Monthly Archives: April 2012

Friday Gauge Check: Birthday Edition

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.

Today is my birthday!  I’m celebrating my 26th birthday – not that I’m 26, I’m ten years past that – but 26 was my last birthday pre-Isabel, and it seemed like a good point to reclaim. Nobody ever believes that I’m over 30 anyway, so I might as well go with it, right? Anyway, I’m celebrating in grand fashion.  Starting with telling people that it’s my birthday!

Regardless of it being my birthday, it’s still a Friday, so Jack had to go to work. (I promised him that next year I would schedule my birthday for a weekend.)  I took myself to breakfast at Panera, where I enjoyed a strawberry scone and a cup of tea, and now I am enjoying more tea and pasta salad for lunch.  This tea is in one of my birthday presents, which is a (left-handed!) mug with the Elizabeth Zimmermann quote,

“Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises.”

I think I will adopt this as my mantra.  It came from Winemakerssister, and was part of the Elizabeth Zimmermann centenary set.  The notecards are getting framed and going up in my craft room.  I feel like I should be able to accomplish anything with Elizabeth at my elbow.  And if Elizabeth isn’t enough by herself, I can always add rum.

Other presents (in case you care) included the car and an off-white Michael Kors handbag from my mother.  She has excellent taste in bags; her Christmas present was the Vera Bradley bag that has become my constant companion as of late.  It’s perfect for knitting, with lots of pockets and straps long enough to go over my shoulder. In what is fast becoming a tradition, she included a random Hello Kitty object; this one is a little lamp that plugs into the USB port of my laptop.  It’s supposed to be a keyboard light, but as my keyboard lights up, I suspect it will prove even more useful to shed some light on my stitches.  Heaven knows I would never actually buy a name-brand handbag for myself, but I’m very fond of them and they make excellent presents.  (Okay, I do own a Coach bag and a Kate Spade bag, both of which I got secondhand and paid less than $10 for.  And I have several Sanrio bags that I bought new. But I’m still not willing to pay over $100 for a purse.)

Tonight Jack and I are going to see Dar Williams at the Aladdin Theatre, and talk about your amazing birthday presents, okay?  Jack saw her years ago, and every time he mentions it he says that he wishes that I could have been there, even though it was before we met.  And now I get to go!

Anyway, enough about today.  Last weekend we went out to Washougal and Camas, which weren’t nearly as far as we thought, and visited Wooly Wooly Wag Tails (which alas, does not have a functional web page).  This shop delighted me, from the minute we walked in and were met with the official greeter, who happens to be a Golden Retriever.  All stores should have incredibly sweet and friendly dogs who meet you at the door.  The human affiliated with the shop was just as nice, warmly welcoming without feeling pushy.

I can’t say enough good things about the shop itself, either.  It’s a converted house, a really good-sized space, and it is just crammed with an incredible variety of yarn.  They have more shades of Noro than I’ve ever seen, and lines of Cascade that I didn’t know existed.  (Did you know Cascade made a wool/acrylic blend?)  What really caught my attention, though, was their sale bin, which was 35% off.  I walked away with a sweater’s worth of Cascade Eco+, four skeins, for a little over $40.  It’s pink, so I’m probably going to overdye it – but considering that that’s twice what I paid for the single skein I made the Through the Woods hood out of?  I’m not complaining.

Who am I kidding, though? What you really want to hear about is my crafting, right?  Okay, so I successfully completed the cast-on for the Gnarled Oak Cardigan, and have since knit four inches on the body.  I’m trying to deAn almost-completed dark green sock and the beginning of a dark green sweater.cide whether four inches is good progress or not.  It’s not much in the grand scheme of an entire sweater, but on the other hand, it’s four inches more than I had last week, 1.5″ of it is 2×2 ribbing, and it’s all plain stockinette, so lots of purling, which I am very slow at.  I’m hoping a mostly-stockinette sweater will make me faster at purling, of nothing else.

