The Ladybeard Project

Following a declaration that I intend to collect my own hair (from my hairbrush) for a month and knit something out of it (my self-imposed ban on buying yarn is clearly making me look for yarn in non-yarny places) I was challenged by a non-yarny to make a beard hat (not from the hair) and post photographic evidence that I'd worn it in public.

>rub hands with glee

Public nonsense interbred with knit-bosh.  This kind of thing comes with a "Made 'for' Tricoteuse" label on it.  I am SO there....in my beardhat....refusing to explain. Just think of the confuddlement you'll inspire.

However!  I decided that the joy of the knit-bosh shouldn't be hoarded all to my onesie....it should be shared, like pie and boxed wine.

So, come hither, come into my lair, with my knitted hair and show some flair at the old faux face fur parade.

My first thought was "Oooh, let's make a day of it - Bearded Lady Day?  LADYBEARD DAY!!!" but I realised that not everyone knits at the same speed and there could be some competitive stress or twiddling of thumbs.  So here we have The Ladybeard Project.

Take your time.  Fit it in with your other projects but at some point soon, make your beardhat and go forth into the muggle world adorned in your furriness with your favourite pet photographer and send me the evidence to mount up for all eternity on this fangled tinterweb.

Knit pattern:
 http://giftable.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/bearded-toque-new-version.pdf
Crochet pattern:
http://www.crochetme.com/media/p/95351.aspx

I'm so excited I might even book a mock-shave in the local barber's establishment.

Endnote:  I'm not a sexist knit-freak.  I know there are gents with agile digits and I don't want to exclude.  So gentlemen, even if you have ample face fur, you may join the party, but you have to wear a dress.

The Straight-jacket of Knitted Resolutions

I made a promise.  It is a promise that we all make come January no matter how many times we find ourselves explaining "stoopid resolutions, not gonna do it, just gonna watch all the lame sheep make them and laugh" and then realise we are chuntering into a mug in an empty kitchen.  I WILL KNIT THROUGH MY STASH.

Two weeks in and I still have a soaring belief in the possibility that I could actually succeed.  This year I will get all the way down to the bottom of the basket and when my hand comes up empty I will unpick the shame blanket and make it into something nice....all before I veer left into Oxfam on the way to the post office and rugby tackle an old lady for a bag of Sirdar Merino before realising my error mid-Mwahahahahaha.

It could happen.  Pandora's hope is nestled all sparkly and enticing at the very bottom of the wool trough.

So I reckon that if I am still breathing inside this self-imposed corset five days after the day that everyone allegedly buckles to their inner cheerleading team of evil and finds themselves eyebrow-deep in raw chocolate brownie mix sitting in the devastated ruins of Freecycle's finest rowing machine...I can do it.

Before Christmas,  the situation was dire.  In addition to the above there were another 30 balls to come.

I'll do some "how to make what I made" instructions for some of the projects that reduced this "you are not allowed to buy any more wool" situation to this:

When I was a cross country runner we were told that we had to keep running "through the wall".  For me, The Wall has a hole in it, like Shakespeare's wall in the play within a play of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Through the hole peeps the little red demon face of my Stash Envy.   It won't be boredom with what I am doing or the admittedly hefty allure of Oxfam's dead people wool that does me in.  It will be all the boasting pictures of better stashes than mine.  The alpaca to my acrylic, the Patons to my Hayfield Bonus, the Noru and the recycled saris.  It's all those pictures I get in newsletters from disgustingly successful people complaining in a way that they think will make people think they are normal...until we see their Ark stuffed with Sphinx yarn, unicorn hair and the hank of wool shaved from the belly of a Musk Ox by an Eskimo virgin princess on the night of the lunar eclipse.   Will I make it through to the other side of The Wall and keep on knitting or will I be rendered a dribbling gibbering acolyte of envy, turn left and trip over the wall mid-Mwahahaha due to being unable to see over the top of the hammock load of dead people wool I will have clasped to my bosom with the gasping desperation of a drowning man?