Monthly Archives: December 2011

Friday Gauge Check: Binding Off and Casting On

Friday means it’s time for our Friday rituals, the ceremonies of escorting one week out and preparing the next one. Which, around here, is the Gauge Check, where I take a look at my week and figure out where I’ve come from and where I’m going. Sometimes there are goals, sometimes I just talk about what’s going on in my life and my crafting. You are all welcome to join in in the comments.

Welcome to the last weekend of 2011!  Everyone and their blog-writing dog is dong a year-in-review post, and… I’m just not feeling it.  I suppose I could look over my gauge checks and hit some highlights or something, but.  But it’s late, and I’m tired, and I just don’t have the energy to wade through 2011 a second time.  It was hard enough doing it the first time.

This year was hard for everyone I know, and plenty of people I don’t know, and I’m very glad to have made it to the end.  I have an apartment and a job, a city that’s fast becoming home, and a relationship that is more satisfying and joyful with every passing day.  There are so many blessings in my life, and I will choose to dwell on those tonight, rather than looking toward the things that dissatisfy me.

Jack had two more interviews with the company I mentioned last week.  If all goes well, there will be at least one more, so I’m going to ask for your good thoughts and prayers once more.  I still haven’t heard back from mine, but she did tell me it would be two weeks.

Knitting!  I feel like I’ve made excellent knitting progress, though I think it was more mental than physical.  Remember how I mentioned that I was wanting to make a Turn a Square hat for Jack?  Well, over the weekend I actually pulled yarn out of my stash, cast it on, and finished it, and he’s been wearing it all week.  I had a skein of beautiful dark teal alpaca gifted by a friend of mine for the main color, and a skein of Felici Sport in Seaside for the contrasting color, and it turned out beautifully.  I don’t actually have any pictures, but I’ll try and get one up on my Ravelry in the next couple of days.  It was a lot of fun to knit, just varied enough to be interesting but simple enough that I could do it at work without any problems.  I may have a little bit of a knitter’s crush on Jared Flood.

After that, I decided I probably had enough yarn to do a reverse version of the hat, and I cast on the ribbing and started knitting on the body when Jack mentioned that he wished he had a pair of mitts that coordinated with his new hat and the grey scarf I made for him last winter.  (I’ve made him a lot of mitts, just nothing that works well with the colors.)  I went looking around Ravelry, thinking that surely someone had adapted Turn a Square for mitts.

Apparently not.  Inspired, I ripped the hat out, divided the remaining yarn in half with a little help from my handy-dandy digital scale, and set to work.  It’s still very much a work in progress, though I’m happy with the ribbing as it currently stands.  I’m going to rip back a little of the hand, but I have a good idea that I know where I’m going at this point.  I’m adapting Robyn Devine’s Merrymeeting Mitts for stripes, just because I’m really familiar with the pattern at this point.

I’m a little obsessed with socks right now, because Jack wore his BFF socks tramping around Portland one day, and the soles had practically disintegrated by the time he made it home.  I’m not sure which of us was more upset by this; I suspect it was him.  As for me, I can always knit more socks.  I have since discovered that it may have been due to the composition of the yarn: Merino and Tencel, while lovely, are not optimal for socks.  This knowledge was acquired courtesy of the copy of The Knitter’s Book of Socks by Clara Parkes that I was able to borrow from the library.  (This book, incidentally, is absolutely fantastic, and I recommend it most highly.)  So I’m hypothetically knitting socks.

In reality, I ripped out the cast on of the second Test Knit sock, since I hadn’t actually gotten any further than that, and re-cast it on as a vanilla sock so I can knit on it at work.  Interesting construction, being interesting, requires more attention than I have available, and Jack doesn’t care if his socks match as long as I made them.

While I was head-on with reality, I looked at the two-color pink basketweave scarf in its Hello Kitty project bag that I haven’t touched in nearly a year.  I pulled it out and examined it, being really honest with myself as to the likelihood that I would a) ever finish it and b) be willing to wear it in public if I did.  It was one of the first projects I ever cast on, back in June 2010, and… well, let’s say that my skills have improved considerably since then.  Even if I did pick it up, I imagine that the second half of it would look very strange next to the first.