For the Oxidation socks, I have finished the 8″ leg, turned the heel (flap heel, Eye of Partridge, if you’re curious) and am about 3/4″ away from the toe decreases on the first sock.  Hopefully the second sock will go just as quickly as the first one, because Jack is incredibly excited about these socks. I’m excited too; they’re gorgeous.  (They’re in Blissful Knits Inspire, if you’ve forgotten.)  Nancy Bush is fast becoming one of my favorite sock designers; the patterning on this sock is a four-row repeat that is somehow incredibly addictive.  If you’re looking for a potato-chippy sock pattern that plays well with variegated or handpainted yarn, you could do much worse than her Copper Penny Socks.  Helpfully, it also creates a nicely stretchy leg that works well with my fiance’s serious calves.  (He did martial arts and dance for years; to my knowledge he’s never been able to buy shoes that were taller than an ankle boot.)

On the spinning front, I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve barely spent any time at my wheel at all.  I spun a little bit of the blue fiber today, but I’m far from finished.  The problem that I’m running into is, that while I love the colors of the fiber and I can’t wait to see the cotton candy yarn finished, I’m not really enjoying spinning the fiber itself.  It’s not good fiber, it doesn’t draft well, and it’s difficult to produce a smooth yarn.  I’ll soldier on, because I really do want the finished product, but I’m promising myself that the next thing I’m going to spin will be pretty.  I’m thinking about the batt of superwash merino from Hanks in the Hood I picked up when I visited Anderson Fiber Works for the first time.

Other things I am considering?  Next week is Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, and I’m thinking about joining in. Lee Meredith is having a Twitter-based mystery knit-a-long, and I’m thinking about joining THAT.  I have these two balls of unclaimed Cascade 220 in my stash, just sitting there, so maybe.  I’m thinking about sewing, and I have a pile of books that I really ought to get to, and there’s that fleece I really need to wash.  Next week: do ALL THE THINGS.

How’s your week been?  Check your gauge, or tell me what birthday you’ll be celebrating next, in the comments.  Oh, and if you’re not reading this on Friday?  It’s always a good time to check your gauge.  Go for it.

 

 

Friday Gauge Check: Thankful

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.

When in doubt, ladies and gentlemen, wash your swatch.  I threw my swatch for the Gnarled Oak Cardigan into the washer (it’s superwash wool, and I do not have a bathtub or a laundry sink; I’m totally washing it in the machine, why pretend otherwise?) and then in the dryer (to see what would happen!) and, lo and behold, it came out perfectly on gauge.  Now that I knew what needle size to use (US 4, what is that), the next step was casting on!  Yeah, I’m still working on that, because apparently? I can’t count.  I cast on (three times, don’t ask), knit the set up row, knit the second row (the one that says “knit x stitches for the front right, place marker, knit y stitches for the back, place marker, knit x stitches for the front left”) and somehow I didn’t have enough stitches.  Somehow I was eleven stitches short.  I don’t know.  (After double-checking, it appears that I was misremembering the number of cast-on stitches, so I just didn’t cast on enough.)

The Enya socks gained another half-inch each (I measured), which means I have half an inch more to go before I start fiddling with the heel.  These socks are never-ending, guys, really.  I’ve never fallen into the knitting black hole on the foot of a sock before.  Of course, the minimal progress on those socks may be because I’m nearly done with the leg of the first Oxidation Sock. I am loving this pattern – a four row repeat, easy to memorize, looks gorgeous, and the yarn (Blissful Knits in the colorway Deep Woods, if you’ll remember) is a joy to knit with.  The only issue I’m having is a little bit of tangling in the cake, and since I wound it, it’s probably my fault.

The pink half of the cotton candy fiber is spun up, and I’m making decent headway on the blue.  I expect to have it ready to ply by the end of the week.  This mostly excites me because I’m not particularly enjoying spinning it, so I’d really like to be done with it.

I’ve been sitting here for thirty minutes trying to come up with a good segue, and I just can’t.  My craft life, my happy relationship, every good thing that’s blossomed in my life since I got away from Isabel – I am so thankful for all of these things.

First panel: a stick figure stands beside a chasm. Text reads: "I know that no matter where I go or who I build a life with." Second panel: Stick figure alone. Text reads, "I will never have with anyone what I had with you." Third panel: stick figure walking. Text, "Thank God."

I'll never forget you - at least, the parts of you that were important red flags.

Sometimes XKCD says it best.

Have a good weekend, everybody.  Feel free to check your own gauge in the comments – or tell me what you’re thankful for leaving behind.

Friday Gauge Check: Entering April

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.

