My Housemate Totoro

New year, new projects. 

One of my two New Years Resolutions (which do not really deserve the capitalisation they are receiving, but whatever) is to create at least 50 projects of varying descriptions this year.

I haven't totally decided if this counts as one project or three. 

It counts as 3 on Ravelry though. That should count for something, right?

My housemate is into anime. He likes Totoro. It made sense. 

It started out with the grey one. Also with quite a lot of me moaning at people who have more idea as to what makes the perfect Totoro telling me that he had to be grey when I wanted to use a more exciting colour. Like not-grey.

Then I found out that in fact you ARE allowed not-grey Totoros. They are blue, and small and - I really can't stress this enough - not grey. And cute. That too. So, clearly I needed to make a small blue Totoro as well. 

Since I am pretty lazy I actually found this out by looking at the other Totoro patterns available on Ravelry and discovering that the wonderous person who made the original big grey Totoro patterns had also made patterns for the whole family of Totoros. 

This is also where the little one came in. He is adorably small.

He fits on the big grey ones head. How cute is that? 

I'm getting better at this. His birthday was only 4 days ago. That's lots better.

Last time it was months late.

Hats and stuff

Hats. So thats a traditional Christmas gift right?

Beards. They go with hats right?

My brother sent me a photo about 3 days before he came home for Christmas of some girl who had crocheted herself a Viking helmet and beard combo. He wanted one. Who says I never give him anything he wants.

The beard is removable, to make the helmet wearable by itself. Or - if you are sufficiently crazy - the beard wearable by itself. My mother is sufficiently crazy. Who knew?





Oh wait. I think everyone did.

My friends don't get out of randomness either. This year I drew Suzz in the Coventry Secret Santa (oh alright, I got Sophie to rig it so I got Suzz because I already wanted to get her this) and got her a book of animal hats. There was a picture on the front of a girl grinning and wearing a crazy hat that just reminded me of Suzz oh-so-much.

I promptly stole the book and used it to make the Secret Santa present for the Poole victim, the lovely Anne.

Who is modelling the Poisonous Pink Frog Hat.

And who got slightly forced into promising to wear it in public in a non-fancy dress way at least once.

And take photos.

I did give the book back to Suzz (and I swear it is actually a present for her and not for me - Honest!), but not before also making a panda hat from the book for my uncle.... who  I failed to take embarrassing pictures of before he took the hat off, and subsequently left Bournemouth to resume his normal life. I say normal. Whatever passes for it for him I suppose. 

Finally - a breather.

School is one day off finishing for Christmas. Oh wait. 2.
But the last ones just pantomimes.

Soo relieved its not even funny.

Knitting is not something I've had time for all term. Just so busy planning lessons, marking and simply making it through the days. I now get some time to put my feet up, drink tea, and knit.
Its awesome.

To celebrate, here is a Christmas tree scarf illusion thingy.
Just a chart to be fair, but so very  easily extended to a scarf that I'm calling it a scarf.
And when I manage to find my needles I will totally knit it up for my Dad.

My brain died with my final lesson.

Pattern:
Christmas Tree Illusion Scarf

Michael Jackson seems to be popular. Who knew?

So the person who asked me to do the first Michael Jackson illusion got back to me like a week ago and asked me to do another one. I .... um.... ignored all that sensible lesson planning stuff I really should have been doing and made one today.
Its actually quite cool.
I like.
I know I would think that cause its my pattern, but basically its CoR's design, I just put it into a pattern format for her. And even that may be stretching the point. Its a photo that I've illusionated. Which is not a word but will be soon. Or should be.

My housemate is playing Tekken3. It keeps making inane comments. Like hai ya. And K.O. And Round Two. Fight.
It may possibly be driving me insane.
I'm not sure.
I'll keep you updated.

Cause I'm sure you are just dying to know.

Whatever.
Where was I?

Oh yeah.
So now I have 2 illusion patterns for Michael. And there is a third on the way. Its not that exciting I know, but it does keep me from dying of boredom planning how to teach year 7s pie charts. Which I gave up on cause I think they probably already know.

Tra La.

The pattern, you will be surprised to learn, is over on scribd, link on my illusion knit page. And the first MJ pattern is also available on ravelry downloads. Hilariously (to me if no one else) this got downloaded 11 times today. This is a new high. Previously my most downloaded pattern was Discworld Death of Rats. At 2 in a day.
Lol.
Just me?
Oh well. I can amuse myself at least.

