Another Wordle

Seeing as we’re about to edge into August I thought it’s time to look back on my past five months of blogging. Plus I’m trying to finish up as much knitting as possible before August actually gets here. So here’s another Wordle:

Elijah

I bet you’re asking yourself – where is all the knitting? After all I’ve been putting up a bunch of pictures and craft related posts. But I’ve still been knitting – not a lot as you can see in last month’s knitting yardage, but I do have some FOs to post.

Meet Elijah:

Elijah

He’s a present for my friend Aarti’s baby, Arjun. Elephants are a symbol of luck in India, particularly elephants with a raised trunk. To make the trunk flexible, I inserted pipe cleaners wrapped with stuffing. That way the trunk can be bent into any shape desired, and it’ll stay up way better than blocking the trunk into shape.

I used Rowan Pima Cotton DK – a lovely soft cotton yarn that can easily be washed over and over again, which can be expected with a baby toy. And I used felt circles for the eyes – I’ve never been happy with the result of french knots as eyes. I’d also recommend to be careful with stuffing the limbs – if they’re overstuffed they’ll only point away from the body and Elijah will have a hard time sitting. So the join to the body should only be stuffed lightly.

I’ve knitted two other Ysolda toy patterns in the past – an Otto polar bear and a Sophie bunny – but this one was my favorite. I had a hard time parting with it. Fortunately I have enough yarn for another Elijah. Then again I’ve already received requests for another Elijahs. Decisions, decisions…

Elijah up close

Blogging formats…

I don’t quite get the point of marking some posts as an image or a gallery instead of standard. I mean, what’s the benefit?

Pea risotto

      A basic risotto recipe with fresh peas from the market – I’ll be making this again, but I’ll be adding some lemon juice and lemon zest to the finished project to bring out the freshness of the peas and lighten the heaviness of risotto.

Ahhhhhh

Home alone and LOTR on TV – perfect knitting conditions. Time to work more on my ghostly whisper.

Late to the party

I have to admit, the movie Larry Crowne really hasn’t been on my radar. Maybe it’s the 35% rating on rotten tomatoes, or that I haven’t seen any trailers for it, but I really haven’t paid any attention. I guess everything is being buried in Harry Potter mania (and I’ll be going to see Deathly Hallows Pt 2 later this week). But I heard about this prank that Tom Hankds played on Julia Roberts involving knitting, and found out that the knitting blogosphere has been abuzz about the prank. So as usual I’m late to the party. Still, the clip is hilarious and worth posting (again).

Prepare yourself

for one of the funniest websites ever: Damn you autocorrect! You’ll laugh your pants off. I received a forward to the top 15 autocorrect posts - normally I might grin when I get a funny forward, but with this post I started laughing like a loon and couldn’t stop. My mouth and stomach still hurt.

After the storm

Yum!

red currant cake

Trillian

My second Strickmich! pattern (after 22.5 degrees) – Maltina keeps finding ways to design interesting and different garter stitch shawls. This one is knitted side-to-side, with a YO-K2TOG edging. I offered to knit a shawl for my friend Ulrike, and she chose a lovely skein of Wollmeise 100% in Mitternacht. Trillian is a really fast and easy knit – lots of squishy garter stitch – and I would have been finished this project quickly if I hadn’t been procrastinating.