Visual Aids

I just might have too much time on my hands...

For my graduate storytelling class, I decided to do a retelling of Jan Brett's story called The Mitten. The story basically consists of a little boy dropping one of his mittens, which is found by a variety of woodland animals, who all crawl inside it to warm up. When the boy finds the mitten again, it has been all stretched out since everything from a mole to a bear warmed up inside it. The joke at the end is the size diference between the boy's two mittens. I needed a visual aid, and so decided to be creative and cut the animals out of felt. Then I needed a mitten to put them in.

A normal human would have gone to the store and purchased a mitten. I am not normal. I am a knitter. I knit both mittens. I found a simple and straightforward pattern online, and made two mittens. I didn't worry about the gauge at all. I used white Lamb's Pride Bulky and size 9 needles for the big one, then Blue Sky Alpaca Silk in white on size 2 needles for the little one. The pattern was lovely, and very clear. I will have to try it sometime with real mitten yarn.

Anyway, it was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. Also, now I have a really nice visual aid should I ever actually become a children's librarian...or I could be nice and give it to my elementary school teaching sister who had The Mitten as a child.

We'll see.

A Yarn For Every Knitter And A Knitter For Every Yarn

I was walking through a yarn shop the other day and saw what to me was a HIDEOUSLY HORRID yarn. (Said fiber will go unnamed so that no one is offended and I don’t get sued by the manufacturer.) I thought to myself, “Who would buy that, what on earth would they do with it, and why would they even want to?” I kid you not, mere moments later another patron walked through the door, made a beeline for the shelf, and scooped some up. Apparently, she LOVES that yarn and uses it to make some sort of purse. (I still can’t envision that being at all attractive…) This got me thinking though about yarn personalities.

If I were to lay several balls of yarn out on a table and invite the knitters close to me to choose a skein, each would be drawn to a different fiber. This is because not every knitter likes every yarn. We are like addicts with drugs of choice. I can with almost 100% certainty predict what is going to turn on my friends:

NorCal Gal would immediately pick up something soft, probably worsted weight, machine washable, and blue.

Mom would go for a self-striping sock yarn in jewel tones, or perhaps a new color way of dishcloth yarn.

The Aunt would want something cheery, a novelty yarn that she could use in a garter stitch scarf, most likely a chunky weight.

I would look at the ball bands and pick an unusual fiber…or alpaca, anything in alpaca, and probably orange.

Princess or Prada would grab something glitzy and glam…fuzzy or sparkly…and then hand it to me since neither one knits.

This way every yarn eventually gets knit…just not by every knitter.

Stash

I have a sizable yarn collection.

Not necessarily enough to open my own shop...but enough.

Every trunk, basket, and purse-not-currently-in-use has yarn in it. I also have several (smallish) tubs in my craft room closet.

But it is not my yarn stash that I am most proud of...it is my secret shelf stash of completed projects.

There are times, such as during movies or grad school lectures, when I want to knit but need to not be thinking about my knitting. At these times, I resort to a simple scarf, dishcloth, or coffee cup cozy. As a result, I have a surplus of scarves, dishcloths, and coffee cup cozies. These are all placed on the bottom shelf of the lawyer's bookcase in my bedroom. I have tissue paper affixed to the inside of the glass door so nosy visitors can't see in. This way when a gift giving occasion arises, I can go "shopping" in the stash!

One would think that this would cut down on the yarn and projects I purchase. But that is not the case. The downfall in the system is that if I remember that a gift giving occasion is on the way, I plan a special project and shop for it before I shop the stash.

Still, the stash has gotten me out of more than one jam...like when someone gives me something for Christmas when I hadn't realized we had reached the gift-exchange level in the friendship...

I highly recommend the stash...

...it goes perfectly with my enormous greeting card cache!

Enough with the BOYS already...

The cute peach baby sweater I was avoiding frogging on can sit in the work basket a while longer. The original friend it was for is having a boy. The second friend who it could have gone to is, as of this past Monday, having a boy. A third friend/acquaintance, just announced this morning that she is also having a boy.

On the plus side, this was a GREAT excuse to buy more yarn in blues and greens…

And my hairstylist is expecting…she might even be having multiples…surely one of them will be a girl…

I have a wonderful father!

I meant to post this earlier, and just forgot.

About an hour after I posted my previous entry about the woeful lack of a cable needle, my father came by my condo.

He had seen my needle sitting on the table and, knowing I was stuck at home, thought I might want it. So, along with some library books my mom had checked out for me, he brought it by on his way to the office.

He noted that it appeared a little the worse for wear, since both their cat and puppy had gotten a hold of it. He offered to buy me a new one if it was ruined.

It wasn't ruined. I got a lot done on the sock...and was able to put off frogging the baby cardigan yet again!

Isn't my dad the best?

Now What?

I had promised myself that I wouldn't work on any other projects till I finished the Blarney socks. In this way I hoped to avoid second sock syndrome. Today I am stuck at home with laryngitis and have some seriously glorious knitting time ahead of me.

The problem: I accidentally left my cabling needle at my parents' house, thereby rendering it very difficult to work on cabled socks.

Possible Solutions (and why they won't work):
1. Use one of my other cable needles. (The socks are knit on size 2's and the cable needles I have are all 8's and larger)
2. Use a double pointed needle. (Don't own any.)
3. Buy another cable needle. (Not supposed to leave home when you have called in sick to work...besides, what if the teller wanted to ask me a question...I have NO voice.)
4. Go get my cable needle from my parents' house (Same reason as above)

So what am I going to do? Bite the bullet and do the other project I have been avoiding...frog back the baby sweater with the twisted stitches...

And then maybe work on a scarf...

The end

Whoops! or When Grafting Goes Wrong!

I knit a sock. A beautiful sock. A sock which according to my completely unbiased mother has the prettiest cables on it that she has ever seen.

I grafted the toe.

I forgot that due to the way I knit socks on two circulars that prior to grafting I needed to flip the sock inside out.

Now, the graft on the right side of the beautiful sock has purl stitches and the wrong side is knit…and it is too late to fix it…I wove and trimmed the ends before I noticed.

Thinking positively: I will be able to tell the right sock from the left…unless for the sake of consistency I purposefully misgraft the second sock as well!