Vector Prime

I've finally read the first book in The New Jedi Order series.

I wildly hate it.

Dredged up all sorts of fun emotions from the loss of my mother a year and a half ago.

Hence this insomniatic post at 3 AM.

Gah.

no chickens were harmed during the making of this shawl

Whee! Citron!

The flock was out terrifying the garden (as they are wont to do) and completely freaked out at the Large White Shawl. One actually flew into the side of the aboveground pool (Knucklehead. At least she's OK).  Hence only one photo.

The Large Green Shawl yesterday, however, was apparently okay and didn't faze them.

I wanted to do something really artsy and pretty instead of being sucked into a photographic rut of flat ShawlOnFence photos, but the hyper beasties currently staring at me through the sliding door beging for treats won't let me with all their melodrama. It's like a soap opera in the backyard with the introduction of Trilby- everyone's shuffling around in the pecking order. Nobody's sure who's the boss now, which makes reactions to things overexaggerated.

Oh! She flapped her wings funny! BLAAAAH!
Oh! A squirrel, the same one I've seen every day of my life! BLAAAAH!
Oh! A leaf! BLAAAAH!
LARGE WHITE THING- TOTAL MELTDOWN! That freakout was like a nuclear explosion compared to the other freakouts of this morning.

Anywho, back to the shawl.

Production Notes
I've never kept track of how many hours it's taken me to knit something, start to finish.

These are all the movies watched during the making of Citron with an extra repeat and a one-row-shortened ruffle.

Against All Flags                                  Robin Hood
Buccaneer's Girl                                   Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid    Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Chicken Run                                         The Lion King II: Simba's Pride

Cleopatra                                              The Public Enemy
Double Crossbones                               Tron: Legacy
Key Largo                                            Yankee Buccaneers


Plus a half-hour episode of Robin Hood. Plus a three-hour car ride. This is nearly 28 hours of knitting. *headdesk*  And it isn't even for me. It's a Christmas present for an extremely knitworthy aunt.

There's also....mmm...half-a-mile of yarn in there. 3 3/4 skeins of Bernat baby sport, the white and gray, and a few dozen yards of the mulberryish yarn, an unidentified fiber from the bottom of the Stash Trunk.
The ruffle's still not lying properly. I'm going to have to try killing or steam blocking it.
I'm mildly terrified. That's 28 hours of knitting right up there, folks. What if I do it wrong?  Anyone want to hold my hand?

emperor's hand

Meet Mara. Green for Mara Jade, a leading lady of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Do not Google her if you have no idea what I'm talking about, for you will spoil nearly all of the books for yourself.

(That's me. Breaking the shawl-on-a-fence trope in all directions by putting it on a CHICKEN COOP. That's right, folks, the very place my breakfast is laid!)

This is a very long shawl. It's not even full-length- 465 vs. 675 yds. (3 balls full 'o sheep, if you were wondering). Discussed more here. If you're not signed up with Ravelry yet, what are you waiting for? It's free! It's fun! I'm enabling!

(Random news: in the week since I've posted, the carpet beetles are under control, a chicken has had an eye infection but is now OK, and I've finished another shawl. More on that later.)

warning: tantrum

There are carpet beetles in my house (which thankfuly only eat yarn and not people. Thinks about carnivorous beetles in her house. Shudder.).

I feel like crying and screaming and generally acting like a five-year-old.

Everything will start to get under control tomorrow, and I've already washed so much yarn today...
Don't expect any posts for a while.

Meet Trilby

Poor girl finally has a name, and had a proper photoshoot.

She's settling in nicely, but is decidedly the bottom of the pecking order. Oh well.

steampunk and yarn

     I lunched at the nearby mall on the way home from AC Moore's a day or two ago, and stopped at Claire's. Now, I normally don't even favor it with a passing glance as I go by because it has entirely too much of a twee sugar-bowl feeling for me, plus the tiny fact that I'm way outside their demographics, but I nearly walked into their display of aviator caps. Which got my attention, as good displays are supposed to do, and I walked out with these.

     Very steampunk, which suprised me greatly. Poor things were crammed next to all manner of Hello Kitty objects items things.   

     I also stopped off at one of my favorite thrift stores and walked out with these:

Top is a very steamy clock print, under that is an elderly Vera Wang, under THAT is an Interesting Textile, and the bottom one is a decidedly mulberry hand-knitted square shawl.

     I nearly forgot this (cone 'o fuzzy baby-blue laceweight currently decootifying in my freezer):

     All for $2. I have rotten luck with Large Life-Changing Events in General, but really good luck at thrift stores. Don't ask me to explain how that works.

Meet-a-Chicken Tuesday

I came home with another chicken from the Fair.

She's still not sure what to make of All the Space.

(Yes, there is an orange canoe and a plastic cow in my backyard,)

This is the as-yet-unnamed new girl, a White Crested BLUE! (still so excited! sorry! restart!) White Crested Blue Bantam Polish.

All my other Polish are named after hats- I already have Bonnet, Helmet, and Panama. I've already used Fedora and Tam O'Shanter, and I don't like reusing names. Ideas, anyone?

a slice of citrus

I am Getting my Act Together in a Big Way, for Christmas Production has started!

I laugh at you, holiday crunchtime1, I LAUGH!2

Citron is also laughing, but at me, for I had forgotten how many miles of stockinette it consists of. I've been coming home, showering, and crashing with a movie and Citron. So far, I've watched:

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (entertaining)
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (meh)
Key Largo (very good)
The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (dorky)
Chicken Run (hysterically good)
Robin Hood (still don't know how I feel about this one)

This is apparently nearly seven hours of knitting, according to my calculator. I'm only in the fourth repeat. *headdesk*

1 Apparently this Christmas will be the Hat Chrstmas- my five-item long list has three hats. Five items, five lucky people, for I r selfish knittar. 
2 Must learn how to do proper footnotes. Anywho, the County Fair is sucking all my brainpower. Blog posts may tend to the nonsensical.

Epic Hat

Whee! Knitting!

Here is the recently-finished R2-D2 Hat, which has eaten up hundreds upon hundreds of hours of my life <end small bit of hyperbole>. I'm only exaggerating a little bit, though, which scares me.

I've made this thing while watching all three Extended Editions of the Lord of the Rings, AND Star Wars: Episodes IV, V and IV, AND both volumes of the Tartakovsky Clone Wars microseries. Plus all the TV-less hours in the beginning when I had to focus solely on my knitting or I'd screw up badly, and the spare minutes I sat down to work a row, and the frustrating hours spent crunching numbers to tweak the pattern so it would fit the recipient's head.
I'm  really good at my own peculiar brand of Fair Isle/intarsia now.

to continue the swashbuckling pirate theme

I'm still alive, honest. I volunteer at my county's Fair, which begins this week. It basically eats my life from the preparations in the middle of June to its end next Sunday.

So, back to pirates. I've been watching an interesting pirate/privateer TV show. It's well worth watching, and very child-friendly, as is most '50s TV. It's such a non-violent pirate show, it's slightly hysterical.

The theme song makes me laugh- one line goes "You'll be walking the plank, sir!" They're such polite pirates.
That's the beginning of knitty's Pretty Twisted cuff , if you're curious. Very fun to knit- I'd never tried linen stitch before. Unfortunately, it's in the frog pile because my wrist was larger than I thought it was.
Goodness gracious me. This is the first knitted thing on this allegedly knitting blog.