- 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.
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.
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.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Second Chance Spider Part 2
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 *
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 *
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Second Chance Spider Part 1
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
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
Monday, July 4, 2011
Hot and Steamy
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.
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.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
The Niddy-Noddy
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*
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*
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)