We closed the My Ex is Full of Knit contest last night and voting has officially begun in the ADHD Knitting forums. To share your two cents on who you think should win all that fabulous loot, click here!

We had some wonderful entries, and of course, nearly half of them came in the last 24 hours. Showing once again that knitters will absolutely wait until the last possible moment. I have a theory about this too, I’m guessing most of these have been almost done for a while but the knitter who was making it did one of a few things:

1. Did all the knitting and felting and stared at the blank face for a few days trying to decide the best possible way to decorate it.

2. Finished the whole thing in one big she-bang, but then wasn’t pleased with the results and fiddled and tweaked it until they ran out of time.

3. Waited until 11:30 p.m. Sunday night to even start it and then knitted on it until 4 a.m. and took a nap while it dried before doing the face while eating their breakfast before work on Monday.

Now, if it were me, I would have done option 3, because that’s the kind of person I am. My mother in law is the kind of knitter who would probably do the second option. Just goes to show, even among knitters it takes all kinds.

Speaking of taking all kinds, if you haven’t seen the Gallery yet you should definitely check out the great entries we got. We have quite the diverse crowd over there, we’ve got ex-husbands, ex-bosses, physical manifestations of things that make people miserable that people want to expel from their lives…everyone really took to the true spirit of the pattern and the contest. I am incredibly proud of every single entry that came in, they are all very thoughtful and brilliantly executed.

Voting runs through April 5th, and from there we’ll pick a winner out of the top 5 popular votes. You can expect a blog post on the ADHD Knitting Blog early next week with the winner and the loot we’re sending out to them.

I just did forty five minute of yoga. While I watched the Americas Next Top Model on VH1. It was pretty awesome.

And now I’m about to have a steak for dinner…which I’m pretty sure completely negates the forty five minutes of yoga.

Other things I did today:

• Knitted on my sweater. It’s taking forever. I kind of hate it.
• Followed my dog around because something is wrong with her ear and I feel the need to check on her every five minutes.
• Pushed on her ear until she squeaked to find out where the hurt was
• Felt intensely guilty and then fed her half a bag of treats
• Painted my fingernails a deep purple
• Talked to Kaitlen for a little bit, wandered off, forgot I was talking to Kaitlen, then remembered and started talking to Kaitlen again.
• Needle felted the face onto the crocheted version of the My Ex bag. Which I will post a picture of after the bullet points end.
• Listened to my “You Can Never Go Home Again” mix on my iPod, which is a mix I made for myself last year when I had my little emotional break down and flew home for a week last July.
• Got incredibly home sick and then promptly turned off my iPod and started watching ANTM.

A picture of the Ex head I did:

Which because I didn’t feel it would be appropriate to model it after one of my own Ex’s I decided to make it look like myself. Only instead it kind of looks like more like…oh, I don’t know, the Wicked Witch of the West.  I even tried to make it look more like me by posing it with needles and yarn…no dice. Still looks creepy.

Now I need to go take a shower because I’m a bit smelly after the yoga and get ready to eat dinner (my yoga negating steak.) and watch some more reruns of CSI or Law and Order until it’s time to go to bed.

Tomorrow includes:

• Taking the dog to the vet and finding out what is wrong with her ear.
• Continuing work on converting some of the knit ADHD patterns to crochet, which I’m stoked about.
• New Knitter Night at Knit Las Vegas from 6-8 p.m.

My life looks so much less boring with bullet points.

Leg warmers. ARE. NOT. OKAY. They weren’t okay the first time, they are not okay now. It is 2008, we left leg warmers behind somewhere around 1988. It’s been 20 years, the scars still have not healed. Let it go.

I implore you, dear knitters, to stop this madness. Quit designing them, quit wearing them, quit knitting them. Do not give your children leg warmers, do not buy patterns for leg warmers. Just say no to leg warmers.

I bring this up because the spring issue of Knitty.com is up. Featured there among beautiful socks, lace and sweater patterns is this one glaring misstep in fashion judgement.

The pattern is called Mosey and friends, they need to mosey on outta here.

These would be completely awesome if they had feet and we could market them as slippers, or mukluks or something. They’re cute, I like the cable pattern, I even like the little swingy pom-poms hanging off the side. I fully appreciate the wonderful job the designer did in putting together excellent and interesting elements, I love the yarn choice, it looks lovely and soft and comfortable.

What I don’t like is the Flash Dance flashbacks I keep having, or the fact that these are being ‘rocked’ with a denim mini skirt.

Oh and we need to address this:

This was fun to knit and more fun to wear.  It’s great to pair these up with a skirt or shorts for the cooler days in spring.

Yeah, if it cold enough to require that you wear wool up to your knees, chances are you should have pants on. Not a skirt or shorts. If it’s warm enough for skirts and shorts, you don’t need a foot of wool insulation from your ankles to your knee caps.

