Socks made from my basic sock recipe, but this time in vegan sock yarn, hand dyed from Sockpixie colorway: Manner of Yves St Laurent
2.5mm bamboo needles

Tags: socks, Vegan, yarn

In this time, this month, with exams looming, shopping for “the winter holiday of your choice” (mostly Christmas) and a knitting queue a mile long…

This nifty little program is a absolute saver.

It has customizable lists, priority levels, the possibility of adding files, colour coding, changing fonts and all kinds of stuff like that. This of course can be kept up to date with your iCal or similar gadgetry.

As with most of my favourite software it’s totally free, get it over at craigotis.com. The only problem with it is that it’s mac only, so if you use windows or linux you can’t play. Someone should do something about that, or tip me about a similar program for other platforms; I can’t find anything like it for other platforms. What this says about people using mac is a completely different cup of tea It is made for iPhone as well though, and possible to use on older mac’s (like mine 10.4.11).

Tags: software

A couple of months ago I got my earlobes scalpelled. They were already stretched to 10mm (known as 000g or maybe 00g in non-metric places). Not just because I wanted them bigger, but because how the original holes were shot forever ago. Apparently it’s pretty common not to have the original holes placed properly, this doesn’t show up too much at a small gauge, like regular little studs in the ears, but at a larger size it shows up.

You can probably see what I mean in the photo above. On the one side (the one without a tragus piercing) it’s just too much flesh… and as it says on the BMEzine wiki “…it may also allow for a slight relocation of a piercing.”

That was one reason, the other was that I wanted to try something new. I had a tattoo, some piercings… why not try something new?

The scalpelling itself wasn’t to bad, not as painful as my nose piercings but worse than getting tattooed, it bled a little and hurt a bit for a couple of days. The aftercare sucked, my piercer recommended a spray that contained chicken fat. Instead of going with the H2Ocean yuck I did regular salt water soaks. A bit messy but better than having dead animal fat on my wounds.

After a week they stopped bleeding completely and ended up a lot like this:

and to make myself invest a little bit in this size, so that I don’t keep on stretching up even more, the way I want to… I now am the proud owner of lots of funky plugs and tunnels. I love how the dollar is worth shit these days, makes shopping online a lot more fun Olivewood plugs for the same price as two packs of cigarettes, that’s good especially since you don’t get them at all over here.

Tags: bodymod, ear, piercing, Vegan

Among my favourite comics (although I hesitate to use that word, it doesn’t convey how beautiful this work is) I now have to count the free online one Bird and Moon. It’s a poetic cartoon/picture series about birds.

When you’ve read it (you should) check out her (the artist: Rosemary Mosco) other works as well. Especially “Parts of the bird” and “Ruffed grouse love“. The latter is exactly what I’ve always imagined that birds really sing to each other, well, that and in the case of the small songbirds outside my window in the spring “central apartment, two bedrooms, close to public transits!” in a typical newspaper style

Tags: art, bird, cartoon, comic

Usually I don’t name my socks. But this is the exception. Sergei Rachmaninoff was a composer of classical music. And the one that wrote the piece I spent some time knitting to indoors on a fine saturday afternoon, KIP’ing away. It’s not a great story, but I liked the name (russian and french names always make tongue tie itself into a know when I try to say them, it’s fun )

The special thing about them is that they are, in fact, my first pair of completly vegan socks! made in panda cotton. A yarn so lovely that I’m considering buying enough for 5 more pairs of socks…

For the rest of the details, check them out at ravelry.

As a ps. I’m not knitting as much as I used to these days, I don’t know why, I just dont. So these socks have been with me for a long time, and I’m still not finished with them.

Tags: kip, knitting in public, ravelry, socks, toe-up sock, Vegan, yarn