I present exhibit A. Notice her reaction to the backhoe design and its intended recipient at 1:35 in. Rather insulting, huh? Notice at about 3:25, the way she emphasizes the pink T-shirt is for a "cute little girl". Contrast the two.
I rest my case. :P
Friday, December 25, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Attention Panic-Striken Christmas-Gifting Crafters
It is December 19th.
Stop for a minute. (No, I don't want to hear that you don't have time to stop; if you don't have time, you need to stop even more than most.) Take a deep breath. Now, take a look at all the knitting/crochetting/sewing/art of choice projects you are "supposed" to finish for Christmas.
Can you reasonably finish that in the next 5 days? Without risk injury yourself? Be honest. Aim low.
1) You still have time to buy something.
If you can't afford to buy something, you have time to make "gift certificates" for those projects, to be redeemed in a more reasonable timeframe. Christmas is a nice holiday, but it is not worth injuring yourself (or your sanity) over.
2) Look at all you've got finished, and all you have no chance of finishing. What you've got finished or can reasonably finish in the next few days ("reasonably" means without staying up to 3 AM one or more nights and pushing on through pain) is your crafting capacity for Christmas. I want you to remember this for next year. Next year, either start earlier or keep your projects below your crafting capacity. (I vote for number 2.)
Also, if you need permission, it really is OK to give people storebought gifts or giftcards instead of making something. Even if your gifts would be small. Be honest with yourself. The person you're injuring yourself for, if two items were on a table, would they chose your handmade creation or a gift card to their favorite place in the amount that the supplies cost you? If the answer is "gift card", for love of God, self, and recipient, just give them the gift card!
3) Remember, you do this for fun. In the future, do what it takes to keep it fun, even if it means someone gets a $5 Amazon gift cert.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled panic.
Stop for a minute. (No, I don't want to hear that you don't have time to stop; if you don't have time, you need to stop even more than most.) Take a deep breath. Now, take a look at all the knitting/crochetting/sewing/art of choice projects you are "supposed" to finish for Christmas.
Can you reasonably finish that in the next 5 days? Without risk injury yourself? Be honest. Aim low.
1) You still have time to buy something.
If you can't afford to buy something, you have time to make "gift certificates" for those projects, to be redeemed in a more reasonable timeframe. Christmas is a nice holiday, but it is not worth injuring yourself (or your sanity) over.
2) Look at all you've got finished, and all you have no chance of finishing. What you've got finished or can reasonably finish in the next few days ("reasonably" means without staying up to 3 AM one or more nights and pushing on through pain) is your crafting capacity for Christmas. I want you to remember this for next year. Next year, either start earlier or keep your projects below your crafting capacity. (I vote for number 2.)
Also, if you need permission, it really is OK to give people storebought gifts or giftcards instead of making something. Even if your gifts would be small. Be honest with yourself. The person you're injuring yourself for, if two items were on a table, would they chose your handmade creation or a gift card to their favorite place in the amount that the supplies cost you? If the answer is "gift card", for love of God, self, and recipient, just give them the gift card!
3) Remember, you do this for fun. In the future, do what it takes to keep it fun, even if it means someone gets a $5 Amazon gift cert.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled panic.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Willpower Recovery Rolls - I botch them
The vacation sewing is not going according to plan. At all.
About a week and a half ago, I bought a brand new super awesome sewing machine with buttloads of decorative stitches. Have you ever looked at a sewing machine and gone "who actually uses all those embroidery stitches?" It's me. I'm the one who uses them. I like crazy quilting. I don't like embroidering over the seamlines by hand, though. So I use the machine for the seamlines and then do hand (or in the future perhaps free motion) embroidery in the patches where it's fun.
So, I buy this awesome brand new machine a week before my vacation, and I bring it home, and... it doesn't zigzag properly. So then there's a big fiasco with a snotty and insulting salesperson at the store until I finally got around her and got the owner/technical person to look at it, and he agrees the machine isn't all it ought to be. Most people wouldn't notice, but most people don't use every single stitch their machine has to offer either, and I more or less do. So he's going to replace it, but because of the holiday, the new machines won't be in until next week.
