I'm starting NaNoWriMo today. I just finished 1765 words. I am working on a 18K word manuscript that my second oldest brother had written. Sadly, he killed himself before he completed it and it is my labor of love to finish the novel.

I am hoping to rope baby brother into the effort as his writing skills are superior to mine. But, don't tell him that, he already has a giant ego!

I'm not the "real" writer in the family. DH Bob has written a 7 book 1 million+ series. If you want to read it, here is the first book. Remember to leave a review, please! Headgames I Fates and Fairies

The book I'm working on will have 3 sibling authors and many family stories woven into it. We have a great many "characters" in our lineage.



I'm knitting simple things for Christmas and exploring cable designs.Here are two versions of "Sweet Evil Alice" inspired by Alice from the UK TV show "Luther. All my patterns are buy one, get one free and priced at $1 each.
Sweet Evil Alice

Cat Head Bag

My youngest brother's wife and two daughters all have the initials C.A.T. Instead of a bunny rabbit themed basket for Easter, I created the Cat Head Bag to hold all the sugar filled goodies I gave them.

This is for the older of the two girls, in her favorite color. The younger likes orange best. I'm still working on that one.

This is a prototype for the pattern. I don't like how the ears came out on the right ear, I'll be working on making that one better.

I expect to have the second one finished this week and the pattern ready for sale by next week. In the meantime, I have a good number of free patterns and all of my designs are $1 and buy one, get one free Garilynn Designs

If you like fantasy (as in Fairies, not any sort of Shades of Gray), check out DH's blog. He is the model for many of my daft designs. He is a good sport and a great writer. Headgames Book Series

Thanks for stopping by!

A friend suggested that I make a cat hat for a cat.

This very mellow fellow is a quasi-feral, he purred the entire time he was wearing his new chapeau.

This design is available in my Ravelry shop Cat hat cat hat  All my designs are $1 and BOGO.

Thanks for taking a look.

Rubber Chicken knitted hat

In a previous post, I mentioned that I designed My Little Pony hoodies for two of my nieces. I studied various sources for inspiration and finally decided to watch the series. The series  is funny and intelligent, somewhat like the Bugs Bunny cartoons of my youth. Layers that the adults and the kids will laugh at, but for different reasons.

The Rubber Chicken hat came about because DH Bob joined an improv troupe. This affiliation required a novelty hat. I took inspiration from Cheese Sandwich's (voiced by "Weird Al" Yankovic ) sidekick, Boneless and translated that into a knitted version.

I have several chicken designs, being slightly chicken obsessed. We have a greatly reduced flock these days, just 2 Amerucanas left from a thundering mixed flock of 40. Our 5 acres are beautiful, but we have many, many critters who love to eat chickens. Here is a post from DH Bob's blog about our chickens:

Chicken post on toolmakingart.com

DH Bob is the patient model for many of my daft creations:

DH Bob, among his many talents such as modeling and blogging, has written a 14 book (so far, he is still writing) series of over 1,000,000 words.He also does his own cover art.   Bob the writer Check out the first book at https://www.amazon.com/Headgames-Fairies-Robert-David-Strawn-ebook/dp/B015II9KUY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1489677705&sr=8-1&keywords=headgames+I+fates+and+fairies

The Rubber Chicken hat is $1 and BOGO, as are all my patterns in My Ravelry shop

Thanks for stopping by. 

Kitty ear hats, several versions

Pink Kitty ear hats have so much political baggage these days. I am designing and knitting lots of this style, trying to find one that satisfies my obsession with garments that stay put and don't require fiddling with.

Here is my in the round version:

Please excuse the blurriness of the photo, vivid colors cause my camera to lose focus and clarity.

The original  Pussy hat is a strip of knitted fabric beginning with ribbing, an expanse of stockinette stitch and ending with ribbing. I did not care for that for two reasons. First, two long side seams. Second, the cast on and bind off edges would not be the same.

I made a good number of my in the round version:

All of these were made from yarn I already had from "auditioning" pink yarns for a Pinky Pie hoodie for my youngest niece:

(Pictured above - Sleeve detail from Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle hoodies)

I was not happy with the ears of the squared top version and started experimenting.

DH Bob, my long suffering model, is wearing the first side to side version with cuff:

(DH Bob is not just a pretty face, he writes http://www.robertdavidstrawn.com/ and does woodworking http://toolmakingart.com/  If you like fantasy books with Fairies, Goblins, Elves, The Fates, lots of references to bluegrass music and a deep and abiding respect for double bass players, check out his series. )

This was still not exactly what I was looking for. The ears would still need some attention from time to time and the cuff would be too hot in the coming months.

I tried a version without a turn up cuff:

The above is a little better, but I wanted stick up and stay up ears. Here is the same design with a slip stitch crochet at the bottom of the ear section:

The latest uses the same basic design of 4 sections in points formed by increases and decreases. The midline section is joined with slip stitch crochet after seaming the back with a 3 needle bind off. Then, the ears are picked up, knit and then edged with I cord.

I'm getting closer, but I still have some issues with this version. I think that the ears may be too fox-like and the I cord edging is not perfect, so that bothers me.

I have almost used up all of the pink yarn I had with these experiments. They are going to good homes soon. I hope to have the pattern for all of the versions on Ravelry soon.

In the meantime, if you want to make the in the round version (free), here is it on Ravelry:

Kitty Ears Hat

All of my designs that I sell are $1 and BOGO.
 

It's difficult to make any reptile puppet  and not have it look like Kermit the frog.

These are based on a character from my husband's book series Headgames Book Series by Robert David Strawn,

I have made about one dozen versions of these. I would normally have ripped them out when I did not care for the results, by DH Bob wanted to keep them all. Lots and lots of yarns were killed during the evolution of this design.

 

I cord Cast On - My way

I have tried various I cord cast on methods and have not really liked how they turned out for me. I am very familiar with casting on from a crochet chain. I tried to apply that to an I cord and it worked very nicely.

First, make your 2 stitch I cord chain, the number of rounds of I cord equal to the number of stitches you want to cast on.

Leave the 2 I cord stitches on the needle. Insert a crochet hook in between the 2 stitches of the I cord.

Pull a loop through between the two I cord stitches and place on the needle.

Repeat until desired number of stitches is on needle.

In this case, I'm going to cast on 52 stitches since I'm making my Last minute no purl Hat http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/last-minute-no-purl-hat

I use this cast on method for my Another way to Zig Zag Afghan http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/another-way-to-zig-zag

All my patterns are on sale now for $1 and if you buy one, you get a second one free  http://www.ravelry.com/designers/gari-lynn