Wednesday 30 March 2011

Illusion of DEATH!!! (for rats)

So mother's day is coming up. Great starting line for a blog post with DEATH!!! in the title right? Well. I like it. There is even a point, and more shockingly a connection. Which you never know I might get to, but first a side-ramble to explain the rambly nature of this post. It is in honour of my mothers manner of speech, in turn in honour of mother's day.
My mum speaks in a kind of random walk. She'll start a sentence, and then there'll be a 50-50 chance that the next word will arrive at a sensible time or that a gap will appear. This process is then repeated until either the sentence finishes or more likely she forgets what she was trying to say and stops. Then shortly afterwards, chances being regardless of any response from those around her, there will be another random event: this one with options of silence, response that follows the conversation, or another sentence starting with the word also, and then being about something that is just not connected. On the surface anyway. Apparently to her it all makes perfect sense, but some of the conversation she's having wasn't necessarily shared with the rest of us.
Bah.
So in that vain, also I've knitted a Death of Rats illusion.

I've decided I like illusion knitting, except for the minor issue that it involves a LOT of stitch counting, which removes it from the mindless category of knitting. I haven't done much of it (till now), only about a third of a Dr Who pattern I got off Ravelry, and the rose thing I gave my Rev mortal this term. I wanted to do something different, preferably something I made up for myself.
I found a site that gave a tutorial of how to make up your own illusion knit patterns, and decided that Death of Rats (from Terry Pratchett's Discworld for those unfortunate enough not to instantly know) would be awesome.
It took a surprisingly long time to make up the pattern, but I was so pleased with it, that I just had to start the knitting of it instantly, interrupting the five or so other knitting projects I have on the go. Woops. I really have a short attention span when it comes to knitting - everything is too cool, and I want to knit it all NOW!

So anyhow - using the tutorial I turned this:

into this:


into this:





Cool huh?



btw: the connection between DEATH!!! and mother's day that I left out a while ago is that my mum keeps stealing bits of my knitting to show off to others - she apparently thinks its something special. I disagree, and though I do really enjoy knitting it all, its kinda weird when she steals stuff just to wave it in peoples faces. Thus I thought for mother's day I'd give her something knitted, allowing her to show it off if she really wants to, and saving the rest of my knitting from being stolen. She also really likes Discworld, so I though the Death of Rats would be cool, and I just like the whole illusion thing.
See. It all makes sense.
Honest.

Ok, it doesn't, but I don't care very much. :)

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Angels fly because they take themselves lightly

At Rev(elation Rock Gospel Choir, but just way too much of a mouthful there so just Rev) we have angels and mortals. In fact I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before in this blog, cause last time I made Emma a little penguin for her final present. So this term we all had new angels and mortals, and my angel this term Rocked!


So the first week I got some amazing chocolate flowers and a card with pretty pictures of knitted flowers on:
then the next week was the day after Valentines, and I got given some jammy dodgers and chocolate heart things, and most awesomely again two knitted hearts:
I think this one is my favourite knitted thing my awesome angel sent me :) She left a note on the card saying she thought I'd appreciate it. She knows me so well.


I also got brownies one week with this picture
Which I fully admit made me think that Joey was my angel for a little while. Him and his puns. Ah revy times and tea (TeaRiffic!)


The whole thing actually made me feel kind of guilty, cause what I gave my mortal was kinda random, and crazed. I was kind of making it up as I went along, giving her whatever seemed like a good idea at the time, which, well. Lets just say thats somewhat similar to the line of 'rational' thinking that got me doing a mathematics degree at Warwick in the first place. I mean, it works out OK, but really by chance rather than any wonder of planning. 
But last night for her final presents I gave her a pink knitted elephant, and a rose illusion thing, both of which I thought about in advance and everything.

Also, last night I found out who my angel was; Jors! It turns out that since she didn't have a clue of what to do for me, she Facebooked me, and found this blog! Gotta love the way the world goes round really :D