Superbowl Shaun

I had the most fun watching this year's Superbowl than I have in ages. What a great game and what fun ads. For those who don't know, I'm a HUGE fan of commercials. I might have been the only person in the US who was using the DVR to rewind the commercials instead of the game. My favorite - the Bridgestone "Screaming Squirrel". La casita de Muse loves rodents so we're a bit biased. I had to give the Tide "My Talking Stain" a strong second place. It reminded me of the Steve Correll mumblese from Bruce Almighty.

Oh yeah, knitting. There was quite a bit of that during the Superbowl. I cast on and finished 80% of Shaun the Sheep from the original Patons pattern I was able to find thanks to the kind peeps on Ravelry.



I still have to finish his legs and I'm not sure I will make the sweater or not. And there was no way that I was going to knit and seam a bazillion little pieces so I knit everything in the round. I used Berroco Plush for the body and its not a bad substitute for sheepy looking wool. I used the same ball of yarn for my Snome and had just a titch left over. I love the softness but its hard to keep up with the stitches and its pretty dammed expensive for novelty yarn.

Last week I was in sunny, warm Coconut Grove in Miami Florida. This is the view that I woke up to each morning...



Alas, my trip was for work so there was very little fun except for a wonderful poolside Mojito at our hotel, the Sonesta Bay (their's was hands down the best of all I tasted while we were there) and dinner at an incredible Cuban restaurant. The locals were "freezing" and it was 75 - 80 while we were there. If that's freezing, count me in!

Whilst in the meetings that started at 7:30 and ran until 7 pm each day, I worked on the Wollmeise wrap that I'd cast on the week before.



Thanks to Ravelry, I now have a crazy insane love affair with German and Scandinavian patterns. I decided not to make it a mobius as written because I get claustrophobic. I cast off on Saturday only to find that I'd like it to be a bit longer (its currently 60"). I want something that reminds me of the mountains and bodies of water from the region and love how the main part turned out. I'm going to add on to at least one of the ends, maybe both, and use a drop stitch pattern that will look like rain to add to the motif. I found all but two skeins of yarn in my stash and about 1/3 of it is handspun (Yippie! I'm finally starting to do something with it). I'll do a photoshoot once I can really wrap it around me. This is a very fun and funky pattern!

In non-knitting news, I bought one of those nano ionic hair styler thingies. Doesn't sound exciting but then again, my current blow dryer is 24 years old and refuses to die. Yes, you heard me right, I've had it since I was 14 and its still going strong. Anyhoo, this thing works so well I could just cry. It used to take me 30 - 40 minutes to dry my hair and now I'm done in like 15. For fun we straightened Thing 2's naturally curly hair and POOF, Leif Garrett appeared in our living room. Scary, huh?