The Age of Brass and Steam

I love this pattern.

 There are different kinds of knitters. There those are who knit to meditate, those who knit for the end product, and those who knit to learn a new process. There may be other types out there, but these are enough for our purposes. I'm a process knitter. I look at some knitting pattern and think “I want to make that.” The product knitters think “I want to have that.” I want to learn a new trick or technique with each new project. But I have found a pattern that I'm willing to make more than once. It’s The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief.

I was going on a trip and needed something simple to knit while talking to people. I ran across this pattern and thought it would suit my hand painted yarn. Trip knitting found. I cast on while on the flight there and bound off a few days later. It was as close to instant gratification as you get with knitting, not counting baby booties. So when, on a Tuesday, I realized I didn’t have a Mother’s day gift for that Sunday I bought pretty green skein of yarn and cast on. It was done and blocked by Saturday, but I’d blocked it crooked. So I reblocked it, and still had it done in time for Mother’s day.

It's fast, easy, but not boring. Perfect!

I’ve not blocked the hand painted one, yet. I’ve a while before I’ll see the friend for whom it’s intended. But, once I’ve given it away, I’ll be sure to post pictures.

I may end up knitting a bunch more of these. I’m so confused; I never want to make the same thing twice. Heck, I'm no stranger to the dreaded second sock syndrome (takes a week to make the first sock, takes a year to make the second, or maybe it never gets made). And now I’ve made two of these shawlettes and want to cast on another.

I think I have a bronze or silver colored yarn that would really bring out the steam punk inherent in the design. To the stash!

So many dishcloths... ahhhhhhh!

Way back in early September I mentioned I had a few projects to finish before I started Christmas knitting. This one turned into a Christmas gift because it took me so long.

They are Susi's Reading Mitts. I've made them before, but since then they've taken the pattern down, so I did some of it by memory and some of it by guessing. I didn't use the right yarn, and though I thought I'd gotten gauge, I hadn't. For these many reasons I got this far before I realized that they were too small.

Too small. Ouch.

I ripped them out, had a mourning period of about a month, and then started over. I'm going to claim having to start over as the reason why I didn't start on Christmas knitting early enough. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So my Christmas knitting became Christmas crochet. And since I'd learned to make soap the easy way, I thought I'd make dishcloths to go with a bar or two of soap.  Fabulous gift idea, I know.

I used the nubbie scrubbie pattern for the most part.

I made a LOT of them. I think I can make that pattern in my sleep now.

I tried out the Interweave pattern, but I didn't like it as much. They were pretty, but weren't as scrubbie, and took more concentration.

I got tired of those so I tried out the Scrubbie Dots pattern. Lots of ends, I chose poorly on the colors, not my favorite pattern.

 After being thoroughly sick of making dishcloths I decided to make a hotpad for my MIL.

It turned out okay. I think if I'd reversed the colors it would have been better.

But the cool stuff happened when I threw out the patterns.

Next time: The necklace pattern I promised you a while ago, and pictures.

Holiday Blur

The holidays are here and I’m having a hard time keeping everything straight. So before I forget, here’s what we did this weekend:
Thursday I went to the gym for the first time in a month. I moaned and groaned my way through my workout, but I felt great after. So much so that I convinced DH that we HAD to go to the midnight showing of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. I loved it, no surprise as I am a huge fan of anything Sherlock. Getting up on Friday was difficult, but the movie was worth the exhaustion.

Friday afternoon I picked up my sister, who had just gotten home for winter break, and whisked her over to our place. She needed to do bit of laundry, so DH suggested we watch the beginning of How to Train Your Dragon. We ended up watching the whole movie. It was so cute! The previews did not do it justice. After the movie and laundry, we headed over to hang with P&S for food and fun.

Saturday DH headed off for disk golf, while my sister and I headed over to the parents’ to start on gingerbread house. After she put a Batman cape on my dog and chased her around the kitchen, we got down to some serious interneting. We’ve decided to branch out and make a house that is not in the Gingerbread Architect, the gingerbread bible that we’ve used the last few years. So after much pouring over Google images, while I crocheted, we came up with a plan. A plan we will start on Wednesday.

That evening DH joined my dad, sister and me to go see a production of Amahl and the Night Visitors that Mom was in. She was a shepherdess; I was very proud. After we waited for Mom to change, we all headed over to Hank’s Garage for the duck fat fries (yes, you read that right). It’s a Belgian pub, so you can get poutine, and the best crème brûlée this side of France. DH and I got home and tried to stay up till our houseguests showed up, but it didn’t happen.

