2012 Recap

Well, a whole year is over.  Weird.  And I didn't really do much crafting.

I made a ton of bricks for an installation with Hooks and Needles in May. I made myself two pairs of socks, made a chameleon for my friend, my boyfriend a scarf, and a mountain of hedgehogs.  That's really it. 

It seems a little depressing, but I was doing other things! I finished grad school, wrote my graduate project on something that I knew absolutely nothing about (in 6 months!), worked two full-time jobs while doing this project (one that had 12-hour shifts), broke up with my boyfriend of 5 years, got a new boyfriend, moved to New Hampshire, and am starting my forever job on Monday.  I may not have crafted a lot, but I've accomplished so much it's staggering.

2013 is going to be a fun year.  I'm going to be working at a job I love, living with Dan, and volunteering.  I can't wait.  I have a lot of goals.  I want to publish all the patterns that I have hanging around half finished, for one - there are so many papers and notes cluttering my things.  I also want to get a grip on my yarn stash. I think that most of my projects this year will be from my stash.

Hope you have a happy new year, and all your resolutions work out!

My One Knit Gift

This year, I've managed to curb my sanity and knit just one gift - a scarf for Dan.  Go me! I didn't over-reach at all on knit gifts! Of course, cards, cookies, and other gifts... maybe a little.  I may have forgotten that I'm between paychecks this month.

Anyway, I set it out and let it block and the herringbone pattern really opened up.  I love blocking things! I'm still not super excited about the stitch pattern, but I'm not going to tear it out and re-knit two months of work.

It really is an easy pattern, so I'll probably offer it up for free here when I get a good picture of it on him.  It's all my own made-up-knit-stuff, but I don't think it's complex enough to warrant testing, pdf-making, etc.

Anyway, back to the scarf.  My favorite part is the fringe.  It turns out I reserved too much yarn for the tassles, so I could have made the scarf longer - I think it's ok though.  He's over 6', and the scarf is 5'.  We exchanged gifts on Thursday and he looked dashing in it - but that was at night so I couldn't get a good shot! Here's one of me modelling it.

blahblahblah, I need a tripod, blah blah.

Hedgehogs for Sale!

It's a little sad that this might be my last Hooks and Needles post in a long, long time :(

I made hedgies for the Hooks and Needles sale this week! Saturday, I packaged them up and went to the post office, but the line was ridiculously, out the door long.  When I got inside, there were still 30+ people ahead of me, and they closed the office.  That's right. I was waiting in line, and the post office closed.  I had been waiting for about an hour.  At the post office. 

Things turned out all right in the end, I went to a different post office on Monday and sent them out express mail.  They got to sit out on a table and meet lots of people!

Hopefully most of them have relocated to new homes.  If not, I'm not sure what to do with them - maybe give them away here? I'm pretty sure I'm never going to have an etsy shop.  I need to lose this delusion.

Today is the last day of the sale, so hopefully Hooks and Needles has raised lots of money for teaching, parties, and field trips!

Half an FO

Okay, okay, it's not technically an FO, but I felt so proud that I had to share my single sock.

Here it is, the middle of Socktoberfest, and I've got one sock that's taken me 7 weeks to knit.  Lame, right? Whatever.  I know the trials and tribulations this sock has seen.  The night classes in the college of business as I curse myself for putting off all my electives until the last term of school.  Protip: most majors don't offer all of the fun electives in one term, so space them out or else you'll be stuck in the College of Business, where the terms are made up and the professor is always right.

Anyway, angst aside, the sock fits slightly better than my last pair! At least, it's not sagging around my ankles, and the afterthought heel looks great, even though it's a bit tight... I have so many heel issues.  One day, I'll find the perfect heel.  I have faith.  Next time, I'm going to pick up a couple more stitches along the edges of the heel.  I only picked up two this time, and hopefully two more on each side will give me the ease that I need.

I think I'm going to do an afterthought heel from now on whenever I have variegated yarn like this.  I just think it looks so much better! I wish I had done that for my Kaffe Fasset socks.  Maybe one day I'll come across some Kaffe Fasset yarn again and get another chance. :P  I'm not going to try and look for some, though... I have too much yarn! (I know, this isn't a real thing, but I'm going to complain about it anyway and say I'm going to not buy any more but... just you wait.)

It's the middle of the night, but I've had coffee to get me through my aforementioned business class. So I'm a little hyper.  I hope this post doesn't come across as mentally deranged.

Beachy Stress Socks

I told myself that I was going to use my new square needles for my next socks, and I did... but I had a major problem.  It wasn't the yarn, which was this gorgeous varigated with colors that made me think of the warm summer beaches that I've left behind - it was the needles! They're too small, and the resulting fabric is just tight and not very fun for socks.

