This year, I've been trying to save money (so I can buy more fibery happinesses!) by cutting back on the ridiculous amount of non-home-cooked food my family eats. Seriously, we spent an average of $15,000 last year on food between the kids' school lunches and fast food lunches for hubby and me, plus the fast food dinners we were eating almost nightly. So far it's going well, I think. It helps that I've learned to cook and seem to rather enjoy it.
Grocery shopping isn't so bad either. The down side? A HEAP of plastic bags end up in my house, with maybe only about 60% of them leaving with the garbage. Husband likes to hoard plastic grocery bags for some reason as yet unknown to me. We have an entire shelf in our pantry that is devoted to nothing but plastic grocery bags. I hate them. They fall down and attack me at least once a day, and I'm quite sick of them. And then there's the space they take up. That's a whole shelf in my pantry on which I can't put FOOD!
To combat this plasticky problem, I've started in on knitting some grocery bags. The trouble with these are that they are BOOOOOORING. The yarn isn't the most pleasant thing in the world, being a cottony-feeling acrylic (maybe real cotton would have been better?) and I am sick unto death of the miles of endless seed stitch leading up to the big fat lace panel. Part of me says to keep on trucking so I can get to the big fat lace panel, but I'm so bored I don't want to! Maybe I should just pick up another of the many WIPs I have floating around. The trouble with doing this is that most of them are small-gauge and I'm still wanting to work large for the time being.
I would leave you with a picture of my boring bag in progress, but it seems I can't get my phone to cooperate with uploading the image. :(
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Startitis
I have it. I currently have 4 projects on the needles, but for some reason, I feel like I need MORE! Perhaps it's something to do with the projects themselves, or with it being January. I don't know.
While I can't fully explain why I feel the need to have at least two more projects going, I can at least explain my current WIPs to see if I can find a connection.
The oldest project is my Eclipse. It's being constructed of Malabrigo Lace in Whale's Road and is scrummy and soft and delicious. The colorway is also certain to contrast deliciously and delightfully with my coppery red hair. I love it already even though I've had to frog and start it over once. The lace pattern is simple, and it's being knit in a fairly loose gauge (as opposed to knitting laceweight on needles the size of toothpicks). All that said, I can't seem to keep my interest in it much these days. It lives in one of the massive compartments of my purse to pull out and fiddle with when either nothing else is handy or I actually feel like working on it.
My next oldest project is a pair of black Branching Off Socks. Yes, black. It's what I wear, and I'm okay knitting with it. The problem I have with wanting to work on them is that they are in a bitty little fine gauge and are incredibly complex. They require focus that I don't often have during my downtime at work and don't get much downtime at home to work on.
The second newest project that is actually on the needles is a hat for my friend Lilly. Lilly doesn't yet know she's getting the hat, so I'm in no major hurry to complete it. It's worsted weight in seed/moss/whatever stitch (alternating 2 rounds each of k2p2/p2k2). It's on dpns, which I now see was complete folly, as it's frogged itself twice in my knitting bag and I can't find my dpn WIP tubes. It will be re-cast very soon (possibly today) on a 16" circ. Maybe that will also make it go faster, as I find knitting anything in the round goes very slowly on dpns as compared to circs.
The newest and shiniest project I'm working on is a pattern I'm adapting from something else. It's a coffee cozy with a beautiful cable pattern that I fell in love with while knitting a pair of fingerless mitts last year. I'm adapting the cable pattern to work flat from the round. It's tedious and slow going and also in a stupidly fine gauge.
I'm about to cast on some simple vanilla socks just for the sake of having something mind-numbing I can work on while watching TV. The next project? I don't know. Perhaps another Impossibly Large Shawl. That's also mind-numbingly simple and in a larger gauge. I really enjoyed knitting the first, but it got a little wonky somewhere, so I'd like to do another. We shall see what the rest of the day brings.
Meanwhile, I've got my yarn from yesterday cooling in the dye pot again. As it dried I discovered that I didn't particularly care for the color it turned out to be, and so I went at it again, this time with more of a clue as to what I was doing. It looks beautifully scarlet sitting in the pot, but then it looked pretty yesterday when it was sitting in the pot too. Only time will tell, I guess.
While I can't fully explain why I feel the need to have at least two more projects going, I can at least explain my current WIPs to see if I can find a connection.
