My grandmother discovered I was a knitter at our family reunion two summers ago. She got all excited, exactly as you would expect a grandmother to do. She promised me she would send me her stash. I got all excited, exactly as you would expect a knitter to do.

And sure enough, a package arrived in the mail shortly after. It did not contain fifty balls of talking, homosexual sock yarn. Or a cigarette-smoking sheep. What arrived was silent, but not in a good way. It was in the delivering-a-menacing-death-glare, very very bad way.

It looks innocent, but it’s not.

The yarn is probably as old as I am, with yellowed ball bands in Japanese. A quick swatching and attempted blocking confirmed that it was the squeaky, sticky kind of acrylic that doesn’t even pretend to absorb water.

I came to regard it as a strange cousin that had come to stay.

Maybe I could knit it into a large, pink elephant.

Update June 1, 2009
I have stopped offering free blog templates and have taken down the old Faces of Yve site. Sorry!

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Update February 4, 2008
The information in the below post is now outdated. I’ve since revamped the free blog templates site and the old stuff is gone. I am in the process of developing new knitting WordPress themes, though, so please go check it out!

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Many of you probably know that my other hobby is web design. I worked as a web designer all through college and still make free blog templates for fun. The next issue of my web design ezine is coming out soon, and I thought I’d give you a sneak preview of the knitting-themed templates I have in this issue.

#1: Stash

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Pattern: Target Wave Mittens, from Knitting Nature and reprinted in Interweave Knits Fall 2006
Yarn: Plymouth Encore, #848 (navy) and #208 (white), oddballs
Needles: Addi Turbos, US 6 and US 8

Started last, finished first!

These are a very quick knit. I made the Child’s Small size and I’d guess each mitten took a couple of hours to make, including the seaming.

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