knitting
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!
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!
Doing kitchener in the rain…
Sitting there… letting it rain on me.
It’s not the most ideal situation, but I didn’t have an umbrella with me. I was able to get a project done on Easter, though. Well, nearly done…I still have to add some color to it. I haven’t decided on which to add yet.
Yeah, still haven’t decided…
Very Merry Unbirthday!
Look! I’m so color coordinated!
Last night was Knit Night. I met up with my ladies at the local burger joint that has been our knitting home for the past few months. I wasn’t in the mood for doing any knitting, of course.
(Remember that whole losing my mojo thing?)
Anyway, I spent the evening doing a little designing, helping a friend with her crochet, and playing with my phone. I really felt like doing a whole lot of nothing.
Just when you think your birthday pageant is done…
Courtney made me a pair of really cool mitts…Very Merry Unbirthday Handwarmers! My birthday was a month ago, but I keep getting gifts. This is why I celebrate pageant style!
Court knows me pretty well…so as an extra little giftie, she left all the ends loose so I could weave them in and find my zen. I know some of you knitters out there might find me odd, but I am actually a fan of weaving in ends. It’s quite a calming activity for me.
Aren’t they fabulous!?!
I love them!
Have I lost it?
Thinking of knitting has me feeling blah and I am starting to wonder if I may have lost my knitting mojo. I mean, it wouldn’t be the *worst* thing to happen to me. Everyone needs a break, right?
Honestly, I have plenty of other things I could be doing. As a matter of fact, I was just chatting with my mom yesterday about how I have three crochet projects on the hooks…and I was just approached to do a custom job for a friend. I have plenty of sewing I could do…or wrangling pattern testers…or editing patterns.
I’ve done nothing. More importantly, I don’t *want* to do anything. I’ve spent two whole days just staring at yarn (or in some cases, a computer screen). It’s making me slightly twitchy.
Whenever I think I want to keep my hands busy, I start going to the last places I should be in my head. I think about my hibernating WIP’s (my Amy Pond lace scarf or my Mountain View Cardigan), my unfinished spinning, or I get the overwhelming urge to warp my loom…and we all know that would be a slippery slope.
I try to look on the bright side. One of my “babies” is nearly done cooking. Now, if I could get over my fear of the unknown and put it out there for public consumption. It’s still early in the day…I still have plenty of time to get super productive doing the things that actually *need* to get done.
Getting things done!
I have been a busy girl! Between looking for “real work” and doing…”freelance” work, I haven’t had too much time to do my own thing.
I finished my sample knit for Miss Babs and it is packaged and ready to be shipped. I was really happy with the finished dimensions. I have been toying with the idea of taking that yarn I bought for weaving and use it to make another one of these Merging Ripples Shawls. Apparently, I can’t have just one.
I also used my needles to pry in a little time to finish a hat. I stayed up late this past weekend to work on my Varia. I knit it completely out of leftover yarn. I used the leftover Cephalopod Bugga! yarn from my Merging Ripples Shawl and some Anzula Cricket from the Hermione Hearts Ron hat.
I know things are happening with my own things too…even if I am not seeing them. I still have patterns out to testers and I am waiting to get this last wave of feedback before tweaking things and then, hopefully, releasing something! I am chomping at the bit to get stuff moving! I need to keep reminding myself to be patient!
The “butt” of jokes…
There is a long running thing in my family that when my mother comes to visit, she and I will eventually get into an argument about my butt.
It started when the kids were smaller. My mother, being the type of Grandma that likes to take mass quantities of photos of her grandchildren…and is also a scrapbooker…would follow them around, snapping pics left and right. Of course, with Facebook being a thing that my mom is into, those pictures would all end up on the Internet.
See, she tried capturing the kids’ at eye level…taking pictures of them walking along side me…FROM BEHIND. Yup. Facebook peppered with pictures of my kids’ adorable little heads…ruined by my ass.
Of course, when I would bring it up and ask her not to post them, she would snap back about how terribly vain I am (which is not a word I think anyone else on the planet might ever use to describe me, and funny coming from the woman to couldn’t leave the house without lipstick on…even if she was going to the dentist).
This is sure to upset her.
Here is picture of me from behind taken by Courtney. I am posting it of my own free will.
This is a sweater that I tried on at the Carolina Homespun booth by designer Sandra McIver from her book “knit, Swirl!”. I walked past her a million times while on the Stitches West floor and every time I had made a comment about how these sweaters looked nice on every single person trying them on, despite body shape. I thought about giving these sweaters a go…and Courtney was kind enough to stop me and make sure I actually tried them on.
This picture actually got me to buy the book. I’ll have to make one soon, or at least before the next time my mom comes to town.
I have something to say!
One of the patterns I test knit recently just went live on Ravelry. I can actually talk about it. Yesssss!
This is the Lutine Cap by Alex Tinsley. It is a cute little cap that is super easy to knit up. Of course, I love Alex’s patterns, so when she put the call out for test knitters, I jumped at the chance.
On Ravelry I call it “Hat a l’orange”.
The pattern calls for fingering weight yarn held doubled. I used some Koigu KPPPM that was lying around in my stash.
This might be the first project I’ve done with bobbles.
I’ve been wearing it with the flaps in the back, but they can be worn in the front or on the side.
Of course, trying to take pictures of your own head while not looking at the camera is super easy, right? I always seem to get some interesting gems while attempting to take photos of myself. This is just the latest one…
I’m blue!
I’m calling this “My Blue Period”, which is appropriate since I had my hairdresser pop some blue into my hair yesterday.
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