A pile of pink yarn that used to be a scarf

This is the conclusion I reached.

At left, you can see the conclusion I reached.  It was really satisfying, ripping all of it out.  I need to break down and pick up a niddy-noddy, because that’s an awful lot of yarn to skein around the back of a chair.

Funny story associated with this picture, actually: I ripped the scarf out, was about to start winding it back into a ball (just to get it all off the floor) and decided that I should take a picture of my efforts.  I dropped the ends of the yarn onto the top of the pile (that’s the better part of two skeins there; it’s two solid pink colorways rather than one variegated one as you might think from the picture), snapped the shot, went to pick the ends back up… and couldn’t find them.  I ended up spreading this tremendous tangle across my kitchen floor, digging for the ends.  I did find them, though I’m still untangling the last of it.

This is another (hard) lesson in “if you don’t love it now, you won’t love it later.”  I stopped loving the scarf a while back, riddled as it was with errors and my earliest attempts at knitting, and now I have the raw materials to turn it into something else, something that I will genuinely love and be proud to call my own.  What half-done projects do you have sitting in a bin that might be improved upon by being reduced to component parts?

Ripping projects out is actually becoming kind of addictive.  I’m also thinking about the proto-Emily shawl that’s been waiting for me to think about how to re-make the border, and the Celtic Moonrise mittens that never quite worked the way I wanted them to.  How satisfying would it be just to say, “No, this isn’t working,” and start over?

Ten Things I’d Like to Do, Redux

Last January, I listed off ten things I’d like to do, as a crafter.  It hasn’t quite been a year, but it seems like a good time to take a look at those and see where I’m at.

Goal One: Knit a Sweater.  Well, I still haven’t knit a sweater, but I have a swatch, and yarn, and a pattern picked out.  Give me a few months, and this one will be accomplished.

Goal Two: Try Fair Isle.  Still haven’t done this, though I’ve done slip-stitch colorwork and two kinds of stripes.  I haven’t found the Fair Isle project that makes my heart sing, just yet.

Goal Three: Take Something From Design to Finished Object.  I’ve done this twice (the Spiral Lace hat and the Yawoll gloves) and I’m working on two more.  Design is fun!

Goal Four: Grow My Stash.  I grew it, then I shrunk it down to a single box, and now I’ve grown it again.  It’s about at the point where I can’t really buy much more yarn because I don’t have much space, and I have an entire bin that’s mostly fiber.  I keep thinking about sweater quantities of yarn, though.

Goal Five: Spinning and Dying My Own Yarn.  Halfway there on this one.  Dying is still something I haven’t quite managed, though it’s mostly from lack of time right now.  I’m slowly collecting the pieces to attempt some dying, and one of the things I picked up at the Knit Picks sale in September was a skein of fingering weight Bare.

Goal Six: Take More Commissions.  I did, but I also struggled with them.  Things I am learning: how and when to say no, and not to take on a project that’s too big or too difficult.

Goal Seven: Hats!   I have made hats.  I, in fact, love making hats.  I want to make more hats. ALL THE HATS.  I now live in a climate that requires hats; my life is eminently better because of it.

Goal Eight: Needles.  I don’t have to buy needles very often, but when I do find a project that requires needles I don’t have, I buy them without angst.  I have needles for hats, interchangeable cables in three different lengths, square needles, and multiples of my favorite sizes (mostly US3).  I’ve gotten rid of 90% of the straight aluminum needles I didn’t like.  My needle situation is vastly improved.

Goal Nine: Sew.  I took a sewing class!  I have a sewing machine fund!  VERY SOON, this goal will be met, and I am SUPER EXCITED about it.

Goal Ten: Make More Stuff For Myself.  The Gretel tam!  The Codename: Garnet mitts!  The monkey socks, though I don’t want to talk about those.  I’m still not a very selfish knitter, but I have made stuff for myself, and I have more stuff in the pipe, such as my sweater.

