21
Mar
2012
0

winner & a rant

time to play god again and reveal the new owner of my birthday giveaway prize. to all of you gasping in horror how i can let go of such a beauty, i say, well… i’m guess i’m just cool like that. you might wanna start making friends with me right about now.

according to an all-knowing, all-singing and all-dancing random number generator, the lucky winner is…

papayamaya, with her comment number 6!

congrats sister! i’ve sent you a message with more info.

thanks to everyone for the good wishes. here’s to another year of obsessive hoarding, failed (and occasionally successful) knitting projects and, most important of all, reporting about said activities in the form of long, incohesive, psychotic rants! chi-ching!

speaking of psychotic rants… i’m currently stuck in some kind of a knitting limbo. it’s something that inevitably happens whenever i fail to program my knittings into a smooth schedule that glides effortlessly from one project to the next. such overlapping range of simultaneous knits is vital for my well-being because it ensures i always have something to do. if i get bored with one thing, i’ll toss it aside and knit something else for a while. and when that one thing gets finished, there’s another thing already waiting in line.

but such an ingenious plan is statistically doomed to fail every once in a while.

first i made cutesy. as soon as that was done i moved on to gyllis. at the same time i was making both bedford and twenty-ten. once gyllis was done i made wurm and two ruffle necklaces, and then went back to finish bedford. while bedford was blocking i picked up twenty-ten and got that done in a couple of days (photos to come at some point). but after that…

nothing.

there was no semi-finished project waiting, because, being a crazy person and thus unhealthily obsessed with my (supposedly) messy raglan increases, i had frogged my otherwise well-off still light a little earlier. so there was nothing to glide effortlessly to. i had no idea what to do with myself, so in terror i picked up a skein of heritage silk and began frantically knitting a sock, fully realizing it would be a mere comfort project until i managed to find a proper one, but not realizing what a mo**erf***ing pain in the poohole that yarn is. (feel free to disagree, but i’m never, ever, EVER making socks with that yarn again. slippery son of a bitch.) so the skein flew out the window and my fragile sanity went even fragilerer.

and now i can’t seem to knit anything, because the knitting part of my brain is in complete lockdown state to keep all further unpleasantries away.

so i’m watching hour after hour of air crash investigation instead. normally i would knit something at the same time, which sort of softens down the horror, but now i just stare blankly at the broken-off tail fins, flaming fuselages and weeping mothers, whose kids weren’t even supposed to be on that flight.

bob, please come back.

16
Mar
2012
0

birthday giveaway

greetings from planet barf. the stinky place between bed and bathroom where strange stuff just keeps coming up. hence no knitting here lately. remember to wash your hands, people.

now that the gross part is done.

this blog was rather immaculately conceived exactly one year ago. a lot of completely irrelevant and boring stuff has been said. stuff that only vaguely relates to knitting. and stuff that does relate to knitting but in a fashion that i hardly imagined would interest anyone. but apparently i have some surprisingly magnetic tractor beam-like qualities which forces some of you oddballs to keep coming back. for which i both apologize and skip around triumphantly.

so to celebrate your loyalty and persistence as well as my own, i’m throwing a sequel to my christmas giveaway!

the grand prize is…

this once-in-a-lifetime baby from the finnish fibre artist ilu, who dyes her unique colorways in tiny batches at her studio in pukkila. they’re virtually impossible to get both outside finland and in, as the batches usually sell out before you even realize the shop’s been updated. you may begin gasping in awe now.

the yarn is a fingering weight 100% merino, running a full 400 meters per 100 gram hank, in a gorgeous shade called “matkustaa” that mixes lovely fresh mints and greens with subtle greys. a perfect reminder that spring is coming – and perfect for any one-skein project you might have.

do i even need to remind you that you probably won’t find this yarn, in this colorway, anywhere, ever?

all you have to do is leave a comment, preferably one that makes some sense, by 11am (CET) tuesday, march 20. the winner will be randomly selected and notified the next day. that’s it!

good luck and may indeed the luckiest bastard win!

oh, and check out the new brooklyn tweed collection. i already got me the winter seasons kit. because i need to finally fondle the loft yarn in person. despite the $13 shipping charge. jared and his f***ing flagship stores.

