2017

In roughly June of last year, I suddenly felt like crafting again.  So I started crocheting a baby blanket.

I understand if a blanket makes no sense to you as a crafting re-entry project.  Even a baby blanket is a large, time-consuming, non-portable endeavor.  Historically, I have done most of my knitting or crocheting on public transit, and that would never happen with this sort of WIP.  However, I had a mess of multi-colored acrylic and the itch to do something mindless while browsing youtube videos on the couch, and let us all acknowledge the suitability of blanket projects when one really wants a convenient lap-warmer.

(Cats are right out, because I live in an apartment and my husband is allergic.  But I acknowledge their prowess as lap-warmers too.)

The multi-colored yarn was a melange of grey, white, black, peach, mauve, and lavender, and a gift.  I doubt I would have ever picked up such yarn myself.  But I thought it would look good in strips with some solid colors to balance things, and so worked up the Rainbow Ripple Baby Blanket.  The only change I made was to limit the solid pink strips to two rows, which did not impact the placement of any other increases.  Doesn't it look fetching?  I worked in up in less than four months.

Then I gave it to my mother over Christmas to regift, since she goes to more baby-shower-type events than I do.  I was on to other crafting pursuits, my inspiration more or less back intact. 

2016

In January 2016, after finishing my holiday crafting, I wrote the names of all the patterns I wanted to knit on slips of papers and dumped them into the top of an cup-shaped dance trophy.  I drew one at random, and cast on the Cancan mitts.

Then I stopped knitting.  I was jobless and struggling to learn a new language, and I stopped crafting.  My creative energy disappeared, rerouted to deal with the stresses in my life.

Then I got a new job, and was assigned to a new project, and started flying around Europe every single week.  I did not knit on the plane.  The first mitt languished unfinished through the end of the year and into 2017.  It was spring before I found myself sitting in a train instead of a plane, and confident enough in my work, to have some energy to make things again.  Then I finished the mitts.

They are too small for me.  I refused to do anything about that.  They are done and off my needles and gone, and I have moved onto other projects.

2015 in Knitting Review and the State of the Stash

Happy New Year!  I hope that you had a wonderful holiday and that 2016 is off to a good start.  I spent the holiday with my family in the US, and recently returned to Europe.  I am now dealing with a lingering case of jet-lag that keeps waking me up in the middle of the night, so I apologize in advance for any incoherence in this post.

Following my post from last year, let's see how 2015 compares with previous years in knitting.

I did not meet my goal of twelve finished projects this year, as I only managed to get through ten.  That's one less than last year.  However, as shown below, these ten projects used a bit more yarn than 2014's eleven projects.  One of the big drivers of that is the Elizabeth shawl, which was the biggest yarn eater of the year.

October Swap Gifts Received

If I have given the impression that my swap partner has been irresponsible, I apologize.  It was neither my intention nor reality.  The post office sent me a note to pick up a package last Thursday, which I picked up Saturday.  A job interview prevented me from gloating over my goodies online until now.

As a side note, I think coding job interviews must always feel awful to all involved.  I had ninety minutes in which to throw together a project that really needs several hours and a few iterations before it would be considered a decent prototype of anything.  Meanwhile, every typing error caused error messages to spew across the screen for all to see.  It was embarrassing.  At least I did know how to do everything I was asked to do.

Anyway, on Saturday I took possession of this lovely parcel.

 It was opened to reveal these mysterious packets.

Finished: Starry Night Project Bag

As mentioned previously, I took up the challenge to make items for the October 2015 Geek and Nerd Swap, and was assigned to find ways to interpret Gothic architecture and Impressionist paintings into handcrafts.  A knitted scarf took care of the Gothic side of things, so Impressionism was to be the inspiration for another handcraft.

I should point out that the specifications for the swap do not include two handmades.  A swap package is to include one handmade item, one fiber arts item (such as yarn or stitch markers), an edible goody, and a non-edible goody.  I like making two handmades because I sew as well as knit and crochet, and I think a handmade project bag, notion pouch, or needle case is an excellent way to translate a theme into a beautiful, useful item.

So I spent time staring at pictures of Van Gogh's "Starry Night," my swap partner's favorite painting, and sketched out the major elements of the image: the exaggerated moon, the hilly landscape, the church tower, and the swirling winds.  I then looked up the dimensions of the bags produced in this tutorial, and converted my sketches into panels of the correct dimensions on parchment paper.

 

Finished: Gothic Arches Scarf

At the end of September, I made a perhaps foolish decision.  I signed up for the October edition of the Geek and Nerd Swap on Ravelry.  The theme was Art and Architecture, and while that is not my area of expertise at all, I was unemployed and so in theory had lots of free time, if not a lot of money.  It seemed like a good project that would require a bit of research and give me something besides job applications to think about.

When partners were assigned at the beginning of the month, I found mine liked Gothic Architecture and Impressionist paintings, with a particular affection for Van Gogh's Starry Night.  She also lived in a warmer part of the US, so accessories had to be on the lighter side.  I ran with the Gothic Architecture theme in knitting.  This style is known for its emphasis of vertical elements, use of pointed arches, and bracing walls with flying buttresses.  Pointed arches and flying buttresses allowed the stone buildings to be built taller than had been possible before with stone, adding to the vertical emphasis of the buildings.

