Kiss My Knits!

All is well.

I am unharmed.

The monstera is benign.

Go back to your homes and await further instructions.

End transmission.

“I am a very nice rock star!
I am a very nice rock star!
I am a very nice rock star!
I love to sing and play my guitar!

Clementine is a very nice rock star!
Because she likes to play her guitar!
Yes, it’s very fun!
Oh I love to sing and play my guitar!

Oh, I am a rock star!
Yes, I know!
YAY!”

Yay! E-mail and server issues have been resolved! Not a moment too soon, either – I had a LOT of people wanting to give me some really FANTSATIC deals on (various men’s products). I would have hated to miss that!

I can put pics on tvini.com again, too, which means that later I’ll be able to make the post I wanted to yesterday. It’s about a giant bizarre fruit from a faraway land – and no, I’m not talking about ! ZING!

ETA: I had to edit this post to remove the name of the product in question, as it apparently triggered a bot to comment with links to even MORE fantsatic deals.

The typo, though, I am keeping.

I still can’t access my new mail without jumping through flaming hoops on my husband’s Linux box. It seems that if you have more than 8000 e-mails in your inbox, that’s a bad thing. Go figure. Also, apparently when I delete messages, they don’t actually delete, they just sit on the server in some kind of e-mail limbo. This is even when I actually log onto the server itself and delete them. So I’ve quit the Freecycle Yahoo group, which would send in 30+ at a time, and also turned off e-mail notification of comments from LJ.

Further, my Mac will not access tvini.com or booboomonkey.com to make changes. So even though I have pictures I’d like to share, I can’t, because I can’t upload them. I’m not using Flickr, I’ve got a perfectly good website of my own and I should be able to use it, darn it!

All in all, a bad computer day thus far.

I didn’t receive any e-mail sent after 6am this morning, and am still having some trouble with this. This means that I didn’t get the note that Emily’s teacher sent until just now.

Today after school, Emily told me, “I got a green! Even though it’s not marked in my planner, I got a green. If you call (teacher), she’ll say that I got a green, not a yellow.” After yesterday’s debacle, I was inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, so we went to Starbucks and tra-la-la’ed along our merry way.

Except that her teacher says she got a yellow.

I don’t know if Emily genuinely thinks that if it’s not otherwise specified in her planner, she got a green, or whether she saw what she could get away with. She didn’t seem like she was faking it.

Le sigh. Time for bed. Tomorrow is another day.

It was difficult for me to visualize brioche from reading about it, so I thought it would be helpful to see it broken down into its components.

pics below the cut.

A few days ago, we had some server issues, namely our server dying a grisly death. My miracle man saved all the content, but I was without the ability to upload pics for a while. But everything’s hunky dorey again, so I can now show you pretty pictures again! yay!

Let’s start with that brioche hat that gave me fits last week. She be done, and now all can marvel! The original and the new, side by side.

The cast-on isn’t as tight, and the Lamb’s Pride Burly Spun has more loft than whatever they were using for the mass-produced original. However, it has the same gauge, same number of ribs, same length (honest!) and feels the same when worn, aside from that super-tight cast-on. Cozy! And I’ve got half a ball of Burly Spun left.

The pattern was this (and I may be mis-writing the extra stitch, because this is already fading from my mind):

On straight #13s, co 49 stitches. I used longtail cast-on.
Row 1: k1, *yo, wyifk2tog*over row.
Row 2: *wyif sl1, k2tog* over row, knit final stitch normally.
Row 3: sl1, *wyif sl1, k2tog* over row.
Repeat rows 2 and 3 until hat is 7 inches long. This only took me 18 rows, including cast-on.

For decreases, the first row was a *sl1, wyib k2tog* and then two rows of *k2tog*. The decreases could probably be improved on since they look a little different than the rest of the hat, but it seems like an acceptable design element. Other decreases in rib looked uneven, to me.

Basically, it’s just a regular ole brioche stitch, where you’re slipping one purlwise, then with the yarn still in front, knitting two together. The only differences were that my cast-on on the first version was too holey, so instead of the usual setup round (which would be co 36, *yo, k1* I launched into the pattern immediately, which made it slightly less airy. Also, since I had to seam it up, I stuck the extra knit/slipped stitch at the end to give me a little more to latch on to.

Many thanks to the members of who were so helpful with their advice. I’m pleased with how this turned out, and hope it’ll keep the guy warm and stylish schussing down the slopes!

Crossposted to and my own journal.

Knit Converse hightops? Oh my God, how can I not make these?!

If you need me, scrape me off the bottom of your shoe, thanks.