This prissy little thing has been sitting on top of our television since last fall, or – gulp – maybe even last summer.

Or maybe it’s just that I have needed to go to the hardware store and get a proper bulb for the lightbox that my boyfriend made for octopus photography purposes, in a rare fit of craftiness one day. Or even just plunk these puppies outside in natural, non-yellowy lighting. Apparently that is more difficult for me than making an octopus or a puff kitty. Ah well, we all have talents and traits, and timeliness is not one of mine.

A blobby thing that could be a bunny or a dog, depending upon which way you want to position the ears. I have deemed it a bunny for taxonomy purposes.

The possibility of another continental jaunt coming up soon has finally moved me to post these critters. And since they have been sitting in inventory for awhile (through no fault of their own, of course), I am selling these for a low low price of $6.50! All are 100% hand made and stitched by yours truly, out of yarn, felt, thread and polyfill. Discriminating buyers will note the lack of “lead” or “salmonella” on that ingredients list. If you need a baby shower gift, a birthday present for a wee tot, a cat toy, a dashboard decoration for a car, something to dangle from the handlebars of your bicycle – etc. – check out these creatures and more at bad metaphor knits!

So I made these for the two little ones:

Baby booties in the sunshine, before delivery.

I think I am starting to get to that age where everyone around me is either having babies or talking about them. I’m still more of a kitten / puppy person myself, I have to say – why no kitten showers or puppy bjorns? Some babies are pretty cute, though, and they are generally a lot more cooperative than their animal counterparts when it comes to wearing knitted gifts!

Quark, looking away from the camera, trying to evade the humiliating fate of being posted on the Internet yet AGAIN, clothed.

Seriously, I have other things going on in my life, but nothing more interesting than the intersection of yarn and furbags. I originally undertook this as an entry to Crazy Aunt Purl’s Cat Sweater Sweepstakes, and actually finished the knitting part in time, but due to laziness and apathy, did not get the thing stitched up, buttoned, and photographed on the cat until well after the deadline. C’est la vie.

In other news, I’m trying the National Novel Writing dealie again. Hopefully this time I’ll be sufficiently entertained enough by my own plot to actually stick with it this year! If you’re curious, bored, and have absolutely nothing better to do (really, sure you’d rather not finish folding your laundry?), feel free to check out my novella, tentatively titled Beyond the Earth and Sea.

“Why hello there good sir, and good evening!”

“Oh, how do you do.”

“Could you point me in the direction of the nearest ocean?”

“You are far from it my friend, you are in a landlocked state”

“Good heavens, I have quite lost my way! Whatever is a fellow to do?”

“Well…you could go that way,”

“…or maybe walk that way,”

“and eventually get to some sort of water.”

“Oh dear, that is a lot of walking indeed! You wouldn’t happen to be heading in that direction, would you my good fellow?”

“Well…”

“…maybe…”

“I’ll have to sleep on it.”

So I decided to knit him one instead:

All the frosting and none of the calories.

As a bonus, this time I actually thought to jot down coherent pattern notes as I was making the thing! (Well, if I posted a picture of what I actually scribbled, it would look like moon-writing to most people. But I understand what I wrote. I think.)

Carrot Cake Pattern – easy, scrumptious, and adaptable to other types of cake as well. Just change the colors!

Ingredients:
2 balls heavy worsted weight yarn – 1 in a frosting-ish color, 1 in a carrot cake color (orange with speckles works nicely to convey the carroty texture).
Size 8 needles
Tapestry needle
Filling – I used a combination of stiff pillow form and soft polyfill.
Some felt for the “marzipan” carrot embellishment (alternately you could knit this too, but I chose not to because I was working against a deadline!)

I assembled the carrot cake thusly:

Anatomy of a carrot cake.

Pardon the crudeness of these drawings.

Instructions for the layer part (note, the bottom layer is knit first):

1. CO 28 sts in cake color.
2. Knit in stockinette (knit first row, purl the next, alternating rows) for 8 rows.
3. Knit 2 rows in frosting color.
4. Knit 6 rows in cake color.
5. Knit 4 rows in frosting color. Bind off, leaving a long tail of yarn.

That was easy enough, right? Now, on to the frosting part:

1. CO 12 sts in frosting color.
2. Knit in stockinette for 20 rows.
3. K2tog, k until last two stitches, k2tog. (10 sts)
4. Knit in stockinette for 3 rows.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you have two stitches left. Knit one more row and bind off, leaving a long tail.
6. Turn the piece around, and making sure the right side is facing you, pick up 12 stitches on the other side.
7. Repeat steps 3 – 5 for this side.