And . . . back!

I have been absent. I apologize.  My last post coincided with my current research project careening towards publication, a couple of job applications resulting in interviews, preparations to travel back to the US, preparations to move to a new country, and preparations to speak at a research conference.  Now my research project has been approved for publication and is being prepared for journal submission, the job interviews have all resulted in polite and distant “thank you for your interest but we will not be pursuing your application further” emails, the trip to the US happened and was awesome, the move to Germany is mostly complete, and the conference talk has been successfully given.  I am looking forward to a slightly more relaxed daily task-list, even if my day-job is now job-hunting.

Several blog posts will shortly be forthcoming as I recount the best craft-related aspects of my adventuring, and ballroom tip posts will be reinstated soon.  On that point, please leave a comment with any requests you may have.  I have more ideas, but I’d love to hear what you want tips on.  How to do ballroom hair styles?  What to bring to competitions?  Let me know what you want to hear about!

It's good to be more settled.  I have so much to talk about!

Christmas a Few Weeks Late

I take a flexible attitude to celebrating holidays on time.  I don't see much point in making a holiday more stressful in an attempt to have everything finished and ready by a certain date, at least when it comes to celebrations for adults (I have little brothers, so I know that you can't get away with that for kids).  I am happy to celebrate Valentine's Day on February 11, and I will celebrate my birthday over the course of a couple weeks if life allows.  Hence my craft-related Christmas presents have arrived in January, and I am finally writing about them in February.

First, I got fabric.

2015 Stash Review and Yarn Resolutions

Happy New Year!  I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I accomplished in 2014 and what I hope to accomplish in 2015, and so I will jot down my yarn-related resolutions here.  That should make me more likely to keep them.

I started with a stash review.  While most of my stash is on Ravelry for easy perusing, it was beneficial to pull it all out and see what is actually taking up the most space.  I don't have a lot of storage space for yarn and don't really want to have a big stash of wool, as it is that much more fiber I would need to keep clean and moth-free.  Shaking it all out lets me check on its quality and repack my storage boxes.

First up, the fingering yarns:

2014 in Knitting Review

2014 is just about over, and I like to take this time to review how the year has gone and how things have changed relative to previous years.  Being me, I then make plots if I can.  

I started knitting in March 2012, and found Ravelry a couple months later.  That marks the beginning of me tracking this sort of data, so while I crocheted before that point, I don't have information on those projects.  Hence the comparison is between part of 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Above is a bar chart showing the total number of projects I completed in the past three years.  Both knitting and crocheting projects are included, though most of those were knits.  As you can see, 2014 was my most productive year, though not by much.  The total number was increased by participating in a few swaps, since those had hard deadlines that forced me to finish.  It was decreased by making scarves for my family, since those scarves took a while.  I had hoped to make it an even twelve projects for this, but that didn't quite happen.

Finished: Lace and Cable Socks

My last completed project of 2014, sneaking in less than two days before the year ends, was the Lace and Cable Socks.

The pattern is Wendy Johnson's Lace and Cable socks, found in Socks from the Toe Up.  I made the size medium pretty much as written, using two 2mm circular needles.  I did add a bit of calf shaping at the top of the socks, so that it would fit comfortably around my legs at that height.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  Did you get your knitting done?  After last year, I didn't really plan on knitting any gifts for this Christmas, but did finally box up the scarves promised last year.  Here they are tagged and ready.

 If they don't get delayed by customs for long, they should arrive by early January.

Finished: Pun'kin Socks!

Two pumpkin stems . . .

  . . . plus 32 pumpkins and 32 hay bales . . .

Finished: Rose Crowns

This is the second handmade I included in my fairy tale swap package.  I have found that I like to come up with three or four handmade ideas for these swaps, because something invariably goes wrong in making one or more or them.  After the tammy, I knew I wanted to do something with roses, because roses are a feature of two of my partner's selected fairy tales.  I knew my partner had a small daughter, that she read fairy tales with . . . and fairy tale costume items then seemed like a good idea.

So I went to ravelry and did a pattern search.  I didn't like anything that I liked in the first couple pages.  Instead, I made up my own pattern for a rose crown.  The roses were made following these instructions, but using shorter starting chains to make rose buds.  I knit the headbands so that they would be stretchy, and simply cast on three stitches and knit until the bands were long enough, where long enough was fourteen inches because that seemed reasonable for a toddler girl. 

Then, the morning when I needed to ship this package, I sat down with some additional green yarn and sewed on all the roses.  It is important to crowd the flowers together at this point; otherwise they stick out funny when the crown is worn. 

Aren't they fun, though?

Finished: Brotherly Binary

 The binary scarf, she is finished.

I have knit the last bytes, have woven in the blue ends, and have knotted the grey ends.  As this is a tube scarf made of non-superwash wool, I am confident that time and a bit of felting will ensure that the ends stay put out of sight with that minimalistic approach.  I then finally turned the scarf right side out and added the fringe.

