Monthly Archives: June 2012

Friday Gauge Check: Black Sheep Gathering Recovery

I had a fantastic time last weekend, between hanging out with a friend and going down to Black Sheep Gathering on Sunday.  I learned a LOT at my workshop, and I’ll have a post up before the weekend’s out about it.  (I’m working on it now, even.)

The drive to Eugene was lovely and not very long, and we plan to go back some weekend when they aren’t hosting the Olympic track and field trials to explore it further.  It looks quite charming, at first glance.

In the way of things, I was on a yarn diet for months in preparation for Black Sheep, and I ended up buying exactly one skein of sock yarn (on sale. for Jack.).  Maybe everyone was just seriously picked-over by the time I got there, but there just wasn’t anything that made my heart sing.  There was a lot of lovely fiber, but my fiber stash doesn’t really have any room to grow, so I refrained from bringing anything home.  (Also the market was closed by the time I was finished with class, otherwise I probably would have hunted down some cashmere.)

Jack also took Monday off, and we spent some time in downtown Portland, and did a little thrifting, and enjoyed spending time together.

The rest of the week felt slow and sleepy – I felt like I just couldn’t get motivated to get anything done, even the dishes. I suspect that I might have picked up a bug at Black Sheep, and while I never quite got all the way to sick, I was lethargic and unfocused.

One handknit sock.Despite this (or maybe because of it?), I finished the first Diamonds and Cables sock (isn’t that colorway amazing?), made good progress on the second sleeve of my Gnarled Oak Cardigan, and I actually got the pi shawl cast on and knit up to 72 stitches.  (I also found the Addi Lace needle I was looking for, but it wasn’t the size I wanted. Naturally.)

I did a lot of spinning (for me, at least) and I’m making good headway on the alpaca/bamboo blend. It has a lot of VM (for values of “a lot” that mean that I’ve never actually spun anything with any VM, really? I don’t know if it’s a lot in the grand scheme of things) in it, and I’m going back and forth between picking it out as I go and just leaving it in there. Opinions?  Will I hate myself later if I leave it in?

I’m sorry I haven’t been saying much lately, guys.  How’s your week been?

Friday Gauge Check: Saturday Morning 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.

Back in March, when I registered for a class at Black Sheep Gathering, we’d been planning to go down for the entire weekend, heading down on Friday and camping out.  Along the way, we realized that Eugene was going to be hosting the Olympic track and field trials, and a friend of Jack’s from Southern California was also going to be in town this weekend, so we decided that we’re going to go down Sunday morning and stay for the day.

Looking at the weather reports – pouring rain – I’m glad we changed our minds. I’m many things, but a hard-core camper is not one of them, and camping in a soggy field doesn’t exactly sound like a good time.

Jack took Friday and Monday off from work anyway, and we did a little garage saling (which I totally want to spell “sailing”) and thrifting, then headed into downtown to have dinner with his friend at a (delicious) Thai place we hadn’t tried before.  My Goodwill score of the day was a copy of EZ’s Knitting Workshop. I’ve never seen a Zimmermann book at a Goodwill before, and there were two copies of this book but no other knitting books at all.  Perhaps someone bought it to try and learn to knit, but didn’t get into it?

Thursday I went to the final job hunt strategy class (where I learned about two topics I loathe: networking and online social media, specifically LinkedIn) and for some reason I thought I had gotten past the increases for the sleeve of the Gnarled Oak Cardigan, so I knit straight to the end of the sleeve.  I’d done nine of fourteen.  The sleeve fits, albeit in the smaller size, and I’m wondering whether I’m going to have to rip back and add the proper increases or I can just attach the sleeve and go with it.  I have very small shoulders, so I’m thinking about putting in a couple of lifelines, attaching the first sleeve to the body, and seeing if it fits.  Opinions, anybody?

Most of my knitting this week has gone to the first Diamonds and Cables sock. I’ve gotten all the way through the foot, turned the heel, and am now working on the leg.  It’s a fun knit, not quite easy enough to be memorizable, but rhythmic in a way that’s enjoyable. Rather potato-chippy, to be honest.