All in all, I think I’ve made good progress on my crafting life.  I’ve also learned to weave, bought a spinning wheel, and made eight pairs of fingerless gloves.

How has your week been?

 

 

 

 

Friday Gauge Check: Coming out of the Darkness

Friday means it’s time for our Friday rituals, the ceremonies of escorting one week out and preparing the next one. Which, around here, is the Gauge Check, where I take a look at my week and figure out where I’ve come from and where I’m going. Sometimes there are goals, sometimes I just talk about what’s going on in my life and my crafting. You are all welcome to join in in the comments.

The longest night of the year has passed, and the world has once again made those of us in the Northern Hemisphere the promise that spring will come.

I feel like we turned a corner somewhere in there, and we’re making progress.  Jack and I both had interviews today, for two positions in Vancouver that don’t involve answering phones.  His is for a job very similar to the one he had in Phoenix, and mine is for a job similar to one I did several years ago that I enjoyed.

I’m sure I’m far from the first person to notice this, but job hunting feels like online dating – you put yourself out there, contacting a bunch of random strangers, hoping that somebody thinks you’re attractive enough to go to dinner with at least once.  Up here, though, nobody will just invite you to dinner; they want to meet for coffee first.  This step is called the “phone interview,” and I can at least thank my current job for giving me a solid phone presence and the ability to think on my feet.  I had the coffee date on Wednesday and the dinner date today; Jack had his coffee date today and scored a dinner date for Tuesday.  My date… left me really wondering.  I thought it was going really well up to the very end, and then it fell sort of flat.  So I’m not sure if I’m going to get a second date, but I hope so.  Your thoughts, good wishes, and prayers would be very welcome, because this is a break we really need.

The February Baby Blanket (aka the Pine Forest blanket) is finished!  I also finished the body of the Sneaky Mountain Shawl (aka Multnomah); it’s headlong into the lace border next.  It feels really small, but I’m not sure how much of that is the way garter stitch behaves when it’s blocked, and how much is the shawl itself.  I suppose I’ll just keep knitting until I reach the end of my yarn, and see how big it turns out.  I think I’d be more inclined to wear a small shawl anyway, so I’m not really going to worry about it.

Everything else has just been simmering.  The Spillyjane Mitts got another round or two, but I’m up into the cabled part, so it requires the ability to pay attention and read directions, which means I don’t often have the mental fortitude to work on it in the evening.

One thing that I have been doing is sitting down to spin daily.  I can’t put a lot of time into it, but I do feel more grounded when I spend time with my wheel.  Spinning consistency is still a problem; I can’t seem to produce a good merino yarn for the life of me.  It’s overspun in spots, underspun in others, and completely disintegrates when I try to ply it.  I gave up, dug into my fiber stash, and pulled out a small bump of some miscellaneous undyed fiber (Corriedale cross, maybe?) I picked up from Webs and am working on that.  It’s a lot crimpier than the merino, and is much easier to work with.

That’s about it for me, this week.  I hope you all have (or had) a lovely holiday.  See you next week!

 

 

Friday Gauge Check: Blogiversary Edition

Friday means it’s time for our Friday rituals, the ceremonies of escorting one week out and preparing the next one. Which, around here, is the Gauge Check, where I take a look at my week and figure out where I’ve come from and where I’m going. Sometimes there are goals, sometimes I just talk about what’s going on in my life and my crafting. You are all welcome to join in in the comments.

I started this blog on Friday, December 17, 2010.  There are currently 49 posts tagged “gauge check,” not counting this one, which means I missed two over the course of the last year.  49 Fridays (and the occasional Saturday) where I sat down and talked about where I was and where I was going.  For someone who’s famous for starting projects and not finishing them, it’s a pretty impressive track record.  Hell, I’m going to come out and say it: I’m proud of myself.  Good times and bad, busy and lazy, I’ve kept up with this blog for an entire year.  And I have no plans to stop any time soon, either.  By and large, I’ve enjoyed having this place to come every week, and I really do appreciate being able to look back at the previous weeks and see where I’ve been.