Sunday we got up, I crocheted, and listened to the radio until K&V woke up. Then DH and I decorated the tree, while I made K&V watch the first episode of Grimm. Not the most Christmas-y show, but I really enjoy it and I wanted to share. That’s in the Christmas spirit, right? I got one of Victorian Texting Gloves that I was hoping to have done for V before they left, but I just didn’t have time to do them both. Since she has already seen and tried one on, I don’t feel bad showing it to you before Christmas. 

I'm almost done with the second one.

That afternoon, we went over to P&S’s for their Holiday Party. The spread was incredible: sausage, cheese logs, queso, pesto pasta, cookies, sticky toffee pudding, pigs in a blanket, the works. K of S&K baked goodies for Christmas and we had a few. The Snickers cookies were a treat, and the peanut butter fudge was wonderful. We decorated cookies, ate until we hurt, traded gifts, played a game of Killer Bunnies, and ate some more. K&V had to go to work today, so headed back to Dallas. I wish they could have stayed longer, but I’m glad they came.

We are going to the last partner yoga session tonight. I’m sad that it’s ending, but I think it has done us a world of good. I’ve still got a bunch of crocheting left, but I’m starting to feel like I might actually get everything done. Let’s see, Tuesday we’ve another holiday gathering; Wednesday is baking gingerbread; Thursday training at the gym; Friday is probably more gingerbread. That leaves Saturday, Christmas Eve, and Sunday, Christmas.

…Christmas is THIS Sunday?! Eeep! Somehow, I thought I had more than a week left. I may be giving gifts on Twelfth’s Night, because that’s been the plan all along. I swear

I'm going to write a post real quick...

Famous last words I know, but here it goes:

I've got 12 balls of cotton yarn in front of me. The pink one is looking at me sideways. I've been working on crocheting Christmas gifts till my hands have gone tingly, and I'm still not done. I've started improvising patterns because I'm sick of making the same thing over and over.

I needed something faster. What could be faster than the crocheted things I can't tell you about? Accessories! So you may be getting something that works with my theme this year, or you may be getting something that will go with that lovely outfit your aunt gave you. It depends on how sore my wrists get between now and Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I love making things for friends and family. I just started too late in the year; I should have started in June.
Okay, back to crochet... and Buffy.

Delightfully Rainy Weekend

Friday we hung out with our usual crowd, always a good time. Saturday was rainy, so we stayed in for most of the day. I knitted and DH gamed while we watched Buffy. That evening we headed to YA, J and YS's gingerbread (read: graham cracker) house decorating party. Met a lot of new people, had a lot of sugary fun.

DH's creation

My blurry manger.

Sunday was also rainy, so knitting and Buffy in the morning. Then I headed over to Gauge Knits where I took a class on soap making (the heat-already-made-soap-add-scent-color-and-dye-then-pour-into-molds-to-set kind of soap making) taught by Knitcrawler. I preferred the soap re-combining to the soap making. It's easier and less caustic.

Here's the glycerin soap melting.

The table before we started.

Adding the dye and scent.

Spraying the soap in the mold with alcohol to prevent bubbles forming.

The mess at the end of class.

My finished soaps. These will probably be Christmas gifts.

After class I headed home for more Buffy and knitting. I’m really, just about, almost done on this baby blanket. I’ve only two thirds of a row of blocks, the garter stitch boarder, and some blocking left. I hope to be done by Wednesday.

Next time: A review of Rainbow Yarn and Fiber in Memphis.

Random Week

This week has flown by. ACL was pretty good this year. There were way too many people; even the crowds on Friday were insane. We skipped Saturday, and lent our wristbands to friends. You aren’t supposed to do that, but we weren’t going to use them. Went back for Sunday and had a much better time. We were not in the festival mood on Friday, but having a day off revived us. Also there were bands I really wanted to see the last day. My favorites were the first and last shows we saw on Sunday, The Airborne Toxic Event and Arcade Fire.

Blurry pictures!

I know you can't tell, but we were pretty close.

They put on an awesome show.

Monday was spent gathering strength, picking up car, working a half day, and then partner yoga. DH and I have been going to Yoga Scott’s partner yoga class at Soma Vida. We’ve gone three times, and every time we go I’m pretty sure we can’t make it the next time. A couple of weeks before I knew about the partner yoga, DH and I made plans to hang with second eldest SIL weekly for trivia. Trivia is, of course, at the same time as the class. I have fun at both, but I feel healthy after yoga.  Perhaps we will be able to go to the class and then after the six weeks are up we’ll do trivia more regularly. We'll see.