So, I recast on with some addi turbos that I got from a friend that wanted to unload some knitting stuff before she moved, and things have been going well.  It's just plain stockinette - perfect for class.  Though, I only have 8 hours of class each week, and lately I haven't had time to go to knitting club.

The sock is still becoming nice and long though - I'm going to do an afterthought heel so I don't have to worry about budgeting free time to turn the heel.  If I do that, the sock will sit on my desk until the end of the quarter!

In a way, it's ok that most of my friends have left and that Hooks and Needles is full of strangers.  I'm so busy and grumpy that I feel like my head's going to fall off at any given moment.  Thankfully, eveyone else in my apartment is in their last year of school, too, and is working their tails off just as much as me - I think I'd be ridiculously annoyed if that wasn't the case.  I just can't wait to be done with school and move on to the next part of my life!

Darn?

I'm not sure if this is darning, but I'll share this with you anyway.  Ever since I finished my colorful Kaffe Fasset socks, I've been wearing them a lot.  Sadly, though, I took them out of the sock bath a few weeks ago to find a tiny hole in one of them!

I didn't know what to do, and was in the course of packing, so I put scotch tape over the hole and threw the socks in with my projects.  Thankfully, the hole didn't get any bigger because when I checked it out today, it was only two stitches.

Somehow, the yarn had split and thankfully I caught the hole before it was gigantic.

So, I used my shiny new needles to catch the stitches and keep them from dropping further.

Then, I went into my old sock yarn stash and found the remnant of this project.  I picked off a section that matched the section that broke, and worked my way across the row a bit to anchor the yarn. After that, I kitchnered the loose stitches together and did some more duplicate stitch to anchor the yarn on the other side.

I think that I saved my socks! I've never darned before, but the pictures that I've seen, the socks look kind of gross looking.  Soon, I won't even be able to tell that I mended them!

Finally - Finished My Dragonfly Socks!

They only took me all summer!

Project: Dragonfly Socks from Cavyshops

Yarn: Eskimimi Knits Broccoli Sockoli

I'm happy with how they turned out, though the heel is a little weirdly placed - it slides off my foot.  Oh well, you win some you lose some - I'm still going to wear them.  Can anyone tell me what I did wrong? I think that I just made the heel flap too long. I guess it's just taking a while for me to make socks that fit me well.  Now is the time for that - the only projects I really have time to do are stress socks. 

I still don't see the dragonflies! Maybe because I k tbl on some stitches instead of just plain k them?  I thought it made the pattern look better when it stretched out.

Last Leg of School!

It seems crazy, but I haven't posted in almost two months! That's mostly because I got an awesome new internship in addition to my other job, and because I'm almost done with grad school! I moved into my room on Sunday. So, by Thanksgiving, I will have entered the real world.  I'm kind of excited, because this time I won't be travelling around, sleeping on people's couches - I will have my own apartment, and a car, maybe a cat... etc. etc.

Another reason (besides being ridiculously busy) that I haven't blogged is that I haven't really knit over break. I chugged away on my dragonfly socks, maybe getting a row in here or there, but I didn't make any real progress.  I finished my giant red sweater and it looks hideous, which is disenheartening.  I have a bunch of designs that are ready to be published, they just need one or two little things. (Or, erm, testing.)

BUT, I am starting to knit again.  I knit all through my business class on Monday night (while I was missing a Hooks and Needles meeting...) and I am - EEK - finally on the toe of my second Dragonfly sock! I've also been making hedgehogs. Lots of hedgehogs.  I'm not sure why, maybe it's a sign of my growing mental instability.

Extended Vacation Sock Knitting

Whelp, it seems that due to a general SNAFU, I'm stuck in New England for the week, mulling about my boyfriend's apartment.  It's okay, though, because there's an Internet connection that I can use to work on my grad project, which is beginning to consume every waking moment of my life.

But, I have a little something to show for it!

Yep, I finished my first sock in the Dragonfly Socks KAL! I grafted the toe and cast on for the second sock while I ate lunch and mulled over my current troubles.  Someone once told me that it's good luck to cast on for the second sock in the same sitting that you finish the first it - anyone else hear of that?

On an unrelated note, the carpet in this apartment is oddly fascinating...

... I need to take more microbreaks. I'm hoping to finish the second sock this week, but knitting while reading journal articles is a lot harder than I expected.

Checking in from New England

Wow, Maine is absolutely amazing! I'm staying on a small island off Portland with my boyfriend's grandmother.  I seriously want to live in Portland some day, and the view from the island is beautiful.

And, the house I'm staying at is also beautiful.  The bathroom that I use at night should be on Pinterest.

