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.

The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers!

As usual, I got distracted.

Honestly, I am knitting the chocobo. But, well. We are redoing our internet, so I'm being sociable in the living room, and the chocobo is upstairs. So I got tea. That's always a good plan. Now for a song I think:

The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful things
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of springs
They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, FUN!
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is I'm the only one
The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful chaps
They're loaded with vim and with vigor
They love to leap in your laps
They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, FUN
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is I'm the only one.
Tiggers are wonderful fellahs.
Tiggers are awfully sweet.
Everyone elses is jealous,
And thats why I repeat...
The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Are Tiggers are wonderful things
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of springs
They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, FUN!
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers

............................................................................... is they hold your tea.

You now understand the link between all these things and how my train of non-thought ended up here, with a Tigger illusion to add to my collection of other illusions.

I have the attention span of a gnat.

For a selection of reasons (most of which I don't understand and the ones I do are basically that I fail at internet) I am now using a totally different scribd account. Which totally doesn't matter to you lovely readers. Here's the link: Tigger Illusion

If you knit it - send me a pic of the completed thing please! I can put it on ravelry then :)

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.

Stress city

I finished Eeyore!

I can't think of anything else knitting related to say.

Basically I am a giant ball of stress with ( I hope ) a small centre of a sane Kate. I am not very convinced any more however. The further through life I get the less sane I seem to be. Oh well. 7 months left of Uni, and only 3 months left of Focus presidency. I can totally make it through.

Oh I know.

Eeyore.
Technically this is a pattern I created myself, and would therefore put on the my own patterns page I'm gently trying to accumulate stuff to, but there is an issue. Basically I don't know what the pattern was. It started by being a messed up garter stitch elephant, but then the head I made for it was a bit rubbish, and so I chopped it off. This made Steve really quite irritated. Apparently decapitating Eeyore was even worse than ignoring Eeyore while trying to do some maths. He may have a point. So then I knitted a new head, which was sufficiently good to be acceptable, and then ears and a tail and hair and a bow for the tail. And I have no clue as to how I would do any of this again.
But Eeyore is complete, and it works!

Yay.
Now back to the rest of life.

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!

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.