I do have another machine to do the straight stitching with, so I've assembled the crazy quilt piece big enough to ultimately turn into a fat quarter project bag with full lining. It's all ready to be attached to the foundation fabric with decorative stitches -- but unfortunately, the machine with the decorative stitches is not here. (The owner did offer to let me borrow the one he'd worked on, which is now in "good enough that most people wouldn't notice but you do" territory, but I didn't really want to be schlepping a 30 lb machine back and forth.) So that's on hold -- although on the up side, when I do get the new machine, I've got the perfect project to run it through its paces with.
OK, no worries. A few weeks ago in a fit of passion I bought a ruffler which fits the old machine. I was planning to use it for doll clothes. I even have fabric to make a circle skirt with tiered ruffles for Rose that I never got around to because I wasn't up to ruffling so much fabric by hand. So I put it on my Old Trusty, and pull out the instructions from Youcanmakethis.com.
Now, typically when you're doing a not-insane ruffle, you want to original fabric to be 1.5 to 2 times longer than the finished ruffle turns out to be. The youcanmakethis.com instructions start you with the minimum your ruffler will reliably do, and then show you how to tweak your settings upward until you get to 2. So I get started, I find where it just starts to ruffle and DAMN. The things goes from nothing to insane immediately. I take the measurement, and with the minimum ruffle depth and a 2.5 stitch length, the ratio is 3.3 -- way above where I want to end up. Making the stitch as long as the machine can handle will just get me down to a skosh over 2.0.
From past experience I know that the circle skirts with tiers look better around a 1.5 to 1.75. When you're doing multiple tiers, that exponential growth catches up to you fast. But now I'm out of levers to pull. (Well, I can do a deeper pleat every 6 stitches, but that doesn't look the same as the gathered look you get with a very shallow pleat every 1 stitch).
I guess when you pay $15 for an accessory that usually starts at $40, you kind of expect this. So, if anyone was considering the Inspira ruffler because it's too cheap to resist, warning: you're getting what you pay for.
It works OK as a pleater. I could do some cute pleated sailor skirts if I wanted to. Or if I get really desperate, I can pull out the old Izek and use it, since it has a longer top stitch length. I don't really want to keep the Izek around indefinitely, though. I have a gathering foot around here somewhere, too, so maybe I'll give that a go.
This ruffler won't work on the new machine anyway, assuming the new new machine works out. If the assumption is correct, I may see if I can get that brand's ruffler for it before Christmas, and use it over my next vacation.
About a week and a half ago, I bought a brand new super awesome sewing machine with buttloads of decorative stitches. Have you ever looked at a sewing machine and gone "who actually uses all those embroidery stitches?" It's me. I'm the one who uses them. I like crazy quilting. I don't like embroidering over the seamlines by hand, though. So I use the machine for the seamlines and then do hand (or in the future perhaps free motion) embroidery in the patches where it's fun.
So, I buy this awesome brand new machine a week before my vacation, and I bring it home, and... it doesn't zigzag properly. So then there's a big fiasco with a snotty and insulting salesperson at the store until I finally got around her and got the owner/technical person to look at it, and he agrees the machine isn't all it ought to be. Most people wouldn't notice, but most people don't use every single stitch their machine has to offer either, and I more or less do. So he's going to replace it, but because of the holiday, the new machines won't be in until next week.
I do have another machine to do the straight stitching with, so I've assembled the crazy quilt piece big enough to ultimately turn into a fat quarter project bag with full lining. It's all ready to be attached to the foundation fabric with decorative stitches -- but unfortunately, the machine with the decorative stitches is not here. (The owner did offer to let me borrow the one he'd worked on, which is now in "good enough that most people wouldn't notice but you do" territory, but I didn't really want to be schlepping a 30 lb machine back and forth.) So that's on hold -- although on the up side, when I do get the new machine, I've got the perfect project to run it through its paces with.
OK, no worries. A few weeks ago in a fit of passion I bought a ruffler which fits the old machine. I was planning to use it for doll clothes. I even have fabric to make a circle skirt with tiered ruffles for Rose that I never got around to because I wasn't up to ruffling so much fabric by hand. So I put it on my Old Trusty, and pull out the instructions from Youcanmakethis.com.