My third project is going to be an Elizabeth Zimmermann pi shawl, but I’m having a hard time getting the cast-on to look good on DPNs, and my US 4 Addi Lace needles have mysteriously disappeared.  (Yes, the ones I was just using for the Forest Ridge shawl. I’m perplexed.) It calls for a four-stitch cast-on, which doesn’t seem to be solid enough to get a good start.  I’m thinking about casting on eight stitches, essentially starting from row 2.  I welcome opinions on that one, too.

That’s pretty much it for this week, though you’ll probably get a Black Sheep report early next week, and I’m also working on a post about having awkward conversations.  Check your gauge, or offer me good knitting advice, in the comments.

Friday Gauge Check: Halfway through June already?

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.

It turns out that the internet issue is actually that the wireless router is on its last legs.  Considering that we picked it up at Goodwill, paid considerably less than $10 for it, and got over a year’s worth of use out of it, I’m not inclined to complain overmuch.

Knitting-wise, I’ve escaped the knitting black hole on the Gnarled Oak Cardigan!  In fact, the body stitches are currently sitting to one side while I knit the first sleeve.  Apparently my purling tension is radically different from my knitting tension, to the point where I’m knitting the sleeve on a US 6.  (The body is on a US 4.)

I finished the first SpillyMitt!  Well, except for the thumb.  But.  It took me six months to get this far. Hopefully it will take much less time to get the second one finished.

The toe of a hand-knit sock, in progress.Finally, I also decided on the June Year of Good Intentions project.  I cast on the Diamonds and Cables Socks from Wendy D. Johnson’s Toe-Up Socks for Every Body using Knit Picks Imagination in the Wicked Witch colorway.

I finished the first pattern repeat, and I’m really liking the way both the pattern and the yarn is knitting up.  The individual colors aren’t quite long enough to stripe, but the sequence is long enough that it doesn’t appear to be flashing or pooling.

A pair of socks for myself!  Very nearly unheard-of.  (How unheard-of?  This was apparently the only sock yarn in my stash that wasn’t explicitly bought for Jack.  Oops.)

Spinning!  As in, there was some!  Still working on the alpaca/bamboo blend, still soft and enjoying spinning it.  It seems to have a surprising amount of VM that I keep having to pick out, and I don’t feel like it’s very well blended, but it’s still nice.

There’s more going on, but I’m having a poor-focus day, so I’m going to sign off and maybe talk about it later.  Have a good weekend, kids.

Friday Gauge Check: No Internets 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.

Happy… um… Saturday, everybody.  One of the perks of our apartment, we thought at the time of renting it, was that internet was included.  What that means, we discovered later, is that our landlord can (and does) unplug the internet at any time, for any reason he considers valid, without either warning or explanation.  We came home on Thursday night to no internet.  Friday morning, I had it for a little while, and then it disappeared again.  I wasn’t feeling well enough to walk down the stairs and knock on his door, and he wasn’t answering his phone.  According to my iPad, there was briefly internet again this morning, but by 10:30 it was out again.  This afternoon, I’m at the library, so here is my gauge check, and I apologize for the delay.

Last Sunday, we went on a nature walk with a group of unaffiliated Druids, and if you follow me on Instagram (I’m rippingback), you were totally spammed by my pictures of edible native plants of northern Oregon.  (I have no regrets.)  Can I talk again about how much I love this city?  Particularly, I love how I can drive across a bridge, up a windy road, pull off to the side of the road, and go on a nature hike in an area that looks like untouched wilderness (except for the trail itself) but still gets decent cell phone reception.

This was the third time meeting with the unaffiliated Druid group, which gets together every other Sunday.  There was an organizational meeting, one where we talked about two major Druid organizations (OBOD and ADF), and then this one.  Next Sunday we’re getting together to talk about the concept of deity.  Everyone who’s showed up has been nice, and we’ve had a good time.  Apparently there’s very little organized pagan activity up here, and there’s some history of flaking out and schisms of the sort that sound familiar from my days trying to herd Phoenix fans, but the folks I’ve met seem to be good people, if (perhaps understandably) skittish of anything that smacks of organization or permanence.

