Tense
My grafting has a tendency to be too tight. What can I say. The world is stressful. Perhaps it's making me tense. The way I fix it is to do my graft very very very loosely. Then, start at the first end of the graft, and tease the extra yarn along toward the final end of the graft. It only takes a moment, and it's much much much easier to take up the slack than to try and work the perfect amount of yarn back down the graft if you work it too tightly.
Done…probably
I think...think I shall call it done with these three. One is level and doesn't have anything in it to give it structure (yet is still surprisingly sturdy). One is level with shallower sides and does have something (in this case, the lid off a cat treat container, for we are nothing if not fancy) to keep it stiff. And one has swoopy sides just because I could and have insufficient restraint to keep myself from doing it. I'm picking testers later this morning (testing thread is up over here), and with any luck, will have this out late this [...]
Round, very very round
Oh, oh this is so satisfyingly ROUND. Just deeply round. And smooth. And just very very soothing. I have so far resisted the urge to pet it incessantly, but that's mostly because it still needs proper pictures, and I'm not allowed to manhandle the knits until after photos. But please know, it is requiring an uncharacteristic degree of restraint.
Assumptions
So let's just take as a given that occaaaaaasionally a person is going to find themselves knitting an urchin. These things happen. And if we start from that assumption, then perhaps it's more understandable that you might find yourself in a situation where you've made a few modifications to an urchin pattern. And then swung by the plant store. And then gotten the most absurd coffee drink you can possibly manage. And then put those all together to make...um...a choice. Yeah. Yeah I've made several choices here. I regret none of them. The urchin pattern is Oddities, and it's out [...]
Oddities
Oddities is out, you can find it on ravelry and payhip, and you can use the code TIDEPOOL for 15% off for the first couple of days it's out (or, folks on the Rampant Nonsense level on patreon get it for free as part of their membership). Look, this was all but inevitable. How many times have I gotten half way through a hat crown and said 'huh, this looks like a sea urchin.' That can only happen so many times before you just give in and decide 'ok, I shall knit a sea urchin.' Or a whole pile [...]
Shapely
These...these do not look right when you are done with the knitting. They don't. They really really really don't. You have to do some stuff to get them stuffed and shaped. Bonus points, the process will give you a chance to say 'cleft' a whole bunch of times. Check out this set of videos over on instagram if you want to see what this looks like as you're working on it!
Monthly reminder
Monthly reminder, abortions are good, and everyone should have access to them! Alas, in the US, a lot of us don't. Iowa's 6 week ban just went into effect, making it the 18th state with a total or near total ban (AL, AR, FL, GA, IA, ID, IN, KY, LA, MO, MS, ND, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, WV). That means more than 1/3 of the US population can't get vital medical care in their home state. Here's what that looks like (from the interactive map on Guttmacher): For more about the ban, see this post on instagram or this [...]
We have a winner!
We have a winner! As part of the (now concluded) return of the retired patterns, I asked you folks which patterns I should bring back and add to the year round collection. This is most decidedly not carefully designed or rigorous poll. It is very much a 'hey, I chucked the question up in a couple places, and here's what folks said.' But this is for sure one of the things we can just let run on vibes. And the vibes say we need these buddies back. Which means I shall shortly: 1) go root about in the bin [...]
More reasonable
Ok, so we started with six, but that really was too many to pick from (most places don't let me do a poll with six choices). So I thought a bit about what would be involved in bringing each of them back, and looked at what the general trend in the comments on patreon and ig was, and narrowed it down to three. We've got Concoction (bottles), Peached (apple & peach), and Nestled (leaf babies). I want to bring one of those three back. They'd all need new photos, but not much in the way of reknitting (so they're all [...]
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