Home Sweet Home

Being in California for the weekend means that I can go to my "happy place"...



Knit This Purl That!

It is so nice to be home!

(Thank you Twilight for taking me, and helping me complete and then redeem my stash card!)

Life without a LYS

Abilene, Abilene,prettiest town I've ever seen...

...has NO YARN SHOP!!!!

Now, there are places to buy yarn in town. You can get yarn from Wal-Mart. You can get yarn from one of the two craft stores...Michaels or Hobby Lobby. However selling yarn does not a yarn shop make.

At first this was disconcerting to me. I was going to have to drive at least 2 hours into Dallas to find a "local" yarn shop. (Can one call it local when it is over 100 miles away?)

There were solutions. I adore KnitPicks. Jimmy Beans Wool is also nice. I could order yarn and have it shipped to me. I could make sure and ALWAYS find a local yarn shop to visit when I traveled. But what about when I just wanted to squeeze a skein of cashmere? Yarn shop trips are major stress busters for me!

Then I unpacked.

Hmmm...

I guess I do have a local yarn shop.



My stash!

Arrival of a Package

A package came LAST Monday.

A package from KnitPicks.

It was patiently waiting on my patio when I got home from the airport.

Pretty yarn.

Very pretty yarn.

Very pretty pettable yarn.

I had to ignore the pretty pettable yarn for a week as I rushed to finish my schoolwork and work work.

But now I opened the yarn.

The pretty yarn.

The very pretty yarn.

The very pretty pettable yarn.

Will I be able to stop petting it long enough to pop some of it on the swift and ball it up?

That remains to be seen.

...

...

...still petting.

What do Berets and Breasts Have in Common?

I finished the Avignon beret last night...sort of.

I was watching Project Runway again last week, and inspiration hit. So rather than work on the plethora of started or planned projects I have piling up, I decided to freelance through my stash!

Unfortunately, once I had cast off, I noticed that the beret had developed a bit of...well...a nipple. Where the ribbing joined in the decreases, a lovely little peak had formed. Not exactly an attractive feature in a hat.

Frustrated, I set it aside. I have often found it helpful to sleep on this sort of problem rather than immediately starting to freak out. (Freaking out seems to be my first and natural inclination! Dreaming Me came up with two solutions:

• frog it back to where the bulge begins and tinker with the decreases
• try to block it out

Blocking wins. Blocking is, ostensibly, an easier solution. I tried to use a dinner plate...but that wasn't working, so I switched the beret over to an upside down mixing bowl. Now I am waiting for it to dry. If this doesn't work, we'll move on to the more work intensive and obnoxious solution of frogging. Ugh.

(On the plus side, I used up the rest of the yarn from Twilight's birthday beret. I feel a little twinge of satisfaction every time I use stash yarn instead of making a purchase. Its like my own personal Knitters' DARE program...just say no to non-essential yarn shopping!)

Knitting Olympics 2010

The Knitting Olympics will begin tomorrow.

Here is how they work:

• Cast on a project that will pose some sort of challenge for you during the opening ceremonies.


• Finish said project by the time the Olympic torch is extinguished 16 days later.

This has posed a bit of a problem for me...I really want to participate, but with work and school pressing in on me I don't see how I'll be able to take part to the extent I would like.

I would like to be able to cast on a sweater, or an intricate pair of socks...I just don't have the time to devote to knitting that those types of things would require.

So instead I am making a bit of a compromise. Instead of choosing a project that is a time/skill challenge, I am choosing a project that I have been procrastinating on. I will knit something that has been in my stash for years. This is a challenge for me. I have a lot of back log in my stash. There are many projects that I was in love with when I planned, but being the fickle person I am, I dumped them and moved on without a backward glance.

Nominees for Olympic Knitting include:

• A cinema shawl out of some blue mohair I purchased when Sweet Stitch was still open(so...4 years ago...)


• A mobius cowl neck vest out of some blue heron cotton that I also purchased at Sweet Stitch.


• An earflap hat out of the periwinkle and white llama yarn that, yes, I purchased at Sweet Stitch.


• The Candleflame cashmere scarf out of the GORGEOUS cashmere yarn that...you guessed it...I purchased at Sweet Stitch! (In my defense, I was making a scarf out of this, but the stitch pattern didn't work with the variegation...)

Decisions, decisions!

Resolutions

Some of my knitting resolutions for 2010:

1. Learn to knit on double pointed needles. It doesn't matter that I love using circulars. It doesn't matter if I never use them for anything ever. Just knowing how will make me a more well rounded knitter. (Kind of like everyone should learn to drive a stick shift, even if they only ever own automatics.)