Now, the piping – I did this with i-cord trickery:

1. CO 3 sts in frosting color.
2. Kfb all sts.
3. Knit 4 more rows in i-cord fashion (see knitting help for instructions; scroll down towards the bottom on that page).
4. K2tog all sts.
5. Repeat rows 2-4 until the length of the piping matches the width of the cake. Bind off, leaving a long tail, and sew the piping onto the cake. (Note: the pipettes (or scallops, or whatever you call them) didn’t turn out as emphasized as I’d like them, so I fixed that when I sewed the piece onto the rest of the cake.)

Now you can weave in all your ends, stitch the sucker together partially, and stuff. Then you can sew on a felt carrot (or rosette, or cherry – use your imagination!), and finish seaming the cake. Bon appetit!

Looks good, but do not try to eat this. Um. Just trust me.

Gimme, musing over her new surroundings.

When she arrived yesterday afternoon, she was most displeased with her new surroundings. In particular, she objected to the massive gray lump of fur moving about and attempting to sniff her lady hind (the nerve!)

She’s quickly settled in, however, and seems to be able to tolerate Quark’s presence (in that she’ll only growl at him if he’s within a foot of her). Given my observations of cat behavior, they should be chums in no time. Will post a photo once they can sit next to each other peacefully.

She grew so comfortable with her surroundings that she had little difficulty zoning in on my knitting, and sitting upon it:

Lelah top, blocking and recovering from having been sat upon all night.

I have her in my care until sometime mid-fall, when her owner’s house is finished. Simon is being a good sport about it, aside from constant sniffling and complaining, of course: “why did you have to be a crazy cat person?!” I retorted with the fact that any other animal collecting would, in our current situation, be far worse – I couldn’t exactly fit one dog in the apartment, let alone two or three, and he hates rodents. I won’t even consider the horrific winged creatures some are foolhardy enough to keep as pets.

No indeed, if one is set on apartment living for an extended period of time, cats are the proper choice for crazy animal lovers. Hopefully I can convince Simon of this impeccable reasoning, and hopefully he doesn’t mind too much that I’m leaving him, with both cats, when I go to Portland next week. Tee hee!

This pattern will make the blue octopus posted on that page, which is kind of short and squat and looks like a blueberry. The finished dimensions are something like 3.5″ or 4″ in diameter, I believe (I gifted it before measuring).

Requirements:
Sport weight yarn
Size 6 dpns
Tapestry needle
Polyfill fiber (or the stuffing of your choice)
Embroidery floss / contrasting color yarn for face

Code translation:
Sts = stitches
Kfb = knit into the front and back of each stitch! See Knitting Help under “Bar Increase.” Alternately, if you have trouble doing this, you could substitute this with the ‘M1′ increase.
K2tog = knit two together. Again, you can substitute some of these on the left side of the octopus body with the ‘SSK’ decrease, for a more cleanly knit octopus.
( )* = repeat whatever is inside the parentheses, however many number of times

Body:
CO 6 sts. Place a stitch marker and begin:

1: Kfb all sts. (12 sts)
2: K all sts.
3: Kfb all sts. (24 sts)
4: K all sts.
5: Kfb all sts. (48 sts)
6: K all sts.
7: Kfb one stitch, then knit the next 2 stitches. Repeat till end of the round. (64 sts)

Now just knit straight for two inches and begin the crown shaping.

Crown shaping:
1: (K2tog, k6)* 8 times. (56 sts)
2: K all sts
3: (K2tog, K5)* 8 times. (48 sts)
4: K all sts
5: (K2tog, K4)* 8 times. (40 sts)
6: K all sts
7: (K2tog, K3)* 8 times. (32 sts)
8: K all sts
9: (K2tog, K2)* 8 times. (24 sts)
10: K all sts
11: (K2tog, K1)* 8 times. (16 sts)
12: K all sts
13: K2tog all sts (8 sts).

Break yarn, leaving a long tail at least 5 inches or so. Draw tail end loosely through the remaining 8 stitches. Start stuffing the octopus. Once the octopus begins to fill out a little, use embroidery floss or alternate yarn to begin stitching the face. Once finished, stuff the octopus until it is full, draw the yarn end taught and weave in the ends.

Tentacles:
I-cord is the best way to make these tentacles! See the instructions at knittinghelp.com, towards the bottom of that page. You could also knit them flat and stuff them; you could even make your octopus proper by crocheting sucker cups on the bottoms like this craftster.

Keep in mind that this pattern is very adaptable, and forgiving – if you miss a decrease or so, just do it on the next row! The octopus won’t mind, and neither will the lucky recipient.

Put out of sorts at having been dredged from the sea, in the very midst of tea time, no less!

I made this grumpy dandy octopus for my friend Louise, who is a big fan of grumpy dandies. Since I can’t seem to be bothered to follow a pattern (not even my own!), I made adjustments for the particular yarn and for the size – this octopus turned out a bit bigger (and grumpier) than its octo-brethren.

