stream of consciousness: cleaning and coffee

I spent two hours Thursday, and two hours tonight, cleaning the craft room. I've found that 1 cup of coffee = two hours motivation. It's almost ten o'clock at night, and I'm contemplating having another cup. It is Saturday.

I'm happy to be staying in on a Saturday night to clean. Is that grown-up, sad, or just OCD?

I've been to three graduations in three weeks. None of them were in Austin. One weekend also included a bridal shower and a wedding. I'm happy and proud for my family and friends, but now I've got to repay the cleaning debt created while playing out of town. I've a room, with all my cool arts and crafts stuff in it, and I've been avoiding it because there's been no floor. I'd really like to use it.

My mom's mother's day gift is pinned out on my blocking board, and it's sitting on the floor of the living room. If I found floor in the craft room, it could go there. I could turn the fan on, leave it there to dry, and not have to worry about tripping over it.

The two hours on Thursday I cleaned out the closet. I can now walk into the walk-in closet, and do so with out fear of being taken out by a stray wooden sword.

The second two hours I dealt with paper. I have acquired SO much paper. For our purposes "paper" is defined as tickets (from trips and concerts), correspondence (Christmas cards, invitations to weddings/showers/birthdays), and miscellaneous (patterns printed from online, receipts, magazine pictures, pretty postcards). I like to have firm proof that I went to this or that movie/wedding/country and when, and so I keep these bits and pieces. I have a terrible memory, so I feel if I hang on to this stuff I'll have a greater chance of remembering it. I'd also like to someday do some scrap-booking. I think.

It makes me think of Labyrinth, where the pack rat Muppet carries around a bunch of garbage on her back. I should get rid of most of it, but it's a bit like going through your old toys. I pick up a random piece of paper, remember that shower/birthday/concert and how much fun it was, and then put it back into the pile.

I am going to have that cup of coffee. The room doesn't have to be spotless, but I want to have the gift blocking in the middle of the floor by the time I go to bed. That's not going to happen without another cup of motivation.

Turning a corner

The finished swatch of the lace edging.

I think it turned out well.

I went with the stockinette rather than the original garter. The garter hid the pattern too much. I had to redo the chart a third time; there was a mistake I didn’t catch until I got to the tenth row.

Five repeats of the lace edging per side should add enough lace, without overdoing it. The math is easy enough: 72 rows per repeat divided by 2 (you only attach the edging every other row for it to lay flat), multiplied by 5 repeats equals 180 stitches per side. But then there are the corners. I’ve never turned a corner in knitting before, and designing my own was quite a challenge.

I know of two ways to turn a knitted corner*, easing the boarder** or a short row turn***. The math required to figure out how to ease the pattern worried me. But you only need one extra stitch for a short row corner. I liked that math.

So, I picked up 101 stitches per side around the blanket. I had to fudge a bit, but not much. Then I knit around, and around, and around, yarning over twice per corner until I had 181 stitches per side. Easy, and rather repetitive. Designing the lace corners were neither. Getting your knitting to turn 90 degrees, while keeping the style of the edge, is not the easiest thing in the world.

Working on both projects kept me from going crazy from either. When the lace became too much, I switched to the relaxing stockinette. When the stockinette became too mindless, I worked on getting the corner right (pun intended). I tried out four different corner swatches and charted out at least five other possible corners.

This is the whole lace edging swatch with the four different attempts at a corner.

I finally decided on this one.

It's the closest to the image I had in my head.

I’ve finished the center stockinette, and started the boarder. I'll post pictures of the whole thing once it is done, and given away.

Next time: There is a fabulous LYS in Houston.

*I’m sure there are more.
**When you ease a boarder, instead of picking up a stitch on the center every other row, you pick up the same stitch three times on one side of the corner, four times in the middle, and three times on the other side. Or at least I think that’s how you do it.
*** When working short rows you knit a row and turn before you get to the end. Then you knit back and forth in the center, eventually going back to knitting the whole row. You end up with a section of knitting that has more knitting in the center than at the edges. This can be used for toes and heals in socks, and also for including more space in sweaters for bustier ladies. Here’s a better explanation of short rows by Cat Bordhi.

Baby blanket

I've some friends who are expecting so I've found some squishy, washable yarn and a baby blanket pattern that I like. I cast on last night and realized that this is the first square baby blanket I'm making by myself. I've made a round one, and the square one I helped with was using big needles and thick yarn.

This one is DK weight and size 6 needles. I'm really glad that I have seven months to finish it. The pinwheel isn't discouraging at the beginning because it grows so quickly; it's only at the end when you want to pull your hair out.

It is rather disheartening to have knitted for about four hours and have only a one inch strip to show for it. Also, since I'm trying to completely switch to knitting continental it is taking even longer. (I'm not left handed either.)

I should be done by the time the baby is here.