I am by no means the most fashionable girl on the block. I have what I like to refer to as (however delusional it may be) ‘classic style’ working for me. By ‘classic’ I mean, I’ve worn the same thing since I was 16 and by ’style’ I mean anything I can find for less than $20 on the sale rack. Mostly this consists of black shirts and dark denim.

Regardless of my lack of fashion sense, I can at least say that leg warmers are persona non grata in my wardrobe.

Okay, enough poking fun at other people. I have work to do. If you haven’t yet, be sure ya’ll check out the ‘My Ex is Full of Knit’ contest over at the ADHD Knitting blog.

So, I finally carved out a bit of space to work. I cleared all the yarn and pattern books off of my drafting table from art school and viola! I have a desk! We added a little metal cubby thingy to hold all the yarn and to create a little bit of wall so there is separation between my work space and the sewing area that Carolyn occupies. I also went through all of my yarn. All of it. I have owned up to my own stash. I dug out all the random balls that were stuffed in baskets, I fished the hanks out from under the bed and behind the book case. I unloaded the various buckets and containers that I’ve been hiding stash in for the last year and I put it all in the cubby thingy next to my desk. Well, almost all of it, there is one other small cupboard on the other side of my desk that is holding sock yarn, and a basket under the desk that is holding odd balls. Mainly because not everything would fit in the cubby thing. I have discovered a few things:

• I have a lot of yarn
• I have a lot of cotton yarn
• I have a lot of yarn that is an ugly color
• I have a lot of yarn I don’t remember buying
• I have a lot of yarn that I shouldn’t have bought
• I will probably still buy more ugly, inappropriate yarn that I won’t ever knit.

So here’s my little work space.

You can see my little sock yarn book case to the left there. The official Protector Cat of the Stash is perched in her place on top of the shelving unit, just as she has been pretty much since we set up the shelving unit.

And there is my stash. Or most of my stash. I love it. The upper left corner is all cotton. The next three cubbies are other various natural fibers. Then I have one of acrylic (but decent acrylic.) and one of random other synthetic fibers like nylon and such. The bottom left is half finished projects that probably need to be frogged to salvage the yarn and the bottom right is the basket I keep my craft receipts in so I can claim them on next years taxes. It’s already pretty full and it’s only February.

Now, I have also finished knitting things in the last few weeks. I know it’s hard to believe I find time to knit in between all my bashing of poor defenseless punk rock writers from Philadelphia, but I do make the time for a few things.

I finished up this hat:

Which is the Pithy Hat pattern. It’s knit in Artyarns Super Merino in a color way that’s name is forever lost to me because I ripped the tag off immediately after it came in the mail. I ordered the yarn from Eat.Sleep.Knit which is an awesome little shop on the web that has great sales every once in awhile.

However, I found out today that Knit Las Vegas is now carrying Artyarns, so I have a local spot for that awesome yarn now!

I also knit these little cuties for baby Madison who is due in April. 

These were a test knit for the Oh My Baby! Booties which is a free pattern for, you guessed it, ADHD Knitting. These will be shipping out to Mom-to-Be, my good friend Alyssa here shortly as soon as I finish the other little things I’ve been knitting for baby Maddie. I’m also knitting the Eskimo Pie Hoodie (also an ADHD pattern) in some really pretty Rowan Romance yarn. I just need to finish the button band and the i-cord draw string and that one is ready to go.

I finished up the mitts I was knitting in the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino that I got the last time I visited Knit Las Vegas, and I even got to wear them once before I ended up giving them away. Christa was complaining of having a cold office, so I gave her the gloves off my  hands in order to show how much I love her.

There she is, enjoying her mittens and a cup of chai last Friday night at reJAVAnate, the new coffee house that Sin City Knits is meeting at on Wednesday nights. (And sometimes Fridays and occasionally Mondays….) For those of you who don’t know Christa, yes, I know she looks like she could be my sister. We were secretly separated at birth.

I made yet another tea cup wrap. This one in some green variegated wool and using a sort of textured pattern. It’s not adjustable, it just fits around most of my mugs and it’s way cooler than the first one. I love this one way more.

Also, some fun little things:

Dixie and I are hamming it up with my camera phone. (Because the camera in the new Blackberry Curve is AWESOME.) I  love how irritated she looks with me in this picture. It’s adorable.

And I FINALLY got a picture of the ‘Cortez’ in the El Cortez Hotel sign downtown. I’ve only lived in Vegas for four and a half years, but I finally went to the hotel AND took a picture. I tried to get a picture of me standing under it but it kind of sucked and you couldn’t see me at all. We’ll try again later. I’d really like to get a good one of me standing under it to send to my Dad, who is very proud of our Cortez name and sometimes even wears a hat with ‘Cortez’ on it just to show how Cortez-y he is. It’s even spelled right! No weird ’s’ version here!

Okay, it’s late and I should be getting rest so I can get up early tomorrow and continue expanding the ADHD Knitting Empire.