This time last year, I was volunteering, finishing my last semester of college, working part-time at the library – oh, and knitting.  I’d just finished a cowl for a Christmas present, and I was working on the second of a pair of fingerless gloves, and a sock.  My current knitting looks rather similar: I just finished a scarf for a Christmas present, I’m working on two pairs of fingerless gloves, and a sock.  And a shawl.  And… well, I’ll get to that.  And somehow I have less time to knit right now, because I’m not commuting via bus and train.

Okay, I remember the shawl, and the sock.  But two pairs of fingerless gloves? I hear you say.  When was she knitting fingerless gloves?

 You’re right, I wasn’t.  I dug the Swan Maiden Mitts out of my UFO bin and got back to work on those!  So I can finish them!  For Christmas!  So go me!  And then… then there was Spillyjane.  Spillyjane, who designs absolutely gorgeous stuff that makes me want to knit complicated colorwork.  She’s working on all sorts of secret projects, so to make it up to her readers, she released a free fingerless glove pattern.  They’re cabled, guys.  You know how I feel about cables.  Plus I had a skein of exactly the right size, weight, and color in my stash.  Do you know how rare that is?  (Incredibly.)  But yes, I have my own pair of Spillyjane cabled gloves in process in Wool of the Andes Thunderhead Tonal, scored at that warehouse sale back in September.

If these go well, I’m going to try and turn them into mittens, since I really didn’t like the (non-existent) thumb gusset on the Celtic Moonrise Mittens, which is why they’re still languishing in the UFO bin.

The sock is the second of the pair I’m test knitting, which are still secret.  I haven’t really done much beyond cast on, but it’s sitting in my sock bag, being all hopeful that I’ll pick it back up.  Multnomah is in there too, equally neglected.  (Poor Multnomah only needs her stitches counted so I can figure out how far up the body I actually am.  I’m close, I know.) But the Christmas present that’s been my work knitting is finished!  On the other hand, that December baby my brother’s girlfriend was expecting was born, so I really need to finish the February Baby Blanket.  I dug that one out and put some rows on it, and it came to work with me today and got a few more, after I wove in the ends on Christmas present.  Somehow I must block the thing.  It’s a good thing my blocking mats are flexible, though I wish I had some wires.

I did cast on one other thing this week, though.  It’s something I’ve never really cast on before, though I do a metaphorical one every week.  That’s right, everyone: I am swatching for my sweater.  Size 6 needles, stockinette, for this.  (Love the sleeves.)  I decided that something a little less complicated than a seriously cabled sweater would be a better idea for a first attempt.  An Alice Starmore sweater is probably not an optimal first project either.  Also: not enough yarn in my Knit Picks box for a seriously cabled sweater, which is what comes of ordering yarn before you have your project picked out, I guess.  I have to admit, though, there’s something inherently satisfying about having a sweater’s worth of yarn.  I could get used to it.

Anyway, enough about knitting for now.  In honor of my blogiversary, I’m borrowing from my original format to do a quick check of how I’m doing.

Physically: Ask me to do anything but chew, okay?

Joint disorders run in my family.  My grandmother had crippling arthritis, my mother has an obscure disorder that makes her hands go white, and I have TMJ.  (Plus fussy knees and an irritable back.)  A few weeks ago, I had a really bad flare-up that made anything involving using my jaw incredibly painful.  Considering that I talk for a living?  Not fun.  The flare-up has died down, mostly, but I still can’t open my jaw very far, and I can’t eat anything that’s crunchy or prone to resisting.  (The latest thing I couldn’t bite into?  A stick of lamb jerky.  I could chew it, slowly, but I couldn’t bite pieces off.)  It means that I can’t eat things that I love, like nuts or apples.  It also means that what I can eat, I have to eat slowly, with effort, which means that I’m prone to getting tired of eating before I’m actually finished.  I normally love to eat, so this is a strange thing for me.

