Om Nom Nomtionary

From the personal dictionary of Om Nom Nom:

Knitstipated (see also CoKnstipated) is the condition of a knitter in which said knitter feels unable to expel finished projects, cast on for new projects, or find anything they feel compelled to knit. In its most severe cases knitstipation can lead to yarn impaction.

Yarn Impaction (see also Yarn Obstruction) is when a fiber artist is unable to desire or purchase yarn, sometimes suffering from yarn disinterest. This is often the result of knitstipation.

Knitstipated, is a term I coined myself and thankfully do not have frequent need to use it. The last two weeks I have no bee so fortunate. However, with a lot of quality time spent at my LYS and my hubby allowing myself to the treat of two skeins of The Neighborhood Fiber Company's worsted yarns, I am on the mend.

Tonight another of the many items that I have pre-loaded but not activated on the Pro-Portional Designs Etsy store will be activated.

With not much left to say I leave you with a picture of some awesome stuffed bread I made with my family just yesterday.



I am so happy with this and plan to play with this recipe and design. Once I have one I think it suitable to share it will be posted here on the Om Nom Nom Studios blog for your tummeh's pleasure.

Driven to Distraction

Lately I have been incredibly distracted by just about everything at the same time as nothing. I have bouts where I am busy with work and then there are some bouts where I could not possibly be more bored (like to the extent of Oog who appeared on Aqua Teen Hunger Force.)


Oog!!! Bored!!

Mister Game Developer! :3 | MySpace Video

I've still been running around with my camera to try and make sure I have pictures to help keep you visually stimulated.

I spent about a day trying to turn Jared Flood and the Rainy sisters adaptation of the Hemlock Ring Doily turned blanket - into a cardigan. And it actually did work out - just not in my size. So I'll have to try again later. During that time I also fell seriously out of love with the shade of purple I was using which I bought last year to make Kate Davies' owls sweater.

After all the snow we have had and then my car battery dying I had barely left the house since New Years. So I spent two straight days at my LYS - it was very cathartic. Even more-so because I stumbled upon this colourway by Neighborhood Fiber Company and had to have it.



So for the last day and a half I have been making another Queen Anne's Cardigan.




But boredom and a bit of worry about my knowledge that I will run out of yarn before I complete it led me back to work a bit more on my Winter Wonderland sweatercoat. The back of it is completely finished and now I am working on the left front side.



Pro-Portional Designs also made it's first sale last week and just a day or two ago I placed another new item into the store. Also, I think I may have mentioned that I had bags that just needed zippers. All but two of them now have zippers so those will be up in the store soon as well.

Well, I have a hungry husband to feed.

ReKnit It Before You Quit It

I've mentioned in the past that I have had to pull apart my own personal knitted items in order to get yarn to make items for the store, although this is not how I prefer to go about getting my yarn to make things - it is an option. A slightly lesser known option to those outside of the knit and crochet communities is recycling yarn. There are numerous ways that you can end up with recycled yarn but the one I intend to focus on it unraveling sweaters and I don't just mean a hand-knit sweater you happen to have laying around, I mean the store bought sort.

There are a lot of crafters out there who will buy knitted items from places like Goodwill just to use the yarn. What to do if you don't craft? Enter ReKn.it.com where "this month my mom will turn your old sweater into a new scarf."

The ReKn.it site is run by Haik Avanian offspring to the (quickly becoming) infamous mom.

How it works:
1.) you send an old sweater to my mom
2.) she unravels & reknits it into
something new.
3.) a brand new, hand-made, one of a kind item is sent back to you.

Still want an item but don't want a scarf? People can vote each month to help decide what "mom" will knit next.

The ReKn.it site has very little information about the project. A little (but not much) more info can be found on it's Face Book fan page. I opted to look at both and then contact Haik directly:

I'd love to see this mystery mom. How bout' a face to some knits?
She kinda' enjoys the anonymity – I personally find it funny as well :)

Whose idea was this? Yours or your mothers?
The base idea was my moms, and I sort of built on top of that (the way it's presented, the monthly timing, the voting, etc).

What does she do if she either comes up short the amount of yarn she needs to finish or has left over yarn?
If there's not going to be enough, she can usually tell before she begins, so she'll either find similar yarn to use it with, or use some of our own for the entire thing. With cases where yarn is left over, we contact the customer and give them the option to either receive the left-overs, or leave them with us for future use.

Will this only be going on for a year?
We'll see how it goes for the year, if people consistently use the service, we really have no reason to stop it after one year. I'm sure it'll evolve and grow as we learn more from our customers over time.

Is there anything else in particular you want anyone to know about this project?
I would like to note that one of our bigger hopes for this is that the act of reknitting becomes a more common practice. I hope that people can realize the how fun and valuable this can be :)

Intro to "The Fat Man's Club" (picture heavy)

Today I randomly planned to have another meeting of "The Fat Man's Club" with my friend Jake but because of my very recent (complete) obsession with Cafe World on Facebook I refused to leave until my dishes were served. In the two hours and four minutes it took for my dishes to be ready to serve (so they wouldn't go bad while I was out) I probably should have looked outside.



