basimah knits… and spins… and maybe complains about things a little…

i just wrote a whole big-ass thing about the monkey bag and progress on it and how i found my "muppets from space" soundtrack cd, but then tblog ate the post, so now you get this substantially lamer abridged version.

here’s the monkey bag being blocked after washing it. it twists like hell, so i stabbed in some double point needles to try to hold it straight. yes, that is a john mayer cd case… room for squares, to be exact.

i’m honestly not thrilled with the way this project is turning out so far. i made the bag a little shorter than i probably should have, mostly because my hands just can’t deal with the evil devil hemp any longer. it’s one of those really-great-in-theory sort of projects, though i’m sure it will be cute once it’s all done. just really small, but that’s ok now that i have a new phone that takes up about half the purse space that my other one did. more to come on the phone and inevitable phone-related crafty-type items.

well it’s not technically the monkeys i’m angry at, it’s the hemp that’s being used for the monkey bag. i finished the bottom of the bag and was about half-way up the sides when i came across a knot in the hemp - two different strands tied together. the stuff AFTER the knot is smooth and uniform and pleasant to work with. the stuff BEFORE the knot was a bitch. nay, a boatload of bitches. it was scratchy and uneven and had big lumps and made my fingers very sad and looked crappier than the after-knot stuff. so i ripped out the whole thing last night and as soon as i finish this post, i’ll start over with the good hemp. as usual, we’ll see how it goes.

so check out the loot i got at the hobby lobby yesterday. yes, my friends, what you see here is the makings for a monkey bag. note the 5 damn dollars barrel of monkeys from toys-r-us because kaybee is the lamest toy store ever. the jungle fabric was on clearance though. and the hemp (which really isn’t suitable for use with knitting unless you kind of like rope burn on your fingers) was on sale. so that’s my project of the day…. a monkey bag.

dear mary maxim brand "titan" yarn,

i hate you pretty hard. the only reason i continue to even bother with you, is that you were free to me and i was asked to make warm things for kids that don’t have them. charity is saving your ass, otherwise, you would so be in the bad yarn time-out pile.

dear really pretty silk yarn i wrote a whole blog post about,

i wish you would start to behave and help me find a good pattern for you so you can get out of the bad yarn time-out pile.

dear lead singing guy from weezer,

i think that you are hot.

progress on the top secret mystery project: i’m not sure that i like it, so i’ve set it aside for a few days, but i’m pretty sure it’s not the end of it. i’ve started another top secret mystery project that involves a lot of pink, and a crochet hook. i have no idea why i insist on these projects being top secret… maybe it just makes me feel important or something.