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:
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.
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.
So there you have my confessions. Your thoughts and ideas on how to resolve any of these issues are welcome. :)
Organizing the bag...
From my first attempt to knit October is for Spinners, I learned the hard way that working with 4 balls of yarn at a time can get tricky real quick. The strands tangle around each other and make a tangled mess if you're not careful.
This time, it was my goal to prevent that from happening in order to make the chances of successfully finishing the project just a little better. I set about doing that by organizing my knitting bag very carefully in the process of setting up for the knit.
First, I had my four yarn balls. Each one was, by sheer coincidence, just a bit bigger than the one before it. This led me to assign each ball a number, with 4 being the smallest ball and 1 being the largest. After I had wound each ball, I took little sandwich-sized Ziploc baggies and wrote a number on each one, then put the corresponding ball in the baggie. Then I took each baggie and safety pinned it to the lining of my knitting bag in order. I wasn't sure it would work, but I had to try something to keep my precious harvest from becoming an unusable, tangled mess.
Then I made sure I had all of my needles tucked into the bag. I decided to use circs for this project because I honestly hate most of my straight needles (most of them are way too long for my preferences), so I selected the appropriate sizes and tucked the lot into one of the pockets of my bag. Then I made sure I had all my other little odds and ends tucked into another pocket.
Last but not least, I printed out my pattern and tucked it into the bag alongside my Stitch n' Bitch book, which is like my go-to guide if I run into something I'm not sure how to do.
Did it work?
Oh hell yes.
As of this posting, I'm 133 rows in, past the spider itself and into the lace. The lace is a bit trickier than I had anticipated, but that owes more to my own lack of attention span than to the difficulty of the pattern. I'm hoping I can get about another 30 rows done today. * fingers crossed *
I haven't always been a relatively fearless knitter. In fact, I was afraid to even try knitting in the round until this time last year.
Up until I made my Pink Ice Cream Mitts, all I knitted were scarves. After I made those gloves and a few others, I felt confident I could handle anything in spite of the fact that I'd not yet tried to do a great many knitting techniques.
Spurred on by my new-found bravado, I ordered some Skacel Merino Lace and set about trying to knit October is for Spinners sometime last November. I tried hard to make it work for a month or more before I realized it just wasn't coming out right and gave up. Why wasn't it working out? For starters, the "laceweight" yarn I was using was extremely lightweight. More like cobweb than anything else I've ever encountered. This made the gauge waaaay too open and airy for the twisted stitch pattern that forms the spider to ever take shape properly.
The second point of failure was my knitting skills. They just weren't up to the task at the time. I lacked the full understanding of how stitch patterns work, how lace works, how cables work. My patience wasn't so great either, so I found myself wanting to fly through it in a hurry. That doesn't work so well, now that I think of it.
So The Spider hit the Frog Pond, and I've been too scared of it ever since to bother with it....
Until I recycled that first sweater.
That first sweater, the grey Ralph Lauren Polo cabled sweater, decided that it wanted to be The Spider as I was unraveling the first sleeve. It said, "Wouldn't I be beautiful all knit up into that scarf? Wouldn't I be soft? Wouldn't I be lovely?" I said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, you would. Let's do this thing."*
And that was that. So the whole time I was unraveling the rest of the sweater, wrapping the harvested yarn into hanks, steaming the kinks from the hanks and winding the straightened hanks into center-pull balls (BALLS! Not EGGS!! Yaaaay!), I was imagining how lovely this damned intimidating spider was going to be once it was all finished.
I cast it on yesterday, after an interesting and in-depth preparation process that will hopefully streamline this whole process. That process will be the subject of my next post.
* Yes, I realize it makes me seem a bit crazy, what with talking yarn and me talking back to it. Just to assure you that I'm not completely and totally off my rocker (at least not in a bad way), I'm adding the little disclaimer that the above conversation is metaphoric. :P
I'm nearing the end of the process of making my recycled yarn reusable. Finally!
Having successfully unraveled my first sweater and wound the harvested yarn into nice neat little hanks, I set about trying to relax the kinks from the yarn being knit up into the original sweater.
I researched a little before choosing my method. The most common method I came across was soaking and weighting, which involves soaking the yarn in hot water for about an hour, then hanging the hanks up to dry while weighted down with something (most often cans of food from the pantry). I didn't particularly want to use this method because 1) it's a soggy mess and 2) from what I've read, it takes a couple days for the yarn to dry. I don't like soggy messes and I have absolutely no patience to wait for the yarn to dry, so this method was definitely out.
