My current obsession is with knitting. Not specifically with knitting bears. It just happens that today's updates are all about bears.

First, there's Dunkin, my most ambitious and successful knitting project to date.



I posted about him before Christmas, but he's found a home and a name since then, and gained a basketball.

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That is not the only bear on my knitting portfolio this winter, though. Oh, no! There is also my sister's new bear hat.

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There has been other knitting, but these were the most dramatic of my gifts so far this season. I'm currently knitting a garish but soft wrap/poncho in alpaca yarn for L in her favorite colors. It's a bit frightening, but she'll love it. Will post photos once it's finished.

Later this week: my new knitting cupboard! I cleared out an armoire, bought a bunch of bins to organize, tidied away my stash, and I suddenly feel like I've gained an entire room in my apartment!

I am knitting the most boring hat in all of creation. It's a black folded-brim hat in stockinette stitch, with a couple of hideously bright green stripes as trim. It looks like a hat you'd buy for $5 on clearance. I promised my friend with the enormous head that I'd knit him a hat, though, and he selected the colors and style.

And in case that "enormous head" thing sounds too mean...His head is 27"!!! The average human head runs 22"-24". I consider MY head to be huge -- I'm at about 23.5", and I can only rarely ever put on "ONE SIZE" hats in most stores. So, yeah. His head is huge, and he's never had a winter hat that fit him. So I'm knitting and knitting and knitting this thing that currently looks like a small sweater. Seriously, his head is bigger around than my sister's waist is!!

I have to finish it, though, because I want these needles for another project I'm anxious to start. Also, because I'm getting really bored with the endless stockinette in black superwash wool.

Hello to all my LJ friends I've neglected for so long! I haven't been a good community member, and have neither posted my own or commented on other people's posts recently. But I'm still following all your lives, wish you excellent things for the New Year.

I've been surviving, and am actually doing a lot better with the depression and all than my lack of posts might indicate. I'm not fixed yet, but I have been making progress. And I've started treatment for my sleep apnea, so I should no longer be chronically fatigued once I adjust to sleeping with a mask and have gotten back in the habit of going to bed at the same time every night. I would have updated more regularly, but my posts would have contained fascinating details like, "Today I went to work without beating myself up too hard. Yay me!" and "Today I took a sick day and read fic all day, and then I beat myself up about it." Truly boring stuff.

But! That's not what this post is really about.

I'm off to my parents' house for Christmas this evening, and I've finally finished the teddy bear I've made for my mom. I have not yet finished his basketball, but he's healthy, happy, whole and dressed, which was the important thing. And the basketball won't take too long. I've done so much detail work on this uniform, though, that I occasionally get tired of it and have to run off and make a hat so that I can feel productive on a larger scale. Because, yes, everybody is receiving knitted gifts from me this year. I put all my energy into this bear for my mom, though, so everybody else gets hats. Cute hats, though! Fun hats customized to the individual. But, yeah, hats.

Anyway. Really this post is a "YOU GUYS!!! LOOKIT THE BEAR I MADE!!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW CUTE HE IS!!!" update. He's all finished here. No disembodied heads, for those who were traumatized by my last Teddy photo post. :-S He's handmade, start to finish. Everything is knit except the school name on the uniform (poorly embroidered) and the red edging (crocheted).

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I didn't finish him in time to take him in to work and have everybody admire him, so I'm showing him off here.

I used this pattern, though my results were deliberately different, primarily because I used a yarn that...well, I guess it's officially an eyelash yarn, but I've never really wanted to call it that. It's a discontinued Lana Grossa microfiber yarn with a wool foundation, and the fuzz is almost feathery, instead of the more common polyester or plushy feel. I knit it with a double strand, which gave me the thickness and lushness I was looking for in a teddy bear fur. And the fact that the foundation yarn is wool gave the body a natural give and flexibility that isn't very common in most eyelash yarns I've played with. Elann.com had its remaining Micro Lungo on clearance for something like $3.75/skein for a while there, so I bought enough that I have enough for probably three more bears if I get in the mood to make more. These will definitely not be gifts my family and friends can commission from me, though. It's too much work. Given the number of hours I put in on it, I have to be excited about making the thing from start to finish.

In this case, though, I think this will be a perfect gift. My mom has a substantial teddy bear collection, and there are certain annual collector bears we're always expected to buy her for Christmas every year. ;-) I assigned that to my dad this year, since I'm often the one who gets them. And additionally, my mom has, in recent years, become a fanatical Gonzaga University basketball fan. It's my alma mater and her (my old) hometown team, and she's gotten to the point where she has a huge variety of GU sportswear that she makes sure to wear every game day. She had to go to a Christmas party on the day of a game, and was stressed out until she realized she had a keychain she could carry in her pocket since she couldn't wear a sweatshirt. All fairly typical sportsfan behavior, but this is relatively new to her. Now that I think of it, I can't imagine where I got my obsessive tendencies. (My father deserves some credit there, too, in fairness.)

I hope everybody has a merry Christmas, a happy new year, a pleasant winter solstice, and a happy any other winter holiday you're celebrating!

O Spamful Day!

I'd abandoned my knitting a while ago, and just recently realized that I needed to pick it back up and use it as a stress reliever. It hasn't totally worked yet, because my current project is a crafty one that requires a lot of problem solving and pattern adaptation, which makes me obsess. But it's fun!

I'm knitting my mom a teddy bear for Christmas with a very soft micro-fiber eyelash yarn. The head has been giving me fits, because it's the key. If the bear has a cute face, the whole thing is made. I've redone the ears from scratch, and re-placed the eyes twice, but I'm finally really happy with it.

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Yay! All happy now!

Well, I haven't posted in nearly a year, so let's just pretend I'm brand new to LJ. So what have I been up to this year?

I spent some time in my post-VM obsession days just lurking and learning about fandom. I've observed, I've read more fic than I've given feedback for, and I've discovered that I am well and truly a slasher at heart.

I've learned that I can't stop being an OTPer, even though that's not what a lot of the cool kids are doing. I've finally come to accept that this is just who I am, and that I can't help but be monogamous in my escapist fantasies.

I've flirted with pairing after pairing, but my main loves are John/Rodney and Fraser/RayK. And my brain has recently been completely eaten by Heroes, and by Nathan/Peter Petrelli. And lately I've been feeling like I'd like to be a bit more sociable with the greater web world.

But on the whole, this is not a fannish post. This is a knitting post, because I just need to show off my creations. Hi! Look what I made! :-)

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All done!! I'll get back to packing for my big apartment move at the beginning of June. Yay for packing?