Posable Figure Body Bag

While repairing my older daughter's posable art figure, I came to the realization that she had no portable container for him or his magnetic stand, so I grabbed some yarn from the Yarn Booty and cranked one out:

Looks like a wine bottle

Or maybe a sleeping bag

Also usable as a beanbag chair

Pencil and grid for scale (ignore the dungeon in the background)

Mad Knittist Notes

Not too shabby for a no-pattern dice bag variant :-)

New WIP: Baby Set

We've got yet another friend with a baby due to be born any time now. I cast on this blanket Friday night, and by Saturday night, had gotten this far, which is not quite halfway:

By Sunday night I'd gotten this far, which is 6 rows from binding off:

Once I complete the bottom border, it's on to the side borders, and I have a vague notion what I want to do with the hat and booties.

Naturally, there are Mad Knittist Notes involved:

Years from now I'll probably find that page in my notebook and wonder what the heck it means.

Mad Mappist Notes and Kimono Progress

Well we played Pathfinder Saturday/Sunday and made it through the remainder of the tomb we were in. If you’re interested, you can read my post on that session in my Hubby’s blog.

In case you were wondering, yes, my mad knittist notes also appear in my gaming:

Those are the maps for the tomb and a thieves' lair we were in previously, and notes on the treasure and clues we found.

Naturally, my painted minis also appear in my gaming. This one is being used for my younger daughter’s character ("Amaryllis" if you read the session blog), and unfortunately is the only mini we’re currently using that’s already painted:

Also in case you were wondering, yes, I knit while I play. In fact, despite having to tink out several glaring errors due to tense battles and harrowing situations, I managed to knit a little over 2 inches of the pink kimono:

If you see any leftover flaws, I blame Veltargo.

Today's Mad Knittist Notes

Brought to you by yet another about-to-be overdue baby set: I've got 2 ladies having babies, both due in March, and I've not knitted a stitch. Ooops. Meanwhile, I've got a dice bag 75% complete, a scarf about 60% done, and gloves 0% done. Should I set my sights on fewer projects? Heck no! :-D

Note Book Randomness 2

On the subject of notebooks, I’m constantly on the lookout for notebooks that will make it easier for me to chart/graph/scribble my creations (insert mad scientist knittist laugh here) and make notes on the same page. Seems like Day-Timer used to have these “project” pages where the top half of each page was graph paper for sketching and the bottom half was lined for notes. Can’t find them anymore, but I’ve been on a passive quest to find a notebook with something equivalent. Generally, I end up with notebooks of graph paper. I did find a NoteSketch book by Bienfang, which is blank at the top with lines at the bottom, though I haven’t tried using it yet. I really do prefer to have the half graph/half lined pages since I’m not much of an artist and the squares make it convenient to count stitches even if they do nothing to improve my handwriting. Given the difficulty in finding such a specialized notebook, one might wonder why I continue the search. The answer is simple:

That is the plan/pattern for a baby blanket I just finished (note the lack of, well, notes).

Those are my initial notes for the hat and booties. Note the lack of sketches. Also note that they’re in two separate notebooks.

Here’s where I reverse-engineered the booties after knitting them and scribbled out the pattern:

Now we’re up to three notebooks.

Here’s the post-knitting reverse-engineered pattern for the hat, though we are still at three notebooks:

My point is, if I could find something that had graph paper and note lines on the same page, this entire baby set could have been in one book. Wouldn’t that have been both convenient and slightly less mad scientist knittist? Oh sure, the writing might still remind one of a mad scientist scribbling frantically on a chalkboard, trying to complete a brand new equation that might change the universe as we know it, but at least there would be a little sketch nearby so you could tell it was just a baby bootie pattern.

P.S. I plan to actually type these patterns up, thus the notes and reverse-engineering my own knitting.

Don't Step on my Brown Suede Dice Bag

Will wonders never cease? I actually wrote a pattern before I knitted the object. Of course, in this case it was necessary because I needed to change back and forth between cabling and stockinette stitch, and the gauge is always different between the two. I got to use the new Bienfang NoteSketch book though, and I suppose it’s okay. I would still prefer graph paper rather than a blank area at the top, as that would have made it easier to transfer the cable pattern. Being who I am, I traced a section of graph paper onto the page instead:

Naturally, I redacted the cable pattern itself, since that copyright is held by the publishers, but you can still see where I added the graph. You can also see that I ran out of room at the bottom and had to squish my writing so it would fit on one page. I do have a reputation as a mad knittist to maintain, after all, and I suspect my notes accomplish that pretty well.

Here is the yarn I’ll be using:

These are my test swatches: one in stockinette stitch, one in the cable pattern. Both are knitted in the round since the dice bag itself will be knitted in the round, and as I’ve come to discover, my gauge in the round is different than my gauge back-and-forth. Arrgh matey, it be the purls.

Note Book Randomness

So, I have this little notebook with a flexible leatherette cover and graph paper pages, about 2 inches thick. I like the thing except that it won’t stay open on its own, the result of which is that I don’t use it very often. Occasionally when I am using it, I’ll flip through the used pages to see what’s there. It has several scribbled patterns for blankets, sweaters, mittens, dice bags, etc. Some pages contain notes where I was apparently trying to explain math and how to tell time to one child or another. Some pages contain partial pattern notations, like this:

Clearly a knitting notation. No clue what it was for. I generally use 4 DPNs, not 3. Mittens, perhaps? Probably not, given that using size 3 needles with only 20 stitches would be way too small for a mitten. So what is it? Alas, the world may never know. I sure don’t.

Here’s another little gem I can’t identify, this one complete with sketch:

I have no idea what that is, or what it might have been part of. Seriously. No idea. Trying to visualize something smaller at the base than at the top with points on the wider edge does nothing to refresh my memory. One might think the fact that I went so far as to make gauge and size notations would solidify it in my mind. One would be mistaken.

Moving on, this next bit of randomness isn’t even a pattern:

Some kind of Rebus puzzle, perhaps? Nope. In this case, I remember what all three images are; I just don’t remember why they’re on the same page. The first two were probably me explaining to my Hubby how the dragon tea cozy was going to work. What other reason would there be to have a tea pot and a dragon together? Unless of course the dragon was going to heat up the tea, but that could get tricky.

The third is a glyph we were toying with for use on a website my Hubby had during our pre-Blogger days. Now that one is a mystery. Not what it is, just, why it’s there with the tea pot and dragon cozy. Weird.