3
Mar
2012
0

i’m not dead

jesus. it’s been two weeks already?

i’m alive and working and abiding by the holiest of guidelines when it comes to parlance, which roughly goes that if one doesn’t have anything remotely interesting to say one should save everyone the trouble and shut the fuck up (and stop referring to oneself as ‘one’). in effect…i’m a dude…who abides.

so here’s me not stooping down to pointless smokescreen jabber and empty sentences of the fancy long-winding sort, which some other asshole out there might well do just to fool you into thinking that some extremely relevant and immensely wise content is, in fact, being said, when all the while it is clear for anyone to see it’s all a lazy attempt to hide the subject’s inherent lack of substance as well as any kind of respect towards the intelligence of his/her readers and therefore, vicariously, the entire human race.

that’s just not me.

instead, i’m presenting you with some distressing evidence of my recent hoarding.

i’m gonna go grow an ironic moustache now or something.

17
Feb
2012
0

friday is the cruelest day

bob: get a hold of yourself, woman.

liisa: whatever do you mean?

bob: i know it’s friday and all, but sheesh.

liisa: i haven’t done anything.

bob: really?

liisa: really.

bob: haven’t done anything?

liisa: uh-huh.

bob: so what you’re saying is you didn’t set the alarm for the 9am wollmeise update, race through the stock list like a rabid dog and get three 100% superwash colorways, only one of which being a colorway you ever  intended on purchasing in the first place, and none of which you actually need or have any plans for?

liisa: well…yeah.

bob: and i suppose you didn’t stalk the 4pm handu update either, right?

liisa: obviously.

bob: you do realize i can see everything? and by that i mean i know you’re lying?

liisa: umm… uh..

bob: what a sad, lonely, obsessive little person you are.

liisa: well look here now–

bob: just because it’s friday and the supply is there doesn’t mean you need to go out and buy everything you can get hold of.

liisa: but i really really want to.

bob: well sure, because you’re such a hysteric hoarder. and easily fooled by group mentality. but it’s not like the world’s gonna run out of yarn, you know.

liisa: i’m terribly afraid it does.

bob: look. you know anything about marketing tactics? stuff that’s elusive, seemingly unique and in limited quantity creates hype around itself that makes it seem way past its original value. it first creates artificial needs by making exclusiveness a virtue and a point of social reference, and then forces people to grab whatever they can for whatever the price before it sells out. so in effect morons like you make hasty decisions based on false needs and still somehow come out thinking they’ve made a really good deal. i’m not saying that wollmeise shit ain’t pretty goddamn awesome, but don’t go foaming in the mouth at every update unless there’s something there you really like. by all means buy it if it genuinely makes you happy. but keep in mind that buying stuff just because you can is stupid. and the colorways, they’re all more or less repeatable. they’re not forever lost once the update’s through. it’s all in your head. you don’t need to buy that 21€ skein just because it’s there.

liisa: but i like getting expensive yarn online because when it arrives i get to make myself pretty for the postman and then i can arrange the skeins in perfect little piles and sing to them and pet them and rub myself against them and then we can all have a little tea party where i’m queen fluffalot and the skeins are my royal court. and the postman’s the chambermaid.

bob: you serious?

liisa: uh.. the thing is.. i, uh.. yeah.

bob: well i’ve seen all kinds of shit in my time, but goddamn.

liisa: i know i need to change but i’m not sure i want to.

bob: suit yourself, then, as a lazy tailor would say. i’m done watching this horseplay of yours. bob out.

liisa: don’t leave me, bob.

bob: you’ve made your choice.

liisa: you can’t do this to me.

bob: i already did. get over it.

liisa: well fuck you too, bob!

bob: ..what did you say?

liisa: oh god. no. wait. wait–

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