Random Thoughts (NaBloPoMo Day 19)

Ha. I did yesterday’s post so early in the day, by the time I’m doing this, it feels like I missed a day. Go figure.

 

Just random thoughts for today:

 

Gee, working with an OpenOffice database can be crazy-making. Eventually I got it working.  It was time to catalog all the fiber I have and I figured a database would keep me honest(yeah, right…). Truth be told I don’t need anymore fiber. Well, at least until this stuff is all spun up! ;)

 

I miss going out and shooting at the gardens and zoos. I had hoped once school started up after Sandy I could get back into it, but blah. I did a little photo walk last Sunday and that’s been about it. I do plan to see the Holiday Train show at the NY Botanical Garden this year. I learned from last year NOT to go when everybody and their mom was rushing in. As members of the garden I didn’t expect a huge crowd for the member’s preview. Boy was I wrong. So, one of these days I’ll mosey in on a weekday first thing and have the run of the place. Heh.

 

Oh man, it just hit me why I’ve been thinking, “Gee it’s so warm in here…”. I had on too many layers. I usually wear t-shirts all year round, with the occasional turtleneck and of course a knit sweater. Somehow in my absentminded-ness, I put on a shirt AND a turtleneck. Sigh. Oh well, it’s done.

 

I am beat. Gonna curl up and hopefully finish “White Heat”. It’s been a longer book than I expected. I guess not all free Kindle e-books are short wrecks. ;)

 

TTFN

Relearning Crochet (NaBloPoMo Day 18)

hoodie 2-2

I learned to crochet as a child, but apparently I wasn’t doing it right. I let that go until my young adult years when I was expecting my first child. I crocheted most of a layette set(I wasn’t interested in the booties), and it turned out I could use only the hat and blanket. The ‘jumpsuit’ wouldn’t fit most preemies. So much for gauge, I didn’t even know what that was. Didn’t do a swatch!

Fast foward to the impending birth of my last child and I was at it again. This time I was gonna get it right! I’d re-learned crochet. I had “Crochet in Plain English”, by Maggie Righetti and a host of hooks and yarn at the ready.  I was, however still too chicken to go the whole layette route and opted for blankets and hats and sweaters.. Easy, boxy, things.  Hell, before a year was out, I was making hair scrunchies(I miss those!), bags, hats, scarves, blankets. I’d even gotten into Tunisian crochet.

But I fell into knitting almost a year later when I got frustrated that all the ‘nicer’ stuff turned out to be knitted. I went through phases of preferring one over the other and today, I can comfortably say I don’t have a favorite of the two. They are equal in my heart. They *do* have differences that I like about them(for instance, ripping  regular crochet is less stressful because you only have one live stitch at a time; no need to have a bunch of stitches secure on a needle  when you’re done ripping, like with knitting or tunisian; knitting is slower but uses less yarn, etc.), but I’ve long given up thinking one was *superior* to the other, ya know?

Well, I had to re-discover a neat crochet tip yesterday while v-chatting. Apparently I could avoid all the many ends of multi-yarn crochet projects by stitching over the loose ends on the next row of crochet. Duh! Why didn’t I think of that? I have been trying to keep the errant ends on the inside/wrong side of the work and so far, so good. But I’d only done it the last couple color changes so I still have a bunch of ends to deal with. Oh well, Live and learn.

hoodie 2

TTFN!

A Good Day (NaBloPoMo Day 17)

I had a good day. You know, the kind of day where you look forward to bed, not because you’re tired but because everyone else is asleep and you can lay back and relive the day and smile.

 

OK, to be honest, I’m not sure if my enjoyment of the day is smile-worthy but it was still a good day.  I made progress on my Harlequin Hoodie and am ready for the next step. Pictures tomorrow. I’d have taken them today, but between working on that and v-chatting with my knitgirls, I finished spinning the red Merino. Woohoo! All done. I think it’s about 4 oz. Wish I had my trusty scale to be sure.

 

Now that I’ve cleaned off the craft table a bit I can see stuff. Like the ounce of Suri Alpaca/Sparkle I picked up at Rhinebeck last month. I tend to prefer plying my spindle-spun singles on the wheel to get it done faster and more evenly, so my spindle is now free to try the Alpaca. I’m so nervous about it, because I really want to get this spun as fine as possible without over-spinning or getting too many thicker spots/blobs. I am considering spinning from the fold, very. slowly. We’ll see.

 

Dinner is long gone and even the cat’s asleep. I’m gonna cut this short and hit the sack and work on “White Heat”.

 

TTFN!

Nothing To See Here…(NaBloPoMo Day 16)

So I’ve gone and done it. Started another Harlequin Hoodie, this time for me. I chose more ‘mature’ colors, like brown, black ,tan and off-white. I did start with yellow in the mix but ultimately the yellow got taken out of the options. I can always use it for something. Hmm.

 

In spinning, I’ve gone back to the Fessler spindle again. I just decided to suck it up and accept the smaller output. Since I spin  predominantly feltable fibers I can just spit-splice ends together whenever I run out of singles. Not exactly my favorite way to handle that, but it’ll do.

 

Still plugging away at kid sweaters, little by little. At this rate it’ll be Summer again before they have them in hand. ;) Then I’ll have an excuse to put them aside for later work *evil grin*. Nah, I’ll get it done. Soon.