Now, typically when you're doing a not-insane ruffle, you want to original fabric to be 1.5 to 2 times longer than the finished ruffle turns out to be. The youcanmakethis.com instructions start you with the minimum your ruffler will reliably do, and then show you how to tweak your settings upward until you get to 2. So I get started, I find where it just starts to ruffle and DAMN. The things goes from nothing to insane immediately. I take the measurement, and with the minimum ruffle depth and a 2.5 stitch length, the ratio is 3.3 -- way above where I want to end up. Making the stitch as long as the machine can handle will just get me down to a skosh over 2.0.
From past experience I know that the circle skirts with tiers look better around a 1.5 to 1.75. When you're doing multiple tiers, that exponential growth catches up to you fast. But now I'm out of levers to pull. (Well, I can do a deeper pleat every 6 stitches, but that doesn't look the same as the gathered look you get with a very shallow pleat every 1 stitch).
I guess when you pay $15 for an accessory that usually starts at $40, you kind of expect this. So, if anyone was considering the Inspira ruffler because it's too cheap to resist, warning: you're getting what you pay for.
It works OK as a pleater. I could do some cute pleated sailor skirts if I wanted to. Or if I get really desperate, I can pull out the old Izek and use it, since it has a longer top stitch length. I don't really want to keep the Izek around indefinitely, though. I have a gathering foot around here somewhere, too, so maybe I'll give that a go.
This ruffler won't work on the new machine anyway, assuming the new new machine works out. If the assumption is correct, I may see if I can get that brand's ruffler for it before Christmas, and use it over my next vacation.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
From the Department of "You've Got To Be Kidding Me."
Floss storage. There are dozens of ways to store embroidery floss out there, and for each one there's someone who claims it's the One True Way.
Myself, I've liked bobbins since the first time the local Big Box carried Anchor floss already wound onto a bobbin. Sure, winding can be a pain, but once you're done you've got your floss on this little easy to store, easy to sort piece of cardboard. The floss isn't going to tangle and it's easy to wind off the amount you need.
Some of the other methods look promising, but they all use some sort of plastic. I'm trying to reduce my consumption of plastic. I won't pretend I can eliminate all plastic, but you know, the less you use, the better.
So this is where we come to the "you've got to be kidding me" part: plastic floss bobbin. WTF?
Someone needs to explain this to me, because it makes no sense. They're more than twice as expensive. They take up more space than the cardboard ones. You can't write the numbers on them except with a Sharpie marker. And of course, most plastic never goes away. It can break down into a state that's no longer useful, but it doesn't break down into something that normal biological processes can use. You just get tinier and more useless particles of plastic.
Is it an archival thing? Because I'm thinking the cardboard ones could be made of acid-free lignin-free material and still be cheaper, and frankly, your basic "hi, I'm a cheap plastic" isn't archival either. Outgassing and breaking down and stuff.
Is it stiffness? Because using two of the cardboard bobbins is still cheaper than one of the plastic, and again, I'm thinking using a thicker cardboard would still be cheaper than the plastic.
These are the only reasons I can think of to use the plastic bobbins instead of cardboard. Yet of the three big craft stores in town, only one carries the cardboard. I was afraid I was going to have to special order some.
I do not get it.
Myself, I've liked bobbins since the first time the local Big Box carried Anchor floss already wound onto a bobbin. Sure, winding can be a pain, but once you're done you've got your floss on this little easy to store, easy to sort piece of cardboard. The floss isn't going to tangle and it's easy to wind off the amount you need.
Some of the other methods look promising, but they all use some sort of plastic. I'm trying to reduce my consumption of plastic. I won't pretend I can eliminate all plastic, but you know, the less you use, the better.
So this is where we come to the "you've got to be kidding me" part: plastic floss bobbin. WTF?
Someone needs to explain this to me, because it makes no sense. They're more than twice as expensive. They take up more space than the cardboard ones. You can't write the numbers on them except with a Sharpie marker. And of course, most plastic never goes away. It can break down into a state that's no longer useful, but it doesn't break down into something that normal biological processes can use. You just get tinier and more useless particles of plastic.
Is it an archival thing? Because I'm thinking the cardboard ones could be made of acid-free lignin-free material and still be cheaper, and frankly, your basic "hi, I'm a cheap plastic" isn't archival either. Outgassing and breaking down and stuff.
