Introduction

One of the advantages of growing more mature (that's my euphemism for it) is that you don’t force yourself to keep self-imposed deadlines at the risk of health and sanity. Either that, or you get better at rationalizing why you got distracted from the Knitting Olympics shortly after committing to a project.

I have wanted to make the Silk Corset above(www.modeknit.com/silkcorset.html) for some time, and the Winter Olympics challenge posed by the beloved Yarn Harlot (www.yarnharlot.ca/blog) was irresistible. At least, until I found another project that captured my interest—making zombie monkeys.

You see, my teenage boys and I had just watched Shaun of the Dead, a hilarious parody of zombie flicks (hilarious if you can ignore the frequent use of the f-word). I was looking for a zombie-related present for my otherwise normal 15-year-old’s upcoming birthday on the Internet, and came across this:

http://community.livejournal.com/weloveamigurumi/33495.html
from the imagination of:
( parasitegirl)

I was smitten. This is an example of ami-gurumi, a Japanese craft of making toys stuffed toys with single crochet. Although you can find plenty of cute baby bunny amigurumi, many are proportioned more like adolescents and given a twist, such as a goth-style cat, a turquoise-colored rabbit, or a computer-game inspired monster. Cute, but not too cute. I had to find more.

It just so happens that I was also looking for a fundraising project, because we’re interested in doing some service projects overseas. As an avid knitter and someone who’s done nearly every kind of needlework there is, amigurumi was a natural choice. And there is very little printed in English. I’m currently working up some prototypes to use to sell patterns, with the notion of making some to sell, too. They will be displayed on a great web site called http://www.etsy.com/, a promising venue for anyone who wants to sell their crafts online.

Why, you may ask, with my knitting time shrinking due to doing (gasp) crochet, am I starting a blog? Well, I’ve wanted one ever since I first discovered knitting blogs, but I was working about 80 hours a week at a hospital. Last month my schedule opened up, and about the same time I noticed that my husband gets this kind of vacant stare when I go on too long about my projects. He insists that he’s listening, but he starts multitasking to the nth degree. If I could find some other people who are in the ballpark of being as much of a nutcase as I am, then I could have my rants and feel normal, too. Don’t you ever find/make something new and want to share it? I think it’s time I took some of the burden off my husband and 3 boys.

I like to be creative with my projects, so I hope that you'll see some things that are stimulating and enjoyable. And I'm interested in nearly everything, so you'll never know what I might talk about--but there will be lots of knitting. Maybe a medical question of the week. The plan is to post once a week, of which I am hopeful.

So, welcome to Ninjaknitter. I hope.