Mentally: Ready for the Weekend

I swapped schedules with someone so they could have today off, and so I ended up working today.  It wasn’t bad, as far as days at work go, though it was busier than it had been all week, so I didn’t get much knitting accomplished.  I’m ready for a break, though, because I’m really itching to get started on a few projects, and hopefully finish up some others.  Jack needs a hat (I’m looking at Jared Flood’s Turn A Square) and I really do need some socks.  I have – mental startitis, I guess?  I’m not actually casting on half a dozen things, I’m just thinking about doing it.

Next Week

Is Christmas.  Who decided that was okay?  I demand more time.  I don’t even have my tree decorated yet, guys, I’m so not ready for this.  Plus I’m working Christmas.  Also Christmas Eve.  Also New Year’s Eve.  Who on earth is going to call customer care for their cell phone on New Year’s Eve, I ask you?  Christmas Eve at least makes some sense, as cell phones are popular gifts.  But really, PhoneCompany, your phone monkeys are people too.  Call center job: light years away from last year’s Vegas getaway.

Apparently next week I’m going to turn into a curmudgeon.  What about you?  Any big plans for the holiday that I can enjoy vicariously?

Friday Gauge Check: Sunset, Shopping, and Sweater Machines

Friday means it’s time for our Friday rituals, the ceremonies of escorting one week out and preparing the next one. Which, around here, is the Gauge Check, where I take a look at my week and figure out where I’ve come from and where I’m going. Sometimes there are goals, sometimes I just talk about what’s going on in my life and my crafting. You are all welcome to join in in the comments.

One thing I’m having a hard time adjusting to is how short the days are right now.  It’s the last plunge into December, approaching the shortest day of the year, and I was on my way home from a thrifting spree.  It was sunny and clear today, and the sun was westering, creating that beautiful golden light I associate with late afternoon.  I glanced down at the clock, thinking about dinner, and realized that it was 3:00.  Now, it’s just past 5, and the sun is in the final stages of setting, where the sky is deepening to black.  It still seems strange that it could be dark this early… and that it will get dark even earlier before it starts getting light again.

As I mentioned, we went thrifting this afternoon, wandering through a series of Vancouver thrift stores and used book stores.  Last week we found a thrift store run by the Humane Society, and discovered that they had not only an amazing assortment of old sewing machines, many with instruction manuals included,  but a complete Bond Incredible Sweater Machine, still in the box.  It was outside my budget, at the time.  However, the tag color indicated that it would be on sale this week, so we stopped in this afternoon.  Lo and behold, it was still there, and 50% off.  Score!  So, I have myself a knitting machine to try out.  If I don’t like it, I’m putting it up on Ravelry, where someone will doubtless give it a very good home.

I also got my box of yarn from Knit Picks, moving my hypothetical sweater further down the path to becoming real.  Now comes serious decision-making time.  I’m thinking about a cardigan, because it will be both more flexible (in terms of usefulness) and more forgiving (in terms of fit).  Cabled, because I’m much more into cables than lace, at least on my sweaters.  Can I tell you how happy it makes me that cabled knits are in?  So very happy.

At the moment, this is what my short list of potential sweaters looks like, although it’s mostly in the abstract sense of “I like the look of this sweater.”  Opinions?  Suggestions?  Recommendations?  I do have both Big Girl Knits and Little Red in the City, so I’m prepared to make appropriate adjustments.

When I’m not working on Christmas knitting or at work, I’ve been playing video games.  I was playing Final Fantasy X-2, but gave up at the end of chapter 2.  The game is just… not quite what I want it to be.  The dress sphere system is interesting and kind of fun, but mostly it seems to be like a lot of flash and not much substance.  The garment grid setup saves it a little, but mostly it feels artificially limiting.  I like the fact that there are three female characters, but the overall plot is so unrelentingly depressing that even Rikku can’t cheer it up.  Mostly it makes me want to play the original, but I didn’t quite get high enough of a level before facing the Sanctuary Keeper in Zanarkand, so I’m pretty much stuck.  Instead, I re-started XII.  (Restarted because I tried to pick up from my save point, 63 play-hours into the game, and had no idea what was going on plot-wise and apparently had completely forgotten how the battle system worked.  Probably for the best.)

