Not your Mama's Knitting!

  Ok so if you are easily offended or doesn't have a sense of humor avert your eyes or better yet just click the little "x" button in the top right hand corner of your screen, otherwise consider yourself forewarned.

  The reason for the warning will become clear as you read further my friends. Now if you all remember in the last posting I alluded to my OB instructor wishing for a "realistic vagina". Her complaint is that the models we use which I refer to as "the plastic butt's" are pretty useless when learning how to insert a foley catheter correctly. Just to give you an idea most of the "learning equipment" we are given are rigid plastic dummies whose anatomy is kinda sorta there, just not in great detail.

Our "patient"

Learning to suctions our "patient"

 
Speaking to the female genitalia, when you have practiced on a dummy that consists of two holes in plastic, it rather fails to create a complete image and when you get to the real thing you often find yourself scratching your head thinking to yourself; "What the hell is all that? It doesn't look anything like what were practicing on in lab! Now where the heck do I stick this thing?" all while trying to maintain a professional, cool, calm and competent looking exterior that assures your patient that you are indeed competent and not a puzzled and overwhelmed student.
  So in an effort to help my instructor find a anatomically correct vagina with, as she put it, a labia , a clitoris etc. I began to surf the web. Well I was surprised and in some cases a little disturbed with what I found, so of course I felt the need to share with you dear readers!

First I want to say this clever knitter takes yarn art to a science, literally. If you visit  aKNITomy you will find all your high school biology nightmares reworked in yarn. Personally I LOVE this store! This gal is seriously talented, take a look!

Brings back memories!

images property of aKNITomy.etsy.com

Next up, for those of you gals who like the more adult side of Halloween, check out these numbers by Brittany Wilson. She has a blog here at Boho Knitter Chic Spins and you can find the patterns for these hot numbers on Raverly.

Candy Corn Pasties! Perfect for those warmer climates

Spider Web Brassiere

These look way fun!

Anyhow, while this was a ton of fun to find it took way longer to find a yarn vagina, BUT I found one! It was there in all it's glory on Into the Big Bad Unknown. 

  It was not found by searching under anatomically correct names, it was listed as "Crochet Cooter". Huh, it would seem that after all these years of nursing school may have expanded my medical vocabulary, but I seem to have lost some of my "ahem" other vocabulary.

Procrastination

 "Fashion fades, only style remains the same."

Coco Chanel

 Somewhere between Piaget's Pre-Operational thought and memorizing the immunization schedule for normal healthy children I decided to take a break. Well really I decided to procrastinate, I mean is it really necessary for a nurse to know every  immunization a child should have by the age of 2 years? Honestly I bet the doctor doesn't, isn't that why he keeps the big chart on the wall in exam room? Ha! I bet you all thought that was for your information, how wrong you were!


  Well my aimless wandering through cyberspace in search of something that would nudge me out of this blah feeling it happened.  I found myself staring at beautiful lace, peek-a-boo cut outs, capped sleeves and nipped in waist lines.  I was in heaven!  No I am not speaking of any designers spring line, I only wish!  I happened to find a gold mine of vintage patterns hovering out there on the Internet just begging to be adopted.

 

With all the technology available it should surprise no one that we are able to preserve and re-publish patterns going all the way back to the 1900's.  And since the art of knitting and crochet has not changed much, it is fairly simple to re-create these fabulous looks!

If you take a peek at my dear friend's fashion Blog The Electric Elmo Newsfeed, she reviews Jason Wu's new collection at Fashion Week.  I don't know about you guys but I think I know where his inspiration came from!

Let's be honest, these looks never went "out" so much as were over shadowed by shockingly short, skin baring, let it all hang out looks.  But these beautiful little numbers have modestly and quietly sat in the back of our collective fashion minds and we take them out every now and then when we want to be ladies.



Could you get anymore elegant?

  So now that I have you hooked here is the exciting part, where you get your hands on these amazing treasures!  Read on dear readers.

