Christmas Cat Scarf

Remember how I wanted to make a kitty scarf for my bro in law? Well, I finally found a chart that didn't remind me of road kill

I slightly modified the pattern, as these kitties used to sit over cross bones. I guess I felt like that piratey stuff is kind of played out... I was very very proud of this, as it is my first ever project with two colors!

Like many of the skills in knitting, colorwork seems a lot harder and more intimidating than it actually is in practice. Though, that's not quite true. I should say that colorwork in the style that I used (Intarsia) is not really as hard as it seems.

I got the basic start of the method from this video, once again supplied by the Judy ("knitter to the stars")



The real challenging method to this style of knitting is that you constantly need to be twisting the yarns in certain ways to avoid forming holes in the work. I found this page to be an indispensable resource.

While I'm really proud of how my colorwork came out, there were some other aspects of this project that I wasn't thrilled with. Firstly, my stockinette totally curled like wallpaper. NO matter what I did, I couldn't stop the scarf from rolling into a tube.

This is my fault mostly. I knit with a lot of tension in my string, as you can see from how the cat face pulls and puckers the stitches around it. I read that this happens sometimes to stockinette when you knit too tightly, but I didn't really restrain myself. I kind of like pulling the string taut and snug around the needle, it's satisfying! I read though that if you do a garter stitch along the edge of your flat projects it helps deter it. Good to know for next time I suppose.

I also kind of feel that the quality of the yarn I used may have encouraged the rolling. Not that Vannas Choice isn't wonderful. But I recently started following the blog Presents Knits, and the girl puts up all these gorgeous pictures of these hand-dyed and homespun yarns that are to die for. It really makes me want to branch out a little, go somewhere with a better yarn selection, and pick out something really beautiful and unique.

The other thing to know about Intarsia colorwork, is that it is not reversible.

I tried to weave the back to reduce the risk of it catching on things, but as you can see, it's still pretty messy back here. That's why I think this style would be better for stuff like socks and hats, where the tangley stuff can be hidden. If I wanted to make this baby reversible, I'd have to master a technique that I would place solidly in the expert knitters only category, double stranded double knitting.



I wonder how long 'til I'm brave enough to try this!

Snowball Mice

I made these little mice to give as Christmas presents to Nevaeh and Grace, who are the young daughters of women who work in my office. I made them from this pattern. I think the reason mine look so different from the very very cute gray mouse the original designer made was because I used larger needles. I think this caused their faces to lose a little definition. It's also kind of a no no in stuffed animal making, because it leads to little holes the stuffing can peak out of. But since these guys are white, you can't really tell.

I made the one on the left second, and it definitely came out 500x better than the first one on the right. I got a better feel for the shape of the mouse, and I also really improved at embroidering eyes. The one on the left also could stand up by itself, the one on the right could not. I guess it goes to show that practice does lead to improvement. Its too bad I had to give one of the girls a buddy who wasn't quite as sharp looking. They kind of remind me of Pinky and the Brain.

My favorite part of making these guys was doing the tails. They're called Icords, and are really handy for all sorts of things; zipper pulls, handles for bags, or even the tail spines on a stegosaurus. They're fun to make, because you get to slide your stitches to one end of the double pointed needle and knit them in the same direction over and over again.

Take it away, Judy!

The Night Before Christmas - 1933

Merry Christmas Eve everybody. If you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you're having a nice day too.

Enjoy this cartoon from the good old days, when people put literal candles on their trees then sprayed them with highly flammable fake snow. This one truly captures the enduring creepiness of an old fashioned Santa Claus.

I had never seen this original version of this cartoon before. I had only seen a later repackaging of it, where all the seedy racial humor (3:14 and 7:16) and the puppies (7:35) had been removed. It's weird to know that this stuff was in there, and that I never knew it.



I hope you all have a very fun and festive holiday weekend. :)

Christmas Eve on Sesame St. - 1978

Christmas Eve on Sesame St. is my favorite Christmas special. Growing up, I can't remember a year when we didn't watch it. I've grown kind of emotionally attached to it, as it brings strong memories and feelings of gearing up for the excitement of Christmas time.

The music in this special is excellent. My favorite song is "True Blue Miracle" The song is especially poignant now, since the woman who sings the first solo, Alaina Reed-Amini has passed away from cancer this week. It's a really good song, and she sang it beautifully.



