Neither Hip Nor Funky

Hmm….I wonder if that title will bring me some more Google hits

I won this yarn in a contest at Fricknits. I love beautiful yarn, but beautiful free yarn is even better.

Sweet Georgia in Rainforest

It jumped on the needles right away….one little Monkey jumping on my needles.

The teddy bear is having a picnic. Oh, who am I kidding? This squiddy bear is so worn out from his identity crisis that he is just barely able to support himself with some help from the plants.

Okay, so here’s the part where I tell you which adorable child in my life is the recipient of this stuffed animal. Um…..it’s me.

Yup, get ready for another random fact about me.

I used to barely fit on my bed as a child because it was so full of stuffed animals. (and yes, I did believe that they talked to each other when I wasn’t in the room. Many of their conversations revolved around their jealousy of my favorites, who got hugged as I went to sleep.) I tried to break myself of the habit of sleeping with stuffed animals when I went to college, but I eventually failed. I tried again when I first started dating P-funk. It kind of stuck, but I still needed to hug something in order to go to sleep easily…so I really just switched to pillows. (While I love P-funk, he is not soft and squishy to fill the “hugging while sleeping” need.)
While making me feel more grown up, pillows are larger and take up more space in the bed than a small bear. So see, I made this for purely practical reasons

Pattern: Baby Bobbi Bear
Yarn: Knitpicks Shine Worsted in Terracotta
Needles: DPNs US8

Thoughts:

Overall, I would only say that this was only an okay pattern. It is clearly written, but some things seem a bit silly. You start at the bottom of the body and work up to the neck. At that point it tells you to put all your live stitches on a holder and pick up stitches at your cast on edge to make the legs. After you finish the legs, you then go back to the neck and knit the head. This seemed like extra work, so I just kept knitting from the body up through the head and then went back to pick up the stitches and work the legs.
I also think that knitting with a heavier weight yarn would work better, for example using the US8 needles with chunky yarn. Since you stuff the bear, it would look better at a tighter gauge, so you don’t see all the stuffing through the stitches. I knew this from seeing a sample of this bear beforehand, however I was using stash yarn so had more limited options.

However, when I design his sibling, Teddy Squid, I will fix the things that I don’t like…and add more legs.

Since I missed putting up my yarn porn yesterday, here’s a double dose for today:

Walking on the Wild Tide, STR Silkie (from the Sock Club April shipment)
81% superwash merino, 19% silk

I was worried about how the barber pole effect would knit up, but it looks good. Although it does make the colors less vibrant when knit up.

Once again, I chose to knit a different pattern than the club pattern. The pattern is very lacey, which is great for a spring/summer knit, however I’m starting to learn that I while I like lace socks, I don’t like overly holey lace socks. I tried some Monkeys first, but the yarn had a bit too much going on and the pattern was lost. So I am now making Roza’s Socks and am very pleased with how it is going.

But…some other yarn has been pulling at my fingers:

This one glorious skein of Koigu that I received in a trade with Nova. It was originally a possibility for part of a Chevron scarf combo, but it kept telling me that it wanted to be socks.

See…can’t you hear it too?

So I mixed it up with some STR Monsoon for a contrast toe, heel, and cuff, and now I’m completely smitten. My first Koigu experience is not dissapointing.

Anastasia Sock, Jaywalker, and Toe-up

Squiddy Bear

Glee

Ogee Lace Skirt

20 days left at my job

Damn…it’s closing in from all sides. Okay, only two sides. I was tagged twice.

The knitting philistine did give me an out if I sent her yarn.

However, I think I will do the meme instead, especially since I was tagged a second time by Christine with no bribe mentioned.

(Okay…before I got this post up, I received my third tag from Brenda, I am surrounded!)

7 Random things about me:

1. When speaking to each other, my sisters and I rarely refer to our parents as “Mom” and “Dad.” Instead we refer to them as “your mom” and “your dad”, even though we all have the same mom and dad. As in, “I was talking to your mother the other day.” We all do this unconsciously. Panda started it in high school, as a way to not claim them….”your mother is so annoying.” Although we all grew out of that “parents are so embarassing” stage a long time ago, it is still embedded in our speech. (This has completely confused roommates that we have had.) It has also extended to references to each other, saying “your sister” instead of saying the sister’s name, or sometimes saying “your oldest daughter/middle child”, etc.

2. As a child, I refused to wear a dress or skirt for four years, from 3rd grade until 7th grade.

3. I have an intense dislike (to the point of gagging) of two foods: beets and cabbage. The first time I met my mother-in-law, two of the four dishes on the table were beets and coleslaw. In order to not make a terrible first impression, I forced them both down, trying hard not to gag or make any visibly disgusted faces. P-funk told her the next day, and the family still teases me about it (but it did make a good first impression that I ate them).

4. I don’t remember meeting my best friend because we met in the church nursery when I was 3 months old. We have been friends since before either of us can remember. I do remember the first time that she was allowed to stay over at my house, after my 5th birthday party. We have only had about three or four fights in our lives. The first one was over who got to “wash dishes” in the sink of my Holly Hobby kitchen playset… how things have changed.

5. I have bit of a dirty mind…I automatically pick up on anything that can be taken as the least bit sexual. (This helps when working with teenagers b/c you can’t slip much past me.) I have also found that if you use the right tone of voice with a raised eyebrow, you can insert any two words into the following phrase and it will sound dirty: “I’ll __(v)____ your __(n)____.” It’s like the perpetually dirty Madlib, try it. I normally only do this to P-funk, to avoid scaring the other people I know.

6. Although I would not call myself a neat person, I like to be organized. This often leads to me going on manic organizing sprees when the clutter gets too much for me while P-funk cowers in the corner in fear considerately leaves me to myself so I don’t snap at him can quickly accomplish my noble goal.

7. My first creative love is painting, however I haven’t done any painting in almost a year. I love the process of painting, but I get a little nervous when I first face a blank canvas and this sometimes prevents me from starting. After my job ends (22 days, baby), I plan to rearrange our space so that my painting is as accessible as my knitting…hopefully ending this dry spell. (The site needs to be revamped, but here is a link to my painting website.)

Now for the tagging of others, I’m going to try. I think that some of these peeps might have done it already, but here goes…I tag: Kirstin, Stacey, Amy, Nova, Risa, Carson, and Moe

The yarn is Louet Gems Opal in Teal