March 26, 2004
Konichiwa, Y'all!*
When my brain is fried, and nothing exciting is going on in the world of TMK and Ryan (which I suspect is a consequence of its being Tax Time, which leaves me either catatonic with anxiety, or flapping my hands in the air in desperation, and with no room in my head for knitting or writing ideas), I thank God for Kooky Krafts. Here is a new web page I found recently which shows knitted (maybe crocheted?) food. It’s a Japanese site but, trust me, no explanations are necessary.
After careful inspection of the page, I noticed that almost everything is designed to perform a dual purpose, be fiber “art” and something else. For example, the bonbons are also pincushions, the cup of hot chocolate/coffee is a pincushion and a trinket box, and some of the pieces of the hamburger can be used as coasters—which leads me to a pop quiz: What is the secondary purpose of the “cookie?” I’ve figured it out; can you?
Since I don’t speak a word of Japanese but was utterly compelled to explore this site further, I just clicked around like a madwoman until I stumbled across another series of pages with more knitted items. When you have the time, these (picture-heavy) pages are very much worth exploring, whether ye be a knitter or no.
On this page, take a gander at the knitted shrimp tempura, i-cord noodles, the fried-egg-on-toast coin purse and the just-plain-ol’-fried-egg coin purse.
On this page, don’t miss what looks like a “snack plate” that has some lettuce, a fried egg, one strawberry, a slice of lemon, a piece of dry toast and, inexplicably, a small but whole bright red squid. Yummmmm.
I understand that the first picture on this page is of knitted sushi, but can anyone shed some light on the amorphous “pile o’ pink” in the lower right-hand corner of the picture? (Then again, as a confirmed sushiphobic, perhaps I don’t want to know…)
The chocolate chip cookie that looks like dog poop in the next picture on the same page is a wee bit unfortunate, but don’t miss the knitted pot stickers (complete with crispy, “browned” surfaces), yarn noodles, satsuma (complete with white stringy bits; my fave objet of all) and knitted ice cream!
On this page, we have a sweater with an intarsia window motif, including three-dimensional knitted lace curtains, and a Fair Isle sweater run amok.
Some pretty lacework and unique colorwork on this page and this page.
About half-way down this page, see the scarf with mittens attached. And on this page see the scarf with socks attached!
On this page, can anyone 'splain to me the little blue dog (cat? mouse?) that is sporting a hatching egg on its head?
And lastly, some interesting felted bags and flowers on this page.
*"Hello, Y'all!"
Knitting Knews
Dear Reader Janine has been very patiently helping me dip my toe into the world of two-color, two-handed knitting (not Fair Isle, mind, just two colors, red and cream to be exact). This week I tackled a two-handed, two-color, steeked swatch of a Norwegian snowflake motif on a 16" circular needle. And where is the picture of it? Weeeeell...it's been frogged, thanks to my hyper-perfectionist tendencies which made me frog a frickin' swatch when I found a mistake. See, I started tinking it, and then the tinking got away from me and stitches started flying everywhere, so I started to frog it Just To Row X, and then the frogging got away from me, and stitches started flying everywhere, and three rows past Row X, I finally said (expletive deleted) and just ripped the whole thing off the needles. (Yup, TMK. That thing I was working on on Tuesday? Gone.)
So instead, I've been plinking along on a new sock, my knitting equivalent of comfort food, the "macaroni and cheese" of knitting. When I started this sock I had to ask, what do you when the yarn you're using is (a) insanely bright, (b) variegated, and (c) possibly self-striping so any complicated patterning is out of the question, yet the thought of doing the entire thing in stockinette makes your eyes roll back in your head? You add a little lace insert, is what.
(The Details: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn, "Child's Play" colorway, 72 stitches on size 1 dpns, lace pattern from "365 Knitting Stitches a Year Perpetual Calendar.")
