Merry Christmas, with Handmade Gifts!

Just a quick post to fling a picture up here showing what my Sister-in-law made me for Christmas. This is just a close-up(ish) view of the blanket she made...

Houston, We Have A Problem. Houston? HOUSTON!!!

Oh, my scarf. My favourite one so far, mainy for the colours and the time I've put into it. See? Isn't it purdy?



(I'm sorry, ignore the green felt of the pool table. It doesn't exactly compliment my scarf.)



I got brave and was backtracking on the row with the Offending Stitch (read previous post for details). Everything was going swimingly for the first few stitches. I thought I was pretty handy! Until I had the thought of "WTF is THAT?!"

Here is a picture of "that"...



Yeah, you see, I'm too much of a beginner to understand what I did to get here, and what I need to do to rescue myself. More pictures will be sent to Tracy, begging Her Brilliancy to talk me through it over the phone. If not, then thankfully she'll be up for Christmas and she can show me what I did and how I FIX the Bloody Thing. (!)

~sigh~

"All I wanted was a colourful scarf to wear when the skies are grey..."

Instead, I'm wearing a grey scarf. But it's soft and comfy and London Fog does pretty decent work.

"But It's Good Practise!"

Oh, good practise my ass.

I noticed that something wasn't quite right. So I looked a little closer. Indeed, I made an incorrect stitch, and proceeded to not pay attention until the end of the following row. I've already backtracked on the one row, and now I need to undo the row the mistake is in. See what happens when I watch tv while I knit? DO YOU SEE??!!!! (Point of needle is directing you to the Offending Stitch.)



And for the record, this is how much yarn I had left ... this is what I was going to try to finish up with tonight since I won't have time to knit this week. THIS, before I found the Offending Stitch. All I wanted was to be able to start with the 2nd skein when I picked the project up again! For Pog's Sake!!



(But no. I'm going to bed now. I will unravel the row when I have time. )

[Oh, and I did get a cramp in my right arm, which made my index finger curl oddly. That's another thing that happens when I'm flying along, staring at my yarn, wondering how many rows I have left before I hit the end of the yarn, and gah!]

And for the record, it is three hours past my bedtime.

Well, I Still Know How To Knit

Even though it's been a few weeks (months).



Do you remember this scarf? My first and only yarn purchase ever from HPY? Well, we got reacquainted tonight. And I doubled its length! I didn't even mark the row I started from since I am finally confident enough to correct mistakes. Whew!



And no, I still don't have the desire to wind the yarn into a ball. We get along well enough to work with it as is. =)

A Very Important APAD

And there are actually TWO pictures to share. For those of you who don't know, my hair is very thick, and curly. Each strand is thick, and there's a lot of them. My hair can go from ringlets (if I help it along a bit by scrunching) to straight ... so I can do my hair in five minutes or over two hours.

The following picture shows the tools I had to use to get the next picture. From left to right: Matrix Vavoom "Smooth Me" smoothing gel; Redken Extreme "Anti-Snap" leave-in conditioner; Redken Smooth Down "Heat Glide" heat protector; Redken "Align" smoothing creme ("for stick straight results!"); Biosilk "Silk Therapy" because it's silky and I love it; Red Christmas Cup containing my brushes soaking in vinegar to get the gunk of styling off. In the foreground is my flat iron.



This picture is the result of a lot of work. Day One was about two hours of blow drying and ironing, and I ran out of time before I had to leave for work. Day Two was this morning, and I had more time to finish (I did NOT wash my head this morning - I wasn't starting over!) - so this was using a bit more of the Heat Glide and Align with the Flat Iron. Trying to take pictures was ... entertaining. This is actually of the right side of my head; I was looking in the mirror to see what the display on my camera was showing so I could take a picture. Fun.