Is it stiffness? Because using two of the cardboard bobbins is still cheaper than one of the plastic, and again, I'm thinking using a thicker cardboard would still be cheaper than the plastic.
These are the only reasons I can think of to use the plastic bobbins instead of cardboard. Yet of the three big craft stores in town, only one carries the cardboard. I was afraid I was going to have to special order some.
I do not get it.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Cross Stitch: Is the Laying Tool Worth It?
That's what I'm trying to decide right now. I've been working on the Evil Tiger Cross Stitch of Doom. It's one of those projects that I pull out whenever I get into cross stitch, and I work on it for a few weeks until I get so frustrated that I shove it back in the bag until the next cross stitch phase. (The chart isn't well designed, in my opinion.)
I got myself a stand for help with the big projects. Now, I'm short overall (and thus have short arms), and I'm extremely short-waisted proportion-wise on top of that, and I stitch sitting back on the couch. Each of these makes a frame a bit of a difficult decision, so finding a stand that suits me with all of them is a tricky proposal. Add to it that I don't have a local needlework shop, means I basically have to buy to try, and most needlework frames aren't cheap.
That said, I think I got about 80% positive on my first try, and I don't expect that I could get much better.
So, I'm working on the Evil Tiger Cross Stitch of Doom with a stand. This piece is 3 strands on 14-count Aida cloth, so the stitching is pretty dense. Three strands mean it isn't really suitable for railroading. To be honest, I'm somewhat dubious about railroading in general, although I do use it on pieces when I'm doing 2 strands and working in-hand. It seems to affect the amount of twist in the individual plies, though, and that's not easy to correct.
So, I've been using a laying tool (OK, a hair stick) with the Evil Tiger Cross Stitch of Doom, and I will absolutely admit that it makes the individual stitches look better. It also makes the work progress at a speed usually only seen in tectonic plate movements. If I'm getting even a hundred stitches an hour I'd be shocked, and when you're doing a piece with more than 30,000 stitches... That isn't pretty math.
I got kind of fed up this evening, put the laying tool down and started doing the work two-handed since I am working in a stand. Whoo! Much faster! We're at least up to glacial speed here. Of course, the individual stitches don't always look as nice. But it occurs to me, there's this thing called "gallery distance". Gallery distance is the distance from which an object is meant to be viewed, and in fine arts should at least theoretically be kept in mind when working details. Details that are too coarse for their gallery distance appear rough, and details that are too fine can't be seen.
This thing I'm working on is a 10" by 28" picture. It is intended to go on a wall. Its "gallery distance" is between 2 and 15 feet. Individual stitches are most assuredly in the "too fine to be seen" category; hell, I'm still thinking I should get a magnifier to be making them. Now, there will be a difference in how light reflects off stitches depending on whether they are laid or not, and that may cause a difference at the gallery distance. But if I'm observant and careful to untwist my floss when the stitches start to twist, I'm thinking that's not enough difference to be worth my sanity.
I would feel differently if I were entering competitions, but I'm not. I do this for fun, and I can't have fun while being the level of anal required to win a dedicated cross stitch competition. (Besides, competitions require that there be no pet hair, and that ain't happening in this house. I do my best, but cat hairs are sneaky.)
In any event, I've got a trolley needle and a Best Laying Tool coming to me, so when they arrive I'll give them a try and see what I like. The trolley needle in particular may get a "best of both worlds" going where I can do two-handed stitching without as much slow-down. If not, gallery distance. And the fact that I do this for fun, not for other people.
I got myself a stand for help with the big projects. Now, I'm short overall (and thus have short arms), and I'm extremely short-waisted proportion-wise on top of that, and I stitch sitting back on the couch. Each of these makes a frame a bit of a difficult decision, so finding a stand that suits me with all of them is a tricky proposal. Add to it that I don't have a local needlework shop, means I basically have to buy to try, and most needlework frames aren't cheap.
That said, I think I got about 80% positive on my first try, and I don't expect that I could get much better.
