I finally put up a couple of new bags over in the "free patterns" section. I made these purses long ago and was saving them for the book I was going to write, except someone else wrote it in the meantime (we won't go into the painful details) so I may as well go ahead and share them with you nice people.

The "Half-n-Half" handspun purse:

The "Patchwork" handspun purse:

<--- Here's my prototype aran ornament. It's definitely not as elegant as I had imagined it; I may take the blue out and replace it with a yarn that has some gold metallic in it. I was hoping to make all these ornaments from my stash without having to buy anything, but all I can think of is how perfect Nashua Grand Opera would look if I went out and bought some of that.

Today is the perfect day to sit around and knit because a cold front came through this week, plus all the great/bad horror movies are on tv. I'm going to open all the windows and let the cold air in, and bundle up with my new giganto-hat, the wool socks that I've never actually gotten to wear, and my hideously-ugly-yet-soft rainbow blanket. That's the thing about Texas, you never get to wear your warm knitted garments. The number of cold days is usually less than the number of scarves, socks, and hats you have, so I am very selective about which ones I allow to be worn each year.

Maybe I should buy a tent. What better way to make use of my FO collection than to live in my own back yard all winter?

There I was, watching TV and making ornaments, minding my own business, when I realized that these 2 random balls of yarn matched (even though you can't really tell in the picture):
 

All of a sudden, there shined a shiny demon in the middle of the road. And he said "Knit the best hat in the world or I'll eat your soul." So I knitted the first thing that came to my head. Just so happened to be the best hat in the world.

Upon careful review of my stash, it was decided that blue would be the best color scheme for the tree. I crocheted more of the little "hyperbolic" orbs last night, and I will be combining them with classic aran style cable patterned spheres. I knitted and unknitted about 5 testers, all of which were pretty crummy looking. At least now I know what I don't want.

I think I have settled on a basic style for the aran ornaments: a strip of about 15 stitches or so containing the cable pattern, grafted into a seamless tube and oriented horizontally, then I will pick up stitches along each edge and decrease down to a closure, sort of like the drawing at left. I will knit it tightly out of the same undyed wool that was used as the center of the other ornaments.

Last night I asked if Adam would let me put up a Halloween tree, but he didn't fall for it, so the new Xmas tree is still sitting in its box mocking me. "Nyeah nyeah! You can't put me up yet, even though today is the coldest day of the year so far!"

While organizing my junk craft room, I came across these early attempts at ornament making and I became inspired all over again. They're just some crochet squiggles where you start in a small circle and increase every stitch until they turn into ruffles. Later today I will probably play around with some other patterns too.

I volunteered to have Christmas dinner at our place, since this is our first year back home. We bought a fake Christmas tree yesterday and I am DYING to set it up, even though it isn't even Halloween yet. Adam pointed out how silly it would be to have a tree up in October, but I may have to overrule him soon. After all, I need a tree to model my ornament designs, don't I?

Apparently I took this week off. I didn't really mean to, but I looked up and suddenly 8 days had gone by and I had accomplished nothing. Whoops.

Not much to report other than my brainstorm about how to incorporate knitting into my holiday decorating. I plan to buy a fake tree and cover it with knitted ornaments. Or crocheted ornaments. (Or possibly store bought ornaments because I am running out of time to knit a whole tree's worth before December.)

I get some hilarious "bots" trying to sign up for my emailing list. First of all, do they think I won't notice that my usual 1 or 2 signer-uppers per week suddenly jumps to 200 within the span of 5 minutes? And I get 200 notifications saying that asdfasdfasdf@sdfafsd .com and hjklhjkl@hjkhk .com have joined my list? They're not even trying to sound like real addresses anymore.

Secondly, why would a bot/spammer want to know when I have new handspun yarn for sale? What could they possibly do with that information? Let's imagine that I was brain-dead one day and actually put one of them in my address book. Then they'd get... notification that I was having a sale? A coupon code? What?

Surely they can't be so stupid as to think they're being sly about acquiring my email address for spamming purposes, considering my email address is readily available in several places on the site. (Here it is again, you fools! natasha@grittyknits.com!)

I'm flattered that they picked li'l ol' me to be the target of their evil plot, but I really have to wonder what they expect to accomplish. Even lowlife spammers must have SOME kind of payoff in mind or they wouldn't be wasting their time, right?