I hope.

Not much yarn, but a great weekend anyway.

I’m still on a yarn diet, but we did enough other things that I was not too discouraged by the lack of fiber. Thursday night we went and saw Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It’s a documentary about the Chauvet caves in Southern France. The documentary is a little weird, and the bit at the end about the albino crocodiles is pretty much pointless, but the cave paintings themselves will knock your socks off. I’d recommend seeing it in 3D, because the way the walls curve is part of the art. And like most cave paintings, I don’t think they would make as much sense in 2D.

Friday morning I had PT. The therapist I’d been going to was out, so I ended up seeing someone else. She gave me a nice massage, except for her exclamations of horror at the state of my neck. After pressing on my pectoral muscles to get them to relax a bit, she taped up my back to fix my posture. I was stunned at where my shoulders are supposed to be. I’ve never stood like that a day in my life. I didn’t really discuss going back to knitting or spinning with her because she wasn’t the one who put me on a diet.
That night DH, my sister and I saw White Ghost Shivers with friends who had seen them before. We danced, and had a great time was had by all.

Saturday I went to yoga with Scott, but I did not push myself as hard as I normally would. I was sore from the PT and tired from the dancing. But it was a calming practice and I’d had a bit of a week, so I was glad I went. That afternoon DH and I went to the HighBall for a karaoke birthday party with wigs and props. (I have to find a red wig in the same style.) Then home to let the dog out and pick up my sister, and then back out again to hang with the birthday girl and friends for a great game of Apples to Apples.

Sunday we stayed in and did laundry. I am SO excited about having clean laundry. I should not be this excited, but I am. I played around online for a while* until I gave into temptation; I carded some fiber together and spun for about two hours. It wasn't great fiber, just some left over fiber from my spin 101 and 201 classes, but it felt fabulous to sit down at my spinning wheel. I attempted to spin holding the fiber in my right hand and drafting with my left and, while it wasn’t a complete success, I had better luck than I’d had previously.
That evening we saw the new X-Men movie at Alamo Drafthouse. While there were a few things that were a bit off (isn’t Banshee Irish? and how is Havok older than Cyclops?), I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was true to the spirit of the comics.

Yoga and PT tomorrow. Perhaps I will get the thumbs up to knit and spin more.




*DH has recently gotten an Ipad. I can’t post pictures to blogger on it. It only took me two hours to figure that out.

Blogs I'm reading

Since I’ve started blogging I have started reading a lot more blogs than I used to (blog is such a weird word, I know it comes from web-log drop the we, but it tastes odd). Finding Google Reader (thanks cousin!) has helped me keep track of them.

One of the best for technical knitting issues is, the appropriately named, TECHknitting. I had known of it, but only recently started reading it. It is full of wonderful tricks and tips. How to knit better, more efficiently, and what to do if a project has all gone sideways on you. If you are a blog-reading knitter and you haven’t read it, rather unlikely, go there now! Well, you can wait until you finish this post, but then you should check it out.

TECHknitter is currently in the middle of a series on garment correction. She links to a previous post about fixing issues in length, and I’m excited about the possibilities. My second sweater is a little sad. (The pattern is this one, the mistakes are mine and not the pattern's.) Not only are the arms a little too long, the body is a little too short. I’m not sure if I can use the tricks that TECHknitter suggested, because of the way the ribbing works into the cable pattern, but there might be a possibility that I can fix it. And thus turn a sweater I’m a little uncomfortable in, into my go to super-warm sweater.

Another blog that I’ve been reading regularly is Yarn Harlot. She needs no introduction; she's a knit blogging maven (or a blogging knit maven, I'm not sure). While fooling around on her blog, reading old posts, I discovered that she created the Tricoteuses Sans Frontières/Knitters Without Borders (TSF). 

She started TSF as a way to support Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Considering all that is going on in the world right now - earthquakes, tsunamis, wars - it is a good time to donate.  I’ll be doing the week long challenge and will donate to the MSF next Monday. And as soon as I figure out how to put a button on my blog I’ll add a TSF link.

Weekend Update

This past weekend was full of wonderful things, but not much knitting and very little spinning. On Saturday I went to yoga, and then DH and I helped out a friend at a fundraiser for The Miracle Foundation. We had a lot of fun, and it was for a great cause.

Sunday I got all dolled up with the help of Mindy, the master makeup artist, to get pictures taken by Martha. Both Martha and Mindy were looking to expand their portfolios, and I wanted pictures of a slimmer me in my wedding dress so it worked out well.

And so, while I did sneak a few rows, I did not finish the blue handspun lace scarf in time for Mother’s Day. I thought about giving my mom the scarf with the needles still in it, but I want to block it out before I give it to her. She’s seen it already, and I’d like the openness of the blocked out lace to surprise her... I hope that the yarn isn't too over spun to block nicely.