 

I’ve also managed to finish 1 of the recent e-book purchases, “Hilda Hopkins, Murder She Knit”, by Vivienne Fagan.  It was an enjoyable read, though I wish it didn’t end so abruptly. Well, you get what you pay for, right?  This afternoon, I started “White Heat“, by Paul D. Marks. Another enjoyable read, though the dialog can be a bit… slow. I hope this one resolves more completely. In fact, I’m going to end this post now, and find out!

 

 

TTFN!

Another FO (NaBloPoMo Day 15)

Harlequin Hoodie

Harlequin hoodie

She loves it!

The Harlequin Hoodie is finished. I changed things a little by making less rows on the hood and cowl to fit her smaller head. I’m tempted to make one of these for myself; I’d need the full 18 rows for the hood. Big Beanlet requested one too. Sigh. I can’t keep up with kid knits as it is; I’ve no business adding to the queue.

I used 2 and about 1/3 of a 3rd ball of Loops and Threads “Impeccable” in the Holland colorway. That was a little depressing as crochet tends to use way more yarn than knitting for the same size garment, but to be fair, the put-up for this yarn is less than what I’m used to for acrylics. Oh well. The rest will become matching mittens. I tried the edging in the same yarn and it wasn’t ‘popping’ so I made the edging from some leftover pink Erdal “Lazer”. I think it worked out well. It came in handy because today was picture day, and while I wanted little one to stay warm, I didn’t want her hair messed up by a standard hat.

All in all, I enjoyed this quick project. Try it yourself!

TTFN!

My Love-Hate for Handknit Sweaters (NaBloPoMo Day 14)

I knit my first adult sweater back in 2004. Well, I started it back in 2004. I didn’t finish it til about halfway through 2005.  It was then my Love-Hate relationship with knit sweaters began. I’d see something awesome, get the materials(or something close to it) and start. And somewhere along that line one of several things will happen:

1) I’ll find an error in the pattern I can’t figure out and have to rip it and call it a day.

2) I’ll get bored with the actual knitting and stall on it.

3) I’ll finish all the pieces and stall on  blocking the pieces so I can seam them.

4) I’ll have blocked them and stall on the seaming itself.

5)I’ll have seamed it and stall on weaving in the ends.. You get the picture. Procrastination galore. That’s always been an issue, not just with crafting. Or,

6) I’ll get it all done in a timely manner and

a) It won’t fit correctly( or at all!)

b) It will fit ok, but somehow it’ll get ruined.

Take the Incredible Custom-Fit raglan that’s floating around the web, for instance. I knit a swatch, took my measurements and knit a sweater that I could fit 1.5 of me in. I tried felting it to shrink it a bit but that didn’t work. At all.

Then there’s the Central Park Hoodie, which my MIL got a hold of during a house move, and did manage to felt. That sweater took me all of 4 months to knit, seam and weave in the ends(one of my fastest knit sweaters), and she undid it all in a 20 minute wash.

 

That stung me to a point where I vowed I’d never knit another sweater again. That was about 4 years ago. I finally got my courage back in late 2009 when I spun for and began the Heather Hoodie. Unfortunately, I didn’t spin enough yarn and there was no more of the fiber. That got ripped out.  Early in 2011 during a crazy snow storm I cast on for Eileen and, between gauge and sizing issues and stalling for (you guessed it) seaming, I completed it, zipper and all just in time for Rhinebeck 2012.

 

In a matter of 8 years I’ve gone from

bigsackdone

to

Eileen is finished!

and I think I’m ready for more. As soon as I finish blocking and seaming Boy Beanlet’s sweater… ;)

TTFN!!

My OTHER Favorite Thing (NaBloPoMo day 13)

I love to read. Though lately, I’ve been doing lots of other things, I always come back to it at some point. As a curious(or nosy, depending on who you asked) child, I found reading to be more than just about learning. It took me places I couldn’t go. To times, past or future.  It let me be people I could never be, if only for a few hundred pages.  Reading took me out of the mundane and into something so fantastic, so awe-inspiring, so rich. I could explore the 5 senses without ever leaving the room.  Some stories gripped me to the point where I can recall their plots as if I’d just finished reading them, especially if I’d done so more than once.

Some of my favorite stories? “Lillith’s Brood”, by Octavia E. Butler, which I’ve read two or three times already and I will certainly read it again. Another of my favorites is “The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, by Greg Matthews. I’ve read it three times just from borrowing it from the library and finally scored a softcover edition to keep. I can still remember laughing hysterically at some parts, on the subway on my way to and from high school the first time I read it. Didn’t care if people stared. Still don’t.

Another one is “Watchers”, by Dean Koontz. I picked that one up at the library as a teen, simply out of boredom. I read the back cover and  immediately knew I’d love it because it involved my favorite dog, a Golden Retriever. That was the beginning of a long love affair with all things Dean Koontz and all his previous pen names.  Some other memorable books are “Wild Seed”, also by Octavia E. Butler, “The Ceremonies”, by T.E.D. Klein, and a bunch of cat-oriented mysteries by Charlotte McLeod, starting with “The Family Vault”.  In fact, I’m currently looking into getting a hold of  her books and enjoying them again.

For now, though, I’ve stocked my Kindle Fire with a slew of goodies I can’t make up my mind about.  I did get a bit into that Lightroom book and it’s already got me planning on reorganizing my photos and getting a spare external drive.  Better get on that before it goes boom.

TTFN!