The other method I came across was steaming. My first thought was, "What am I gonna steam this with?", but then I read a post in a Ravelry thread that mentioned using a tea kettle. Perfect.
I set to steaming my yarn pretty quickly after that, and have now gotten all but one hank steamed straight, dried and twisted into hanks. Once the sun goes down tonight, I'm gonna steam up the last one so I can cast on the project I've decided on for my precious harvest...
October is for Spinners. This will be my second attempt at what I think of as The Spider. Hopefully this time around, my skills will be up to par.
My niddy-noddy finally came. I am stoked. I've already used it to hank up one of the balls from my merino/angora reclamation and I absolutely love it. It threw me for a bit of a loop just how tiny this little niddy-noddy is. It came in a teeny little bubble mailer, unassembled, with directions for assembly and use. The longest piece of it is about 6" long. I thought, "Well how is this gonna work? It's so small I won't be able to weigh down the yarn." But I went ahead with it anyway.
It took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to wrap the yarn around it, but once I got going, it made perfect sense. Its small size makes it sooo easy to wrap the hanks quickly. I'm absolutely thrilled.
In addition to loving my niddy-noddy, I've been learning about dyeing yarn and/or fiber with KoolAid. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm itching to. There are a couple of sacrificial sweaters in my frogpile that could do with overdyeing because they're currently hideous. Tomorrow might be the day to play with that. *plots*
In addition to being an isolated fiber junkie (there's not a LYS within 50 miles of my house!), I'm also a bit of a bargain hunter. As a direct result of this combination, I often find myself purchasing my fiber-related supplies from eBay.
Currently, I'm waiting for my niddy-noddy and three sets of bamboo circs. The circs will take a while, since they're coming from China. The niddy-noddy should be here in a few days. Meanwhile, I'm going crazy waiting for it.
I'm waiting to hank up my pretty recycled yarn and un-crinkle it. Dammit. :|
So, as of about ten seconds ago, I officially finished frogging my first "recycled" sweater. My thumb aches from wrapping yarn around it all weekend into center-pull balls, but it's worth it not to have my precious harvest all tangled up. I ended up with four good-sized center-pull eggs (my hand-wound yarn balls always end up egg-shaped for some reason), one medium-sized ball, three small balls and two teeny tiny ones, along with a fistful of waste yarn (strands that broke, strands that were part of weird shaping spots and strands from teh segment I had to cut out because there was an embroidered logo that I just couldn't pluck out).
When my niddy-noddy gets here, I'm gonna hank it all up and de-ramenify it. Then, it will become an October is for Spinners scarf.
My next victim will be the blue merino, now that I have a seam ripper and a clue.
As for knitting, once I get my recycled yarn tucked away for the night, I'm going to ball up my gorgeous Miss Piggy sock yarn from Wild Hare Fiber Studio tonight so I can cast on for Sunday Swing Socks. I think the pattern is just busy enough to keep the knitting interesting while not overwhelming the handpainted yarn.
All in all, today has been a good fiber day for me. :)
Since finishing my last project, my gorgeous but slightly-incorrect BlackRose Socks, I've been unable to decide what I want to knit next. I have a bunch of yarn in my stash and a ton of patterns in my Ravelry queue, but nothing seems to tickle my fancy enough to pick up the sticks and go to it.
Is it knitter's block?
Whatever this thing is that's causing me to stop dead in my tracks before I even cast on a project, it's making me fucking cranky and I don't like it.
Meanwhile, I ordered a pretty little niddy-noddy today for very, very little money. Don't worry, Hubby. I'll find somewhere to put it. :P
I mentioned in yesterday's post that I had taken up an interest in "reclaiming" or "recycling" yarn from old sweaters. Today, I began that journey for the first time.
I went to my local Goodwill and raided the sweater racks, examining fiber contents and seams before plucking my sacrificial sweaters. I ended up coming home with four. Two 100% cashmere, one 100% merino and one merino/angora rabbit blend. Most of them are teeny, tiny laceweight affairs, but the merino/angora blend is a little heftier, probably closer to fingering.
I started off trying to disassemble the 100% merino because it has a gorgeous colorway and I have a project in mind for it. Bad idea for your first go-round, I think, because it was really, really hard to find the "unzippy bits" for the seams. So I switched, after about an hour's frustration, to the merino/angora. It's also beautiful, and incredibly soft.
In the last two hours, I've managed to break it down into panels and now I'm planning on frogging away on one of the sleeves tomorrow night. I'm super excited to get started on it. I'll hopefully be able to post pics of the panels tomorrow and the WIP as well. :)
Before I go into my little ramble, I just want to make mention of how horrible I've been at updating this thing. Not that anyone reads it or anything, but just in case someone's watching... My apologies.