Tuesday was spent crashed out re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and knitting. I still wasn’t fully recovered from ACL. We are almost through season two. I wonder if the marathoning has made me more in touch with my angsty-poet-teen side. I’ve been feeling the need to get my sketchbook out and play with pastels again. Haven’t done that in years. I know the show has made me miss all my wonderful 90’s clothes. Buffy holds up, except for the prevalence of cell phones, or rather the lack there of in the show dates it. They say, “I couldn’t find her at her house or the school, where could she be?” And I think “You could just call her.”
The late 90’s don’t feel that long ago fashion wise, but then I heard an interview on NPR about the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind. That made me feel old. I didn’t get into Nirvana until after Curt was dead, but still.
I’ve gotten good enough that I can now watch TV and work on the baby blanket. I have been cheating a bit and doing the wrong-side with my right hand. I’m just about 3/8ths of the way done. My tension has changed and it looks better at the top, so now I’m thinking about ripping it out and starting over. But that’s just the OCD talking. While it is supposed to be washable, it does have a bit of wool in it and should block a little bit. I hope.

Wednesday was yoga, grocery shopping, and delayed Dr. Who watching. No spoilers here, but the episode made me teary. If you aren't watching Dr. Who go back to the reboot in 2005 and catch up. The old Who is kind of campy, and while I like the fourth Doctor, I wouldn't suggest starting from the beginning if you haven't seen the new Who. Start with the new stuff, if you get really hooked then go back and watch the old stuff.

Thursday was weight training followed by hanging out at S's, watching him play video games and playing with kitties.

Yesterday was going with my parents to see Conspirare perform music by Samuel Barber. DH liked it just fine, but I was blown away. If you are into choral music at all, you should check them out. Then DH and I came home and watched Buffy until the wee hours. Yes, we are that silly.

Today was yoga, and yarn store. I was sore before yoga and I'm still sore, but I feel good. It was a very stretchy, rejuvenating sort of yoga.  The yarn store was Hill Country Weavers, one of my favorites. Some LYSs in central Texas have been rounding up donations for those who've lost their homes in the recent fire in Bastrop. Lots of knitters lost their stash or had it damaged by smoke, just when they need comfort. The donations that they asked for were skeins of yarn that were close to the heart of the one donating. If you love it, the person who receives it will love it too.  So, I decided that the blue that wouldn't do anything right but finally turned out well was something that I loved, that someone else might love. It felt right to give that yarn to the knitters who were going through such a hard time. I had such a hard time making it, and it took a long time until I figured out how to turn it into something that I liked. But in the end it worked out. And I feel like that's a spirit I want to pass on. Things may fight you, and things may seem completely ruined. But if you work at it, sometimes, it turns out right.

Tonight we are going to see Weird Al. DH is over the moon excited and, although I'm not as big Weird Al fan, I'll have fun watching him have fun.

I'm not dead yet.

Can it really have been four weeks since I last posted? I guess it must be. It’s been a bit crazy (birthday parties, holiday, and then the state caught fire) with not a lot of knitting or spinning. But here’s what I’ve done since we last met:

Fiber: 

The top is silk, the "green" is cotton, and the bottom is llama.
A friend saw this picture and said it looks like a monkey. Now I can't not see the monkey.

I decided to try out some of the non-wool fibers I bought a while ago. I have a new appreciation for cotton clothing. Cotton is hard to spin! I tend to make overspun yarn, not always the best way to spin, but it is a good tendency to have if you are working with cotton. The staple length is so short you have to add a lot of twist just to keep the fibers together.

Silk (white) and cotton (green) fibers.

After spinning a bit of cotton I decided that I wanted to try to spin some silk, and that felt completely different.

Projects:

I’ve stalled out on the baby blanket. I’m a little over an 8th of the way through it. Not because the blanket isn’t interesting, I just got... distracted. I've made a crocheted scarf for a co-worker who was changing jobs. I remembered to take pictures of it before I gave it away; I just didn’t take very good ones.

It was windy.

At first I wanted to make a crocheted shawl, but the patterns weren’t working, and the yarn fought back. So I decided that a scarf, in one of my favorite yarns, would be just the thing.

Here's what it looks like when it's not moving.

I’ve made a few of these scarves, and they never fail to please. 

I’d promised a few people handmade items at the beginning of the year. It’s September and I still haven’t made one, so I found the yarn I’d picked out for one and thought, “I’ll bang this out over a weekend or two.”

Sometimes, I forget that I’m not the Yarn Harlot (see her recent one-a-day baby knits) and that I can’t actually “bang” anything out. So I’m halfway through the first gift and it’s feeling a little bit small. I think once I block it out (never mind that the yarn is washable and so doesn't block) it will fit the recipient. I hope. I’ll show pictures once I’ve given it away.