So, I'm working on the Evil Tiger Cross Stitch of Doom with a stand. This piece is 3 strands on 14-count Aida cloth, so the stitching is pretty dense. Three strands mean it isn't really suitable for railroading. To be honest, I'm somewhat dubious about railroading in general, although I do use it on pieces when I'm doing 2 strands and working in-hand. It seems to affect the amount of twist in the individual plies, though, and that's not easy to correct.
So, I've been using a laying tool (OK, a hair stick) with the Evil Tiger Cross Stitch of Doom, and I will absolutely admit that it makes the individual stitches look better. It also makes the work progress at a speed usually only seen in tectonic plate movements. If I'm getting even a hundred stitches an hour I'd be shocked, and when you're doing a piece with more than 30,000 stitches... That isn't pretty math.
I got kind of fed up this evening, put the laying tool down and started doing the work two-handed since I am working in a stand. Whoo! Much faster! We're at least up to glacial speed here. Of course, the individual stitches don't always look as nice. But it occurs to me, there's this thing called "gallery distance". Gallery distance is the distance from which an object is meant to be viewed, and in fine arts should at least theoretically be kept in mind when working details. Details that are too coarse for their gallery distance appear rough, and details that are too fine can't be seen.
This thing I'm working on is a 10" by 28" picture. It is intended to go on a wall. Its "gallery distance" is between 2 and 15 feet. Individual stitches are most assuredly in the "too fine to be seen" category; hell, I'm still thinking I should get a magnifier to be making them. Now, there will be a difference in how light reflects off stitches depending on whether they are laid or not, and that may cause a difference at the gallery distance. But if I'm observant and careful to untwist my floss when the stitches start to twist, I'm thinking that's not enough difference to be worth my sanity.
I would feel differently if I were entering competitions, but I'm not. I do this for fun, and I can't have fun while being the level of anal required to win a dedicated cross stitch competition. (Besides, competitions require that there be no pet hair, and that ain't happening in this house. I do my best, but cat hairs are sneaky.)
In any event, I've got a trolley needle and a Best Laying Tool coming to me, so when they arrive I'll give them a try and see what I like. The trolley needle in particular may get a "best of both worlds" going where I can do two-handed stitching without as much slow-down. If not, gallery distance. And the fact that I do this for fun, not for other people.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
OMG Squee!
Hansi Singh has a book!
Hansi Singh is the mastermind behind Hansigurumi and hands down the best pattern writer in modern knitting. I've done her squid and started her octopus, and you absolutely can not beat her for creativity or for completeness. She documents the hell out of how to make her stuff. I really can't say enough good things about the way she writes her patterns.
And she's got a book out! Amigurumi Knits! Brand new. The knitting store just got it in today, and they don't have it anymore, because I bought it. (Well, hopefully they have more copies.)
I'm super glad I stayed late, because I hadn't seen it on the table earlier. I'm not sure if Lynn or someone brought it over to look at or if Deb had set it out for perusing, but I look down and I see a book with Hansigurumi's octopus on the cover. Oh hey, she must have contributed to a book. Wait, that's her praying mantis. And her hermit crab. Oh, she's the author; it's all her stuff. *snatch*
There's tons of stuff in here I've wanted to do, but couldn't really justify buying the individual patterns for until I was ready to make them. The mantis, the hermit crab, the Loch Ness monster, the jackalope, and several more. But to have a whole book of them right there in front of my face and in my hot little hand... Yarn stores are dangerous. It HAD to come home with me.
Now, flipping through the book I can see that not all of the photos in the stand-alone patterns were put into the book, but it looks to me like the most crucial are. The mantis especially has tons. So if you're a knitter and you like awesome toys, go buy this. I'm sure you will not be disappointed. And she's got even more in her Etsy store.
Hansi Singh is the mastermind behind Hansigurumi and hands down the best pattern writer in modern knitting. I've done her squid and started her octopus, and you absolutely can not beat her for creativity or for completeness. She documents the hell out of how to make her stuff. I really can't say enough good things about the way she writes her patterns.
And she's got a book out! Amigurumi Knits! Brand new. The knitting store just got it in today, and they don't have it anymore, because I bought it. (Well, hopefully they have more copies.)
