Copied from here. I’m such a meme-thief.

Bold for stuff you’ve done, italics for stuff you plan to do one day, and normal for stuff you’re not planning on doing.

American/English knitting (as opposed to continental)
Bobbles
Button holes
Cable stitch patterns (incl. Aran)
Continental knitting
Darning
Domino knitting (modular knitting) ???
Drop stitch patterns
Entrelac Sorta…
Fair Isle knitting
Freeform knitting
Fulling/felting ~ both accidentally & intentionally
Garter stitch
I-cord
Intarsia
Kitchener BO
Knitting with circular needles
Knitting with DPNs
Knitting and purling backwards
Knitting smocking
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars
Lace patterns
Long Tail CO (both knitwise and purlwise!)
Moebius band knitting (Maybe)
Norwegian knitting
Short rows
Slip stitch patterns
Steeks
Stockinette stitch
Swatching Have done it. Don’t do it regularly.
Textured knitting
Thrummed knitting
Tubular CO (have attempted… failed)
Twisted stitch patterns
Two end knitting ???

Knitting with alpaca
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Knitting with banana fiber yarn ??? It exists? ???
Knitting with beads
Knitting with camel yarn
Knitting with cashmere
Knitting with cotton
Knitting with dog/cat hair (Inadvertently. *chuckle* I’ve certainly knitted it /into/ things. It’s everywhere…)
Knitting with linen
Knitting with metal wire
Knitting with soy yarn
Knitting with your own handspun yarn
Knitting with someone else’s handspun yarn
Knitting with self-patterning/self-striping/variegating yarn
Knitting with silk (Not 100% silk yet.)
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Knitting with wool

Afghan/Blanket (baby) (I don’t intend to… but it may happen)
Baby items
CardiganCuffs/fingerless mitts/arm warmers
Gloves
Hat
Hair accessories
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cozies…)
Jewelry
Mittens: Cuff-up (two mittens… of two different pairs…)
Mittens: Tip-down
Pillows
Purses/bags
Rug
Shawl
Scarf
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Slippers Socks: top-down (Doing that right now!)
Socks: toe-up
Stuffed toys
Sweater
Toy/doll clothing

Charity knitting (Honestly? I’m not that nice. Or rich. nor do I knit fast enough.)
Graffiti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street)
Knitting art
Knitting for pets
Knitting for preemies (Only if I have one, or know someone who does.)
Knitting items for a wedding
Knitting a gift
Holiday related knitting

Designing knitted garments
Dying with plant colors
Dying yarn
Participating in a KAL
Publishing a knitting book
Knitting to make money
Knitting for a living
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
Knitting on a loom
Machine knitting
Olympic knitting
Teaching a male how to knit
Writing a pattern
Knitting in public

Back in late December or early January, I purchased a beautiful Lamy Safari fountain pen at Pear Tree Pens, extra fine, graphite colored. It comes with a Lamy ink cartridge, but I was not at all pleased with it, so I went over to another pen place and bought some Noodler’s ink in bulletproof black and turquoise, and added a converter to my original pen order.

I loved it so much that just last week, I ordered a second Lamy Safari - in their new, limited edition summer white color, and some more inks. The new pen is shiny white, with a glossy finish instead of the slightly ‘rougher’ matte finish of the graphite black. The point is also shiny silver instead of a sleek black - meaning that filling the pen through the point gets it all inky in an obvious way. And the white pen means that I can’t get away with not bothering to wipe the little rim off when I fill it, either, because it will be icky.

But I do like it. Lots. I bought a fine tip this time, instead of extra fine, and I’m pleased with that, too. It’s only marginally less fine than the extrafine… though beware, I haven’t attempted it with the same bulletproof black ink that I normally use in the other pen. Inks DO matter, as I discovered…

I bought some J. Herbin scented orange ink, which is… erm… watery. Or it was. And it made the pen sort of… scratchy. Now, granted, the ink is fairly light colored to begin with, but I just wasn’t too impressed with it. Maybe it’s just the scented ink. Maybe it’s just that bottle. Maybe it’s the whole brand. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because I didn’t thoroughly clean the pen before I filled it the first time.

Hard to say, but I was so displeased that I cleaned it out and dried it well and filled it with some Private Reserve Chocolat ink.

Which is heavenly. A nice, choclately brown. In a nice big fat bottle with a wide mouth - even better. I must say, I fear filling up from the Noodler’s bottle once it gets about halfway gone, because it’s tall and deep. Um, can we say inky fingers, everyone?

One of my inks this time (from Pear Tree Pens) didn’t show up. There’s a small, illegible notation beside it, and I /think/ it says B.O. - which I think means backordered. But I’m gonna have to call and confirm that.

