WIP
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!
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.
I need to get out more.
The interesting part about being part shut-in is that sometimes you forget what it is like to interact with other people. I think I might be able to imagine what it is like for people who are stuck in places for long periods of time. Like on a space station or off in a bio dome somewhere growing carrots.
The funny thing is that, I never thought that my keeping to myself would effect my productivity.
I am a multi-tasker. I like to juggle multiple things at one time. It keeps my mind off the hamster wheel, and I prefer that. However, it never really occurred to me how much actually interacting with people helped all that too. Distraction, as well as human interaction…I need these things.
Lately, my knitting mojo has been lacking. Yes, I finished a hat…but that is a small project. I did however spend hours just staring at Ravelry and feeling the crushing guilt of a trail of WIP’s that have been hibernating for quite some time, which has left me unable to cast anything else on.
(For the record, I am at the point where that Mountain View Cardi might have to be frogged. It’s been hibernating WAY too long. Please feel free to attempt to talk me out of this, should you feel the need, but I think I’ve decided to take that yarn and knit some other sweater with it).
It’s not like I haven’t tried to crowbar my stuff in at various times. I used to work on projects while I sat outside my son’s class, or my daughter’s practices, but then I find other parents wanting to talk to me and I feel I’m being rude not giving them my attention and become hyper aware of my eye contact and body language. So what I am saying is, I could have knit last night, but instead, I had a class dad try to talk me into taking flying lessons. Pre-exile, I probably wouldn’t have cared that much about appearing rude.
I have worked on a few other things, but they are projects for other people. Of course, those always come first. Luckily one of the projects I’m working on is a multitasking project in itself, even though it doesn’t feel like it. I am making something for a friend, which is becoming a prototype for one of my top secret things. Yeah…’cause talking my top secret plans make for great blogging. ::rolls eyes::
Good thing yarn crawl is coming up. I’ll soak up the energy of other knitters while I’m out socializing…but before then, I need to force myself to cast on something just for me…and maybe get out of the house more.
I am not a machine…
Would it be so terribly bad to say I haven’t been doing very much knitting? I went about a week without any knitting at all. I’ve mostly been spending my time on other things. I’ve been pinning and repinning fabric like some crazy seamstress with a bad case of OCD. I’ve done some pattern writing and a little sketching. I even took a day, much to the surprise of anyone that knows me, to read a book…FICTION even. How very unlike me.
The truth is, even when it comes to hobbies, everyone needs a break once in awhile. I took it while I could.
Yesterday, I decided to return to it. I’m not going full tilt…just a little here and a little there. I’m making a Wale and Course hat with my Miss Babs Yummy Superwash Sport in “You’re The Only One”. I assure you that the yarn is greener than my picture. I bought a little skein of Yummy Toes “Ghoulish” in a lime green color to go with it…but I feel like I may change my mind about that being the accent color…because I still have scraps of all sorts of colors hiding in my toy box.
More things I can’t talk about…
Writing a blog can be super frustrating sometimes. I come up with some of my best ideas right before bed, then insist I will remember those ideas the next morning. I never do.
(God, It’s depressing to think how many ideas I might have that die in my sleep. I need to stop that.)
It’s also hard to find things to write about when you are working on projects that must be kept a secret. I spend a lot of time on secret projects these days. I am writing some patterns. I have a bunch of them written on paper, but I have been dragging my feet getting them typed up and sent out to testers. I know…I need to get on that.
Can someone keep on me and tell me to just type this stuff out already so I can start showing you all the things I am super excited about?
Really, I need someone to push me.
Knitting is making me superstitious…
I might be worrying prematurely.
Maybe it is because this project is started from its widest point and knit up to the center.
Whatever it is, it has me freaking out. I am worried I am going to run out of yarn.
I shouldn’t worry. I have had David and Courtney look at it and they think I will make it to the end. Each skein of Bugga that I bought for this project has 50 more yards than what is called for in the pattern. I should probably just learn to chill out.
But something keeps telling me that if I don’t look at the balls of yarn while I knit this, I will make it to the end. So that is what I am doing…I am keeping them hidden. I don’t even want to know how much I have left.
I don’t dare look.
We all do this…right?
All of us knitters have done this at some point or another (at least this is what I tell myself to feel better).
To make it easier for the uneducated or unaware, here is a diagram:
Gaze upon the wonder that is my ipad screen grab!
Imagine this…It’s 1:30 in the morning. I’ve just spent 2 hours working on my “In the Pink” shawl.
I had already completed the center spiral and both wings and had started working through steps 1-5 of the diagram above. Of course, when you get to this point in the middle of the night, I imagine most people would just stop and continue later. Not me though. Nope. I am the person that keeps going. I am the person that keeps going to the point where I am dropping stitches, questioning the pattern, and having to tink back step 6…twice.
What in the hell was I thinking? I really don’t know. I guess I was telling myself “If I can just get done with step 6, then I’m totally golden. I’ll be in the home stretch!” That statement is not entirely true, of course, because that edging takes up about half of yarn called for on this project.
There is a silver lining, however. After tinking back and losing stitches, I think I am back on track. I am about half way through step 6…and while I would love to take a picture and show off the sweet ass progress I made while in a state a sleep deprived psychosis, I cannot. My cable needle is too short to to be able to spread out the project and photograph it properly. I promise I will get back to it soon though…just not in the middle of the night.
What CAN I talk about?
As a sometimes-blogger-type-person, I really struggle with what it is I can say. When you are working on super-secret stuff you can’t reveal yet, it makes it difficult to find things to talk about. Do people think I am just sitting at home watching tele and stress eating? Maybe I am off wandering somewhere? Maybe I cease to exist?
Luckily, I am hardly monogamous when it comes to my projects. I have plenty all yarn love to go around. If I need to take a break from one, I have another to fall back on.
I was working on my Loki socks, but the stripes were starting to get frustrating. We decided to take a little time away from each other. It was then I decided to start knitting a shawl. I need more shawls in my life anyway.
In The Pink…or in this case, The Aurora
I had this yarn patiently sitting in my stash for YEARS. It’s Wabi Sabi Tallulah Sock in Aurora Borealis. It seemed the perfect yarn for this swirly vortex section of the shawl. It practically screamed at me to knit it. Kismet.
Secrets…
I don’t know how some fiber bloggers do it.
Listen, I like secrets as much as the next girl. Secret messages, treasure hunts, Easter eggs…I love them all. The problem is, when you are working on super-duper-top-secret projects, be it for yourself, a friend, the world…whatever…then what are you supposed to write about?
I thought about doing a video blog and adding a few Easter Eggs of my own…but then I had some weird internal fight with my brain about how I even do that. What if somebody was actually paying attention? Would I be excited? Mortified? Worried my work wasn’t perfect enough?
(That last one is probably the most likely scenario.)
I thought about trying to take pictures of a small part of the things I have completed so far. But I don’t know that I can do that without giving away too much.
Am I a little paranoid? Yes, probably. I really like the things I have been making…and honestly, this is my first real attempt and writing my own patterns (see…I can tell you SOMETHING). I am normally not really someone who follows rules…(ask my family, I can’t even follow a recipe)…but I am feeling a strong need to follow some type of guidelines when it comes to this. I really don’t want to mess this up and my head is doing me in.
I hope to at least get one project written up before this week is out…then it needs testing and editing. The closer I get to getting things done, the closer I get to shouting my nonsense from the rooftops.
In the meantime, you will get this lovely pic of me at home base.
I will not confirm or deny that there may be something here...
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