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I've been doing a lot of pattern-writing lately, because it doesn't feel quite right to me to be knitting from another person's pattern. It doesn't quite feel like my own work. Beyond this though, it's just so exciting to me to create my own patterns, solve the problems I encounter, and end up with something unique.

That being said, sometimes I run across a pattern that I just sort of fall in love with, and last week I decided to knit one of them.

CRAZY KIWI!!!!!!!!

I found this pattern a few months ago on Ravelry and saved it in my favorites. After finishing the Gravitational Lensing Mittens, I decided to take a break and knit something quick and, more importantly, cute!

Knitting the kiwi-bird was really fun! It was simple, though I did do some learning about short rows for the neck, and on size six needles it went quite quickly. In two days a tweedy kiwi had popped right out of my hands! Obviously, I named him Tweedwi.

In truth, two days was just too fast for me. I decided to knit a friend for Tweedwi. I used some old wool from my Ireland sweater as well as some of the last of the first wool yarn I ever bought years ago. I rounded off the beak and feet with the birthday cotton I got at my birthday party last fall. I wanted to stripe him every-other round with cream Donegal tweed and the light brown first-wool-yarn. But the cream yarn was a very small ball - I probably wouldn't have had enough to knit a whole kiwi.

So I made things more difficult for myself and charted out a color-transition into the dark brown Donegal tweed to round him out. I must confess, Tweedwi's Friend is a little bit cuter than Tweedwi himself...

They're both very sweet. : )

love, Jimmy

Spun out

Happy new year, everyone! I'll start off with that.

Last night, I was at Noel's house with Justin and Meridel, and we rosed, budded, and thorned a reflection of 2009.

Last year included so many brilliant, beautiful, and happy things, and also a lot of horrible things. But then I suppose the point of rose-bud-thorn is that, like Meridel said last night, the thorns end up sometimes changing their mind and turning roses for the next year. They are places to look for buds in.

I spent New Year's with my sister and her friends Erica and Jenny. There was talk early in the evening (that is, Carrie Paulette, around 9:30 PM) of going to a masquerade ball. This didn't end up panning out, but Erica did have the supplies to make polymer-clay masks! That was an unexpected and unfamiliar project for me. The mask I made ended up being a little too brittle to be practical, but then it was the first time I'd used polymer clay in years, and never had I tried to make something wearable out of it before.



I finished spinning my first ball of yarn! On December 27th, I worked hard to finish first the spinning and then the plying of the whole batch of roving. Plying means spinning two already-spun yarns together to make a thicker, stronger yarn. You ply the yarns with an opposite twist to the twist with which you spin the two component yarns, so the two twist directions neutralize each other and give you a yarn that doesn't crazily curl!

Once I'd plied my yarn, I needed to wind it on the back of a chair, measure it, and tie the skein. Then, I washed the skein in just a tiny bit of detergent and water, which set the twist of the yarn so that it wouldn't unravel when I released the tension on it.

Then, Momo, Dad, and I left to Kansas while my yarn dried. I returned on December 31 at 5AM and wound this ball. Yay!!! I'm pleased and super excited to try knitting with it! Right now, I'm thinking about doing a hat with it.

In other knitting news, the other day Laura modeled the leg-warmers I'd knitting for her so that I could awkwardly take pictures of her wearing them. I inserted these into the pattern I'd written, and then I posted it.

Once I'd uploaded the pattern, I submitted it officially to Ravelry, and so now the pattern shows up on my Ravelry profile as one of my "featured designs." This is really exciting for me! I'd really like to continue writing patterns and hopefully doing something that somebody will enjoy.



During 2008, my big project was Picture of the Day. I took pictures each day of anything significant, and at the end of each day I chose one picture to represent the day. I had artistic pictures, goofy pictures, and pictures of things significant that had happened. Anyway, I put these all together in a folder and labled it the Pictures of the Days. In 2009 I didn't do this anymore and took correspondingly less pictures. But since January 1st, 2008 my camera is basically perpetually in my pocket.

I missed Picture of the Day last year. So this year, I'm starting it up again. Here's my Picture of the Day for January 1st, 2010:


It's Noel doing the dance from Bride and Prejudice. YAY!!!!

love, Jimmy