals in my blog, and changed some of the content to accurately reflect the numbers…

The despair part of this post aside, I did manage a fair bit of knitting this week, even taking into account a small family holiday to see the Blackpool Illuminations! My small project turned into a larger for two reasons.

Reason 1: I wound up knitting two:

(Pattern is Little Miss Widow by Anna Hrachovec from her book ‘Super-Scary Mochimochi’. There’s so many awesome patterns in that book…)

Reason 2: The hairband was liked so much I wound up knitting a further three.

The reasoning for this was Felix wanted the spider one, so I agreed, and it actually stayed in, so I knit two in her school colours – bottle green and lemon yellow. The childminder she visits liked them so much she asked if she too could have one. So another spider was knit and a more sensible one also, in red, which Felix says is her favourite colour…

So my quick little project took much longer than I planned and my big project has barely been touched.

Oh well. I have another little project (actually, three) which I will start Monday alongside my big project.

Hopefully this time I won’t be side tracked!

Wool count

Starting total – 650

Wool used – 125 (0 this post, only used parts of balls of wool)
Wool bought – 49 (7 from my Blackpool trip, at least I was good and resisted all the 10 packs of wool…)
Wool given – 135
Wool gifted – 59

Total – 646 (Getting dangerously near that starting total again)

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting 1 Comment

To show you this quick little leaving present for someone at my work:

It’s based on the hat worn by Jayne Cobb in an episode of the cult hit TV series Firefly. I’m pleased to say she was happy with it! No pattern given as it’s something I whipped up from my head…

In other not knitting news, I had my sewing lessons again and made more cushions! (Waiting for the rest of the class to get confident with the machines before I move in to more fun things) so here’s my latest upcycled T-shirt cushion!

img_20160924_180650248

It’s probably one of my favourite T-shirts that Engel doesn’t wear anymore (it’s so baggy it’s like a tent, and that was before he lost weight!) So now, it’s an awesome cushion.

And since I had time…

Well, let me explain this one, from the beginning. The beginning by the way, is some point in 2011.

This is the result of a string of disasters.

I wanted to knit my other half the big bad wolf jumper, (from the book Domiknitrix by Jennifer Stafford) so bought some wool and cast on.

Halfway through, I ran out of wool and found it to have been discontinued. I managed to find something similar so…rip rip rip went my first attempt, and I cast on again using the new wool.

Sigh.

I knit all the pieces, sewed them together and had him try it on. I’d sewed the arms too tight, so yank yank yank out came my sewing and back I sewed again.

Grr.

It fit. Perfectly. Just the right amount of drape so as not to be snug, but not so much as to be baggy.

It was worn every day for a week before I got it off him and into the washing machine…where it did something very weird. It got both wider and shorter.

Argh!

He put it on once it was a dry and it looked like a super baggy belly top…not his look at all!

OK, that did give me a chuckle.

After sitting in the naughty knitting corner for a year, I rather haphazardly turned it into a cushion. It was ok, but… I kind of sewed the cushion into the cover. So… not so easy to wash.

Grr!

So today I pulled it apart again and turned it into a much nicer, neater cushion!

And that is the rather long tale of why my big bad wolf jumper is now a cushion…

There you have it for today’s post.

Starting total – 697

Wool used – 100 ( 3 this week)
Wool bought – 13
Wool given – 7

Total – 617

 

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Or perhaps the road map playmat of Sods Law. Super cute blanket, but I had a bit of a nightmare making it!

Let me tell you my tale of woe…

I was stash busting, as you know, my current goal being to get that number at the bottom of each post down to skmething bordering reasonable, but Sods Law, I ran out of wool.

Grr.

I needed more but, Sods Law, couldn’t get the same colour…So I then had to use two shades and tweak which squares had which one.

Grr.

This happened not once, but twice. The green and yellow.

Double grr.

After what felt like knitting all the squares I needed twice over, I ran out of green again! Seriously?!

GRR!

So I changed the road layout to accommodate.

Grr.

Finally, I had knit all the squares, and started to sew it up, when Dashie, one of the cats, ran in, stole a square and hid it.

Photographic evidence of Dashie ‘helping’. Sigh.

Upon retrieving the stolen square from where the cat hid it (under the sofa) I found several more complete knitted squares.

I had 39 squares, not the 35 the pattern required.

GRR!

Turns out I did have enough of the second green not to have tweaked the pattern… But was a bit late to do anything by then!

I’m taking this as a sign from the great elder God Cthuhlu to rethink my blanket making strategies…

Wool countdown!

Starting total – 697 balls
Wool used – 17 (Despite the shenanigans, none where used up this week!)
Wool bought – 9

Total – 689

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting, Little one 2 Comments

Its been one of those weeks knit wise. Everything I’ve tried to knit just hasn’t worked.

I used needles to big on a cuddly toy and had to frog it. Reknitting on smaller ones (photo to come when finished)

And there was a tiny gauge issue.

Ok, a big one.

Alright, alright, an enormous one!

Engel wanted a light blanket (seeing as all mine tend to be garter stitch and wool held double for extra coziness, none where suitable for the task of a light summer blanket) so I had a look on Ravelry, spotted a mesh type pattern that would be suitable, grabbed my biggest circular needles (8mm) and cast on as many stitches as could fit the 20cm cable.

