Monkey 2

Getting tired of knitting updates yet? If so, skip this. I knitted a new monkey this weekend:

I had a hard time picking a new project, but finally decided to try a tiny monkey with the same general pattern as the big one. The big one was a lot easier to make, as it turns out. I used size 3 needles for the head, body, legs, arms, and tail and then switched to size 1 for the face, ears and feet. It was a tough time, even with the tiny needles. Like with the big monkey, every stitch made a difference because of the scale. Then I used black seed beads for the eyes, and I had to use a ridiculously thin-eyed bead needle to sew them on. Oh, and I also made one of his feet upside-down, but whatever. I'm trying to let that go.







So far, the monkeys seem to be getting along well:

Monkey

I finally finished the monkey tonight. I used Burly Spun in Mountain Majesty? and Oatmeal, and some Lamb's Pride Bulky in brown for the face. Lucas helped a lot with suggestions about monkey anatomy, including the great idea to double the ears like that. Here are some pictures:

SnowAnimals

Finished rabbit on May 1st, but realized yesterday I forgot to add a tail:





Finished snow "wolf" yesterday. He doesn't look exactly like a wolf, though -- maybe he's some kind of dog mix.

I would like to set these things up with good lighting and take better pictures of them -- some of the knitting blogs have great pictures. Nevertheless, here are PhotoBooth pictures of the wolf:







He finally came together when I put his nose on:



I'm not sure what my next move will be. I used up every last bit of that great yarn on the wolf, but I have bulkier snow-colored yarn.

Older Knitting

April 5
I made a bunch of Easter eggs, and then I realized that if I didn't finish an egg but made a couple more sections instead, maybe I could make a bug. Originally I thought it would be a Cootie, like in the game. So I made this:







Now, I'm not quite sure it's done. Lucas thinks the back legs are a little anatomically strange and should be moved to the middle section. I'm inclined to agree, but then how would the bug drag its giant end around? He thinks that having all the legs together would make it more closely resemble the structure of a real ant, which is what he thinks it most likely is. However, I think his view of knitted bugs might be overly scientific.

The other question is whether to make wings. This would make the bug not an ant, but something else. I mean, there are flying ants, but I don't think I want it to be a flying ant, because those are kind of gross. But wings are cool, and it would probably be fun to knit some wings if I could find the right yarn.

What do you think about the leg placement and wings/no wings?

P.S. This is going off the deep end a bit, but here's another example of the egg pattern's usefulness. I made a hat for my egg timer:




April 17
Bug #2 -- Lucas made the legs. I'm not sure this one is done. He probably needs a face, but I'm not sure how I'm going to do that. The face makes a huge difference in the creature's character.





I have another bug body made, but I'm not sure what I want to do about the legs for that one.

Today I finished a bird. Shannon sent the link to this pattern:
http://berroco.com/exclusives/bluebird/bluebird.html

I think that bird is so cute, so I tried it, but the pattern confused me. So last night while we were watching the new Bond movie I just tried to freeform it, purposely not looking at the picture again. I used the good old Easter Egg pattern and then modified as I went along. I think the beak on mine is too long, making him look like a duck. I also put the tail on sideways. But I like him anyway:

Knitting Update

I really don't like being in between knitting projects. I mean, it's nice to finish things, but then there's a slow period when I try to decide what to do next. I still have a bug body without legs and an elephant without a head, so I guess I wasn't exactly in between projects this time -- I just wasn't inspired to work on anything. But the Red Sox were playing the Yankees last night, and I wanted something to knit during the game. I mentioned this to Lucas and he suggested an abominable snowman. (He had been playing baseball all day in the ridiculous heat.) It turned out to be a great project, although like all Yeti, he was difficult to photograph.

Yet another flavor of human weakness...

Let's not worry too much about how I ended up watching WHEEL OF FORTUNE in a Japanese bar with a couple co-workers on a Friday evening. That's not the point. Instead, let us consider this scenario:

Woman #1 spins the wheel and lands on the improbable $1 million wedge. Then she solves the puzzle. But she still has to win the whole game before she can claim the million dollar prize. How would you signal to your competitors that you'll split the million if they let you win?

As a casual and infrequent viewer of this show, I don't have total confidence in this guess, but I think on a good night a contestant might walk away with $20-30,000. It probably shouldn't cost much more than that to buy off your competitors. A million dollars is a big pie to split three ways. A generous person might pay out as much as $100,000 to her competitors. And only a ridiculous greedhead would demand more.

But no, our hapless hero botched her plays later in the game and ended up losing to Woman #2 in a close contest. Woman #2, oblivious to her devastated neighbor, celebrated her $20,000 prize by clapping and jumping. It was a sad spectacle that left me in an abstract state of despair. I haven't quite worked it out yet, but I'm convinced this episode illustrates some deep flaw of human behavior. And Woman #2 deserves to be ostracized from humanity.

And we're all doomed.

Shouldn't it be obvious that the million dollar prize is a game-changer? With a little collusion, the contestants can guarantee themselves a big prize. Otherwise they're competing for the chance at a much smaller one. This should have been worked out in the green room before they even started.

It's kind of like chopping the pot in poker, but not exactly.

National Novel Writing Month

We've both had bad colds, but we're doing okay with NaNoWriMo. Here's my word count widget: