Burning out my retinas…
I just posted last night and I’m sure no one has even seen it…yet here I am, writing again.
It occurred to me before falling asleep last night that I didn’t post a picture of my Safety Scarf. Here it is. I am a bit further along on it than this picture would suggest. You could probably also tell that I have a thing for dayglo. I am a little bipolar that way. My inner goth loves black and grey while my inner unicorn poops rainbows all over the place. It confuses people sometimes…but it always makes perfect sense to me.
Luckily, I have a bit of both in this particular project!
I plan on taking it to lunch today with my friend Wendybird. I really want to get it finished. I love working on it, but I have to admit, I can only work on it in short bursts. Apparently, yellow happens to be a color that tires the eyes out. So imagine what it is like to knit with yarn that looks like a thick neon noodle!
Third time’s the charm!
“I really should put down the knitting and blog something.”
Yup, this is what I keep telling myself, but honestly…I’ve been on a roll.
I have been working hard on my Celestarium. As of this writing, I’m at least through Cassiopeia. It’s not the only thing I have been knitting though. I have started Stephen West’s Safety Scarf as my mindless knitting, because the Celestarium is not proper Friday Night Knitting. Too much counting and math. That’s not easy when you are chatting and watching playoff hockey!
Now my “Celestial Ruin” is on it’s third incarnation. I had to frog it twice. The first time was for my crime against the KAL and the second was earlier this week when I realized that last Friday night I had placed my stitch markers in the wrong place and was exactly one stitch off. Yup…I let ‘er rip!
Right now I seem to be back on track and I am excited to be working on it!
Of course, my other crafting has slowed down a bit, but only because my parents are in town. I had to move the ironing board and sewing machine to make room for an air mattress. I’ll be back to it soon!
Interrupting my regularly scheduled blog…
Pardon me while I interrupt my blog for this bit of awesome!
My daughter and I are the first Mother/Daughter duo to be featured for The Year of the Fan Girl on Ashley Ackstein’s HerUniverse blog! How freaking cool is that?!? I am super honored to be nominated by Ashley to be featured, and I can’t wait to hear what Lily thinks about this!
How exciting! She even included a little spoiler about a secret project. Of course, I’ll have to let you know more about that later. ::wink::
Just another Wednesday…
Well, it’s Wednesday. What does that mean exactly? For me, it means that today is the day I go pick up my prize.
Yeah, I kinda won this contest. It was a photo contest for Yarn Crawl Los Angeles 2013 and I somehow won 1st place. I’m not really sure how, because I’m no photographer. I just have a love of fairy lights and yarn.
Yarn bombing outside of Gather DTLA.
Anyway, I had originally planned to pick up my “major award” after lunch with some old work friends today, but that was rescheduled, which then left my day free for doing whatever I needed before my parents arrive in town tomorrow. So, like a responsible adult, I’ve planned to go yarning with my friends this afternoon and blow off all preparing the house for my parents visit. Maybe if I feel so inclined, I may try and do some sewing because…oh yeah…I told myself I was going to finish that project before they got to town too. Oops. Heck, I probably should have been dressed an hour ago, but instead I am sitting here knitting, writing, and playing some tunes while I enjoy my coffee.
Yes, this is indeed what I look like this morning.
KAL shaming
Ok people, remember this?
Well, I was pretty much going to get away without anyone noticing. Until someone slipped Friday night…that “someone” being me.
I really have no idea what I was thinking. I was all cocky about people not reading my blog (I mean, who the hell brags about THAT?)
Now, Angelique had known what it was I had done. Not because she had read the blog, but because I had gone to a mixer in Hollywood with her and needed something to talk about in between my threats to take a dip in the pool at the hotel.
So I let it slip…and I explained that I haven’t touched it since…and that I had no plans to touch it until everyone had reached the place I stopped…and then there was some yelling. The whole event was photographed and caught on video…and posted to the Interweb so I could properly be shamed for my crime against the KAL.
Photo by Ashley.
To your battle stations! (or how to identify a bug)
I had such plans for today. I was going to be productive…get things done.
It started off pretty well. Got a call from a friend and chatted for awhile. Pinned and repinned the latest sewing project. I even showered. Hooray!
Then, at some point after lunch, I heard a noise. A flippy kind of buzzy noise. Like something had gotten in. I looked over to the corner of the dining room and there he was.
WHAT IS THAT THING?!?
It was pretty big, about an inch and a half long, with a missing back leg. Of course, I don’t know bugs, so I immediately thought the worst. I mean, bugs in general don’t scare me unless THEY CAN EAT MY YARN.
So I proceeded to do what any concerned fiber artist that can’t identify bugs would do…I went to the Internet.
I posted pictures to Instagram, Facebook, and twitter…tagging all of my trusty fiber artists to get feedback. I grabbed all yarn in the vicinity and threw it in a trash bag and shoved it in the freezer immediately. I pulled out an extra bag of cedar balls from the stash closet and started leaving them everywhere.
Of course, I’m getting mixed answers of the identification of this thing, from grasshopper to locust. I’m still planning on getting my hands on some lavender so I can start sprinkling it everywhere.
Hopefully the stash is safe.
(And for any of those concerned, I didn’t kill him. I took him down the hallway and let him go outside.)
Getting something done while I wait…
Before you start to think all I am doing is sitting around and waiting…I am still getting things done. I did just make a shawl appear out of nowhere.
I haven’t really said much about my Nightlock shawl, but I did finish it last week sometime. I haven’t taken many pictures of it, mostly because I haven’t blocked it yet. It has been relegated to the “Block party” pile for finishing sometime after my parents leave town (and no, they haven’t actually arrived yet).
I feel like it is going to need some serious stretching. I’m not really sure what is up with my gauge lately, but maybe it is tied to my new habit of waking up at 4 a.m. or that huge knot that currently resides in my right shoulder. Having to go up 2 needles sizes to get gauge is seriously unlike me.
An attempt to show restraint…
I’m in trouble kids. I really couldn’t help myself. (Court, please don’t kill me.)
This past weekend I got called out for my “swatching”. I know that my friends were doing their swatches all legit like, but I know how I am. I always have to jump on the latest project. I have a reputation for pooping out projects for a reason. I’m seriously manic about it.
I suppose I should give you the backstory.
I think it was October or November of last year. I believe I can blame David for tipping us off to the Celestarium… because he knows that some of us are crazy and some of us have a love of stars. For you lay people passing through, this pattern is a circular, beaded star chart shawl. Yeah, I’m not sure how I didn’t just die from knitting beauty overload right then and there.
Anyway, we jumped on the KAL train and decided we would try to start it sometime around Christmas, but things didn’t quite work out like we had planned and we had to push our start date. Some of us were still looking for proper yarn, or formulating plans of how to attack the thing. Maybe some of us went a little crazy pants (Courtney, with much help from David) and actually color coded beads by star classification!
I am guessing everyone might have been a little surprised when I went the easy route. I already had two skeins of Anzula Wash My Lace in Charcoal in my stash, so all I needed were beads. After a trip to San Gabriel Bead Company (one of my old haunts), I had some purple lined topaz AB seed beads and was ready to roll…except I had to wait for everyone else to be ready.
So that brings us to now, almost May.
This past weekend, while my knitters were at home, knitting up proper swatch tubes, I was knitting the first three charts of the actual pattern…because, really, it’s a Pi shawl and I could care less about gauge, I’m just looking to see what my fabric looks like. I did it up on 4′s and sent them a picture to take a look at the size of the thing…and I think I almost gave them a rage stroke. I think Courtney said she even showed it to her mom, and they all agreed…I cheated.
You think I would have learned something, right? Well, I did learn that my “swatch” was too tight, so I was going to have to go up a couple of needle sizes. I grabbed my 6′s and did another swatch. No, it’s not a proper swatch either. Maybe I should just leave it at that before someone decides to hurt me. I put it aside so everyone can get their stuff together…but I’m not gonna lie… I keep pulling it out of my project bag to look at it. I want to work on it so bad that I think it actually hurts.
Monday morning craft attack.
Where do I even begin?
It’s Monday morning, and in an order to pull off that whole faking it thing (see previous post), I need to hit the ground running. Funny enough, the only mojo I seem to have gotten back is in the knitting department. I have crocheting and sewing that needs to be jettisoned though…and soon. I need to try and reclaim my living room.
The sewing part.
Knitting mojo, it’s a funny thing. I guess it only really took me completing that quick and dirty Jayne hat to help me get it back. I’ve been looking at my pattern collection and stash to see what I can use. I would love to start working on making the stash smaller again. I was also inspired while having coffee with Dana last week. She was knitting this really cool looking shawl called Nightlock. I had always wanted to knit a Danish style shawl. I really like the idea that the ends are long enough to tie behind ones back, saving you from having to have a shawl pin with you. So I grabbed my newly stashed Oink Pigments yarn and purchased the Nightlock pattern.
Danish Tie Back Shawls.
So I began my shawl…and as of this writing I am about halfway done. I worked on it last night, even though the AC is out at our place and it has been rather warm lately here in sunny SoCal. It was almost too hot to knit…*almost*.
Named for reasons only known to me.
So, now that the blog is done, it’s time to get my crap together and attack my sewing project head on…with breaks for lunch and crochet. It is going to be a very busy day!
“Pretty cunning, don’t ya think?”
I have really over thought the blog thing the past few days. “Fake it till you make it” has been really hard to do lately.
Everyone is pretty much aware of all the yucky stuff happening in the news right now…Not everyone is aware I just got word I wasn’t hired for yet another job. The former being far more serious than the latter, however, both have had me more than a little emotional.
I had lost my crafting mojo recently. I was spending my time just sitting here staring at projects, full of ennui. There is so much to do…crocheting, writing, sewing…so I started trying to seriously adopt the “fake it till you make it” philosophy.
I decided to kick it off with the now controversial Jayne Hat.
(If you are unaware of the controversy, click here or here.)
So, Monday night I cast on the hat. I knit most of it Tuesday morning while having coffee at a local Starbucks with my friend Dana. By lunchtime on Tuesday I was done. I decided to snap a pic and post it on twitter…then my husband retweeted it.
Had I known he was gonna do that, I would’ve thrown some makeup on or something.
Of course, my knitting group was a little annoyed because I have a reputation of “pooping out” projects, but it has given me a small jump start to get some stuff done. I started working on some of the projects I have been sitting here staring at…and that is a good thing.
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