The oldest project is my Eclipse. It's being constructed of Malabrigo Lace in Whale's Road and is scrummy and soft and delicious. The colorway is also certain to contrast deliciously and delightfully with my coppery red hair. I love it already even though I've had to frog and start it over once. The lace pattern is simple, and it's being knit in a fairly loose gauge (as opposed to knitting laceweight on needles the size of toothpicks). All that said, I can't seem to keep my interest in it much these days. It lives in one of the massive compartments of my purse to pull out and fiddle with when either nothing else is handy or I actually feel like working on it.
My next oldest project is a pair of black Branching Off Socks. Yes, black. It's what I wear, and I'm okay knitting with it. The problem I have with wanting to work on them is that they are in a bitty little fine gauge and are incredibly complex. They require focus that I don't often have during my downtime at work and don't get much downtime at home to work on.
The second newest project that is actually on the needles is a hat for my friend Lilly. Lilly doesn't yet know she's getting the hat, so I'm in no major hurry to complete it. It's worsted weight in seed/moss/whatever stitch (alternating 2 rounds each of k2p2/p2k2). It's on dpns, which I now see was complete folly, as it's frogged itself twice in my knitting bag and I can't find my dpn WIP tubes. It will be re-cast very soon (possibly today) on a 16" circ. Maybe that will also make it go faster, as I find knitting anything in the round goes very slowly on dpns as compared to circs.
The newest and shiniest project I'm working on is a pattern I'm adapting from something else. It's a coffee cozy with a beautiful cable pattern that I fell in love with while knitting a pair of fingerless mitts last year. I'm adapting the cable pattern to work flat from the round. It's tedious and slow going and also in a stupidly fine gauge.
I'm about to cast on some simple vanilla socks just for the sake of having something mind-numbing I can work on while watching TV. The next project? I don't know. Perhaps another Impossibly Large Shawl. That's also mind-numbingly simple and in a larger gauge. I really enjoyed knitting the first, but it got a little wonky somewhere, so I'd like to do another. We shall see what the rest of the day brings.
Meanwhile, I've got my yarn from yesterday cooling in the dye pot again. As it dried I discovered that I didn't particularly care for the color it turned out to be, and so I went at it again, this time with more of a clue as to what I was doing. It looks beautifully scarlet sitting in the pot, but then it looked pretty yesterday when it was sitting in the pot too. Only time will tell, I guess.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Live and Let Dye
By now I'm sure you all know that I love unraveling thrift store sweaters. It's the least expensive way of getting one's grubby little paws on huge quantities of luxury fibers like cashmere and silk, and is enormously fun. It's also a good way for me, as yet uninitiated in the knitting of sweaters, to get a firm grasp on the mechanics of them. By unraveling them, I understand more about how they're put together, so that I might be better able to put one together myself one day. But that's a story for another time. Back to the sweaters as a whole.
Every time I go to the thrift store, I can't resist rifling through the sweater racks, scoping out fiber content and examining seams. More than once however, I've passed up some nice luxy fibers because they were a dreadful color. Now, when I started unraveling, I already knew one could dye yarn with KoolAid and/or food coloring, but it didn't stop me from leaving these awful-colored sweaters on the racks. Why? Because I was scared. Dyeing intimidated me like little else fibery has, even if it was just with KoolAid.
A little later I decided to at least consider it. All I did, though, was consider it. I thought about wanting to dye yarn for months and months. And then it happened.
On my last trip to the Goodwill, I found a scrumptiously soft cabled sweater in a nice hefty gauge made completely of merino. Orange merino. The kind of orange you get when you mix primary red and primary yellow. Orange and I have never had a good relationship, in spite of the fact that my hair is a coppery red at the moment. I couldn't resist a heavyweight merino though. Not when nearly every sweater in my frog pile is lace or cobweb weight. As I'm standing in line waiting to pay for my heap of orange woolliness, I think to myself, "You KNOW you're gonna hafta dye this, right?" And so began the working up of my nerve.
I've had the sweater for about two weeks now and it's been practically singing a siren song at me from the stashbox. I finally got up the nerve to pick up a bunch of KoolAid at the grocery store the other day, and so I made up my mind to frog the sweater this weekend and dye up a test skein. And that is exactly what I did.
