I couldn't resist...

I'm a sucker for a good music meme. Swiped from Jaichan.

How many total songs?
3981. It's not every song from every album I own...but it's pretty close.

Sort by song title - first and last...
About a Girl - Nirvana
99 Luftballoons - Nena (I guess numbers aren't as important as letters? Down with the hierarchy!)

Sort by time - shortest and longest...
Die Zauberflote: Atto Primo - Dialogo Teatrale - Mozart (Yeah...it's opera. Want to make something of it? Huh? Do ya?)
Come Around - The Salads

Sort by Album - first and last...
Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld - The Orb
4:99 - Die Fantastischen Vier (These guys make German rap work. Really.)

Sort by Artist - first and last...
A.R. Rahman
ZZ Top

Top five played songs...
Here It Goes Again - Ok Go
Tokyo Drift - Teriyaki Boyz
The Imperial March (From "Star Wars") - John Williams
Galvanize - Chemical Brothers
The Reflex - Duran Duran

(Don't ask. Let's just say that it's easier to bribe the kid with listening to the Star Wars soundtrack than to play Lego Star Wars until my brain bleeds out of my ears again.) >_<

Find the following words. How many songs show up?
Sex: 28
Death: 10
Love: 201
You: 365
Home: 58
Boy: 164
Girl: 94

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle...
Tobacco Hand - Big Sugar
Drive - R.E.M.
We Have Explosive - FSOL
License to Confuse - Sebadoh
I Never Loved a Man - The Committments

Dye Party!

Well, it was more of a get-together, but it was very enjoyable, nonetheless. I didn't have a camera with me (it was in Toronto with Mr. Ninja), so I didn't manage to document the happenings, but it was lovely having Steph, Alison and The Boy come and play. What I can show you is the resultant dye jobs. I did three things that day - black sock yarn (use your imagination - it's not showing up well on camera), a Henry themed roving, and a random skein of yarn with the leftover dyes.

Et voila.




As you can see, the random yarn is kinda sketchy, I think that I have to start tying the skeins together more loosely to avoid those blocked off white spots. It's weird, although my math is accurate, it sure as heck doesn't feel like 300 yards of yarn in that ball. The Henry roving is also turning out to be quite the experiment - the blue isn't showing up much, but the green is doing this fantastic shading thing. More photos to come of it as I go along. (FYI, it's all superwash merino - I'm not nearly experienced enough to try my hand at feltable base materials yet.)

I kept busy while Mr. Ninja was away...


A Diagonal Knot Scarf in Malabrigo Aquarella in the Paysandu colourway. Not as soft as their merino, but I couldn't resist the deep, rich colours. It's about halfway done at this point.


A Curly Purly soaker in newborn size. I'm a bit iffy on this pattern, as it seems like the legholes are ENORMOUS for tiny newborn chicken legs. We'll have to see how this fits.



Eleanor is also chugging along slowly - this is the first sock. It's a lovely pattern though. Just simple enough to be good TV knitting, but it looks so pretty when it's actually on the foot. I would link to the pattern, but Socktopia seems to be down at the moment.




And finally, a bunch of Very Baby Snug Wrap Covers in the newborn size. I love love <3 these covers. I don't know if they're really all that gender neutral, but I don't care. Heh. They're super fast to sew (1/2 hour from cutting to finishing each) and they let me indulge myself in a little bit of fabric therapy. So far, my favourites are the red dragons and the surfboards. And with these done, I'm ready for this kid (well, at least the diapering aspect - I'm all aflutter about the rest of it all...).

Next on the list is painting and decorating the baby's room, getting Christmas decorations up, and doing any last minute holiday stuff (like making truffles as gifts for the neighbors...but we'll see if that really happens). But I want to try my hand at baking Christmas cookies this year. Mr. Ninja's Oma made big batches of cookies when he was growing up and I think that he misses them. Guess I'll be hunting down good German cookie recipes soon.

Also, I'm going to be doing a sort of Advent give-away all through December. Still working out the details, but more info to come soon.

Kicked in the ass by karma.

So...remember how I thought I was done with Christmas knitting? Yeah. I got a phone call a few days ago from my Mum with two pieces of surprising news. One, my elder brother had his girlfriend officially move in with him. (This is big, people. I'm hoping to go to a family wedding within the next decade, as the last one was ... uh ... ours.) And second, my younger brother's girlfriend would be accompanying him for Christmas.

What this means is that not only is my family coming to Halifax for Christmas, but so is Mr. Ninja's. Plus my brother's girlfriend. And we're hosting Christmas dinner. No pressure. (Don't worry, we're only having Mr. Ninja's brother stay at our place over the holidays, as the rest of the family is being accomodated elsewhere. *cheer* No early labour for me!) That equals something like 11 adults plus Mr. Munchkin for dinner. And the other thing that it means is that I needed some presents for the new ladies in my family's life.

So I got cracking, and whipped up two more hats.



The first one is the Yarn Harlot's Unoriginal Hat, and the other is a Cutie hat (a la Mr. Munchkin).