2. Finish a project before I purchase a new one.

3. Check the stash before I make a purchase.

4. Do not over commit myself with commissions, gifts, etc. and neglect my own personal pleasure knitting.

5. Post a blog entry every odd dated day. (Which I have actually been pretty good about lately!)

6. Teach an average of one person to knit per month. (This one should actually be ridiculously easy since I tend to get good turn out at my library programs.)

And other goals, that can't really be considered resolutions:

1. Look into opening an etsy store front.

2. Keep trying to possibly get published.

We'll see how these go...

Ornament Exchange

The ladies at my church had an ornament exchange tonight.

I hate ornament shopping, especially this time of year. The ornament shop at the mall is always crowded, dark, and claustrophobic making. The mall in general is to be avoided at all costs.

So instead of buying my ornament...I made two!

I used the same mitten pattern I used for my mitten storytime. I used red and green dk wool, and embroidered the snowflakes on in white. (Actually, the yarn is all from my stash...the red is leftover from Twilight's beret...cream is from my beret...green is from Hawaii's wrist warmers...)

I think they really turned out cute.

And, Blondie seemed very pleased to take them home! (She stole for them!)

Hat Envy

There is a very cute little girl, Bounce, at church who came to services in a crocheted beanie a couple weeks ago.

The beanie was adorable, very 1920's flapper or 1960's Biba. Psych saw Bounce's beanie and suffered from...hat envy.

Angel had a head, so it followed that Angel also needed a cute beanie. Psych commissioned one the following Monday night. (And since Angel has a tiny head, I went ahead and took it on.) However, lest we be considered copy cats, the beanie needed to be slightly different.

The differences are:
1. I knit the beanie, I did not crochet it.
2. Bounce's beanie was pink, Angel's beanie is cream.
3. Bounce's beanie had a sparkly lame flower, Angel's has a cream knit flower.

Essentially, it is a very very sized down version of what I made for my cousins and I, out of a white merino/alpaca blend from the stash, on size 4 needles. The flower pattern is one I found online here. I started the beanie on Halloween, and worked on it while hanging out at Brother's house. (It was small...and so was portable... with an easily memorized stitch pattern...and therefore a really good travel project!)

I delivered it last night when I was at Preach and Psych's for a bible study. (Poor thing was pretty sleepy when I got there...hence the bleary eyed photo!)

Interesting side note: one case of hat envy has spawned another. I finished up Angel's hat in the break room yesterday...and one of my co-workers decided her granddaughter would REALLY look cute in a blue version...

Switching Paddles Mid Stream

I had been working on yet another scarf for myself, the Corn Rows Scarf.

It was very pretty.

It was also fairly skinny.

I liked it.

Then, I got around to finally organizing and cleaning out my closet.

During said cleaning, I got down the tub-o-scarves. I saw the plethora of skinny, pretty scarves that it contained. All of a sudden, Corn Rows seemed...redundant.

I didn't want to frog it. I didn't want to abandon it. I still liked it.

So, I am switching modes in the middle of the project without changing any of the already completed work.

I am making a belt.

Scarf + Buckle = Belt!

Finally Got Around To It

When NorCalGal was in the process of moving back down to CA, she discovered a really neat little yarn shop in downtown Sacramento. She brought back some rust colored Baby Alpaca chunky yarn for me as an incentive to get me to move. (I figure her thinking was that she could lure me south with the promise of quality fibers...and apparently it worked cause here I am!)

I only had one skein, but that was ok. I had made kool-aid dyed beanies for Sister and Sis-In-Law out of chunky yarn, but never got around to making one for myself. I decided to use the alpaca instead of doing a dye job...the rust was the ideal color, and not one easily achieved with beverage powder!

I had used my swift to ball the yarn prior to the move down. I just hadn't cast on. Other projects kept cutting in the queue. (Besides, I didn't NEED a beanie...I lived in CA!)

Labor Day weekend, I took the ball with me to WA to use as a nostepinde demo. (I didn't want to take my swift, so needed a ball instead of a skein.)I impressed the aunts with my nifty notion, and got a more usable ball in the process. As long as I had it rewound, I went ahead and cast it on. It was a speedy knit, and I got it made up in a single night.

Not a needed item. Not even that impressive of an item. But still something that I can check off the to-do list, and one less ball in the stash!

(It did turn out pretty cute though...didn't it?)

Three Little Acorns

I have doing my best to only knit from my stash because...let's face it...it would be a whole lot easier to justify buying new yarn with my minimal amount of spare cash if I didn't have bin upon bin of yarn in my craft closet.