(p.s. – snuck another template change in there! As always, let me know what you think.)

The Louisa May Alcott yarn is the bottom front one. The gorgeous strawberry and chocolate skein in the back was also part of the gift. The other two skeins are some white silk wool blend, leftover from the knitting of my sister’s gloves.

While I loved these two yarn choices (and still do), the question was, what to do with them? I mulled over the LMA yarn, debating about whether to just do a big chunky scarf or some mittens, until I finally decided that I wanted a kitty hat:

Meow!

I’m mostly pleased with the end result, though I’m not entirely sure that this kittyhat is not ugly. None of the other kittyhats I’ve seen have been made with variegated chunky yarn. I think I’ve settled on it being cute, in kind of an ugly (oogly) sort of way, so naturally, it suits me just fine!

I am, however, at a loss as far as what to do with the other skein. A lacy shawl? Stockings? Any suggestions?

Cabled fingerless gloves for the sis. Since she is a photographer, she needs her fingers free to hit buttons and whatchamacallits on her doodads; this does not mean the rest of her hands should have to freeze.

Pattern: Cabled fingerless gloves, also a Yarn Barn Pattern
Yarn: Wool / silk blend from my favorite LYS, The Yarn Barn
Time to complete: About 2 days, knitting off and on.
Notes: Lovely, well-written pattern. Will have to make a pair for myself, once I become unbroke again and can afford shiny silk blends.

Slipper socks for the brother-in-law. He’s been needing slipper socks for some time, so I thought I’d finally set myself down to making them. Unfortunately I chose colors that he can’t distinguish, being color blind. Doh!

Pattern: Moccasin Socks from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Around
Time to complete: 4 days, again working on and off
Yarn: KnitPicks Swish Superwash in Fired Brick and Truffle
Notes: These didn’t take too terribly long, but I should have started them earlier…I ended up having to wrap one sock with an IOU for its soon-to-be-completed brother. One day after gifting and it was already well-coated in cat hair, as you can see in the photo.

The cursed sweater’s send-off, before its bon voyage across the sea.

Pattern: Leo, from the Fall ’04 Issue of Knitty
Time to complete: Way too fucking long!
Yarn: KnitPicks Swish Superwash in Coast Grey
Notes:
1. I’m not sure if it was the pattern sucking (hey, some finished measurements might help for someone who does not knit at the exact gauge or use the same expensive yarn as the author!), or me being completely spatially challenged and unable to adapt a vague pattern to my specific needs. Likely, an unholy combination of both factors.
2. Yeah, the sweater curse, in this case, more or less held true. Oops!
3. He doesn’t like the neckline. Boo. Well, I think it looks nice on me.

Panda for my roommate, who has a bit of an obsession with the lovable creatures.

Pattern: Of my own devising (yes yes, I will post it when I get a chance to write it out!)
Yarn: KnitPicks Wool of the Andes, in Coal Black and Natural
Time to complete: Approximately one week
Notes: Originally I was going to felt this, which is why I got WoTA in Natural instead of in a white color (yarns that have been dyed white tend not to felt so well due to the chemical treatments). But I was lazy and decided that felting a black and white panda would be far too much hassle than it was worth. And anyway, the recipient was pleased with the unfelted result.

Daisy the hat.

Pattern: Roughly based on Crazy Aunt Purl’s roll-brim hat recipe, though obviously, as you can see, Daisy does not have a rolled brim.
Yarn: The noble Lion Brand Homespun
Time to complete: 4 hours
Notes: I had planned a knitting group meeting a few weeks ago, but had to cancel because Nature decided to rain down icepicks and razorblades dusted in crystalline sugar that day. So, bored out of my mind, I knitted myself a companion for my head. Daisy has been a trustworthy hat ever since, and the best part is, she is machine washable! (My head had heretofore been exposed to the elements uncovered, due to my unfortunate tendency to accidentally felt my wool hats. Luckily, Daisy is machine washable).

Other things I made:
1. Scarf for my dad, which he subsequently turned into an excuse to make rabbi jokes. Good ol’ Dad!
2. Scarf for my stepmom, to which I got so attached, I wore it out to a bar a few nights before I actually relinquished it to her possession. Hee hee.
3. Scarf for Indie Dan, who desperately needed one. I made it kind of long and skinny, to kind of resemble him.
4. Felted cloche for Louise, which is still not yet completed (she’s still working on my Christmas present, so I don’t feel quite as guilty)

It doesn’t seem like all that much, especially comparing to serious knitting blogs (which, of course, this is not), but I do feel I could slow down on the knitting for a bit! Doesn’t mean I will.