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.

We interrupt this regularly scheduled knitting blog...

I have two pressing issues I must share that have nothing to do with either knitting or yoga. The first is that the Fiat 500 is fabulous.


My car is in the shop for coolant leaks, and I scheduled a rental car. They ended up giving me a red Fiat 500. I didn't ask for one, I just wanted the cheapest car for the day. But I guess something told the very nice guy at the counter that I needed to be driving this car. They also gave me the red one instead of the gray one. I didn't ask.

I love this car. I want one for my very own. Top Gear did a segment on the Abarth version and I've been lusting after one ever since. This was the first time I got to drive it.

It has so much style, and is so very Italian. When I got in the car the clock was 10 minutes late,  just so you would be fashionably late and not unforgivably on time. The visors are so small as to be practically useless. But there were mirrors on both, so you could make sure you looked cool when you drove with the windows down and said "Ciao."

I had to take a few pictures before I gave it back:

Here's what it looks like parked in my garage.

And here's the inside.

I'm sure you can find better pictures out there, I just needed to take these.

The Fiat 500 is the little red dress. You drive down the highway and feel like everybody is looking at you and admiring you for your good taste and sexiness. Too bad it was just for the day.
I did not test if the spinning wheel would fit in the back seat, but I know it would look good in the passenger seat. The candy apple red matches my wheel, but I swear that has no bearing on how I feel about the car.

The second non-yarn, non-yoga subject is Austin City Limits Music Festival, usually referred to as ACL. It starts today and I'm excited.
Today I plan on seeing: Fool's Gold, Electric Touch, a bit of Coldwar Kids, Foster the People, Gary Clark Jr., and Coldplay!

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. 

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.

Noir and Western

This past weekend was a mix of lounging around watching Darker than Black, productive bursts, and going on Erin’s birthday party adventure.

Darker than Black is a noir anime. It drops you in the middle of a world where there are "Contractors" and a "Hell's Gate" with only bits of explanation. We are almost done and I'm still not sure who the good guys are. It is slightly reminiscent of Cowboy Beebop: the noir softened with silly, the search for a missing loved one, and the “Syndicate.” It might be these are themes that run through noir anime and I’ve only just picked up on the connection between these two. Still, Darker than Black is its own show with mesmerizing characters, a twisting plot but not one that loses you. DH and I have the last four episodes to watch and I can’t wait to see how it ends.

I spun a bit while we were watching. I’ve been out of practice so I worked on some easy wool, and then plied some singles I’d made before we went to Paris.

That's the blue that wouldn't do anything right plied with a multicolored single spun from scrap left over from Spinning 101 and Spinning 201.

I also tried Navajo plying a single I’d made a while ago.

The rest of the scraps from Spinning 101 and 201.

It’s ok, but the yarn starts thick and ends thin. When you Navajo ply (the link is to youtube, skip to 47 seconds in) you ply the yarn on itself in short sections. This maintains color changes, but tends to multiply any inconsistencies rather than smoothing them out as when you ply using two singles. Still, I think the yarn will be pretty if I use it as an accent in a bigger piece. I want to continue to focus on getting an ever more consistent single so I can Navajo ply more often. Unfortunately, my shoulder has been hurting a bit since I last spun. So I’m going to take a bit of a break, and focus on knitting for a while.

Erin’s birthday was great. And I could go into detail, but she's already got a great post with pictures and everything. Check it out here.

Sunday DH and I got up, did a bit of laundry, cleaned a bit of the house and then headed down to my parents' place to look at a table that had been in storage. We decided to take the table off their hands, and Dad and my sister helped us move it into our house. That evening we went to Alamo Drafthouse and saw Cowboys and Aliens with Dad. (Mom is out of town and my sister was packing to go back to school.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I’d heard an interview where someone discussed using the western tropes to keep the spirit true while adding in the alien element. I think it worked quite well. A stranger comes into town, causes a ruckus, and then has to save the day. I won’t say any more because you should go see it. 

Finished stuff, part deux!

Last night my sister and I finished up the Gamma Delta Iota tee.

This is what it looked like while drying.