I had, in stash, three 98-yard skeins of Classic Elite Imagine yarn, a cotton/rayon blend that has been discontinued. I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I had originally purchased it because it was pretty and I liked to look at it. Unfortunately, I had not purchased enough to do anything with. I had two different colors and three different dye lots.

I wound it with my nostepinde. (Have I mentioned how much I love that? I love it a lot!) This was not easy since the yarn was a slippery little devil. But I still had noting to do with it.

Enter a book that I have owned for a really long time:
I was flipping through it and came to hat #6, the beach beanie...which called for "less than 150 yards of yarn." One of the versions shown said it was made out of Imagine. Lucky me!

I cast on. I knit. I was done. It was insanely fast.

I knit another, slightly smaller beanie, out of the other color. A child sized version. (Or what I hoped would be a child sized version since the pattern didn't give any other sizes and I had no child handy on which to test it.)

Then I made a third beanie, in the same size as the original, in the same color as the original.

I took the beanies to WA with me for the holiday weekend. I had two spare beanies, and handily also had two girl cousins. And we were all getting together for a family potluck on Monday.

The aunts said we looked like three little acorns.


I thought we looked splendid!

Why Yes...That Does Sound More Impressive

Brother and Sis-In-Law stopped by for a surprise visit on Sunday afternoon...and once again Brother said something amazing.

I was showing Sis-In-Law some of my yarn and patterns for current/future projects. One of these was for a shawl/vest thing knit out of lace weight. I showed Brother the yarn and told him that the garment took just shy of 1000 yards.

"Really...that's almost a mile!" (Actually...it was only about 5/8 of a mile, but close enough.)

"Really? I hadn't ever thought of that." I picked up the shawl I had just finished and told him that it had taken about 450 yards.

"Well, that's about a quarter of a mile then!"

Turns out that a mile is 1760 yards. Which I knew. I had just never connected yarn quantities with distance before.

Brother and I went through and converted some of my projects over into mileage. A sweater was a mile. A wrap was a half mile. A pair of socks is a quarter of a mile.

"You should start telling people that," Brother said. "A quarter of a mile of knitting sounds a lot more impressive."

He has a point.

Winding Whiz!

I admit it. I was a little worried about how the nostepinde was going to work out...what if I crashed and burned as a yarn winder? A lot of the instructional websites warned that many people end up with oblong yarn balls, and that the stackable upright kind I prefer are hard to make.

It was with great trepidation that I embarked on my first winding attempt. I decided to use the Classic Elite Alpaca Sox yarn in "rose" that Mom and Dad got me for my birthday, since the nostepinde itself was a birthday present. (Come to think of it, the swift was a Christmas present from them as well...aren't they just a lovely pair of fiber-fanatic enablers!?!)

I followed the instructions I had found...and...Voila! A beautiful, upright, center-pull, stackable ball of sock yarn just waiting to be used!

I am hooked.

Not only does the nostepinde look like a magic wand, it makes me feel like a wizard!

So, last night I went ahead and wound another skein of yarn...this time Malabrigo sock yarn. I love having yet another "productive" activity to justify all the time I waste watching DVDs!

And, as long as the novelty hasn't worn off...I have scads left in the stash to wind: Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn, 1000 yards of lace-weight Egyptian cotton, 4 skeins of mercerized cotton, Cascade 220, 2 different colors of chunky llama...I could go on...

Who knows, I might just unwind the balls I have done in the past, and rewind them as center-pulls...although, I should probably knit again at some point...

Post Script to JoNo's Hat

I meant to post pictures of JoNo's hat after I added the green ties.

I ended up going with a green that was more lime than neon...mostly because it was what I had in-stash. (I love the kid, but I am not buying yet another new skein just so I can add strings to his earflaps...)

To make the ties, I cut 6 lengths of yarn, approximately 24 inches long, and threaded three through the bottom of each earflap, so that 6 ends hung down on each side. Then I braided them (2 ends per braid segment), knotted them off, trimmed them, and fluffed the ends.

I forgot to take a picture, but it ended up not mattering. JoNo wore the thing all night, and several times over the next week or so, and happened to post oodles of pictures of himself on facebook. So I stole a couple:

Testing the Appliances

I have, in the past week, knit 4 coffee cup cozies.

I know.

I'm crazy.

Or at least, I have way too much free time on my hands.

Personally, I blame the knee injury. I have no choice but to sit on my couch and knit while Fred and Ginger dance across my television screen.

Still, I figured that this was a good opportunity to test out the felting abilities of my new apartment's washer and dryer.

And the gift stash rejoices!

