Needles on fire

My mom brought an entire suitcase of stuff for me. Here's all the cool stuff I got:

KNITTING STUFF:		OTHER STUFF:
Several sizes of bryspun needles		Boxes of Rice-a-roni
An addi turbo for when I finally make my sweater		Cheddar and Parmesan Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers
E-Z bobs (donut-shaped bobbins) in medium and large		2 boxes of Cheerios with free Shrek watches inside So stylish!
Yellow Italian agora I bought a billion years ago		Cans of clam chowder. Don't say eww gross! This is actually pretty good.
Blue angora that I think I might not even like that I bought at a sale		Really good peanuts for my boyfriend
Pink angora that is the same as the blue but I like the color better.		Oyster crackers. Yummm.
The summer Interweave Knits		Chopsticks in cool colors
The new issue of Piecework.
I'm sure I'm fogetting stuff.

Off to the Bon Marche to buy some yarn to go with my new needles (and replace the skein of yarn I still can't find dammit!)

I frogged Joseph down to the mistake and redid it and I am much happier with the look of the 2 colors now. I just have to block it and the other hats I made recently. I'm not always happy with hats that I block flat (and sometimes I don't bother with the blocking), so I have decided to try something new. I'm going to block my hats on balloons! ...and you thought they were only there for the party. I figure they're roundish and you can make them any size you like! What's better than that?! We'll see if it works. Maybe my hats will end up smelling like rubber... I'll give you an update.

In other news:
I still can't find my missing yarn and I'm getting more aggravated by the day.

My mom arrives tomorrow with lots of good knitting related stuff and comfort food. I think part of my North American stash is even moving in with me!

I have been pretty productive today. I wrote up 2 patterns that I had no intention of writing this morning, but I did them and they just need to be test knit. So I figured I would give one a whack before asking someone else to do it. (I stlil can't find that stupid yarn for Tanguy and Anouk, so I won't be starting those any day soon) Plus, I was looking for an excuse to not do the dishes, so I was sitting here knitting Joseph, feeling pretty proud of myself before I noticed that I had somehow screwed up a really simple pattern. oh well.


I've really got to knit something by someone else. I swear, I will get my act together soon and find my yarn and start my frickin bucket hat. Or my other uptown boot sock from the winter IWK. I should do that but... I really want to start something BIG! Like a sweater or a shawl or something like that. I'm open to suggestions... lemme hear from ya. I've got yarn I have been saving for way too long. I should make something with it. I'll post a picture of some of my saved yarn later.

It's been kind of a bad knitting day. I can't find some of the yarn I want to use for Tanguy. I spent all day writing up and knitting a bunny and I hate him. He's not at all what I had intended. He looks like Bunny's misshapen, dorky, older brother. Grrrrr.

I'll give lots of yarn to the first person who comes over and organizes my house for me! It is only about a week of work. Or just a couple days if you don't sleep much. Bring a dumpster and a shovel with you.

Add that I will probably be the sole bread-winner soon and you have a grumpy girl.

I was lurking in the Knitter's Review forums and came across a post about a video that is on MTV know that is done with lots of yarn and knitting. YOU MUST GO LOOK NOW! It was done by Michel Gondry, who did loads of Bjork videos and that White Stripes video all in legos.

In other news: Ursule is done. Now for Tanguy...



Thanks to all of you who have written me for Say say my playmate!

Ursule is pretty much done. I just need to block and embroider it.



I knit it in Rowan Cotton Glace, which was nice. It kind of feels like it has a coating on it so I am looking forward to seeing what it feels like after blocking. I tried a different colorway from the original. I think I prefer the original, but my choice was pretty limited the other day. A lot of the colors were really drab (and oh! the color on the top is more dimetap purple than gray) and I had trouble finding a few that I really liked together. I think I am going to embroider in apple green and that will make the other colors pop. Unless you guys have a better idea.

That's my baby, Tom, by the way. She came all dressed in pink in a box marked, "this is your pretty baby doll, Tom" So, Tom she stayed. Poor Tom sits around naked most of the time except when I try a hat on her and I only do that when my friends and their babies aren't around. I'll have to make her some clothes one of these days. I'll put another picture up another day so you can see her weight lifter arms and shoulders. You don't wanna mess with this baby!

