The One With All The Chocobos

 hi friends!

It's, again, been almost a month since I last posted.  bad blogger, bad blogger!

I've been up to things, making stuff, reading, playing video games.  The usual.  The Tour de Fleece started yesterday! V. hype!

I suppose I'll start where I left off last time?  I was making a hexie bag for my friend, Amara.  Welp, I finished it and sent it off and she loves it!

I'm.. I won't say that I'm done making these things, cause they're fantastic, but I was sort of making it to get through it, rather than enjoying the process particularly.

The temporary aida cloth that I bought for the cross stitching was a pain in the ass to remove from the fabric.  It was painful and difficult.  If I do this again, which you know me, I probably will, I'm going to look up a better removable cloth.

There was some knitting, and in fact I went to the local yarn store in Sacramento with Zac last weekend.  The shop is called Rumpelstiltskin's and it was fantastic.  I got some gorgeous merino/alpaca/silk yarn and a mohair silk yarn to hold with it:

Not to mention this tribble  I mean alpaca pom pom for the top of the hat.  Yes, I'm making *another* hat.  This one is interesting though, and unfortunately I don't have a picture of the WIP.  It's going to be the Oslo hat, which is a folded brim stockinette hat.  No ribbing, wild! With the mohair and the alpaca it's going to be v. warm, but hey, even though we're in California, it still gets pretty cold here.  so there.

The hat is interesting because it involves a provisional cast on.  OK, so the pattern doesn't call for a provisional cast on, but when you're done knitting the very long brim you fold it up and catch the cast on with the next row.  I did a provisional cast on so that I can pull out the waste yarn and knit together the cast on stitches with the row I'm doing.  It makes it very tidy. And probably only somewhat fiddly to perform.  Next time I swear I will have a picture.

In cross stitch, I'm woefully still on page 3.  But, I've made some progress every evening for the past few nights and I'm seeing progress:

It's enjoyable still.  I kinda like working on a few different things rather than hyper-focusing on one thing to the abandonment of everything else in my life.

In spinning, like I said before, the TDF is on! It's the world-wide spin-a-long during the tour de france.  Everyone spins, it's great!  You can join teams, I've joined 3.  And mostly it's low-key, make up your own goals and have fun type thing.

I'm planning on continuing the polwarth sweater spin from earlier this year.  I'm on bobbin 3 of 4:

It's going.  There's not much to talk about with it, except that it's just going.  I'm eventually planning on plying the lot together.  This will be good for a few reasons, it will blend older singles with newer ones in case there's discrepancies.  It's also just a style choice?  there's another way to make a 4 ply, called a cable ply where you ply singles together into two two-plies, and then you ply the 2-ply yarn together into a 4 ply.  It's a nice way to make 4 plies when you have limited bobbins, and/or lazy kate space.  I have plenty of bobbins for my Minstrel (or 6) and I can figure out how to deal with the fourth bobbin that won't fit on my kate.

In other spinning news, I finished the Kingfisher yarn on my EEW6:

I chain plied this one, to keep the colors together.  It looks so fun and tropical.  I'm thinking about taking it along to Hawaii and knitting a nice gradient cowl with it.  One that looks like a shawl, like Dewberry or Zuzus petals.

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And now for what you all came here to talk about, probably, my growing collection of crocheted chocobos!  :D

One became two, which became three.

They have names, too, cause I'm that wacky.

The yellow is Choco, for traditional reasons. Zac suggested I name her Dee, because she's also blond and a bird, but I insisted on choco.  I might name one after an It's Always Sunny Character, but it would more likely be Charlie, my favorite.

The red is Miranda.  Back over in my snarks and the city blog, I was rereading back episodes.  I got through season 4, when Miranda was pregnant and Charlotte was throwing her a baby shower.  Now, Charlotte was being a pushy, jealous, jerk.  She kept calling Miranda at work to ask nonsensical questions.  At one point, she questioned Miranda's registry, since it was woefully incomplete.  She said to her "What about a peek-a-ball? Peek-a-ball Miranda?!" and uh, it lives in my head rent-free, and for some reason my brain decided peek-a-ball was the same thing as Chocobo.  Chocobo Miranda!

Plus, it's red, like Miranda's hair.

The blue one decided his name was Carlos.  After the punny kid from Magic School Bus.

See? he even wears a blue sweater. And he's punny.  and I love puns. ^^

That, as they say is that.

Well, there was some final fantasy playing, too, but nothing I haven't talked about endlessly in more appropriate places.

I do have more plans for more chocobos, but nothing until the sweater spin is spun. (I'm going to break into it and make a chocobo first, as you do).

We're going to Hawaii in a few weeks, and I have plans to bring along some socks to knit, obviously the hand-spun cowl, too.  Nothing heavy or difficult, just brainless stuff for traveling and relaxing.

I hope you're having a good summer!

Cheers!