He stopped playing Tekken. The voice has gone.
But I'm out of stuff for this post anyway.
And looking at it again, most of it was inane babble. It's a good thing I don't have to pay for this blog in any way really.

Or something.
Back to lesson plans. Bye!

Explorations into the world of Crocheting

I have now been knitting for just over two years. Time to try something new me thinks.
Crochet.

That scary thing.
I'm not totally sure why I'm so scared of crochet hooks, given that knitting needles are sharper and therefore make a much more viable weapon (not that I've thought about this much...), but there we go. I'm much less convinced that wool will obey me when I'm wielding a hook rather than a needle.
That said, time to venture into this strange new world. (cue Disney music).

This is actually because I am now starting to think about birthday and Christmas presents to cover the next 4 months, and too many of the really cute small things are crocheted. In particular there is a really really cute little black mage that I want to make. A year ago I would have run from the idea, and in fact did - hence Tory's gecko, but now. Now I am going to give it a go.

Is this what growth is?
Am I growing up?
Somehow I doubt it....

comissioned illusion

Stranger things have happened than someone offering work. But this, for me, is a first. Someone on ravelry contacted me recently to ask me to do a particular illusion pattern for them (Robert Pattinson/Edward Cullen). Lol. Random.
I'm working on it though. It's actually really not that hard a process for me, turning an image into an illusion pattern, but it does take a little while. On which note, I'll go do something about it, and continue the blog post later.

And I'm back (like a week later). I've made up three versions of the illusion. There's a medium and super huge version of Edward Cullen, and a medium Robert Pattinson. At some stage, when the guy is relatively happy with the patterns, I will put them onto ravelry, but for the moment at least they are uniquely his. Well. I guess they should be mine, but I really can't be bothered to knit that big of an illusion of a person and/or character I have no interest in, as I have a queue of things I do want to knit. So I won't. But I do think the patterns will work. In fact the super huge one should be pretty good, if a pain in the donkey to knit.

It's been fun though. I really enjoy making the patterns, and still find it funny that I was asked. Funny in a good way. In a whoa!-I-have-a-skill-that's-in-demand-when-on-earth-did-that-happen way. You know?
No?
Me either.
Me and words - we fail.

Warthogs are cute. Also tasty.

So. That whole thing where I promised not to start any more knitting patterns? I have decided that that does not specifically forbid the making of new charts. Even though it probably should.
Oh well.
It's not like its a big pattern. I mean. One Warthog. Not a major project.

I love these guys. They're awesome. When we were staying in Zimbabwe our hotel used them as lawnmowers. And then to show the appreciation they felt towards their fuzzy employees, they the served them up for dinner in the hotel restaurant. Pumba steaks are awesome.
Sorry Mr Warthog!
Anyways. The chart is over on scribd, link on colour work page. I will probably get it onto ravelry at some stage, but for the moment it's here.

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. :)

The Mattinator

So Matt Brennan is one of my close friends at uni. He's a second year mathmo, and is the publicity officer of Focus, president of Photo Soc, and all round computer wizz. For example, last year at the end of term my computer totally died - due to lack of memory as it turns out - and within 6 hours Matt and Ste had totally revived it. Incredible - cause I couldn't actually turn the damn thing on.
Anyway. Tonight in the pub Jenni mentioned something about a program that would really help with knitting complicated repeating patterns - say 8 rows or something - that you use a row counter for. Her idea was that if you had a computer it ought to be possible to have something that highlights the relevant row of the pattern - specially as me and Jenni both get most if not all patterns off Ravelry.
So, Matt, the awesome, the Mattinator, got out his laptop in the middle of the pub, and started spewing code in such a way that he has created such a program. Its awesome. Try it sometime.
http://onehundredandfiftythree.co.uk/knit/
This is totally and completely Matt's hard work, but it is going to be so useful I can't quite resist sharing it. Thanks Matt!

Its really awesome having pet computer geniuses.
ps. Not a derogatory term, but a term of AWEsomeness.

