The good, the bad and the fugly

The Good
This weekend has been FUN. I've been out every night and shopping/sightseeing/church going* in the daytime. On Saturday we found one of those make-your-own-jewellery shops in Le Marais. Normally those places don't appeal to me, but this one was packed full of pretty, shiny things and it was also cheap. I made myself this necklace...
Also, it was Pamela's birthday on Friday so I knocked up (i.e. crocheted) a beret for her in some really nice Monoprix Husky (50% merino 50% acrylic I think, and super chunky). I didn't get a chance to buy the yarn until Friday itself but luckily I managed to get most of it done on my bus journey home from Monoprix.
The Fugly (I'm saving the best til last)
This ring was only 50 cents. That's all I have to say in its favour. Ugh, it gives me the creeps!
The Bad
On Friday night someone mentioned how they'd been in Montmartre and realised after a while that they must have appeared on about 10 different photos taken by tourists. We laughed and joked about doing it on purpose - getting your face onto photos that would be seen around the world. Then I thought - ooh, imagine doing that in the See You Next Tuesday Hat! That would be totes lolzworthy, yes?

Update on the Pomatomus/yarn barf situation: the yarn is now split into two separate balls. I had to cut. I learnt how to spit-splice (bleeeerrrgh - especially after drinking wine and not brushing my teeth... whoops, TMI - but at the same time a very effective technique). I'm 75% through the first sock. Worked out the deceptively simple Chart B (hint: ignore those blank squares. They don't mean k1. Start and finish at the thick black lines) and managed to do a fair portion, from memory, at 3am on the nightbus home, after a good few glasses of Merlot.

*Vespers at Notre Dame. It was somewhere warm to wait for Jenny ;)

This post is edumacational

Been a lazy blogger lately. Went back home to Liverpool for a week and a half and was busy, busy, busy. Although that's no reason why I've only just got around to sorting these pictures out from my trip to Musée d'Orsay in September. I took them in RAW format and forgot about them... anyway, behold:

Knitting Art in Paris by Helen Wilkie

First off, I saw this painting, "Bergère avec son troupeau" (Shepherdess with her flock) by Millet. Click title for full pic. As you will see, she's using DPNs. I didn't even know of their existence until 2005.

Next off, also in the Musée d'Orsay, a statue of a girl... er... spinning? I have no knowledge at all of spinning. And I have no desire too, my patience has already been put to its limits winding up a ball (more to follow).

Next, I saw these murals in the Bastille metro station. Apologies for the photos, I took them on my phone and there were some people sitting right beneath them, wondering what the hell I was doing. They show tricoteuses, and were obviously painted by someone who's never knit.

This ends today's lesson.

I have one lousy FO to post. My second Short Row Hat made with Noro Kureyon. This colourway matches my bag almost perfectly, which thrills me no end.


And now a rant about skeins of yarn, which I've already vented on Ravelry. I have a gorgeous skein of Cherry Tree Hill that Interannette sent me in a swap. I'm absolutely desperate to cast it on to make some socks. Last night I sat down with a loo roll and the second series of Spaced on dvd and started to wind my ball. By the end of the dvd (seven or eight episodes and some extras) I was still left with this:

That's one large, slightly wonky ball of wool, a knot and another little ball of wool where I realised I would have to start untangling from the other end.

That's four hours of my life I'll never get back. Thank god for Simon Pegg, Jessica Stephenson and my insomnia. I could have been up to the heel of the first sock my now!

Seriously though, I'm actually quite annoyed now about the whole practice of selling yarn in skeins. Unless you've got a ball winder and/or swift you've got a long, boring, difficult job on your hands before you can even get down to the knitting. It doesn't make economic sense, in the money or time sense to buy yarn in skeins if you've got to go out any buy more equipment. I feel like it's a bit of an affectation - "I'm so dedicated to knitting I'm prepared to suffer for it". Yarn does look nice in a big twisted hank but it's so impractical. As people on Ravelry pointed out, you pay more for the yarn and then have to wind it yourself, whereas cheapo mass produced stuff comes ready wound. I think we're being had.

Not that I don't love my yarn and have lots of respect for independent yarn producers. Maybe I'd just like to kick up a bit of a stink so traders might start offering the option of ordering yarn pre-wound.

Anyway... once I get past this knot I think a pair of Pomatomus are in order (that's a helluva lot easier to type than to say).