I've always thought that Bob was a really cool guy. He's a pretty famous Irish Tenor, and known as Bobu Magurasu in Japan...

The clip below is for part one. Watch it if you want to see Bert and Ernie have some PDA, A Muppet Pair skating number to the tune of Feliz Navidad, and Oscar the grouch flying through walls like a wrecking ball.

Santa's Land Oddity

So I was reading this great article on the Roadside America website about Santa's Land in Putney VT. This place is right up the road from my Grandma's summer place in Leyden MA, so I visited a few times through my childhood. The story really encompasses the charming weirdness of the place, including the spray-foam Xanadu house, which I always thought was there to make the elves and reindeer feel more like they were in their native arctic climate:
"We walk up the hill to the quiet of Santa's House, and can see red legs through the doorway. Santa sits, motionless. We assume he's a stuffed dummy. Then a truck klaxon echoes through the woods -- the over-the-top horn for the tiny Alpine Train -- and Santa jerks to life.
"Ho ho," he says groggily. "You caught Santa napping." The next words out of his mouth startle us even more than finding him asleep. "You look like prosperous gentlemen. Would you like to buy Santa's Land?""
Fortunately, somebody did buy Santa's Land in 2004, and apparently made a lot of really positive improvements to it. I'm really glad to hear it, as these small, independently owned attractions are as awesome as they are increasingly hard to come by.
The weird thing about this Santa's Land article though, was the discussion of a statue called "The Purple Plum Man".

The first thing that really comes to mind when you see this guy are the letters w, t, and f. He doesn't make any sense at all and looks like he came from a bad 50's space invader movie. The more I looked at this though, the more familiar it seemed. Then I remembered something...

When I went to Santa's Land w/ my bro in the 90's (I'm the nearly obscured head and shoulder by the belt buckle, he's the blondie baby) we posed for pictures with a fairly normal statue of the childhood icon Humpty Dumpty, pre-accident.

So my first reaction was, why in god's name would you paint a regular nursery rhyme character to look like that? It seemed like a really bad choice. But then the plot thickened!

Behold, Purple Plum Man in his native habitat, circa 1985. So. Either between 1985 and 2005 Purple Plum Man was temporarily painted to look like Mr. Dumpty, and eventually that was decided to be a bad call, or Santa's Land, for whatever reason, purchased two Humpty Dumpty statues and had to figure out what to do with the second one.
And the more I look at the pictures, the more the latter seems true. Purple Plum man perches on pot or sack of some kind, while Humpty opts for the more traditional wall. Also, Humpty has a more defined belt buckle.

Why two Humpty statues in the first place? And why try to cover up the truth with this ridiculous Plum man ruse? We may never truly know...

From the Higgins Archives: What's wrong with this picture?

Click to get a larger view. This was in a folder marked "Unknown Event - Unknown Year". First person to shout it out wins a prize!

Old Fashioned Christmas Play

I have this book, I bought at a church sale called "The Complete Christmas Book." It was published in 1958, and is full of recipes, decorating tips, and holiday stories that really belong back in that decade. One chapter in the book is devoted to short Christmas plays. You know, just in case you want to invite a bunch of your friends over and do a little show for them or something. I dunno.

Anyways, one of the plays is basically just a recitation of "The night before Christmas." Except, at the end of each line is a zany, "humorous" substitution that the crowd you're doing this show for is supposed to be prompted to shout out.

The funny thing about this play is that 50% of these joke lines make ancient references to products and slogans that I don't think have existed for 50 years. The other were just bizarre and weird. I put the best quotes below:

"The children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of sugar plums...made them drool on their pillow. And mama in her kerchief and I in my cap had just settled our brains...by visiting a psychologist"

"With what to my wondering eyes should appear but a miniature sleigh...with hydromatic drive. With a little old driver so lively and quick that I knew at a moment it...was the Fuller Brush man"

"And he looked like a peddler...In the (local) grocery emporium. His eyes how they twinkled, his dimples how merry. His cheeks were like roses...But not so expensive!"

"He had a broad face and a round little belly that shook when he laughed...Like a television picture! And I laughed when I saw him...my wool underwear tickled me"