Previously I’d cast on 10, did a few rows and reckoned I’d need 350ish stitches…which was what I had roughly on the needles.

I knit an inch, and it was hard going the stitches were so tight together, but hey, it was looking good size wise.

I knit another inch. It was looking quite roomy.

I knit another inch. The stitches were really opening up now, and it was getting bigger.

I knit another inch, looked at the mass of wool (6 balls worth for 4 inches here) and decided to pull it off the needles and compare to an actual blanket.

Yeah…

It could go from the foot of the bed to the head, then back to the foot, then back to the head…

I did realise I only needed 106 stitches for a rather roomy double however.

So frogged the lot, took a good hour winding the wool back up and I’ve cast it back on. I’m only at two inches and barely any wool used…

In fact, because of the fiasco, not a single ball of wool this week has been finished.

Sigh.

But in other news, my cthuhlu campaign has gone absolutely crazy, and its brilliant, but I’m only just keeping the whole thing reigned together. Felix is learning and growing scarily fast, we’re getting to her stringing words together into almost sentences. Lastly, Engel had an accident with his finger and an axe. Its still attached, but he’s chipped the bone, it needs the nail removed and then the flesh drained.

And he wonders why I’m so stressed!

Enough of such things, lets distract you readers with a few knitted goodies from the archives that aren’t on the blog yet!

Today: Roly Poly Kitties!

Its a free online pattern by Karen Null, and its adorable, quick, and great for scraps!

Till next week.

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting, Little one 1 Comment

This May bank holiday I was at the Chestnut Centre – its an otter and owl sanctuary, and since the weather looked promising, I figured it would be a nice little family day out.

I think I should take a moment to explain. I hate water. Nearly drowned when I was 15, yadda, yadda, the stuff gives me the creeps. Especially big open expanses of it. When myself and Engel had Felix I wanted to make sure she didn’t have that same phobia, so to the pool she went when she was but a tiny thing.

Her response to water? Roll onto back, cuddle a rubber duckie/ball and kick with the back legs, grinning manically.

So we nick named her ‘Ottah’, as that’s what she made us think of.

Subsequently, I kept saying when she was old enough to not need a pram, we’d go to the otter sanctuary and she can see her namesakes in action.

She loved it. Otters go squeak. Owls go hoot. She can outrace her mum on the uphill and her dad on the downhill. Everything’s awesome.

Though she did have a tantrum at the gift shop on the way out – she ran right past all the mountains of cuddly toys, and dove into the books, demanding about six of them…she already owns five of the ones she wanted! So when we got home I read ‘The Otter that Loved to hold hands’ to her then promptly cast one on the needles.

One adorable Otter. Its one of the Patons wildlife collection. It goes to bed with her. And I had to do owls too.

The infamous Owl Puff pattern – its free on Ravelry. Oh, and because I’m sure someone must be wondering what knitted thing I photograph all the toys on:

The also infamous, ten stitch blanket. Also free on Ravelry.

Hope you all had a good bank holiday too!

Oh, wool update, three used this week! And of the two I bought last week, yep, Sods Law, only needed one in the end.

Wool Count down:
Starting total (28Feb15) – 747 balls
Extra stash found – 10 balls (so far)
Wool used – 36 (Yeah!)
Wool given – 3
Wool bought – 3

Total – 725

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting 2 Comments

What can I say? I couldn’t resist seeing what was happening in my area – quite a few LYS near me did special offers, demonstrations and cake!

I was good though and only bought two balls of wool. I could have walked away with…40 easy, but managed to restrain myself.

The ones I bought are to finish a project on the needles already – a cute jumper for Felix, and as Sods Law dictates, when knitting a pattern for the purpose of stash busting, one will have to buy more of that wool to finish the project, defeating the purpose of having knit it in the first place.

One would have sufficed, but when Engel stated that knowing my luck I would run out right before the second sleeve, well, he jinxed me. If I bought one I would run out. If I bought two I wouldn’t need the second.

So two it is. I’ll make a matching hat, or some arm warmers. Maybe socks too. Oh, a little bag would look adorable. And a toy.

May need another ball…

Wool update – used two, bought two, no change!

Wool Count down:
Starting total (28Feb15) – 747 balls
Extra stash found – 10 balls (so far)
Wool used – 33 (Yeah!)
Wool given – 3
Wool bought – 3

Total – 728

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Updates 1 Comment

On the way to the house this morning Engel and I realised something.

You are expecting a workman at between 10am and 2pm.  If you turn up at the house  late then you will have missed the workman.  If you turn up on time he won’t turn up until after 2pm.  Thus the workman is in a state of quantum flux both being late and early whilst on the journey to the house.  Whether he is dead or not is another matter however.

Quantum physics was never my strong point but being able to describe wave particle duality using workmen at 8 in the morning is quite impressive.  Needless to say the workman turned up at 12:15 as soon as lunch came out of the oven, that’s just sod’s law.

Update: We have a house now! And as of 12:30, internet. Its just taken me over six and a half hours to find a spare moment to tell you all this.

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