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Peanutbutter

I have very much enjoyed reading about the LED knitting needles and crochet hooks around the internet, but *most of all* I have enjoyed reading the comments about these items on Gizmodo. Hahaha! Grandma Raver!

Although as I go back to check the link, I find that Some Serious Knitters are beginning to leave Serious Comments. Oh dear. Must knitters take umbrage at this sort of thing? Much more umbrage-worthy are the lame-ass writers who keep pegging their stories on Grandma.

Lame-ass writer exhibit A
Lame-ass writer exhibit B
Lame-ass writer exhibit C

As is our wont, however, we'd like to be fair to these lame-ass writers who, after all, are writing about knitting. In the interests of science (and while busily slacking), we googled 'Not Just for Grandma', and behold: Results 1 - 10 of about 20,900,000 (0.19 second). Google it for yerself.

And D'OH!! I've just written practically a whole blog entry on Not-Just-for-Grandma myself!
Lame-ass-edness. It's not just for lame-ass writers anymore.

Oh right. Peanutbutter. Mikey would like you to look deep, deeper, deeply into his eyes and pass the cookies.

Happy cookies to you. Please brake for grannies.

Right!

How did I miss this? Follow link to read betz white's clever use of what she terms "iCord" (haha!). See Bond America's Embellish-Knit here. I'm intrigued by the idea that "iCord" is painstaking. Any MagiCord/Embellish-Knit users out there? Cranking out 18 feet of knitted cording in 10 minutes?

This seems like a good spot to proclaim my love of Make and WhipUp . (You did see the DIY needles, right? Perfectly swell!) I Heart Them. Nearly dearly.

Thursday. No knitting, but four hot sleepy dachshunds.

. . . But it Feels like 105°

Must be High Summer——I'm suddenly annoyed at the very sight of wool.

We have little knitting to report . . . none, in fact! It's the time of year, though, when my mind turns to knitting projects large and small, plain and colorful. Betwixt aversion to wool and attraction to complex wooly projects, I feel rather thwarted. And to accompany the combination of muggy temperatures and frustrated project-lust, I'm also annoyed with my job. Very long hours and very very long weeks and no weekends whatsoever...I ask you (in a strictly rhetorical manner), shouldn't I be mad as heck? But every time I start to sell some noise with complaints about work, I think about the war and how little it seems to affect us here while other places are melting down and other people are blowing up, and I suspect maybe the state of my knitting and my lack of down-time aren't quite as important as I feel. I do feel something--I've just forgotten what it is.

At most workplaces, even during dreadful deadline-intensive work, there are brief intervals of wait-time that are only long enough for launching Firefox and browsing headlines or current feels-like temperatures or, best of all, state-of-the-art KNITTING MACHINES!! I spend my free minutes at work fantasizing about this fabulous machine, which I think should be called The Hello Kitty Knitting Machine:

I love machines, but this one! So purple! So shiny! All those buttons! So streamlined! and the output, oh! the output!

It's an industrial-sized objet d'art as far as I'm concerned, and if it were mine, I'd place it in the front parlor where other folks might place a grand piano. Wouldn't I love to be able to make dozens and dozens of hats with yellow bird motifs in minutes! You betcha! But I have to get back to the stinking day-job, so I dream on.

Would you like to see lots of swell shiny knitting machines? Study Narinda International's website, where you can admire all 'The machine with ideeas that make her special.'

Be sure to look at the output of 'Other Machine', which does something called Sequence and Bidding to produce splendid plies of sequined yarn. Wowsers!

I've just remembered that what I feel is Hot (but not in the good way). In the event you share this feeling, I share a cooler image to focus on, at least temporarily:

Della Dashing Through the Snow, February 2006
Dream on, dear knitter :-)

Nanette's Socks

Nanette wrote a lovely sock pattern for her blog readers, Caledonia Socks, from her June 25, 2006 entry. I was so smitten with Nanette's color choices that I tore through the stash to find my olive and fuscia sock yarns. What a wonderful combination!

Thanks, Nanette! My feet are lots bigger and my yarn is much smaller, but still! Fabulous colors! And I needed the practice doing stranded knitting in small circumference...I still tend to let the wool pull in. I highly recommend Nanette's books for two-color stranded knitting--they are full of great small colorful projects. Find Stranded Color Knitting here, and Wild about Color Knitting here. Nanette is working on holiday colors right now...I hope there will be a book.

Since it's Friday, I have links to ponder. First, this $11,580 crochet rug.

Find it at http://www.karkula.com/ . I like it. But where to find a crochet hook that large?

Second, fabulous hand and machine knit biodegradable textiles--see them here. Love the ruffles.

Ooh La La!

Happy Friday!