Today, I frogged one sleeve and the turtleneck of the dreadful orange sweater that's been taunting me. Then I took the skein I had wound on my little niddy noddy, gave it a careful and gentle shampooing (it IS, after all, hair), mixed up a dye bath of Black Cherry KoolAid and went right on ahead with it.
At first, it didn't seem quite as deep a red as I wanted it to be. The color had exhausted itself, like it does, but it needed more. So I took another packet of Black Cherry and just sprinkled it in, stirring the yarn gently and carefully as I did. This has had an interesting result, as the yarn that was on the bottom of the pot is lighter than the yarn that got sprinkled more directly. Anyway, I cooked the yarn for a few minutes, until the color was once again completely exhausted (and I do mean completely), left it to cool, and then, when it was cooled to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I rinsed the newly reddened yarn in 100 degree water from the tap, shampooed it again to make sure the color had set, rinsed again and hung the skein in my shower to drip dry. The last time I checked, it had started drying to a pretty, rusty red. I can't wait to see it all the way dry. There will be before and after pictures very soon.
Meanwhile, I'm encouraged and think I'm going to do one more small skein with a LOT more KoolAid to attempt to get a nice even, dark red color. If that result can be had, I will be knitting the attrocious-no-more, formerly orange sweater into... a better sweater. My very first sweater. :D
Every time I go to the thrift store, I can't resist rifling through the sweater racks, scoping out fiber content and examining seams. More than once however, I've passed up some nice luxy fibers because they were a dreadful color. Now, when I started unraveling, I already knew one could dye yarn with KoolAid and/or food coloring, but it didn't stop me from leaving these awful-colored sweaters on the racks. Why? Because I was scared. Dyeing intimidated me like little else fibery has, even if it was just with KoolAid.
A little later I decided to at least consider it. All I did, though, was consider it. I thought about wanting to dye yarn for months and months. And then it happened.
On my last trip to the Goodwill, I found a scrumptiously soft cabled sweater in a nice hefty gauge made completely of merino. Orange merino. The kind of orange you get when you mix primary red and primary yellow. Orange and I have never had a good relationship, in spite of the fact that my hair is a coppery red at the moment. I couldn't resist a heavyweight merino though. Not when nearly every sweater in my frog pile is lace or cobweb weight. As I'm standing in line waiting to pay for my heap of orange woolliness, I think to myself, "You KNOW you're gonna hafta dye this, right?" And so began the working up of my nerve.
I've had the sweater for about two weeks now and it's been practically singing a siren song at me from the stashbox. I finally got up the nerve to pick up a bunch of KoolAid at the grocery store the other day, and so I made up my mind to frog the sweater this weekend and dye up a test skein. And that is exactly what I did.
Today, I frogged one sleeve and the turtleneck of the dreadful orange sweater that's been taunting me. Then I took the skein I had wound on my little niddy noddy, gave it a careful and gentle shampooing (it IS, after all, hair), mixed up a dye bath of Black Cherry KoolAid and went right on ahead with it.
At first, it didn't seem quite as deep a red as I wanted it to be. The color had exhausted itself, like it does, but it needed more. So I took another packet of Black Cherry and just sprinkled it in, stirring the yarn gently and carefully as I did. This has had an interesting result, as the yarn that was on the bottom of the pot is lighter than the yarn that got sprinkled more directly. Anyway, I cooked the yarn for a few minutes, until the color was once again completely exhausted (and I do mean completely), left it to cool, and then, when it was cooled to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I rinsed the newly reddened yarn in 100 degree water from the tap, shampooed it again to make sure the color had set, rinsed again and hung the skein in my shower to drip dry. The last time I checked, it had started drying to a pretty, rusty red. I can't wait to see it all the way dry. There will be before and after pictures very soon.
Meanwhile, I'm encouraged and think I'm going to do one more small skein with a LOT more KoolAid to attempt to get a nice even, dark red color. If that result can be had, I will be knitting the attrocious-no-more, formerly orange sweater into... a better sweater. My very first sweater. :D
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Garments
I've been scared of garment-making for a while, since they're so massive and seemingly complex.
I've been thinking lately that I should get over it. I've knitted my Holy Grail project, the Spider; I've knitted socks, lots of them; I've knitted lace, I've knitted cables. So at this point, I think it might be possible that I'm ready to knit anything that comes my way. Except, perhaps, colorwork. That's later on this year. Lol.