I've done some knitting, mostly on the ride up - which was hot and muggy (the car had no AC) and I'm almost done with the leg of my dragonfly socks... but I hit another snag.

The yarn turned my sweaty fingers slightly green!

Okay, looking at the picture, it's really hard to see.  Maybe the heat and sun caused me to hallucinate.

Anyway, the internet in the hotel we're staying at now is really crummy, I'll post a big picdump later this week!

Yarn Winding Nightmare

First, let me say that my birthday on Wednesday was okay - definitely not as bad as last year, alone in NH, but the fact that my family is currently a confusing mess of people ostracizing other people complicated things.  I almost wish I had gone out of town to avoid the guilt storm that followed yesterday.  "You went out with THEM? Instead of ME?"  You get the idea.

On another note, I'm going to Maine! I'm really pumped, and I figured that my current WIPs (besides CC, who is still waiting for her pattern to appear again) are pretty concentration-intensive, so I've decided to work on a pair of socks for myself (again)!

The pattern is going to be Dragonfly Socks, which I found through a KAL that Dee is hosting on her blog.  The yarn is going to be this:

Eskimimi Knits Brocoli Sockoli.  I LOVE the color of this yarn, and it was really the first indie yarn I ever bought because of the color.

But, winding it... what a nightmare! I don't have a swift anymore - I was only borrowing the one at school from Ash - so I tried various techniques to wind the hank.  Eventually all I got was this:

Which took me two hours to detangle.

And then, of course, the skein was funny looking so I had to rewind it again, when this happened.

By that time it was late at night, and I could only react by sobbing and going to bed.

This morning I re-wound the mess twice and finally settled for this.  I don't like that there's such a large difference in height between the outside of the skein and the inside, but look - here's the culprit.

 

The skein is 100g of sock yarn - twice the normal amount.  If I had just wound the hank into two balls, everything would have been fine.  This is pretty much how my 22nd year of life has been so far.

DAL Summer 2012 Submission!

I have been wracking my brain to think of something for this round of Design Along - it seemed like I had a mental block all month about it, but I sat down today and sketched out all my ideas.  I narrowed it down to three that I really liked:

• A Pandora's box shawlette, with different lace panels representing the different things that Pandora let out into the world - skulls for death, boil-like bobbles, dropped stitches, etc.  I realized that this is a cool and kind of dark idea, but I would never have the time to execute it.  And, who am I kidding? I don't wear any of the shawlettes that I've made.
• A set of fingerless gloves based on Adam and Eve, in a leaf lace pattern that wrapped around the wrist and buttoned up the side. While this would be cool, there's not exactly a shortage of leaf lace fingerless gloves in the world.  I didn't think I was going to bring anything new to that arena.
• Finally, this:

 

It's a set of fingerless gloves based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.  The princess Ariadne gave him a thread to find his way out of the labyrinth, and these gloves have embroidery detail that wraps around the hands in patterns as intricate as the person wants.

Yeah, it's a little simple, but it's different and do-able and I'm going to find the perfect yarn this week and the finished project is going to be pretty, just you wait and see!

Sweater Quandry

I took my giant red sweater to a baseball game yesterday with my cousin and my uncle because, frankly, CC (my final nickname for this thing) and I are pretty good friends right now.  I was worried that the 1x1 ribbing on the collar would be time consuming, but 4 inches in and it's really just potato chip knitting, as Kathy would say!

But, I woke up this morning and realized...

... I don't know where the written pattern is.

I looked all through my bag, tore apart my mom's guest room, frantically texted the people whose living rooms I've been squatting in sporadically.  It was all to no avail! I went through every book that I had used, in case it slipped into the pages or got mixed up with the mountains of printed articles that I've been carrying around. Nothing.

What's the most annoying is that I clearly remember the last time I had the pattern.  Someone asked me what I was knitting, and I was sitting on a couch and I said "A shrug, here, it will look like this at the end."  I then unfolded the pattern with gusto and showed them the faded picture.  They looked at me as if I was insane.

If only I could remember when and where that happened!  I think I might just finish the sweater from memory.  Once the collar is long enough, I just have to graft the sides of the shrug together and then pick up stitches for the arms...

Or, CC and I can take a break until the piece of paper shows up? I'm sure that it's somewhere, and I will probably find it between someone's couch cushions or under the seat of my Dad's car.

Notice Anything?

I finally finished the gigantic swatch of stockinette stitch that is the cozy cocoon shrug.  Now, I've picked up the 288 stitches of the edging and am working them in K1P1 rib for 4(ish?) inches.

I actually really like this project.  It's strange, because even a year ago I would have looked at this project and scoffed.  "Too much boring stockinette.  And then, you get to do ribbing? For FOUR INCHES? Ugh."

