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Month: March 2005

  • Eggbert the Easter Chick

    Eggbert the Easter ChickCheck out my new favorite holiday creation! A nice lady came in the shop the other day looking for wool to duplicate a little knitted chick a friend had given her. I squealed like a girl, especially once I turned the chick over. How cute is that? The lady told me I could copy her handwritten pattern if I wanted. That night I whipped up a prototype and set to altering the pattern (so as not to infringe copyright; I don’t know where the customer’s friend got the pattern in the first place). My version has a slightly rounder head and short rows in the tail to make it flip up. The pattern is currently available for free in the shop, but I’ll reproduce it here for the rest of the world. They’re really quick to make; I’ve done four already. Hooray for stash-busting! Happy knitting…You need:

    • scraps of 8-ply (worsted weight) yarn
    • 3.75mm needles
    • cotton ball or other stuffing for head
    • bodkin or wool needle for sewing up
    • cardboard for beak
    • egg, chocolate or real!

    Cast on 32 stitches.

    Row 1: K1, increase 1, K to end.
    Repeat first row until you have 44 stitches on the needle.
    Knit four rows plain.

    Short row tail:
    Row 1: K4, slip next stitch as if to purl, yfwd, move slipped stitch back to left needle. Turn.
    Row 2: K4 to end.
    Row 3: K3, slip next stitch as if to purl, yfwd, move slipped stitch back to left needle. Turn.
    Row 4: K3 to end.
    Row 5: Cast off 15 stitches, K to end.

    Repeat previous five rows for the other side. You should end with fourteen stitches left in the center of your knitting.

    Head:
    Knit three rows plain.
    Row 4: K1, K2tog, K to last three stitches, K2tog, K1.
    Row 5-6: Same as Row 4.
    Knit two rows plain.

    You should now have eight stitches remaining on your needle. Cut the working wool leaving a footlong tail. Thread the tail onto your sewing needle and run it through the remaining stitches, cinching them tight. Then use the tail to sew up the head, back, and underside of the duck (leaving a hole to insert your egg!). Stuff the head and use some scrap wool to cinch the neck. I used contrasting wool to make knots for the eyes, and the beak is a sewn on piece of cardboard. You can get pretty creative embellishing these things! Have fun…

  • Amazing Race 7

    For the record, the Snook and I are firmly on the Rob and Amber Love Train for this season of Amazing Race. Some folks think Rob’s just “smarmy and sneaky,” and you know what? He totally is. That’s what we love about him! Paying the bus guy not to tell anybody else the information? Genius. Paying the driver not to open the other door? More genius. Making the other teams foot the bribe? Priceless evil genius. Here’s the thing though: Devising strategems and trying to screw the other guy over never works unless you can actually back it up by being a good racer. And Rob and Amber are currently kicking the race’s ass. He’s workin’ the Spanish. He correctly predicted the money issues on the shopping trip. And he owned that book detour. Go team Boston!

  • Gandalf on Corrie.

    Gandalf on Corrie. *blink blink*

  • Dammit.

    Dammit. After working so well, my comment spam tactics seem to be getting less effective. Some jerk managed to slip several through the cracks today. They’ve figured out the link limit. Crap. Now I need a new idea.

  • Colorization Using Optimization

    Colorization Using Optimization. Wow. That sounds really boring and technical, but check it out anyway because it’s actually mind-blowingly cool. Those video clips at the end are so neat. (Link courtesy of Ernie’s mini-blog.)

  • ThinkSecret is no New York Times.

    John Gruber tells Think Secret: “You’re no New York Times.” And you know what? I agree with him. People are jumping all over this lawsuit as some sort of sky-is-falling, First Amendment, bloggers-versus-The-Man type of thing, when in reality it’s about a crappy gossip site publishing trade secrets and trying to claim it’s legitimate journalism. It’s laughable. I also don’t buy the argument that Think Secret’s “reporting” is good for Apple and that it doesn’t hurt the company. Gruber effectively debunked that myth for me a few months ago.

  • BreadBlog

    The Snook made our third batch this morning: Coffee and Walnut bread. YUM. He again set the machine last night to have the bread ready for breakfast. This time it worked perfectly! I wonder if the caking problem we had last time was because it was a prepackaged mix and this one was from scratch. All I know is, waking up to the smell of fresh-baked bread only to discover that the Snook has left a buttered slice and a glass of milk beside the bed for me makes for the Best. Morning. Ever.

  • The end of mulesing?

    It seems that a rare sheep mutation may spell the end for “mulesing.” We chatted about this recently at the Tapestry Craft Stitch and Bitch. Mulesing is the process by which the wool and skin is physically torn off a sheep’s bum to prevent something known as “fly rot,” which is really gross and involves flies laying eggs in the sheep’s skin. So, yeah, mulesing is pretty harsh, but so’s having maggots breeding in living flesh, right? (As the resident dumb American, I wondered aloud to the group why the sheep would have this difficulty, as it seems like something that evolution would’ve selected against. Turns out it’s not the sheep’s fault; it’s because Australia has entirely the wrong climate to raise them. It’s hot and humid and infested with big nasty flies. So now you know.) Anyway, it’s good to know that there may be a genetic way around the issue. PETA has been agitating for some time for international wool buyers to boycott Aussie wool, and it’d be a shame to let the local industry die out over something that maybe can be fixed.

  • Bride & Prejudice

    Oh my! Bride and Prejudice is finally out! I’m so excited. And wow, Ebert has a serious crush on the star.

  • Bork bork bork!

    moblogged image

    Swedish meatballs at the biggest IKEA in the southern hemisphere. We are on a mission from god… to find bookcases!