The whole while I've been pondering making a garment (a sweater, to be specific), I've been trudging through online yarn shop after shop, looking for a yarn I can afford a sweater quantity of. Never once, until a few days ago, did it occur to me that I have seven whole sweaters sitting in my stash box waiting to become something else. Thus, I am inspired. I will play.
But first, I will get over this damn nasty cold. :(
I've been thinking lately that I should get over it. I've knitted my Holy Grail project, the Spider; I've knitted socks, lots of them; I've knitted lace, I've knitted cables. So at this point, I think it might be possible that I'm ready to knit anything that comes my way. Except, perhaps, colorwork. That's later on this year. Lol.
The whole while I've been pondering making a garment (a sweater, to be specific), I've been trudging through online yarn shop after shop, looking for a yarn I can afford a sweater quantity of. Never once, until a few days ago, did it occur to me that I have seven whole sweaters sitting in my stash box waiting to become something else. Thus, I am inspired. I will play.
But first, I will get over this damn nasty cold. :(
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Second Chance Spider Part 3
This post is long overdue. I get easily distracted and forget things like that sometimes.
I finished my Spider about a month ago. In fact, I finished it the day before I last posted. The last foot or so of it were pretty much torture because I was so very ready to be done with it. It's like the last few yards of climbing a very high mountain (or so I'm told). You're so eager to be at the top you don't want to climb those last few yards, you just want to BE THERE NOW!
Without any further ado, here are the pictures of my Spider's story, from unraveling to scarf:
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Mini-Confessional
I have a full post, but it's late and I'm tired and somewhat brain-dead tonight, so you get a mini-confessional instead.
- I haven't been entirely myself lately. In fact, I haven't been entirely myself in so long I think I'm in danger of forgetting who "myself" is. I need to start keeping a journal again, privately, so I can process some of the weirdness that rolls around in my brain and maybe figure myself out a little more.
- I used to enjoy Facebook. Lots of games, lots of seeing what people were up to, lots of all kinds of interesting things to keep me busy. The last few weeks, maybe even months, it just feels like a giant time-suck. I have other things that I would rather do with my time, so I'm starting to think about the idea of taking one night a week completely afk. Read a book, play a game of Guitar Hero, knit like crazy, Idk. Whatever. Just a night away from the computer, because whenever I'm sitting here, I've more than likely got at least one tab open to fb.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Confessions I
From time to time, little things niggle at my mind. This is where I shall confess them.
- For starters, I'm losing my spidery steam. I have 51 rows, some tassels and blocking left to go but I'm kind of over it right now. I'm ready to move on to the next thing, but I know I'll never forgive myself if I don't finish this before I do. I suppose I shall soldier on.
- I am steadily becoming more snobbish about the type of fibers I use. When I first started knitting, I didn't care what my yarn was made of, so long as it was in my grubby little paws and wasn't Red Heart Super Saver. Acrylic? Fine. Cotton? Delightful. Wool? Heaven. The deeper I get into fiber art as a whole, the more I find myself preferring what I refer to as "The Good Shit" (natural fibers) and shying away from more readily available (read: available at my semi-local Michaels or Walmart) acrylics. This new-found yarn snobbery bothers me just a little. My stash is FILLED with acrylic at the moment, and there's very little I can think of that I want to do with it. I'd consider donating it to someone if the little hoarder in my head didn't start shrieking "YOU'RE GONNA NEED THAT ONE DAY!!" I thought about trading it, but who the hell wants to trade The Good Shit and receive a mountain of acrylic in return? Nobody I can think of. Maybe I'll sell it in a destash group on Ravelry for like $2 per skein. Maybe I'll go yarn bomb my entire damn town. I don't know. But what I do know is that I've either got to use the stuff or get rid of it in a constructive way in order to make room for more of The Good Shit.
- I'm beginning to brainstorm the possibility of starting my own local fiber arts group, since I'm sick of feeling like the isolated knitter. My town has an Arts Council that offers sponsorship to local art and/or craft groups, and studio space for artists and all that good stuff, and I'm thinking it might be just the thing to kick start from.
- I am STILL pining for a spinning wheel. I watch the one I want on eBay every time it re-lists (it's Buy-It-Now from a fiber arts store in my state), but have yet to actually click the button. I keep hoping that maybe if I clean out the closet I want to store it in when it's not in use, Hubby will relent and stop giving me shit about getting it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)