other people take great pictures

1. layers of earth, 2. 2005 01_07 15, 3. Totorowhite2, 4. Untitled, 5. DSC04758.JPG, 6. Lola, 7. Dragonfruit aka Pitaya, 8. It's contagious, 9. Reef detail3, 10. My girl., 11. Hålet. Hjärnan. (Virkat.), 12. King Kong (the cute version), 13. Shower Art that Looks like a cupcake, 14. Midnight - Roars, 15. Medusa: a study in sculptural crochet in a scientific context, 16. the sweetest nose

This is my submission for No-cost Swap: Flickr Faves Mosaic. As you can see I really like rats.
These images are all directly from my favorites. I simply reordered them for variety. Enjoy!

boy am I behind

I never think about his until I am no where near a way to update.
This month has been very busy. I had excellent sales from etsy, which is pretty good since I only have small items. Now that I'm past my December rush, I can focus on making other things which are fun. I want to make stuffed birds. My stuffed crochet animals are mostly only creepy looking. We'll see if that can change. My bunnies were so absurd that I labeled them zombies. I once sold a fairly ugly frog with button eyes. He was square. I guess if I made him nicer, I could sell more. He didn't have to be ugly, but the yarn was just disappointing.
I got my new spindle in the mail and spun up a little bit of yarn. I have to get on that fast because I have people I want to give it to soon. In fact, I wanted to give it to them in the past. Past due.
I found my crochet hooks! This made fulfilling my etsy orders much easier. I had listed some puppets I couldn't find from moving, but I won't specify which ones. I was surviving with an H, but didn't want to send out some of my products. Luckily, I found the rest and got to remake my dissapointments before shipping.
I have some new designs that are almost ready to go up. The unicorn was waiting for me to find the hooks, so it can be realised along with its breathren. This will not be the last.
I'm almost finished scribing some patterns. I have several finger puppets, and a sweater or two. Ravelry is pretty interesting. I'm not terribly into it yet, but I don't follow patterns that often. You won't find me making Clapotis, even though I have alpaca just for a scarf, or knitting Fetching, even though fingerless gloves are useful. When it comes time to use up my yarns, I'm just going to make things on the fly, like I usually do, and maybe write the directions down.
Knitty is a pretty impressive phenomenon. All these people are contributing patterns, which are destined to be available for free, and they are wildly popular. Ravelry makes this even more interesting. People have access to excellent patterns for free. Then you can go to Ravelry and see how many people report making it.
I pledged to do a handmade holiday this year. I'm number 6185. This way I got to shop tons on etsy and every time a package arrived, it was like Christmas.

Revien de la France

La droguerie 

I got to visit this store on Saturday and it was really crowded. I waited in line and took my turn. Looking at all the yarn on the wall had me wondering, just how popular is knitting in Paris? There were really only a few types of yarn to choose from. Plain wool, alpaca, cashmere, and bamboo lined the first section of wall. The second section held cotton, linen and a linen blend. Basically all the yarns were basic, standard solids. There was nothing I could categorize as novelty or art. While those are not the standards by which I base my yarn purchases, it was a little strange not to even see variegated yarn. The closest was three-ply bamboo which plied 3 colors together. Most of the yarn was DK to Aran weight. Across from the basic wool was a bulky wool. If you were seeking variety of color, you were set, If you needed variety of guage or texture, you only had so many options.

My french is pretty terbble in terms of understanding when people talk to me. I can read for myself, and produce functional sentences, but listening is a real challenge. And since I never talk about knitting in English, I didn't have anything as far as French knitting vocabulary to work with. I also never buy yarn with a plan or pattern. So when it was my turn, I had to make up a plan on the fly. Apparently, my celery colored alpaca yarn is going to be a lace scarf. This it probably the only way I would ever make myself a nice scarf, so so be it.

It's strange to buy yarn the same way you buy cheese. Both are great when you get them, though.