On one hand, I should probably be knitting, but on the other, I need the relaxation.

What do you do to unwind at the end of the day?  Give me your best relaxation tips, or just check your gauge, in the comments.

 

Friday Gauge Check: Wait, What?

Friday means it’s time for our Friday rituals, the ceremonies of escorting one week out and preparing the next one. Which, around here, is the Gauge Check, where I take a look at my week and figure out where I’ve come from and where I’m going. Sometimes there are goals, sometimes I just talk about what’s going on in my life and my crafting. You are all welcome to join in in the comments.

Okay, who let December in here?  It seems like only two or three days ago it was mid-September, and now there’s terrible Christmas music everywhere you go, and exhortations to buy, and evergreens in every empty lot.  Christmas is coming, ready or not, and that terrible harbinger of Christmas, Black Friday.  Which was last week, and, as I told you then, I didn’t do anything about.

But then there was Cyber Monday.  Cyber Monday doesn’t involve crowds, just sales.  Sales, I can get behind.

You know who had a sale on Cyber Monday?  Yeah, Knit Picks. So I finally got a sweater’s worth of yarn, a bag of Swish DK in the colorway Jade.  I also grabbed a few skeins of Felici in the Time Traveler colorway, so I can make Jack the pair of fingerless gloves and socks to match his Second Doctor Scarf I’ve been promising him.

Of course, I’m still waiting for the delivery, and I can’t show you a picture of the test sock I finished yet, so here’s a picture taken out my kitchen window the other morning.  That’s a thick coating of frost on the neighboring rooftops, and it was gone in a few hours, but it’s gotten pretty cold, at least by my standards.

(My standards are admittedly not very high.  Or perhaps I should say they’re not very low, since it’s the temperature we’re talking about.)

I’ve been wearing my handknits with great gusto, though – fingerless gloves and a hat nearly all the time.  The Gretel tam is very warm, garners compliments everywhere I go, and is making me think about knitting similar sorts of hats.  The Grace Lace Beret, for example.  I love me a good slouchy hat, and I can wear them with some style.

Hats have so much potential, you know?  They’re fairly quick knits, don’t use a lot of yarn, and they’re super-versatile, at least up here in the Pacific Northwest, where it rains nine months of the year.  (I’m guessing at that, actually.  It could be more.)  Keeping your head warm (and dry!) wasn’t much of a concern in Arizona.  But I’m a hat person, have always been, regardless of the temperature, so I didn’t realize how very important a hat was up here until the day I failed to put one on.  The walk from the car to the door of the office has never been colder.  I’m just glad it wasn’t raining at the time.

Fingerless gloves are like that, too.  I didn’t think about how much warmer my hands were when I had them on until I left them on my desk when I went to get lunch.  (Mostly, I thought about how cold my fingers were.)  Now, I have at least two pairs of fingerless gloves in my purse at all times, usually the Codename: Garnet gloves and the alpaca pair I picked up at Sock Dreams and embellished.

Some years ago, I spent a couple of winters in Pennsylvania, and when I was there, I learned the fundamental purpose of the scarf.  As a desert child, I’d always thought about scarves as decorative objects, worn to add flair to an outfit.  It wasn’t until that first snowfall in State College that I understood that a scarf was a necessary article of clothing to keep your neck warm.  Somehow, I didn’t figure out hats or fingerless gloves during this time.  Then again, I wasn’t a knitter yet, so that may have had something to do with it.

It isn’t cold enough that it requires a scarf all the time, at least not yet.  On the other hand, it’s very early December, and it may get colder.  When it does, I have a smart black-and-white wool coat, and some lovely shawls that will wrap charmingly.

How is deep fall treating you?  Are you warm enough?  Tell me about your favorite cold-weather accessories, or just check your gauge, in the comments.