I don’t really consider myself a Druid per se, but I’m doing some work on the ADF Dedicant Path to see what I learn.  Part of my healing process is re-exploring paganism, because my spirituality has a lot of hurricane damage.

A few weeks ago, I signed up for a job-hunting workshop at Multnomah County Library, and the first one was Thursday.  It’s a small but interesting group of people, and I suspect that I’m going to learn as much from my classmates as the facilitator.

This weekend is the Rose Festival, which is apparently Kind of A Big Deal around here.  I’m not sure if that’s why there was a floral mandala in the middle of Pioneer Square on Thursday, but there was.  I took a picture.

The Rose Festival includes a parade that’s apparently Srs Business around here – as in, people set up tents on the sidewalk the night before to be assured of getting a good spot.  For a parade.  I kid you not.  (I don’t pretend to understand it, either.)

Please understand that last night it was 48 degrees and had been raining off and on most of the day.  Granted, I can’t think of any time that I would want to camp out on a sidewalk in general, but certainly not any that involve temperatures below 50 degrees and rain.

What am I missing?  I mean, it’s a bunch of marching bands, floats covered with flowers, and random groups of people waving (or dancing, or riding horses).  What is it about parades that make people so excited?  Do you guys like parades?  (Yes, I watched the St. Patrick’s Day parade.  From my front stoop.  And a lot of the appeal was that it was just so incredibly bizarre.)

In knitting news, Tuesday I finished the Forest Ridge shawl!  I still haven’t blocked it, mostly because it’s got a serious wingspan and I’m going to have to either clear some major floor space for it or block it on my bed, which is going to take a warm day.  We’ve had a distinct lack of warm days so far this month.  It looks surprisingly  nice for unblocked lace, but not nice enough that I’m willing to take a picture of it.

The SpillyMitt is now past the afterthought thumb placement, and I’m well into the hand.  If all goes well, I expect to finish the first one next week.  Still putting a row per day on the @Leethal Twitter Mystery Cowl KAL.

I still haven’t decided the June project, though I’ve looked at a couple of books.  I was thinking about the Three-Cornered Scarf from The Intentional Spinner, and then I realized that most of my shawlettes are triangular, and I probably don’t need another one.  I also set the twist on my handspun, and it bloomed, and I’m not sure how much of the yarn could be considered laceweight at this point.  Most of it is fingering, I think.  I’ve been considering just pulling a pretty stitch out of a dictionary and creating a rectangular stole, but we’ll see.  The June project may end up being socks.  Does anyone have any good “increase for half the weight of the yarn, then decrease” shawl patterns to recommend?

In celebration of finishing the Forest Ridge shawl, Jack told me to pull the pink yarn off the bobbin and work on something else.  Life’s too short for inferior fiber, he told me.  So I took a look at my fiber stash and decided to take a crack at the alpaca/bamboo blend I picked up at Wool ‘n Wares during the Rose City Yarn Crawl.  I didn’t spend much time working on it, but it’s incredibly soft and I can’t wait to sit down with it again. (Excited about spinning? What kind of crazy talk is that, right?)

Oh, and I also added a few more rows to the Gnarled Oak Cardigan, which is now up to 14″.  I… am in the knitting black hole on this project.  A row feels like it takes forever, and I feel like I’ve been knitting on it forever, and yet have made no progress.  I keep measuring.  It doesn’t get any bigger.  I’ll be in the corner, sobbing into my eternal stockinette.  Next time, I keep telling myself, next time I’m going to knit a cropped cabled pullover with negative ease.  Except that I would look terrible in a cropped sweater.  But next time I’m definitely going to pick a sweater that isn’t mostly stockinette knit flat.  Whoever invented purling should be ashamed of themselves.

That’s been my week.  Check your gauge in the comments, no matter what day it is.  Or tell me your funny never-ending knitting project stories.  Or why you like parades.