A woman I know asked me for 3 hats. I got one done today.



I knit it in Rowan Calmer which is super duper soft, but it bugged me a little when it kept splitting in two. I knit it on my casein needles which I love. I was sitting outside knitting and this weird guy came up and started bugging me (and not because he was terribly interested in knitting) so I left in a rush and was walking with my knitting in hand. Someone walked into me (or I walked into him... or maybe we walked into eachother) and I was afraid I had hurt him with the needles, but he kept walking so I didn't even get to say I was sorry (which I normally would have). I'm glad I didn't stab someone, but unfortunately this collision caused one of the needles to shatter into about a million pieces. Luckily I somehow had extra casein needles of this size, so it's not really a big deal and as much as I like casein needles, you can't expect them to last forever, especially when you carry them all over town and knit in the metro.

On another topic:
I give English classes to a little girl who loves those songs like "Miss Suzie had a steamboat..." and "Cici my playmate..." But I can only remember the Miss Suzie song with the hidden bad words and I'm not going to teach her that! Do any of you remember any of those things? I can't even remember the Cici song except for the version where she gets knocked up. Help! I need clean ones so I don't get fired.

We were laying around in the Bois de Vincennes chatting with my knitting pal Isabelle today (actually it was yesterday, but I haven't gone to bed yet so I am pretending it's still the weekend) and my boyfriend was saying that I knit so much and so fast yesterday that my needles were smoking. I said, "Yeah. My needles were on fire!" and I realized that that was a much better name for my blog, so:

Welcome to Needles on fire!

This is the grand re-opening of my blog, so come in, sit down, grab a cup of tea or hot chocolate or a glass of nice red wine, and join the knitting chatter!

Got my submission in for the next knitty. My hand is cramped from testing what I had written all day long. No energy to knit today. It's finally beautiful out even if it's a bit cool, so I think I am going to go wander around the city or go lay down in a park. I'll just leave you with a picture I took in Père Lachaise cemetary a long time ago. It's where Jim Morrison is buried (though I have never looked for his grave) as well as Oscar Wilde, Chopin and lots of famous French people like Édith Piaf and Collette. It's a nice place to walk around.

I still need to decide on the colors for Anouk.
I haven't had time to even swatch my bucket hat.
The sweater I have been meaning to design for 4 years is still undesigned.
I haven't even cast on for my second Uptown boot sock.

I have to go to work, so no knitting will get done today. I'll try to swatch on the metro, but I'm not optimistic.

I am on the other hand working on something for the next knitty. I'm just hoping I can get it done in time!

All of the cereals in France are either covered with chocolate or "honey". I grew up in a household where sugary cereals were forbidden, so now I am having a lot of problems finding something nice and crunchy and fairly bland to eat in the morning. I brought back a box of cheerios the last time I went to the states and had been hoarding the last few magical little Os that were quickly getting stale. Normally a picture like the one above would make me really bummed, but now I don't have to be! Kim, an awesome, blogless knitter from Oregon brought me this:



It is officially the world's biggest box of cheerios! Isn't that cool? Now I might even be generous enough to share them with my boyfriend (I can't stand watching him ruin perfectly good cheerios by putting ovaltine in the milk-if he wants chocolate cereal, he can buy chocolate cereal) I decided I would crack them open and have the world's biggest bowl of cheerios and I did... except my milk had sucked up the smell of the world's smelliest goat cheese so I couldn't get down more than a couple spoonfuls. Looks like it's me who ruined the cheerios today. oh well.

This morning I was sitting on the metro across from a woman who must have been Dr. Ruth Westheimer's long lost younger sister. I swear! She was tiny and had the same hair and everything. The metro wasn't moving so she kept looking at her watch and saying, "ça fait chier!... chier!!! merde!!!... c'est pas vrai!... chier!" I just kept imagining Dr. Ruth sitting in the metro swearing and couldn't help myself from smiling.

Maybe you had to be there...
Or maybe some of you also see celebrity look-alikes walking around.