Now onto the post...
Kristie is my partner in crafty crime. We've been friends since we were like, 13. We've been through thick and thin, hell and high water, and every craft from craft lacing lanyards to duct tape clothing together. To make a long story short, we really like to make stuff.
Kristie got me hooked on crochet a long time ago, so in return, I got her hooked on knitting.
Now she's paid me back for it. We went to Carolina Fiber Fest together last month, and as a direct result of all we learned and all we did, I am completely and utterly besotted by all sorts of different facets of fiber art, though the most notable new one is spinning.
I'm a full-fledged fiber junkie. I'm learning to spin on a drop spindle, which is both harder and easier than I ever would have imagined. I've learned the very basics of wheel spinning, which I prefer because it's just sooooo soothing. I've played very briefly with needle felting. I'm researching dyeing and handpainting.
I may have to remodel the storage shed into a fiber studio before too long if this continues. Otherwise, Hubby may lose his mind. Lol.
Since my last post, things have been happening rapidly. Good things, mind you, but they've made me introspective, as change often does. So now I figure it's time to share.
A couple years ago, I was a vibrant, happy-go-lucky gal with a waitressing job in a fine-dining restaurant I loved and a dream of one day opening my own restaurant. I also bounced about cemeteries with my camera taking pictures of everything that would hold still for a fraction of a second. I was, in short, a whole different woman.
Then one day, I got the news that I was going to essentially be laid off from that job I loved so much. I was devastated, but being a survivor, I soldiered on and got a job managing a store in a local fast-food chain.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
Being the over-achiever that I am, I excelled through the training program, acing every test I was given and generally being the golden child. There were very high expectations for me to power myself through the ranks and into upper management quickly. The trouble was, I really and truly hated it. Culture shock had set in and wasn't letting go. I was disgusted by the food, the employees and the customers alike. And it truly hurt my feelings to have fallen so far so fast.
Despite having been the golden child through training, and despite the high expectations my superiors had for me, it felt as if I could do nothing right and it began to weigh heavily on me. Between the stress of the job itself and the wonky hours (getting up at 3am for morning shifts, then having to close the next night at midnight), I was beginning to crack.
Six months in, I was in my store, having a particularly rough night. My staff wasn't listening and the customers were particularly awful. Things came to a head when a woman came roaring in from the drive-thru lane screaming that her fries were cold and disgusting. Though I offered to replace them, she continued to throw a hissy fit and finally threatened me with physical violence. I wasn't about to take that sort of behavior from anyone. I told her she needed to leave before I called the police. When threatened with police action, she left, grumbling the whole way. I was shaken. People get psycho over their french fries, apparently. A few minutes later, an employee decided he was going to test me by refusing to do what I had asked (which was simply to restock the paper products before going home), and the conflict escalated to a screaming match that resulted in me firing the boy. Once that was done, I was a mess.
I don't remember the next thing that went wrong that night. I have no memory of the straw that broke the camel's back. Shortly after I fired the unruly employee, I found myself sitting on the office floor with the door locked, bawling my eyes out on the phone with my immediate supervisor. I had snapped. I had reached the point where I could take no more.
That was the night I had a nervous breakdown. In the end, I was given a week off to recover, transferred stores and stepped down from management, but I was broken. In the weeks that followed, I realized that something inside me had gone dead. I was hollow, fragile, and more prone to extreme anxiety than ever before. I soldiered on nevertheless, hoping that in time I'd get better and enjoy life again. That never happened.
One morning in late November, after a lengthy search in vain to find another job that wasn't going to kill me, I woke up for my morning shift (yeah, still 3am) with the idea in my head that perhaps it was time to get an education and get out of the restaurant business. I had no idea yet what I wanted to study, but I knew I had to do something. My first thought was culinary school. I'd been wanting to go to culinary school for years, be a chef, open my own restaurant. My experience with the fast-food chain, however, had completely killed off any desire I had to ever run another restaurant. So that was out.
Eventually I came to the idea that I would study cosmetology, since it's only a year-long program and it seemed like fun. So I thought I would get my cosmo license and be a hairdresser while I worked on a bachelor's degree in something else.
So I got my duckies in a row, got a Pell grant, got registered, found a new (and incredibly awesome) part-time job from home, and put in my two weeks' notice at the restaurant.
When the semester started, I was still a hollow, fragile mess, but my life was going to change forever when I walked into the first day of class.
More backstory for you later.