Penguins of happyness

I joined in Rev's angels and mortals thing this term - think secret santa all term long. Twas awesome. I got given Ben and Jerrys, a hug, alcohol, a really confusing note, and a ball of awesome wool. Thanks Ellen!
Even more fun was giving Emma (Hastings) pressies, cause she was my mortal. She got truly random things. A pineapple. Glitter glue pens.
I wanted to knit her something from the start as well, but knew she would instantly cotton on to who her angel was if I did that, so I left knitting a present till the last week of term. I was going to knit her a turtle, and give her some chocolate coins, but when I went to wilkos I found awesome chocolate penguins. So clearly the knitted project HAD to be a penguin. right? So Ravelry to the rescue again. There was a fairly cool project for feathers McGraw, from Wallace and Gromit, and so clearly that was going to be the best random happy christmas knit I could find.

Was really easy too. A good thing, since I got home at 2 on Tuesday, and left at 5 for Rev. WEll, pre Rev, but the same difference, cause I went via the chaplaincy to drop off said penguins. About half 6 Emma got to the chaplaincy. I know because I got a text from her saying something along the lines of 'Do I by any chance owe you thanks? :)'
Knew she'd get it in one. :D

oh. btw, this was not the pattern I was intending to knit Emma as a mortal present. That will have to wait for another day cause I ran out of time.

No way could I make life easy for myself

It could be said that the worst part of getting a maths degree is having to do the maths involved. In fact it is said. By me. A lot. But.. I could do more to actually make my life possible. Say, only doing one or two things at a time, rather than trying to juggle about 17.

An example would be today. I went in for a 9o'clock, which was fine. I didn't understand the stupid thing, cause I've had to miss the last two lectures for various reasons, but on the other hand at least I didn't fall asleep. Then I had to skip my 10o'clock to go to some stupid piddly little meeting with the SU about the Focus weekend away (shock horror disaster nothing was wrong with the form (actually there was but I wasn't exactly gonna point that out was I) and we can go) which lasted all of 3 -count em- 3 minutes. I then went to the chapo, and discovered the kitchen was sufficiently disgusting that I spontaneously decided to clean it. ALL of it. All the washing up, all the surfaces, the lot. I am an idiot. That took over an hour. Then last lecture (which btw was a win, cause I didn't fall asleep in that either!) and home.
Then the ever present choices: clean kitchen, clean room, do useful work that's due in soon, do useful work that is never due in, or knit.
Hmmmm. Clean kitchen. Did I mention I'm an idiot?
Next.. Hmm. Work that's never due in. .... .... 5 minutes later. Yep: bored. NEXT!
Hmm... Knitting.
At this point we see the entry of more stupidity. Instead of continuing one of the many projects I have on the go, or starting one of the ones that I really want to do soon, I started a totally new project! Yay! Emma put the idea of knitting Eeyore into my head, and ravelry had failed me. This is kind of where the issue came in. If I had found a pattern then the whole thing would quite happily have been put on the back burner and added to the queue. But they didn't, or at least not for free. And I'm sort of against paying money for a pattern I can work out myself given time. Time. Yeah. One commodity students are supposed to be rich in, and I'm totally skint. Meh. ANYway, it led to me knitting Eeyore instead of doing the silly assignment that is in fact due in in about 13 hours time now.
Again. I am an idiot.
And.. I'm OK with that.

(I ended up snubbing Eeyore by hiding him under the table in order to persuade myself to do the maths. It's OK though. He doesn't know I'm snubbing him. Although, that is largely because I haven't knitted his head yet.)

AAAAAAHHH!!!

Sumaiya's birthday is... actually I don't know. But she's doing stuff for it this weekend. Apparently I was invited to this about 2 months ago... but I only actually found out on Sunday, and only confirmed I was going this afternoon.

This is a major YAY: I get a weekend with friends in London!,most importantly Sumaiya who is bucking the trend with Focusites by actually leaving both Uni and Coventry at the end of her course (more-or-less, she spent one extra year here); I get to see Avenue Q!which I thought I was gonna miss due to it closing in like a week; and (importantly I feel) this means I cannot possibly do any maths at all this weekend!
Minor issue. Present.

However that is now sorted. I found an awesome pattern for ducks on Ravelry and have knitted Sumaiya a duck :D Whether this is really a sensible present for a 23rd birthday is a matter that I don't really care about to be honest. It's not that earthshattering as knitting goes, but it is cute, and importantly only took about 2hours! Success here is measured in time left over before the deadline : 2 days and several hours!

