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

DAL Summer 2012 Mood Board!

Whoohoo! This took way longer than I thought it would.  I tried to get as many photos in that I could.  Anyway, you can download it as a desktop background, too, which I think is super cool.  You can click on the file for a larger image or click here for it.

I can't wait to see the mythology-themed ideas and designs!

Lilac Moves

I'm home for the summer, hanging about in my home town.  My mom's garden is in full bloom...

And look who has a new home!

My mom cleared up this space in the backyard, and her boyfriend built Lilac this outdoor pen.  Of course, I'm worried.  Will it be too hot? Well, despite the heat, it's cooler out there than in the house (which is like an oven).  Will she be lonely? What about bugs?

I also planted some seeds for her - arugala, cilantro, parsely, lavendar (okay, that one was more for me).  She also has a whole bed of mixed lettuce, too!

She snubbed me all yesterday evening, going into her little hut whenever I came by to offer her salad or clover or toys.  But this morning, I was putting laundry out and I saw her through the screen door, tossing her wicker ball up and down and generally being happy.  When I came out to give her some salad and a frozen banana, she hopped into the corner and glared at me.

Summer DAL Mood Board Submissions

Whoa, the past three months have been a blur! It's time for the next round of Design Along, a challenge which asks knit and crochet artists to make up a pattern from theme to finished product.  This round's theme is Mythology, and I have no clue what I'm going to (attempt to) make.  I have some pictures for the board, though.

I picked all my favorite myths :) I will admire someone who can recognize all of them!

Don't go to the forum and cheat before you guess - well, you should click here go to the thread and vote for your favorite submissions, because that makes making the mood board way easier.

You can also submit your own images if you feel inclined - the group is a lot of fun, though most of us haven't been able to make the deadline :X

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."

Imagine RIT!

I'm so pumped to finally be able to share this project! Last Saturday, Hooks and Needles exhibited at Imagine RIT, a yearly festival hosted on campus.  Over 32,000 people showed up, and tons of them passed by us.

Our exhibit was three parts.  The first was Samson, who hung out all day and got to represent angora rabbits everywhere.

There was also spinning with drop spindles and Ash's wheel (which she isn't an expert at yet, so we made Nathaniel do it.)

The second was finger knitting lessons, which we gave to people of all ages.  I taught kids as young as two or three (who loved it but didn't quite get what was going on) and a couple of ladies that were in their seventies.  The whole club pitched in!

And the third and most impressive portion was this:

A wall of knit bricks. 

We knit and crocheted over 1,000 bricks to put up as part of the exhibit, which was the vision of the club's secretary and president-elect, Alysia.  This has been a process that started in September and has taken us through months and months.  There were several cases of carpal tunnel and tendonitis, and a few tears.

The day of the exhibit, we were there at 6AM setting up.  We were working almost to the finish line - that's four hours of cutting duct tape, folding it, and pressing bricks against the wall

The end result was nothing short of awesome.  I think people were totally impressed, and we did a ton of good work spreading awareness for the club and teaching people about fiber arts.  

Unexcused Absence

I know I shouldn't make excuses, but I feel bad about not being around blog-land lately.  I'm going through a kind of rocky breakup with W, and school kicked my butt, and work... well... let's just say there was a temporary meltdown and knitting/blogging/designing/blog reading fell to the wayside.  I'm going to try to blog more in the coming months, because I have designs that are ready to be publishing and photos that I want to take and a whole list of reasons.

For now, I have the DAL Spring Mood Boards to show you!

 
The theme is "Summer Romance" - I'm not sure if I'll participate this round, I have a LOT of WIPs I need to do, but I love the theme SO MUCH... It makes me want to make a skirt.

Not like I've ever knit a wearable...

If you'd like to participate in the DAL, you should check out our Ravelry group! :D

Whoops!

I've been so busy attempting to get back into the swing of school/work/misc that I forgot to mention that I did a guest post for the blog of one of my awesome online friends, Carla! She runs the blog Tiny Angry Crafter. 

So, if you're interested in designing knit toys, or just interested in a little bit of my process, check out my post on Carla's blog!

Retrospective

Happy New Year everyone! 

2011 was incredibly crazy for me.  I published six designs, made four pairs of socks, knit a sweater for a cat, sold toys at a craft sale... and that's just the knitting!

I made a little collage of all the things I've finished:

The project from 2011 that I'm most proud of is (of course) my Blackbird Shawlette.
The project from 2011 that I use the most are my Pomatomus Socks - I love having socks of my own!
The strangest project from 2011... well, that's hard to decide.

Of course, I didn't include photos of the 12 hedgehogs that I made for the craft sale, or the pile of bricks that I'm knitting for a project I haven't blogged about, or the latest design that I'm slow cooking.  I DO have a camera, though, I got one for Christmas, so... expect more blogging!

December has been incredibly busy, but, I know that I'm going to be able to use these next few days before school starts up again to hit the ground running.

What's in store for 2012? Not even I know!

How about everyone else? Best project? Biggest mistake? What are you happy to be finished with?