  For those of us who are more frugal, or just don't have any money to spend, run don't walk over to Free Vintage Crochet and click, NOW! They have a huge selection of totally free vintage crochet patterns they have painstakingly scanned and re-published.  For you knitters here is the sister site they run Free Vintage Knitting. There is a huge number of patterns between both sites and even entire books re-published for sale.  Both sites are run by Purple Kitty LLC please check them out as they do great things by getting permissions to reproduce and redistribute patterns no longer in circulation.  Also if you have or know of anyone who has out of print patterns PLEASE donate them to this site! They even send you a free gift for donating your old patterns! Here is the information where to send any patterns.

Purple Kitty LLC

172 Ellen St

Oswego, NY 13126



Isn't this shrug to die for? And the pattern is free!



 

One of the 16 free patterns offered



  The biggest treasure trove I have happened to find is Yesterknits, which advertises itself as the largest collection of vintage patterns on the web.  After browsing their extensive pattern selection I would have to agree.They are based in the UK and most of the patterns are from over the big puddle so do be careful with the crochet patterns and know whether they are written in English or in US pattern format.  The pattern prices change depending on how many you buy, love bulk discounts, and at an average of $5.00 each they are worth it!  The site offers to send you a single pattern from their list of free patterns via email, I sent off for this one, still waiting on it however.

 

  This site packages together a number of booklets in one big bundle of crafty fun. Vintage Crochet Patterns.Com is a no frills website that looks more like a bad infomercial, they offer a free booklet to download if you fill out the form to request it. So I sent out a request and did indeed receive not one but three PDF booklets!  And for you knitters they also have a sister site with the same deal Vintage Knitting Patterns.Com and I received two PDF books one of stoles and one for hats. How perfect now I can accessorize that cute sweater!

  So in other words go forth dear readers and indulge your inner lady! Oh and by the way, I showed the patterns to the hubby who thoroughly liked them, he said something about more fun to guess what is underneath and to find out later how right you were! He's currently bugging me about when he gets to preview the finished product, so gotta go, Piaget can wait the hubby cannot!

 

Knitting with Neko

Hi All,

  I am Neko, for all of you scratching your heads this is the Japanese word for cat.  When we first started dating my husband used to make comments about how much I had in common with my kitty, so he started calling me that and 11 years later still does.  So I thought it was an apt name for me through this blog.

  Let me introduce myself, I am currently in my 3rd semester of nursing school after taking a year off to work as an LPN in Phoenix, AZ. I grew up Toronto, ON Canada and am trying to adjust to the Southwest.  I began to knit only about 6 years ago and recently taught myself to crochet by watching online tutorials.  I have been married for 11 years to a wonderful husband who tolerates my crazy yarn hoarding habits with great patience and humor.

  So what am I up to now?  Well in order to de-stress from the fun life as a nursing student I play with yarn, can you see the cat like tendencies? I mean how can you really have fun at school when your greatest worry is "Are my shoes white enough?" and how many of you can rattle off Piaget's Pyscho-Social Development Stages while trying to keep all your patients medications straight? Yeah didn't think so. So you can see that in the very complex world of nursing school that I turn to a very un-comple hobby, at I think it's uncomplex.  I laugh every time someone sits and stares in fascination at my busy hands coaxing some bit of brightly colored yarn into shapes.  I find yarn crafts uncomplicated, a series of knits and purls or singles and doubles put in the right order to achieve the right shape.

  Ok so I ran a little off course, I do that...ALOT.  Well right now I try to keep my projects small and easily stashed in my bag somewhere between the 1300 pages of Medical Surgical text and my wallet so that I can whip them out when I am riding on the bus or waiting for my professor to show up.  I have also been lured into the beautiful and painful world of knitted wire jewellery, I have a small cuff on the go but my fingers need healing time from the blisters that created. Thank god I can do my own wound care!

  So in other words stay tuned, I will posting some pictures of the projects on the go and handing out some free patterns. In the meantime please browse my resources and enjoy all the free pattern sites I have listed.

Cheers!
Neko