Though… it /is/ a J. Herbin ink, and I /knew/ I should’ve actually tried my sample before ordering… but this one looks much better than the other. Well, we shall see if it even shows up.

That said, I got another package yesterday. YARN! Yes. I got the yarn I ordered - two lovely skeins of Lorna’s, and a couple skeins of that beloved Karabella Aurora 8 for my SP10 pal. Because heavens, it’s nice wool, and everyone deserves some.

Now I just need to pick up a few extras. *beam*

Moving on. Chick pics! Though they’re really looking more like chickens now! They’re growing up beautifully… except for Lazy Sue, who’s bald. The other chickens must’ve plucked her headfeathers out. She looks a bit like my father… who was not pleased with the comparison. She’s a very lazy girl compared to the others. She’s the only girl I’m 100% positive on regarding breed.

Lazy Sue:

Lily:

Houdini:

Feather:

Suspected roo? This chick looked exactly like 2-3 of the other girls when just a baby, but (s)he’s developed some white feathers when the others have not, and her? comb is much more pink.

Faceshot:

And some misc picks:

I couldn’t get good pics of all of them - busy little creatures, they are!

It’s finished! The scarf is finished, if unblocked.

See? Sorry for the awful photos. There was no sunlight to be had when I was taking the picture. The good news? The off-color mishap is not nearly as visible in natural light, like sunlight, or even in my house. Strangely, it’s most visible in the office under the really bright flourescents. So it’s not such a glaring mistake as I feared. Whew.

My mother and A both assure me that it’s fine. Annoying, maybe, but not so terrible as ‘can’t wear in public’. Hurrah. The blocking, I’ll have to do at later. A likes it all puffy, but while I like it puffy, too, I don’t like how thin it gets when it curls all around itself. Besides, it’ll slowly puff back up the more I scrunch and wear it, I’m sure. So after a stiff blocking, a little wear will probably make for a good happy medium.

Hopefully. we’ll see. Not like it can’t be soaked and ‘unblocked’ if I hate it.

And speaking of blocking… the STOLE IS BLOCKED! And it is good. No pics yet. Mom’s been, erm, ill…. Well, really, she’s been dealing with the unhappy effects of having a colonoscopy. Joys. Nothing like a camera up one’s ass to make for a happy few days. And between that and me wanting to take photos outside in the sunshine, pics have got to wait. Maybe I’ll get to snap some tomorrow or so…

I whipped out a dishcloth in a couple days. My first ‘entrelac’ attempt, though it’s really entrelac in all garter stitch. Not bad. Sloppy knitting. I’m not sure if it’s the yarn, or me, or the entrelac, or what. Anyway, the pattern came from here.

Also, some pics of the potholder I finished a while ago! Here it is prefelted:

And here it is post-felted. I never really blocked it. I think that’s why it’s so, erm, ‘wrinkled’. It could’ve maybe been felted some more, shrunk down to size. As it is, it’s more of a trivet than a potholder. But whatever.

Now, onto pictures from my Spring Fling (at knittyboard) secret pal! First, the first package. Or part of it. There was other stuff involved. Some nifty point protector needleholder things, a toy for the cats, etc. This is just the stuff I could gather up quick for a photo.

Lovely lovely yarn. All earthy. I still don’t know what I want to do with it. I can never decide…

This is package two:

Even more lovely than the first! It included some lovely bath beads (Oh joy, oh joy!), four skeins of yarn!!!, handmade stitch markers (see photos just below), a handmade row counter, some alpaca stickers, an adorable tin, a pin from the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival, a colorcard for Green Mountain Spinnery yarn (never heard of it, but the yarns look yummy!), and a an oh-so-handy needle inventory (also from Green Mountain Spinnery). Sweet!There was so much in this package, I may have forgotten some of it. Hmm.

The yarns included were:

Southwest Trading’s Bamboo. (I have used this before, and LOVE it… and what a bright, cheery color!)
Crystal Palace’s Cotton Chenille (So soft! My pal says it makes nice washcloths. So I’m trying that. Tonight.)
and The Fiber Co’s Terra, in medium indigo. Never heard of this before, either, but it’s merino, baby alpaca, and silk combined. Oh, the love. Two hanks of it. Yay!

I’m in love with this package.

Speaking of… I sent out my first (I know, I’m terribly late on the draw here) package to my Spring Fling pal last… Friday…ish? Something like that. It’s late, but I had to wait for the yarn to arrive from wherever the post office had it. And then I was just busy.

So naturally, my second package will be late, too! Better late than never though, I say. Right? Besides, the round isn’t actually over yet. It’s six weeks long, and we’re only a month into it! I sent a very nice package, too, I think! The first yarn I sent was some Lorna’s Laces sock yarn (strangely, I believe I ordered the exact same or similar color to the stuff I got in a swap last year, that I’d nearly forgotten I had [buried in yarn drawer], and if I’d known… I’d have sent the package earlier and just kept the new stuff for myself to get the package out sooner!), and then I added a ball of wool from my own stash to complete the package. Because everyone needs some nice wool. I didn’t get a photo. Again.