I’ve still got two more of these promised handmade items to make before I start on Christmas gifts. I may be crocheting gifts this year. 

Renegade Craft Fair

I’ve been trying to figure out what it was about the craft fair that caused me to have such a hard time getting my thoughts together.  First, I hadn’t planned on going until the very last minute, so I had no plan of attack.  I wandered around stunned, trying to take it all in. But the magnitude of it and the sieve-like nature of my brain have combined to make the details go fuzzy. And that's a shame because the details were so cool.

This was up at a booth of funky accessories. I loved the sentiment.

Secondly, the creativity and inspiration I found there was incredible and overwhelming; I haven't fully digested it. In order to keep track I grabbed a card from every stall that had something I liked:

I still haven't gotten the chance to go to all the different sites to check out their stuff, but here's a list of links that correspond to the cards:

abby try again     alternativeArt     b.bags     betsy & iya     black gardenia     Blue Eye Brown Eye     Both Hands Studio     bret gum     Crab Apple Designs     Crafty is Cool     Cutesy but not Cutesy     Fifi du Vie     Freeforged Jewelry     From Fragments to Furniture & Beyond     Fusingcolors     girls can tell     GvE     Hello-Lucky     Illustrated Ink     infrared studio     julie guyot    Katinka Pinka      La La     Make Shop Live     Misha Ashton Photography     oceguera     onion head monster     Paper Tiger Cards     pommes frites     SavannahRed     Simmang Design     soap addict      Twinkie Chan     verameat

I did end up buying a few things.

Lotion bars use the heat of your body to become soft, so you don’t get a whole bunch of goop on you. Brilliant!

A book at one of the few booths that had yarn-like things:

The only yarn craft represented at the fair was crochet. Which kind of fits my theory: It takes so long to knit something that - unless you are making very small items, with very cheep yarn and/or are going to charge an incredible amount of money - it is not actually worth trying to sell your knitting.* At the craft fair, where most objects were going for the $3-$60 dollar amount, it seemed like it’s not worth trying to sell knitting.

Recently, I’ve had more than one friend interested in helping me sell my finished knitted objects. So browsing the fair for knitted objects and not finding any was good intel. Forgetting about copywrite issues, I’m not sure it would actually be worth my time. I mean I don't think I could be fairly paid for my knitting, without it being prohibitively exorbitant. I guess if I lived in LA and sold one-of-a-kind-objects to the stars, it might be worth it. But I’d be in LA. I’ve read again and again by people who knit; no one understands the time and effort - unless they knit themselves. And if you do knit, you probably want to make the thing instead of buying it.

Crochet is different. I can make a toy in an afternoon or three, rather than three weeks. But I’m not sure if I actually want to design and make crochet objects to sell. The craft fair made me think about it, I just haven’t come up with an answer yet. I am more at home designing crochet than I am knitting… Then again, I thought that this would only take me a day or two, and it’s been a week:

Full picture put together once I’ve sent him off to the nephew.



*(Disclaimer: I’ve only been to one fiber festival; there might have been knitting for sale there. I was in the market for fiber, not knitted items.)

Good news and plans

I did not have to get a shot into my shoulder. Hurray! I have a prescription for physical therapy, and a topical ointment and that’s it. I should see the doctor again in 6 weeks, and by then be much better. I’m thrilled!

I really enjoyed my yoga practice this morning. My intention was “I am happy” and it’s really lifted my mood. Whenever I’ve gotten a minute to sit and think I’ve tried to focus on happy instead of worried. (Being “slightly worried” had become my normal state for too long.) Knowing that my shoulder is not nearly as messed up as I feared does put a good spin on the rest of the week too.

I felted the little basket in the washing machine last night. It turned out ok. I’d like to felt it a little bit more so it is sturdier, but I want to finish the doo-dad that I plan to put inside it first and make sure it fits. I’m not sure how I feel about using the handspun for the doo-dad. I’ve only got the center done, but I do not love it so far. I’ll finish it and reserve judgment till then.

I found a few different options for the Nephew’s birthday, but I can’t decide. I can make the “quick, will be done before the party” gift, or the “won’t be done by the party, but is soooo cute it would be worth being late” gift. I’m more inclined to do the latter. I’d rather it be late and he love to play with it, than on time and he doesn’t care.

Have you seen the Yarn Harlot’s Jacob Damask shawl?  I’m so inspired. I’d love to go from fleece to shawl. I’m getting better at spinning, so it’s not inconceivable that I might get there in the next year or so. How far did you say this rabbit hole goes?