Add to that another Odessa, and this is the sum total of my Christmas knitting (don't worry, no one who is getting any of this swag actually reads my blog, thank goodness).


Yup, none of the ends are woven in. Soon...but not yet.

Add to that mass of craftiness - Mr. Ninja is headed to Ontario for some R&R this weekend, and he's going to be taking a baby shower present with him. I had the urge to make yet another diaper for the friends who are having the baby, and made these last night.




The first one is a shot of the diaper cover, and the second is the matching diaper. Yeah, I know...but I can't help it. This nesting thing is getting out of control. Someone send help?

Finally, Steph and I are getting together this weekend (while the man's away, the girls shall play) for two purposes: 1) We are going to make Henry into a Dolores look-alike. 2) To dye some yarn. Possibly in a Henry colourway.

Anyone want to join us? I give no guarantees to the state of my bathroom... I'm thinking Saturday, 2ish until suppertime. Bring your own yarn, kool-aid, facemasks and roasting pans. I have some acid dyes on hand and a niddy-noddy for skeining. I'm going to bully Steph into helping me pick up a big foldable table from Canadian Tire, so I should have adequate working space, I hope. Also, here's some homework for ya - how to dye roving with acid dye and handpainting yarn. I figure we can do the actual dyeing at my place, and everyone can take the wool back to their places to "cook".

Cravings...

I've been wanting tea and hot cocoa recently. Constantly. So I treated myself to a new teapot. Lord, I love President's Choice - even their knick-knacks make me happy (let's not even talk about their wonderful frozen entrees). But the only thing about this teapot is that it's so fragile feeling that I did the only thing that I could do, as a responsible knitter.

I knit a tea cozy.


It's the Kureyon Kozy from Knitty. I'm not too thrilled with the fit on this pot, but what the hell, it's at least preventing the pot from shattering on my tile counters.

I was going to originally post with the news that I'm DONE my Christmas knitting (yes, you have my permission to hate me a little now) but Mr. Munchkin objected when I told Steph that I was done. "But Mommy, you need to knit socks for yourself! Then you're done." And damn if the kid wasn't right on the ball. I'm knitting Beatrix from socktopia - but I'm fairly certain that I'm screwing up the lace. Oh well...at least Seawool rips back well. Pics to follow.

Ay yai yai...

(It's an expression I often hear from my parents - I think that it's a South African thing. I remember being delighted when watching "The Gods Must Be Crazy" and hearing someone say it.)

Long time no see.

Things have been busy here, as I've actually been crafting (as opposed to writing and thinking about crafting). Here's a quick run down of the works in progress.

1) Cloth Diapers - I only started sewing cloth diapers for Mr. Munchkin when he was in size mediums (we used a diaper service before that). So, I needed to get some newborn diapers made. Let's not talk about the fact that yes, the baby will likely outgrow all of these diapers in 3 weeks and that yes, I really should get cracking on making size small ones too. Shhhh.

Seeing as how dreary February is around this part of the country, I figured that I was going to need something to cheer me up - so I decided to make a diaper rainbow. I cut out squares of 15 x 15 bamboo velour (SO soft!), and proceeded to do a low-water immersion dyeing method.



As you can see here - it's a messy business. The main reason that I did it on top of my washing machine is that it is well ventilated in that room, and that it was one of the few flat surfaces in the house that isn't covered with clutter. Ahem.

The results were spectacular.


I'm very pleased, and a little surprised at how well some of the colour combinations worked. The green-yellow and orange-red turned out much better than I would have thought. Additionally, I was quite happy with how low-maintenance dyeing fabric can be - I suppose that I was used to the very messy and laborious process of dyeing wool, and was expecting something along those lines.

Oh yeah, here's a pic of the diapers that I made for my friend. For those of you who know (and possibly care) the pink one is a pocket diaper, the red is an All-in-one and the funky print is a fitted.


In other crafty stuff - I got around to finishing these yarns. I set the twist earlier today and they're drying now. Counter-clockwise from the top - merino/tencel from Funky Carolina (sockweight), BFL from the Sweet Sheep (worsted), Berry BFL from the Sweet Sheep (worsted), Pink Cadillac superwash from Crown Mountain Farms (sockweight), Abby's Yarns superwash wool/silk/firestar (DK), more BFL.


Also, Ravelry is wonderful! I found a kool-aid dyeing group, and was inspired to overdye some pink ghetto Malabrigo in my stash with grape. I'll let you all know how it turns out.


Also, as part of the ongoing efforts to get the baby's room ready, we revamped our storage solutions in the house. JYSK, I think I love you.


Not only are these dresser/wardrobes a heck of a lot sturdier than an IKEA equivalent, they're much DIY friendlier. Clear instructions, precise numbers of screws, and they include wood glue! WOOD GLUE! INCLUDED! Be still my heart.


Mr. Munchkin was not neglected in this revamp either. Since he got to reclaim his closet from Mommy's clothing, Mr. Ninja decided to build a toy closet. Thus, in one fell swoop, Mr. Munchkin gets all of his toys in one place, and the adults get back the rest of the house. Win-win, eh?