The pattern is Christine Dumoulin's Binary scarf, knit up with Cascade 220 sport yarn.  When finished, this project had consumed about 740 meters of yarn, which Ravelry helpfully tells me is the largest knitting project I have ever made.  It certainly felt like it as its bulk increased; the final unblocked length was 76 in/ 1.9m.  This scarf is longer than I am tall.  Luckily, it is for my younger brother, who is markedly taller than me.

I am proud of how this scarf turned out, and thrilled I didn't get bored with it.  The initial cast-on was followed by a long hiatus, but the entire scarf was knit in just over a month after restarting.

This completes my long stint of knitting scarves for my immediate family, a project which has taken most of the last year.  After I block the tilting ribs cowl and this guy, I will label and send the last of these projects to new homes.  Meanwhile, I am feeling the strong urge to go cast on a sweater for myself.

Still Knitting

Work on the Binary scarf progresses.

It has reached a mass great enough that it can be uncomfortable to hold the scarf on my lap on a hot day.  This scarf only works as commuter knitting because I typically commute with a mostly-empty backpack.

Surprisingly, I am not bored with the pattern, perhaps because it does not have a true repeat.  I must check my selected sequence of ones and zeros for each row of characters, but only for one set-up row.  The color sequence for other rows follows logically from there.  As I mentioned previously, the stretches of color are short enough that I don't have to worry about weaving floats or anything like that, and at this point I've done enough stranded knitting in this project and the Midna Mitts that I have picked up speed.  I try to finish at least two rows of numbers a day, but for most of the past two weeks my average has been closer to three.  I anticipate binding off this scarf in the next few days.

It is a timely finish for this project, as I am signed up for the August edition of the Geek and Nerd swap and am still waiting delivery of a few materials before diving into the handmade for that.  As the month is more than a third gone, I likely have a crafting marathon in store for me.  We shall see!

Me and Stash: It's Complicated

At the beginning of June, after receiving my partner assignment for the fantasy theme of Geek and Nerd Swap 2014, I decided to make the Midna Mitts, based on Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts with my own charts.  I dutifully trotted off to the best yarn store in town to pick out yarns in appropriate colors.  There two lovelies came home with me:

 

There was, of course, the possibility that this would not be enough yarn to complete the mitts, but it was three days into June and I had turned out fingerless mitts in under a week.  I was certain that I would have enough time to pick up more yarn if I ran out.

Binary Progress

The binary scarf has been my companion knitting for the past couple weeks, and progress has been made.  The scarf now measures about 25 inches or 63 centimeters, and I estimate that it is about 40% completed.  I should soon finish up the first half and start working ones and zeros in the other direction, repeating the same sequence of characters.

This is my second project with real, feltable sheep's wool, and I understand even better why wool is recommended for this type of project.  While not as buttery soft as superwash merino, this wool isn't all that harsh either, and I expect it to soften with proper washing.  The two colors cling together in a good way, and stitches are extremely loathe to drop or run (as I found out the two times I accidentally tugged the wrong needle and needed to recollect a couple dozen stitches).  Despite that, I don't have difficulties ripping out stitches either.

Ones and Zeros

I have run into a small problem with the pumpkin socks and gauge.  The pattern doesn't actually include gauge information, saying instead that a sock 64 stitches around knit on size 2 needles fits a size 6 and that this is a half size larger needle than the designer typically uses.  Now, I know what kind of gauge I get with the yarn I am using when I use my favorite pair of sock needles, and I know the finished size I like my socks to have.  If I had the gauge or some information on the finished circumference of the sock, I could calculate how many stitches I need to make a sock that fits and go from there.  Unfortunately, without knowing that information and without any experience on how much cables restrict a sock's stretch, I will need to do a bit of experimenting to figure out how many stitches I need to get a sock that fits well on my calves and then alter the pattern charts to match that number.  While I don't mind the calculations, the inevitable ripping out does not appeal. 

I spent several hours on the train over the weekend for a short trip, and felt like knitting rather than knitting and ripping.  The pumpkin socks were bumped out of active status in favor of the last remaining Christmas scarf, a restarted Binary.  Train travel is a great venue for complicated knitting in my mind; there is none of the hassle of security or baggage checks like those of airports and more space to spread out than on a plane.  The result:

Pumpkin Orange

I love pumpkins.  I have fond memories of coming home from school on Halloween, excited to go trick-or-treating, and smelling my mom baking pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.  Most of my attachment is to growing or eating pumpkins, but they are still the sight and smell of fall for me, from September throughout the winter.  While western Europe has some very nice squash, I maintain that they aren't the same as the pumpkin varieties from the US, and are not the same thing.

This explains why my reaction to seeing Sabine Ruppert's pattern for Little Pumpkins socks was to squeal "Pun'kin socks!"  I had to make them.  Finishing the Midna Mitts and other swap goodies meant that I was in need of a commuting project, and I cast them on last Saturday.

This is a particularly timely project for two reasons.  One, it has historically taken me two months to knit socks, which means these should come off the needles in September or so when it is fall. Two, this is the local weather:

Since fall weather is being delivered in such large, blustery, and wet amounts, I will go mix up a pot of soup and knit pumpkin orange socks.  Happy knitting!