Getting ahead of myself

It's still exam time. Warwick has a really hideously long exam time. Half my friends at other unis not only went back later than us, but have also finished. Which is really awesome for them and all, but jealous!
On the other hand, those that now have nothing left and so have almost-graduated.... EEeeeeK! They now have to pretend to be adults! Anything more scary?
Well. Probably, but this will do for the moment.

In any case, this stupid long revision time (and the fact that I tried using my finger as a chopping board and that hasn't healed yet) mean that I have done nowt all in the way of knitting recently. But since I am insane in this particular department (and many others that I won't add here) I have been continuing with the illusion patterns. I still haven't even made it to the fuzzy/not-fuzzy elephants to find out if they're fuzzy or not in Great A'tuin. On Great A'tuin. Definitely not in. Quite clearly standing on his back. Not sure what I was thinking of there. Made it sound like the Great Old Turtle In The Sky had starting eating elephants (fuzzy or not) for breakfast.
Demonstrating the madness oh so well today huh?

Um. point. I had a point.

Oh! yeah. that I get ahead of myself.

It's not that interesting, but again its exam time and knitting is Not-maths, so I guess I'll tell you anyhow. I've been happily looking for other things to illusionate, and particularly looking for stuff to illusionate that would lend itself to other colours - largely cause I'm out of double knit black. So this lead me towards the Matrix. Obviously needs green right? Or blue if you're a purist who doesn't acknowledge the sequels. Minor issue that it really should be green and black, but whatever.
Neo Matrix Illusion knit pattern is the result of all this rambling, and revision-evading.
Again the pattern link is over in the illusion knit page.

I've also got a couple of discworld things to put online shortly. They're not that great, I mean I haven't tried them (gasp if shocked here.... no one? me either) so they could still potentially turn out amazingly, but the lack of detail was semi-deliberate. These ones - Nac Mac Feegle and Rincewind - are actually in dimensions that could easily turn into scarfs. They could in fact be something other than a panel of time consuming knitting! Success!
And coincidentally, clearly a present lined up for my discworld happy mother! Woot!

Anyways - enjoy the patterns. Bet you someone else gets through with one before I do :)

Procrastiknits

Really short post coming up. List of current procrastination knitting projects.
ETs bday present (only 10 days late so far)
Brothers bday present (technically done, but not counted till I remember to post it)
off shoulder jumper
Great A'tuin illusion
Illusionating Rincewind
Illusionating Nac Mac Feegle
Illusionating Neo
Matts bday present

List of exams to do
Algebraic Number Theory
Combinatorial Optimisation

Oh, and an interview I ought to prepare for.... meh.
Knittings just more fun.

Bloody Stupid Johnson's Bloody Stupid Hat

Actually thats a really mean title. I thought it was a fun hat really. And really quick - only took about 2 days.

Not a long or particularly interesting story this... but its revision term so therefore it is upgraded to more-interesting-than-maths. Not a big upgrade in status I have to admit.
Liz saw me knitting in the chaplaincy and mentioned a hat she wanted someone to knit. It was the bloody stupid Johnson hat. (shock horror - you'd never have guessed that right!) I said I'd give it a go.

Ta Da!
A hat was created.


hum. the tada would work better if I had remembered to take a photo Before giving it to Liz.
Ah well. I'll ask her to send me one, and put it up when she does. Or I'll take a camera tonight and hope she wears it. Or something. Falalalala they're only bees.

Tis the Season to Procrastinate, fa la la la la, la la la la!

Ring out the bells: Exam Season is HERE!!!
Joy.

Just so much joy.

Have you ever noticed that when you need to revise you end up spending at least as much time procrastinating as revising? Ok, in my case its more like double the time procrastinating as revising, but you get my point. Its boring. And in addition to needing to do all this work theres the sense of massive guilt you get whenever you are not doing work. Oh you gotta love a good old revision revision revision EXAM!!!!!!!!!! season.

Oh wait. You don't.

Anyway. Rant done. My point is that I have been doing loads of knitting recently, but at the same time feeling really guilty about it. Hence even though I'm spending more time than usual knitting, I can't get into any big projects. I think it seems like too much of a challenge, and just looks like too much time. So instead, all the little things I was going to knit for friends as listed in last post are getting done - which honest to goodness is a great thing, specially since I've only just noticed its May, and that means a new round of birthdays. Why can't I ever keep track of my life?

Back to the point, what I really want to be playing with in the knitting department is more illusion knits. I really really enjoyed doing the Death of Rats, and actually I made my own rose illusion too. I didn't bother to share that with anyone cause there's lots of that sort of pattern about on Ravelry, but it was just fun to do it from scratch myself. So I decided. I've made the pattern for another discworld illusion knit now, and will get around to the actual knitting of it later. Well. Actually. I think I'll start it off now... and just feel really guilty whenever I knit more than 5 ridges at a time. That could work.

The patterns over at scribd again, but here's the original picture I was working from. I'm not so confident with this one as with DoR, cause this one has a lot more detail and is far less line drawn. I think I've got good definition on Great A'tuin and the disc - but the elephants look a little on the fuzzy side on the chart. It's impressive how much you lose just from going over to greyscale; using only three colours makes things just a bit difficult to see.

It may work out perfectly. Thats the hope anyways.

What goes around comes around. And what goes around was weird to start with.

In January my friend Jenni posted a pay it forwards craft thingy. Basically the first five people to yell got her to make them something, and they in return made something for five people. Not that surprisingly I signed up, and even less shockingly I haven't yet actually done a damn thing about it. But we are shoulder deep into revision time for final exams at Warwick uni, so what better time could there be to procrastinate with totally random knitting projects?


On that line of thought, I bring exciting news (to a certain kind of mind its exciting) about one of my Christmas present knits.
Apparently, Mrs Darlick has acquired a boyfriend.

I think someones sanity may have cracked, the problem is I can't tell if its mine, or Timo and Aicha's. Oh well. another rung knit.








by the way - I only had 3 takers in January. 2 random knitted things remain for the taking

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. :)

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