tutorial: demi octopus

Pattern: Demi Octopus

Ravelry link: here

"Hey wait! What's the back story? Where did this craaaaazy thing come from?"

You want back story? I'll give you back story AND a photo tutorial to boot!

tutorial: mini alien by barbara prime

Pattern: Mini Alien by Barbara Prime

Official link here.
Ravelry link here.

This here is the Best . Pattern . Ever.  It is deliriously cute and quick and EASY and it is my new crack. (Sorry Octopus!)   I've made a LOT of these dudes ...




I mostly follow the pattern as is, but there are a couple tweaks and some tricks that I do in the knitting and the finishing to give my aliens some extra flair.  The changes are: use m1r m1l instead of m1, add a wrap by the bobbles, decrease symmetrically, add a magnet, do some tucking, and, finally, needle felt on the eyes.

That's kind of an eye-twisting list, so I decided to photo-document it all.

q&a: Pomatoma-shrug

Hey all, this is the Q & A page for my Pomatoma-shrug project (Ravelry link). It's gotten a lot of hits lately from being mentioned on a couple blogs (OMG!) and I've also gotten a lot of questions, most around some common themes. I'm going to start replying directly with short answers, and leave it up to the inquisitive ones to find more in-depth answers here.

q&a: ninja biking mask of AWESOMENESS

There's been a lot of interest in my ninja mask (Ravelry link) which is super awesome! But it's not a simple pattern and some parts are downright mindbending.  I've been answering questions individually, but I realized today that it might be useful to aggregate the questions and answers in one spot.  Instead of hiding this useful info in the comments or cluttering up the Ravelry project page, I've decided to put up a Q&A page here (I have a blog, might as well use it!).

how-to: afterthought heels

     af-ter-thought

          1 : an idea occurring later

          2 : something (as a part or feature) not thought of originally : something secondary

          [from m-w.com]

Given this, what is an afterthought heel?

An afterthought heel is a technique where you first knit the "tube" of the sock, then go back afterwards to knit the heel.  So simple, so easy!  But wait... where do the heel stitches come from?  Do you steek the heel?  Get all crazy with the scissors?

This is where the magic happens.

You knit a section with some scrap yarn, then knit over it as usual.  When you're ready to do the heel, you carefully pick out the scrap yarn, place the live stitches on needles, and there you are!  Ready to knit the heel in the round.

But talk is cheap and not very helpful, so let's look at some pretty pictures!  For now,  I'm going to demonstrate this on a swatch.  If I do this with a sock again, I'll post ACTUAL, REAL demo photos (OMFG!)