Knuckle dusters

The mornings can be painfully cold in our little house. While we no longer have to deal with cracks in the walls and slat windows (shudder) we do have a lounge room window that is the size of a wall. People walk past and stare in all day long, possibly because they don't realise that the local drug dealers were the last tenants, and the only addiction I have is yarn.

This week I started a set of Knucks for myself, using the very yummy make make yarn Joex bought me home from her honeymoon last year. I've already made a cowl and I still have 3.5 balls left. This stuff is going to last forever.

I need fingerless gloves rather than fingerless mitts because I'm a sad old lady with arthritis in a few knuckles and they need to stay warm.

I also need to make some fingerless mitts for Knit One Give One. I'll finish mine up and churn out a few pairs for the homeless. I might be cold, but they're freezing in this cold spell.

Meet Dobbin

My Harry Potter lifestyle continues, unabated. Not only am I listening to Stephen Fry's audio recordings (for the gazillionth time) but I'm still creating projects for my classes.

For Muggle Studies this month we needed to make something based off a stamp. Apparently stamps are odd, hence the need for studying. I knew what I wanted to make, so I found a stamp with some koi and got hooking.*

My lovely friend Lea found the pattern and I'm pretty sure she's a genius. Dobbin was a breeze to make, seriously. We're talking two hours, tops, for all of it.

The lovely gemstones in the bottom were a gift from Lea as well, and Dobbin thinks they're beautiful, as do I.

Best if all, I have a no-maintenance pet! If only I had a pony...

In other knitting news, I managed to make a pretty impressive mistake sewing up a customer's jumper.

I managed to sew the back and the front of a raglan together. I'm officially a cretin.

* With a crochet hook. Minds out of the gutters, people!

Nerdy nerd nerd

I finished the shrug for my customer last week. Turn out that she had a ball tucked away somewhere, so I drove over and nabbed it. Two days later she was looking happy and rather blue in her new shrug. I do like happy customers. Only thing better is a happy me, and considering that Spring term for the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup started May 1st I am one highly chuffed lassie.

Here's the deal: each term is made up of three months. Each month you have classes, eight of them, but your minimum requirement is one. There are OWLs, knitting projects that will take 8-12 weeks to do, and there are Missions for the Order of the Phoenix, which take 6-8 weeks. There are Quidditch matches too. To shoot goals, knit/crochet something.

This is a HUGE amount of fun for a Harry Potter junkie, like myself. I was sorted into Slytherin and have weaseled my way into everything. It's just wonderful to have others love what you love and try to combine how much you love everything together. 

So here are my classes so far:

A dragon's tooth mug cozy for History of Magic.

A Falkor-pink bow for Potions.

A ripple mug rug for Charms, based around water. I chose my colors for "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner": The water burned like witches oils, all green and blue and white." 

An oddly colored Scottish terrier for Transfiguration.

Lastly, I finished Square 10 for my Sherlock blanket. I'd started it before term began, so any project you finish up during a school month can be turned in at Detention.

See? I told you it was fun!

This is not good

I have 4 rows left of knitting on the TARDIS blue shrug.

That's how much wool I have left.

It really is bigger on the inside, because how else is all the yarn gone?

Tangled up in blue

I am starting to get very VERY tired of this shrug. Hopefully I'll get most of it done this weekend.

I have a new project planned. And it's grey. And I'm still excited.