We made (read: she made and I worried and critiqued) our own stencils using painter’s tape. The trick, I’ve now learned, is to lay the tape out with multiple layers on cardboard, draw out the design, and then use an x-acto knife to cut it out. Don’t lift the tape too many times when you are cutting it out; if you do the tape won’t stick to the shirt enough to keep the spray paint from seeping. Crisp edges are your friends. Also, when spraying be sure to cover the rest of the shirt with painter’s tape, the glitter will get everywhere otherwise.

Once the tape was removed.

And here's what it looks like on.

I am silly proud of this. I know that my sister did most of the work, but it’s just so darn cool. And I helped.

The other thing I made in the last few days was this:

The, apply named, Yarn Basket.

I’ve been wondering where to keep the yarn I’d spun. I guess I could keep it with the “store bought” yarn but that just doesn’t seem special enough. So when I noticed this pattern I thought, “Hey, I’ve got a giant skein of yarn I bought because it was huge and purple. I could use it for this!”

It could also double as a hat for Hagrid.

I cast on using the provisional cast on and size 17 needles. It took two evenings, and I was knitting it continental style since it is supposed to be easier on the hands. The basket is basically a giant knit cylinder, and then you thread a piece of yarn around one edge and pull tight like a drawstring bag.

I may be making a bunch more. It’s quick and easy and I need to practice my continental knitting skills. I’ve thought about making a Doctor Who scarf. It would be great for working out tension, plus it is so wonderfully geeky... I just can’t make myself do it left handed. I’ve decided I need instant gratification projects because knitting continental makes me I feel so clumsy and slow.

I have a major project coming up. It’s called Organizing the Craft Room (cue: screams). I hope that making baskets of some sort or other is going to help, not hurt this endeavor. I’ll post pictures of what it looked like once I can take pictures of the progress. To post just “the before” pictures would be too depressing.

Finished stuff!

This week I finished the Echo flower shawl, made a basket, made a tee-shirt with my sister, and crocheted a birthday gift.
First the shawl:

So close, yet so far.

 I got to the end and did the double stranded bind off using the size 7 needles I'd been working on. I got 44 stitches (out of 247) from the end and ran out of yarn. So I went up two needle sizes, and bound off tightly and ended up with extra yarn. I did the double stranded bind off, a bind off I'd never done before. Basically you find the other end of the yarn, hold it with the working yarn and, leaving a little tail to weave in later, just bind off the way you normally would.  I used one ball of Malabrigo sock yarn, size 7 needles, did 8 pattern repeats and had just enough. For those who don't have a death grip on their needles, I'd recommend size 5s and 7 pattern repeats, or 8 repeats and use beads instead of nupps.  If I were to do it again I'd do the 7 stitch nupps rather than the 9 stitch nupps. I think it would be faster, and eat less yarn.

Here's what it looked like before I blocked it.

Before I blocked it out it was just big enough that I could wrap it around my neck. But I trusted in the magic of blocking and was rewarded.

Pinned out to within an inch of it's life.

All done, isn't it pretty?

Detail!

I am really proud of this shawl. It is proper lace with Estonian flowers and nupps. Nupps are the bumpy bits, you knit a bunch of stitches into one stitch, and on the next row down you purl them all together. They are a pain, but pretty.

A-tisket, a-tasket a purple and white basket:

Ain't it cute?

I made this in a class at Hill Country Weavers. I got to pick the contrast color. I've been in a bit of a purple mood for the past year.

And here's what it looks like from the side.

 It looks pretty good. I'm proud of it, for a first basket. It is a bit wonky, but I love it anyway. I also love finishing a project in a little over three hours rather than three months.

The tee-shirt we made was a spoof on the sorority tee-shirts. GDI is the answer one gives to pushy sorority/fraternity folks. It is short for 'god damn independent'. So we made a Gamma Delta Iota tee-shirt for a friend who was going to a camp where she is the only "independent." Of course we didn't get a picture before we gave it away. But I did get a picture of the back of mine:

A name I was once called. I've felt rather proud of this name for a while.

We didn't get to do the front for mine. It got late and dark, and it was hard to see to spray-paint.

Finally, I made a crocheted gift for a friend, but I'm not going to post a picture until after I give it to her. So pictures later this month.