Terrarium fever and yarn

I love terrariums but this is silly. The world of knitting and crochet is a bizarre one. Just having lots of yarn and lots of time isn't a justification for making some of the stuff they have patterns for. Pick up any knitting magazine and you see at least 5 car wrecks of yarn-tastic horror. There are more pictures on Why Would You Knit That? a super cool site that lives up to its name.

Curse of the Were Rabbit

I love movies and gardening. One beautiful blend of the two is "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit." I had forgotten how much I love this movie, the characters, the setting, and the unabashed (yet gentle) mocking of the Brits and their gardening habits. The puns come fast and furious and every time I watch this movie I see more details. The attention to the smallest touch is so thorough.

I love the Anti-Pesto issued garden ornaments and I’m really tempted to make a gnome with red light eyes. Maybe with a motion sensor to trigger the light-up eyes. I’ll probably just make an Anti-Pesto warning sign for my plot.


I’m also really digging Victor’s ubiquitous polka dot scarf, so classy. I saw something very similar on Sartorialist and it’s been hanging around in the back of my head ever since. After all there’s no reason why you can’t look good when you’re moving dirt around. I had a vintage bandana of my grandfather's that had an awesome polka dot pattern but I recall wearing it to death too. Also Gromit’s ever present knitting needles thrill me, knitting continental style too I might add! I might be easily pleased but as far as I’m concerned Wallace and Gromit can do no wrong. This movie is probably one of my favorites of all time.

bath mat is done!

I never thought I'd finish it but I did! The bath mat of doom has been finished. I felt like there was some kind of drum roll as I bound off. The bathroom looks so much better too. Check out the before and after pictures.

Baby hat finished

Last month when I was flying out to L.A. for a wedding I started working on a pair of baby socks. There's this group called Touching Little Lives that's been really great to my family so I've been working on some projects to donate to them. Anyways the friends that we stayed with announced they were expecting so with a lot of speed knitting I finished the baby socks and left them with our friends as a gift. I've been working on a baby hat in matching yarn and now I'm finally done. It's all machine washable--as I believe almost all baby gifts should be. I'm really happy with this yarn it's super soft. Well into the mail it'll go this week. Now to finish up the stuff for Touching Little Lives and to get a move on my holiday knitting. I've got to write a paper for school this weekend too.

The camera is down right now. I'll post a picture of it later.

Plarn=plastic yarn

What to do with all those pesky plastic bags! It seems that no matter how much you try to avoid them sooner or later you've got some. Most grocery stores have bins where you can recycle them, however it you're crafty like me you can make stuff with them. I've been making market bags. I totally suck at crochet but that seems to be a bit faster and less stretchy than knitted plarn.

I take the bags flatten them out then fold them and cut the handles and bottom. That leaves a tube that I cut up into loops. The loops are then looped on each other to make one continuous string of plastic yarn or "plarn." Sure it's time consuming but what I have will last me a long time and stay out of the land fill. It takes a lot of bags to make one market bag so I feel good about it and I use up my friend's and family's bags. Making the plarn is my television watching activity or should I say "television listening" activity since my eyes are on my hands.

Maybe I'll get better at crochet and make something more interesting. Some people use old vhs tape to make these shiny, crinkly purses and stuff. I even save and wash the plastic bags from frozen veggies and fruits, as well as the bags that toilet paper is packaged in. Almost anything that can be cut into a tube or loops I try to reuse because I can get a lot of color that way. The plain white bags get a little dull looking and who doesn't like a little color?

The most colorful one is still in progress. I'm knitting some handles out of acrylic yarn to be a little easy on the hands. I'll post a picture once I'm done with it. By the way I keep working on the bath mat of doom but it's still slow going.

The bath mat of doom!

This is the bathmat that will not end. I swear I work on it every day and it doesn't seem to move or grow or anything! The only reason that I started this project is because I thought I could whip this out in no time. Well it's been week and weeks. I think they call all those weeks months. Well it's been months.

The idea was a good one. Our bathroom is navy blue with hints of browns. We wanted a navy blue bathmat. Do you know how hard it is to find a navy blue bathmat? You can find baby blue, indigo blue, marine blue, Tiffany blue, sky blue, robin's egg blue and even navy blue and green, but no solid navy or heather/verigated navy blue bathmat. Nothing under $20. I found a nice one for about $35 online (not including shipping) but we're broke and it seems silly to pay so much for something that's the human equivalent of a spoon rest. Let's face it, all a bathmat does is catch drips.

So off to Hobby Lobby I went with gift card in hand visions of the coolest bathmat in the universe and got about $15 of cotton/something yarn (it's washer&dryerable) and got cracking. Initially it was flying by; I was making progress by leaps and bounds. Then when I used up the second ball of yarn it started to slow, now I'm on ball number three and I need to put a stitch marker in to tell if I'm making any progress at all. I keep knitting but it doesn't seem to be getting any bigger. I feel like Sisyphus pushin' his damned rock up a mountain.

When it's done it'll be pretty cool. Most of it is in garter stitch with moss stitch borders and lines breaking it up in geometric ways. I think it'll shrink a bit when I wash it for the first time and that'll probably bring out the contrasting pattern a little more. You can't tell much from this picture but I'll keep you posted.