No Dye Lot Yarn

JoNo requested that I make him a beanie as his graduation present. Since he has been so sweet lately, I went so far as to agree to make ear flaps.

He wanted it to be dark blue...which was perfect since I had a goodly amount of dark blue acrylic left over from an earlier project (I believe it was a scarf I made as an undergrad for one of the Oblivious Twins...the one who still actually keeps in contact, not the other one).

I merrily began knitting.
First one ear flap.
Then the other.
Then connected them and knit the 1x1 ribbed band.
Then knit the main body of the hat in a 3x1 rib.
Simple mostly brainless knitting that allowed me to enjoy both Funny Girl and Funny Lady.

But then when it came time to start the decreases, I looked down and realized that I did not have enough yarn left to finish the beanie.

No sweat! It was, according to the ball band that had miraculously survived sitting in the stash for at least 5 years: Caron Simply Soft NO DYE LOT YARN.

What a bogus bunch of hogwash. I had Blondie drive me to the store to get some more.
Under the craft store's cheap fluorescent lights, the yarns appeared to match.
Under my less than ideal lighting at home, while I knit it, it appeared to match.
But, now that the beanie is completed and I have examined it in the lovely natural sunlight streaming in through the living room window, it clearly DOES NOT MATCH!!!!

I have two options:

1. Give it to JoNo and hope he doesn't care, since it really is only a wee bit on the crown and not MILES off in color.

2. Knit a whole new beanie with the new yarn, and unwind the old beanie and reknit it as a child's size or without earflaps.

ARGH!

Getting Reacquainted.

I missed many of my belongings this past year as they sat in storage.
I missed my books.
I missed my photo albums.
I missed my sewing machine.
I missed my purses.

However, I think almost more than anything else, I missed my swift.

I had quite the night last night winding skeins that have languished in the stash awaiting the unpacking of the swift.



Bliss.

Samples Samples Samples

I have been working hard to have a respectable number of dishcloth samples for my program tonight. I have 2 that are actually the pattern I am teaching them, and then two that require knowledge of a YO and a K2TOG.

Had this been a year ago...or better yet the day before the 2007 company Christmas gift exchange...I would have had SCADS to show the students from my gift stash. Sadly, having most of my stuff in storage, in combination with the deluge of incoming babies, has totally depleted the stash.

So, instead of going to my handy dandy shelf, I have been scrounging in my kitchen drawers for examples that are not TOO TOO grungy. I also have decided out of desperation to take along a couple of burp rags...they are essentially the same thing anyway.

This whole adventure has led me to two conclusions:
1. I really need to work on beefing up the gift stash again...I mean seriously...there is only ONE coffee cup cozy in there.
2. I am in dire need of some new dishcloths for my own use. Honestly, some of these are shameful.

Techno Knitting

I have an iPhone.

I love my iPhone for many reasons: the built in iPod, the built in GPS, constant email access, remote facebook access, internet at my fingertips, high quality camera, etc.

But now I have a NEW reason to love my iPhone: the "EweStash" app.

This app allows me to not only catalog and keep track of all the yarn in my stash by color, fiber, gauge, and yardage...it is also fully searchable, AND lets me take a picture of the skein with my phone to save with the record. It also has a section to catalog knitting needles and crochet hooks.

Needless to say, this is a library knitter's dream come true.

Now when I am out at the store, if I come across a pattern I can make sure I don't already have the yarn at home. And, once I use a skein, I just delete it from the stash!

I am in love.

Moving Moving Moving

I missed a day of posting...I never know what to do on months with 31 days, since I try to post on odd days. Do I post two in a row? Do I skip a day? Which day do I skip?

I feel justified in skipping this weekend, since I moved. I am up to my eyeballs in boxes. I forgot that I owned most of the stuff that I've been unpacking...storing everything for nearly a year will do that I guess. On the plus side...I have ALL of my knitting, scrapbooking, and quilting supplies in one handy dandy place again...and an accessible place no less! They get their own closet! (My sewing machine. I have my sewing machine back. I can hem my pants finally, instead of using scotch tape!)

Moving also means reorganizing. I have a lot of "display" baskets and bowls that I keep leftover balls of wool, sock yarn, etc in...not to mention the project box and basket that go in my living room. I am going to be forced, to sort through ALL of my yarn in order to determine what goes where now! What a hardship!

(And by the way...I am almost done with the last bunny blanket buddy for the library commissioned baby gift. I will hopefully be posting the pictures on Wednesday sometime. The downside to moving is that I don't have internet at my apartment yet, so I will have to upload my pictures and posts on breaks at work!)