I looked at the duck today, and it looked cold. It IS cold - it should NOT be this cold when its only October - so I couldn't let the poor thing suffer. I knitted it a scarf. It is now a warm cosy duck with an awesome I-cord scarf. Yay!

So... no hat. Lets try gloves next.

So. I have no hat to help with the keeping-Kate-warm, but I do have a scarf - its awesome and rainbow striped! My current issue with cycling in is how freaking cold it is (yes it's mid October, but it's only Week 2! How bad will it get?) and how my hands are gently getting frozed.

Obvious solution. Gloves. So I am now in the process of knitting awesome rainbow striped gloves. Happyness. I searched Ravelry for the pattern again, and picked the one that looked easiest while still resembling actual gloves rather than mittens or the creature from the Black Lagoon. Little things like that make all the difference in knitting patterns I think.

One thing I will say though: Knitting gets silly when you're using 6 double pointers and a circular needle in one glove.

Tory's Gecko Completed!

My first ever pattern-that-I've-made-up-myself done! AND its really awesome! I love it!
I basically made up the pattern as I went along, starting at the tail and working towards the head, and knitting the legs separately. When I was done I decided to cartoon-ise him, and modified part of the Dalek pattern to make massive eyes.

The pattern is approximately:
Starting at the tail end of main body piece,
CO4
*K4
P4
Repeat from * until piece is the length you want the tail to be (more or less)
**K1 inc1 K2 inc 1 K1
P row
K row
P row
Repeat from ** until there are 16 stitches.
increase 4 stitches in each of next 2 rows.
K row, P row until the piece has sufficient body length
decrease 2 stitches every other row 4 times.
decrease 2 stitches every row 3 times
K row
increase 4 stitches in each of next 2 rows
K row
P row
decrease 2 stitches every other row until 2 remain
P row
BO2

Legs, make 4 the same:
CO8
Work in I-cord for 16 rows, or until leg is in proportion with body piece
Place 6 stitches on holder, continue working in I-cord on remaining 2 stitches for 6 rows to create a toe.
BO2
Pick up 2 stiches from holder, work in I cord for 6 rows.
BO2
Repeat for final two rows.

Eyes, make 2 the same:
CO1
KPKPKP into that one stitch
KP into all 6 stitches, making 12 stitches in total
K row
K row
K2tog 6 times
K2tog 3 times
K3tog
Pick up the original cast on stitch, K2tog
BO

Sew up the main piece of the gecko from nose to tail, pausing at some point in the belly to stuff. Attach legs and ears.

And - you have a Gecko! Yay!

Tory, her Gecko, and the yrrytatyon of Crochet patterns

I have a very lovely fryend named TorY. She ys Amerycan so must be forgyven the fact that she cannot spell her own name, and ys yn fact declaryng herself to be a Conservatyve the whole tyme she ys yn England. Y once had a really long argument wyth her and her boyfryend Rob about her to spell Tory, whych resulted yn the current weyrdness of usyng 'y's all over the place.
Anyways. The poynt ys that Y myssed Tory's byrthday yn September, to be fayr she was yn Amerycaland so yt could have been worse. Tory loves geckos. There ys happyly an obvyous solutyon to thys problem: knyttyng Tory a gecko.

Unfortunately Ravelry users do not thynk that knytters want gecko patterns, only crocheters crochet geckos. Thys even more yrrytatyngly went double for google knyt pattern search, so Y'm now left wyth ynventyng my own pattern for knyttyng a gecko. Thys could take a whyle, especyally gyven there ys no tyme to guylt-free knyt anymore...

The one good thyng about myssyng someones byrthday by a month already: Yt no longer has any relevance how late you gyve them a present.... provyded yt's before Chrystmas anyway.

Yt surely won't take that long, wyll yt?

My very own Elephant Herd

I went on safari this summer through Botswana. Before I went I thought how awesome it was going to be to see an actual-real-live-in-the-wild-elephant! Then the very first night out in the wilderness we actually saw some actual-real-live-in-the-wild-elephants, including a baby one! So I was obviously happy. Then we didn't see any elephants for about a week, and then we saw just about every elephant that lives in Botswana. They kept coming to say hi. It was awesome. We saw really little babies, and really old males, and big herds of females and their younguns crossing the Zambezi, and big herds of males - who by the way spent most of the time we were watching them playing in a handy river and ducking each other! Awesomeness!