But between working, fixing up my Dad's house, doing research for my graduate project, and fluttering from place to place as only someone that doesn't have an apartment can... I actually welcomed the endless stockinette stitch.  I worked on it while reading Game of Thrones and watching Battlestar with my new boyfriend and listening to an endless list of webinars and reading the thousands of pages of reports on electric power delivery.  Which is the topic of my grad project.

So, I think I'm going to finish my first sweater in four years before the end of summer! And I'm actually excited :)

My First FO in a While

Hooray! I finally finished these stress knitting socks for myself.

I love the yarn and the colorway - it's Regia Random Stripe that I got from Rhinebeck this year. 

All in all, they're okay socks - but they sag at the ankle and heel! It's hard to tell from these photos, but as I was wearing them I noticed it.  It sort of makes me feel like an emaciated old lady!

I guess my ankles are just skinnier than my feet.  Who knew? Next time, I'll decrease a few extra stitches at the gusset to make sure the sock sticks.  Another alternative (I think) would be to make the sock longer so that it hits the thicker part of my calf - but I really like the shorter height. 

And, if the socks bother me that much, I'll just give them to my mom :P

Another WIP Update

Here's some more catching up to date with the projects that I have lying around. 

First off, there's this little monster.  I want to finish him fast, because he looks so lifeless and dead without stuffing or an armature. 

He's a gift for my best friend back home, Steph, who likes chameleons.  The pattern is Chameleon by Hansi Singh.  I really love it, but there are some errata which really frustrates me - I don't like finding errata in patterns, especially when I paid for them.  But thankfully all the fixes were on ravelry, so after I ran into my first snag I looked up any other errata and wrote it down in my moleskin. 

 

Anyway, it's coming along well but I want to finish it before I move home and see her again - so, by the middle of next week.  (My conscience is saying "good luck" here, but I believe in myself!)

There's also this kind of crazy thing:

I haven't been able to give it a good name yet, since most of the things I think of when I look at it could be mistaken for euphamisms.

The nickname "The Red Terror" was met with snickers and/or disgusted looks

It started out earlier this quarter when I saw that a sweater kit on knitpicks was on sale for $20.  The pattern was called Cozy Cocoon - which is about $5 in itself, so... I got a sweater's worth of yarn for $15.  This alone was incentive enough for me to buy it, since I've been telling myself I'm going to knit a sweater for years, and buying yarn for sweaters for years, now I finally get a pattern, with yarn, delivered to my door for about $25 when you factor in shipping?  That's too good!

It probably didn't help that everyone in Hooks and Needles has knit or is working on a sweater - Kay, Ash, Rebecca, Alysia... I just wanted to belong! So, I happily cast on, and kept knitting... and knitting... and knitting...

I'm not even halfway done. I just hope I don't get bored, or don't like it in the end.  I guess if I don't like it, I'll just give it to my mom.

So, that makes 3 out of 4 projects that I have to show for myself! The 4th one deserves a post all in itself, so I'll save that for another time I think.  I don't like having so many WIPs at once - I feel like nothing is getting done!

Lilac Festival!

This year's Lilac festival was kind of a drag, since we didn't have our traditional triple date (Only one of our three musketeers isn't single) and the mild winter and crazy Rochester weather have pretty much killed all the lilacs.  But there were still a few flowers!

This stuff...

And paw paw... (which I think is a flower.  I like it, anyway)

And, of course, the lilacs in the conservatory were in full bloom. The statue that I took a picture of two years ago year is pretty much hidden, too, poor thing.

Anyway, despite the lack of flowers, I still had a good time! I'm thinking of going again today (I wanted to go every day this week, but I don't have a car anymore...) so if I do I'll post up more pictures tomorrow.

WIP Update - Winter Socks

Do you guys remember this sock?

I started it back when I was living with W, mostly because I was going to see Anne Hanson last November and wanted to knit one of her patterns.  So, I started on the Longjohn Sock pattern in Regia Random Stripe.

Then I broke up with W, stopped knitting (stopped doing anything actually) and picked up the project again over winter, put it down when I started knitting bricks like crazy, picked it up again... the typical WIP dance.

I actually got pretty far on the sock, past the heel turn, until I saw this:

No, it's not a mistake.  I just like the way that this yarn looks in stockinette so much! I thought about it, and I decided to start over and just do two plain two-up stress socks.

I haven't looked back. I might make the long john socks again in a solid color, but for now? These are going to be my sock projects! I'm already done with the first sock, and I really like the way that it looks.

Viva finishing ancient WIPs! Or, at least, making progress? I hope to have this pair for when I move back home for summer "vacation."