Now before I go on, I'm sure you're wondering what on earth "The Fat Man's Club" even is. I am a plus-sized gal and I'm sure that is still recognizable through my photos online. Like a lot of women though I used to be a teeny tiny thing (which some people like my husband still say I am because of my height of five foot three.) When I was that teeny tiny thing I used to make jokes that a very large fat man lived inside of me and that he was hungry. About two years ago I met Jake when I moved to Ohio. He too is a fellow of jolly pro-portions. We got along immediately.

One day I randomly proclaimed that I was starting "The Fat Man's Club." Basically it was just me and anyone else who loved to grub (most of us all jovially pro-portioned.)

As of late I have had a craving for Jimmy Johns - and if you are ever in Columbus, Ohio I really recommend them. They are really fantastic subs that are made FAST (they like to advertise how quick they are.)

Back to the great outdoors.

I ended up deciding not to go all the way to Jimmy Johns (because alas I no longer live as close to it as I used to) and told Jake The Fat Man's Club will have to reconvene at another date. Once he looked outside - he didn't blame me.

Problem was, I still actually needed to go out or suffer a house with no toilet paper. Here is a view of what I was out driving in from inside my car.





I wasn't at Wal Mart terribly long and my car looked like this by the time I came back outside.





Snow is much more fun when you get ready to go out and play in it with your family - even if your family is just one more person and two dogs. When my husband got home from work the girls and I were ready to play! Actually Perfect seemed more ready than all of us because she raced to the door and camped out there to insure she'd be the first one out into the snow.

In real life her eyes don't look all glowy.

More pictures (as well as better views) of tonight's playtime in the snow can be found on Om Nom Nom Studios Flickr stream.

Pro-Portional Designs and The Uniform Project

I mentioned before that I had "Big Things Poppin" but couldn't tell you more (for fear of Jinxiepoos!) But now that the time has arrived I can now tell you.



Om Nom Nom Studios offered a donation to The Uniform Project (because I'd need a few hundred dollars to be flat broke). Links to where to find Pro-Portional Designs were sent along with the offer. The response back was that Sheena liked the Chocolate Chip Cookie Scarf and I figured why not give her just that!? I didn't end up sending the exact one that she saw and liked but instead whipped up one JUST for The Uniform Project(complete with label.)

I have listed the twin to the one given to The Uniform Project. If interest is expressed in more of these I will begin turning more out immediately. Then in late April or early May donate a portion of the profits to The Uniform Project both as a monetary show of support that I was not initially able to give and as a thank you for providing me with a means to do just that.

This specifically means that all orders placed for the chocolate chip cookie scarf from Pro-Portional Designs during the remaining days of The Uniform Project will fall subject to funds for donation. Scarves will be sent out in the order requests are received and payment is due before any stitches are cast onto my knitting needles (to insure donation is made in time and also because I do not have money to put up for gas or yarn). To arrange to order a chocolate chip cookie scarf I can be contacted directly through Etsy or you may e-mail me at OmNomNomStudios@Gmail.com.

"Also, so you know, we are planning to auction off the donated accessories that Sheena wears to increase our fundraiser." So if any of you out there are interested in owning her exact scarf that should be an option.

Belated Happy New Years

Oh my I never wished everyone a happy new year. So let me take this opportunity

Mine was pretty uneventful. I had planned to go to party A, but then my husband told me that he was going to throw one at our house. CRAP! So I took a break from working on items for the store to haul patooty to clean my messy house. The husband comes home and I find he has changed his mind about that and would rather go to party B. We wait hours and find out party B has fallen through. So now it's around 10:30 and we have no idea what we're doing. We ended up heading off to grandma's house and playing wii with one of our cousins.

The next day I spent practically every waking hour working on one of the aforementioned big things that's preparing to be poppin'. Thinking ahead I had brought a bag full of extra work that needed the touch of a sewing machine with me. So there are quite a few pre-listed items nearly ready to go - they are mostly just waiting for zippers. Mostly.

I mentioned I took on the insane task of lace knitting for relaxation. In a nutshell I have two rows left of my Laminaria and am on strike (and relatively certain it WILL get frogged). I have looked over what I have knitted and do NOT see the proper pattern in it and I feel certain it's because of (what feels like) the hundreds of mistakes within it.

Last night I cast on and set up for my own Winter Wonderland Sweater however somewhere in the lower skirt chart I managed to be off a row so all of my Wrong side rows have become my right side rows. I recently had yet another snag in knitting it (a stitch off) and in light of my most recent fail I am considering frogging it and starting over.

Now I'm off to drown my knitting frustrations in a pot of flowering Calendula tea.

Who Doesn't Love a Good Poem About Cake?

So the other day I was watching Doki Doki School Hours (which to me is a lot like Paniponi Dash! - only not as good) and character Akane kobayashi opens an episode with a poem that made me happy.

Myself in Spring by Kobayashi.

Spring is a fun season.
However, it is a depressing rhapsody.
In terms of chocolate... Chocolate is delicious.
What I especially like is chocolate cake.
Speaking of chocolate cake, I recommend the cake shop at the Okitsu Shopping Center! It is so soft and sweet and right after you put it in your mouth, it feels like a carnival and stuff...