Anyways. The point was actually going to be that before I went I promised my friend Anne that I would steal her a baby elephant, but shockingly our guides and the elephants mothers were both none too keen on this plan. So I got back home with no elephants in tow.

I then found on ravelry the easiest pattern for an elephant in the world. Its so awesomely easy that my first garter stitch elephant took around about 3 hours to make, and he looks really elephant-like and everything!

 I then knitted another that was multicoloured which took significantly longer thanks to the joys of changing yarn ALL the time and the jumbled mess of wool I ended up with. But he's even more awesome. He was going to be another of my exciting knitting birthday presents, obviously to make up for the lack of a real elephant, but he's too cute.








Now I keep making more elephants but I haven't yet got one that I'm willing to give away....

Hmmm.... what else could I get Anne for her birthday?

Knitting for Birthdays

You know the old tradition of knitting socks for peoples birthdays? Well I thought it was boring. For my friend Emma's birthday this spring I found this stuffed Tigger in Asda. It was quite cool, but not quite up to awesomeness standards. So I fixed that by making him into Super Tigger!, with the simple addition of a cape. It was basically a copy of the cape I made by accident for my weasel, except that this one had the major plus of a big orange T in the middle of the cape. Poor Emma then received less a present than an assembly kit with unhelpful instructions. I enjoy vaguely irritating my friends for their birthdays, and happily they find it funny. It works for everyone this way.

Sophies birthday is this Saturday coming, but I got the jump on this one. In the summer we got majorly into Doctor Who, including some of the retro stuff... and well. She has a stuffed weasel too, and it was looking mighty cold this summer. It just HAD to have a Doctor Who scarf really didn't it? Couldn't let it suffer.

For Sam's birthday (next week) I kind of panicked. I'm really terrible at thinking of anything to buy for Sam, so it had to be something knitted. Problem was thinking of something interesting (read random) enough for her, since I'm thinking she wouldn't overly appreciate a pair of odd gloves. So I was happily searching Ravelry for inspiration when my housemate Suzie (who so far has avoided the onslaught of knitted gifts but won't for long) suggested more Doctor Who related knitting.

And I found a DALEK pattern!! Knitting has apparently got so popular again that it can even be Geeky! YAY!
Anyways - long story short, I knitted her a Dalek. Its awesome.

ps. its even a fictionally accurate colour. Pierre reliably informs me that the red dalek will reappear next season of Doctor Who, whereas the retro grey versions, and even the new blue one won't.
 .....
 I should really get a life sometime soon.

the start of my Crazed Knitting

I started knitting a year ago, largely because I came back to uni two weeks early and had NOTHING to do. I don't like being useless. So I started knitting. Knitting because some of my friends here also knit, and its something you can do when watching TV or listening to music, both of which I enjoy, but get itchy fingers. So knitting.

My first knitting project was the traditional scarf, and as tradition dictates it got way wider at the end than it was in the beginning. Enter the first piece of randomness. I have a cuddly toy weasel (doesn't every uni student?) and, well it was in need of a cape. So I turned my first ever piece of knitting into a cape for a weasel. Obvious when you think about it really.

Unfortunately knitting then sauntered back into the mundane realms, with me knitting an actual scarf, another scarf that just barely qualifies as a scarf rather than a length of material (I was running out of wool) and a pair of gloves that match in precisely no way other than colour. Oh well. It was my first try. And they are still usable as gloves so it all works out in the end. Next I tried (and succeeded) a lacy scarf, and a rainbow scarf, both of which I actually use where people can see them. They're THAT not-awful. Oh yeah.

The only problem with this is that now whenever I have any time to spare I knit. Not a problem I know, but when you are 20 years old moaning on the train cause there's not enough space to knit, something has probably gone wrong in your life. Or everyone else's. And when I went on safari this summer I was also irritated about not being able to bring knitting. I didn't want the knitting for the actual safari - my life hasn't sunk that far quite yet - but I did want it for the 11 hour flights. However the powers that be believe that if I were allowed to take knitting needles on board a plane then I would instantly turn into a homicidal maniac and skewer the pilot. Not that the thought has never occurred, I'd just be more likely to skewer my family. And I can do that before airport security.