You guys, I am so tired right now.  It’s been a long day – a good one, absolutely – but a long one.  If I had more energy, I’d tell you all about going to “Alpacapalooza” (I am not making that up) last Saturday, which featured a lot of alpacas but not nearly as much unattached fiber as I’d hoped.  I ended up picking up a singular skein of yarn and some fluff suitable for needle felting, and that was it.  It was kind of disappointing, but I reminded myself that I do have a bag of alpaca roving that I picked up at the Alpaca festival I went to in Arizona.  Alpacas are pretty cute, though, I must say.

We also saw The Hunger Games, which was absolutely fantastic – really everything I wanted the movie to be.  The only casting complaint I had was Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch, and only because I didn’t think he looked seedy enough – a couple of days’ growth of beard and an askew collar does not 24 years of alcoholism make – but his acting was enough to win me over.  I can’t say enough good things about everyone else, especially Cinna; he was perfect.  Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss had the perfect level of inexplicably likable hostility.  Effie made me want to punch her (which is appropriate), Prim was adorable, and I wanted to put Rue in my pocket and take her home.  I’d read the book, Jack hadn’t, and both of us really enjoyed the movie, which is exactly what you want from an adaptation.

Registration for Black Sheep Gathering opened on Saturday as well, and I managed to snag a spot in Judith MacKenzie‘s “Yarns Recycled” workshop.  There are still spots open in several worskhops (although not any of hers), so if you’re thinking about attending BSG this year, I’ll be there  (EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESOEXCITEDOMG)!  If workshops aren’t in your budget, it looks like there will be lots of other things to see and do.

Crafting-wise, I spun more of the pink “cotton candy” roving.  It seems to be spinning more woolen than worsted, which is interesting – it’s not drafting very smoothly, but as Jack pointed out, cotton candy isn’t particularly smooth, so it really works for the concept I’m playing with.  I expect to finish working through it next week, since there really isn’t much left.  After that, it’s on to the blue.

The knitting for the Through the Woods hood is complete!  The finishing… is not.  I hope no one’s surprised; I’m certainly not.  Next week, though, I really do want to get it blocked and seamed (just in time for it to start warming up, of course).

I only did another couple of rounds on the Enya socks, but that’s because I was busy with the first two projects for the Year of Good Intentions.  “First two?” I hear you say. “I thought you were going to do one a month.”  Well, I was.  And I am!  The trouble is, after I put up my book list, I discovered one more book hiding in my yarn basket – Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn.  After some consulting with Jack, I determined that I would add one more project to the list, but this one would be for him.  You may remember that during the Rose City Yarn Crawl he found a skein of gorgeous green and black handpainted sock yarn in the colorway Deep Forest from Blissful Knits, so I cast on the Copper Penny Socks by Nancy Bush. Since I’m using green yarn, I’m calling them the Oxidation Socks.

I also swatched for the Gnarled Oak Cardigan, which looks like it’s going to be knit on US 4 needles.  Let me stress the importance of washing and blocking your swatch, folks, because my original swatch, on the US 6 needles the pattern called for, went from 20 stitches per 4 inches to 16 when it hit water.  The gauge on US 4 is still not perfect (my first inch was 6 stitches to the inch, the other three were somehow exactly 5, WHAT DOES IT MEAN)  but it’s close enough that I can math it a little and make it work.  The sweater’s supposed to have positive ease, and it is a cardigan so it will have to go over clothes, so it’s okay if it’s a little big, I think.  (Tell me these aren’t famous last words.)  Maybe I’ll make the sleeves first.

This week I’ve had – I suppose you could call it partial startitis?  I want to cast things on, but I’m not sure what!  Is this just me?  Have you had this problem?  Hopefully that will shake itself out this week, or if it doesn’t, maybe casting on the Gnarled Oak Cardigan will help.

Today, though, I took a class at Knit Purl from Takako Ueki of Habu Textiles on reading Japanese patterns, and let me tell you, it was like a revelation.  These patterns make so much sense!   It starts with a schematic, and you follow arrows, and it’s just amazing.  I hope to put together a post next week to talk about it in more detail, but I have to figure out how to describe the system without having a pattern to talk about – she walked us through the pattern for this, and it’s under copyright and not a free pattern, so it’s not like I could just tell people to download it.  (If I were a rich girl, though, I might order that kit in wine.  I’m kind of in love with the construction.)

That about covers the week – or at least, everything I can think of.  Check your gauge, or tell me about the wackiest festival you’ve ever been to (can it beat “Alpacapalooza?”) in the comments.