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.

The Saga of the Kitchen

Several months ago, my husband and I moved to Germany.  Moving to a new country always presents many adjustments, but I found one of the most disconcerting to be what is considered a furnishing in an unfurnished apartment.  In Belgium, light fixtures (and I mean the ones you screw into the ceiling or wall) were furnishings.  They were the property of the tenant, and tenants took their lights with them when they moved out.  In Germany, the lights and the kitchen are considered furnishings.

This includes the kitchen appliances.  It includes the counter-top.  It includes the kitchen cabinets.  It includes the sink and the faucet.  The "kitchen" in an unfurnished apartment around here comes as a room with a few pipes hanging out of the walls.

That's the original "kitchen"

Clearly moving into an apartment without a functional kitchen is a problem.  There are a couple work-arounds commonly used to make the transition easier.  The first is that often the old tenants have no more desire to pull out all the cabinets, appliances, and fixtures of their old kitchen to pack along to a new place (not to mention the difficulty of getting a pre-existing set up to fit correctly in a new apartment) than the new tenants do to find, purchase, and install all the cabinets, appliances, and fixtures necessary for a kitchen.  A deal can then be made where the new tenants pay the old tenants to leave their kitchen in place.  This effectively increases the initial cost of moving in, but requires no additional effort on anyone's part.

Shawl Status

September is devoted to finishing project both at work and on the needles, and right now the total volume is bearing down hard.  Scientific research and mental stimulation is all well and good, but sometimes the only logical response to difficult students and difficult projects and difficult deadlines is to eat ice cream for dinner.

Peanut butter cup ice cream with additional peanut butter and chocolate chunks.  It was worth it.  Luckily I also have knitting to relax.  Let's check on the knitting projects, shall we?

This rather snarled-looking mess is my grandmother's shawl.  It looks much better stretched a bit.

This shawl is a sampler with several bands featuring different Shetland lace patterns.  I have finished the first band, which means I've completed the first 66 rows.  As the entire shawl is about 220 rows, I estimate that I have knit about 9% of the total shawl. 

I also estimate that I am probably not knitting fast enough for my intended deadline.  I'll work on that.

The punkin socks are progressing better than the shawl; I am working on the toe of the first sock.  Their progress is actually helped by the mess of traffic and construction around the city, as I knit while the bus creeps from stop to stop.  I should be casting on the second half of the pair in a day or two.

For now, though, back to the shawl.  Grandma deserves her present!

A Box for Me!

My fourth or fifth birthday party was themed around Little Red Riding Hood.  I remember few of the details beyond the lovely little red cape my mother made me and that my dad wore a plastic wolf mask to play the villain.  It was awesome.  While I don't find it my favorite fairy tale to read now, I still have a fondness for that story.

So when I got home from work and found this . . .

Back to pumpkins

Belgium's poor attempt at summer seems to be giving up on being anything but fall, and the back-to-school season is in full swing.  Things have been hectic.  I have participated in congresses for the two dance federations I mostly work with, one of which included a competition.  I currently am balancing three projects at work, which is mostly okay except for days when I spend 5.5 hours in meetings to present 35 of my own slides and provide back-up to a student's presentation.  That was Friday.  I sent out my swap package for the August edition of the 2014 Geek and Nerd Swap Saturday morning, and I look forward to sharing the details of those projects once my swap partner has received them.

In the meantime, though, I am returning to my small stash of works-in-progress to see what I can make progress on.  The latin dress is stalled somewhat, mostly because I don't particularly enjoy the pattern alterations I am trying to sort out.  Standard dress patterns don't fit well enough or look right for dancing, so alterations must be made.  But I don't feel that I am skilled at it, so I end up making a mock bodice, and then *tweaking the pattern and making another mock bodice, repeat from * until satisfied.

To keep me busy during my commute, now made longer as students in school means buses tend to run late, the pun'kin socks have been restarted.  I ripped them out to start with 72 stitches around and did one less repeat of the cuff pattern.

I wouldn't particularly care for this sort of cuff, since I prefer 1x1 ribbing, but I must admit that it makes sense--the cuff looks like a pumpkin stem.

My Swap Package Arrived!

My swap partner was more disciplined than I, and sent my package a couple days before I sent hers.  So I got my package!

I love having fun mail waiting when I get home.  It makes me happy.  So did this box.  I have a pair of fingerless gloves and another of mitts, and my partner told me that the pattern ideas were graciously supplied by Thorin and Zelda when she had asked around for inspiration.  I have yarn, body wash with an amazing scent, herbal tea, and some adorable stitch markers from Wychwood Dreams.

I was cooing over the stitch markers.  I felt the immediate need to start a lace project or three.  Thank you, swap partner!

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to the Experimental Knitbook.  Here you will find pictures and details about the sewing and craft projects that I work on; I knit, crochet, sew, and occasionally dabble in things like counted-cross stitch, embroidery, and patchwork.  I am mostly self-taught and have learned a lot from the blogs of others, and hope to record pictures and information here that will help others learning the same things. 

A few comments about the name of this blog:

The ‘experimental’ part references the fact that my day job is a scientific researcher, and I perform experiments.  It is also a pretty good description of how I normally work—I regularly adapt patterns and techniques, which can have unpredictable results.  While keeping a lab notebook isn’t necessary in my field to log results, they are useful to record details of what methods worked and what didn’t, and I hope this blog serves a similar purpose.

Knits are singled out because I spend most of my time working with knit fabric; I knit a lot of accessories, and most of my sewing is with stretch fabrics.  Whatever your interest is, I hope you find something worthwhile during your stay.  Enjoy!