In other things, I’m about to order the yarn for the second package there, and I’ve already ordered yarn for my SP10 secret pal, too! It should be here this week sometime. I hope. I ordered me some yarn too. Some Lorna’s Laces for myself in a colorway I’ve been dying for for reasons beyond my comprehension. It’s not my usual thing. It’s like, BRIGHT yellow and green and blue, and all spring sunshine and grass and sky, and I must be having a hankering for something sunny and cheerful. I think they’d be great socks, though.

Moving on.

I have two cakes of Araucana’s Patagonia Nature Cotton from SP9… and I really wish I had three, because I’d LOVE to make a huge openwork summer shawl out of it. But I just don’t think 210 yards will do the trick. I don’t know though. I don’t even have any idea how I’d go about creating one, let alone knowing if I had enough yarn to do it. Will be looking for patterns…. Any ideas, just let me know.

Gahhh.

So, I may or may not have mentioned in an earlier post that I had to buy another ball of Karabella Aurora 8 to finish Backyard Leaves. Because 4 balls as was stated in the magazine was sooooo not enough. I don’t know what they did to make it work (maybe I just didn’t look at the errata… maybe it was a mistake…) but heck, I didn’t even swatch. Maybe it was my gauge, but really, I’m using the same needles, and my gauge is almost always spot on. And it’s awful hard to tell on a fabric like this one, anyway. No matter, I’m sure my gauge isn’t off /that/ much, in any case, and anyone could have the same problem. 5 balls should’ve been listed. Not four.

Because when I ordered another ball, from the same place, I naturally got a different dye lot. The kicker was that my original 4 balls did not have any color or dye lot stamp on them. The spots for these were blank. So I couldn’t even /attempt/ to match the dye lot, or request that they try to find one. I couldn’t even attempt it on a swap board.

Lame.

My new ball is indeed a different dye lot, in a shade darker and more wine colored than the original, which was slightly more reddish. It’s obvious. It’s at the /end/ of the scarf, the neat end, the nifty two-leaf tail. I’m very unhappy.

The only way to ‘fix’ this would be to maybe rip back a long long way to work every other row with each of the two different balls of yarn. But gegh. I don’t know what that’d turn out like, especially with the border on this scarf. No better, probably. Maybe worse.

Geh. What a disaster.

Oh well. With only 35 shortened rows to go… I can’t just quit. I just wish I’d had the money to order an extra ball in the first place. Usually, I wind up with too much excess yarn. Maybe an entire ball of excess. So I didn’t. And now I’m paying for it. Hoi.

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted a single thing. I’d say that life’s been hectic, and in a way, it has, but it’s more an emotional thing than anything else. I spend the same amount of time on the computer or doing random shit as I always have. I haven’t been caught up in any /activities/, per se. I guess I just haven’t really wanted to acknowledge my own life online. Acknowledge that I haven’t done a thing worthy of talking about in, what, 3 weeks?

I’ve raised chicks to semi-chickens. They’re in the coop now. I will have to get pictures. (And chickens aren’t the only thing I need pictures of. I actually still don’t have a picture up yet of my Spring Fling secret pal package, either…. *begs forgiveness*) They’re growing great. Haven’t lost a one since the initial die-off, though I at times have /lost/ a couple… and had to chase them down and around and all that.

They’re endlessly amusing, if barbaric little monsters. I have a favorite. Her name’s Feather. I lurves her. I have some other favorites, but none as special as her. Except maybe Lazy Sue, who’s bald. I suspect some picking has been going on. Picking her feathers right out of her poor head.

I’ve been knitting in the last few days. The bloody backyard leaves scarf. It’ll be done tomorrow night if it kills me. Well, at least, the /knitting/ part will be done. I have yarn settled onto my pretty swift for Mom’s mother’s day gift. I have yet to wind it into a ball, let alone knit it, and tomorrow is Mother’s day. Hah. Way to go.

I have read… very little.

I have sewed… nothing.

Though, I have gotten some of my garden planted, and the chickens moved to the coop, and I have been working on a very geeky hobby called conlanging, which is… constructing a language. From scratch. Oh yeah, it’s geeky. I love it, though.

I bought some new clothes. Need to take some others back to the store. I have just ordered a second fountain pen and some $30 of new inks. Because… yeah, I totally needed to blow some money.

I don’t know what my issue is these days. A strange bout of apathy. I need to get over it.

This is the first step. Soon, I’m sure, I’ll be on a roll once again.