I'm super glad I stayed late, because I hadn't seen it on the table earlier. I'm not sure if Lynn or someone brought it over to look at or if Deb had set it out for perusing, but I look down and I see a book with Hansigurumi's octopus on the cover. Oh hey, she must have contributed to a book. Wait, that's her praying mantis. And her hermit crab. Oh, she's the author; it's all her stuff. *snatch*
There's tons of stuff in here I've wanted to do, but couldn't really justify buying the individual patterns for until I was ready to make them. The mantis, the hermit crab, the Loch Ness monster, the jackalope, and several more. But to have a whole book of them right there in front of my face and in my hot little hand... Yarn stores are dangerous. It HAD to come home with me.
Now, flipping through the book I can see that not all of the photos in the stand-alone patterns were put into the book, but it looks to me like the most crucial are. The mantis especially has tons. So if you're a knitter and you like awesome toys, go buy this. I'm sure you will not be disappointed. And she's got even more in her Etsy store.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Hee, how fun!
I ordered The Best of Teresa Wentzler Fantasy Collection, Vol. 2 and it arrived today. I'm so excited. I want to do The Storyteller. Or maybe The Guardian. Or maybe start a little smaller with Above the Clouds, which is sort of a smaller and easier-to-acquire version of The Castle to my eyes.
Are y'all seeing a theme here?
I don't plan to start a new big project for a couple/three months yet. November's NaNoWriMo, and I intend to take a go at it (with a "can bail without shame" disclaimer), which may not leave much project time or energy. Also, I've never worked cross stitch on even weave, so I'm thinking of starting small. My plan is to get some next time I'm out shopping (I know Hobby Lobby carries it if Michael's doesn't) and do a few Christmas ornaments for practice. And I do need more Christmas ornaments; I still don't have very many.
But, one of these would be great to start the New Year with. I can buy/order the supplies as a Christmas present to myself.
Are y'all seeing a theme here?
I don't plan to start a new big project for a couple/three months yet. November's NaNoWriMo, and I intend to take a go at it (with a "can bail without shame" disclaimer), which may not leave much project time or energy. Also, I've never worked cross stitch on even weave, so I'm thinking of starting small. My plan is to get some next time I'm out shopping (I know Hobby Lobby carries it if Michael's doesn't) and do a few Christmas ornaments for practice. And I do need more Christmas ornaments; I still don't have very many.
But, one of these would be great to start the New Year with. I can buy/order the supplies as a Christmas present to myself.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Blog Division
Some of you may have noticed that some entries have disappeared. I've decided to break this blog up into three seperate ones, based on topic.
This one here will be dedicated to my hobbies, mostly various forms of handicraft (although occassional collections may slip in as well). Hopefully I can think of a better name for it. :)
A Fine Line is dedicated to fiction. This is where I will have my movie and book reviews, and also talk about my own writing and events like Nanowrimo.
And finally, Fire and Spice will be for my socio-political writings.
Hope I haven't messed your bookmarks up too much.
This one here will be dedicated to my hobbies, mostly various forms of handicraft (although occassional collections may slip in as well). Hopefully I can think of a better name for it. :)
A Fine Line is dedicated to fiction. This is where I will have my movie and book reviews, and also talk about my own writing and events like Nanowrimo.
And finally, Fire and Spice will be for my socio-political writings.
Hope I haven't messed your bookmarks up too much.
This Week In WIPs.
I thought it would be fun to show the projects I've worked on this week. So, in no particular order...
First up, a ginormous cross stitch of a mama tiger and a few cubs. Ultimately it will by 10" by 28" and look like this:
You can see I've got a long way to go. I didn't do all that this week, either. I started this thing way back maybe even in college, and I usually work on it for a few weeks, get fed up with it and shove it away somewhere for a few years before going at it again. It's been excruciately slow. I hope it speeds up a bit once I'm not having to sort through floss and add several new colors a row, but I think it's always going to be slow.
This time around I'm using the parking method. I was so excited when I found out about this method. "Oh wow, you mean the cross stitch police won't come after me if I do this?! Yay!" When I was taught to cross stitch, that way was verboten, but it's very logical to me. I think it's come about because computer use in cross stitch design has resulted in a large number of modern patterns that are beautiful, but not what I would call well-designed. I'll go into what I consider a well-designed pattern in a later entry. For now, though, this one is not terribly well designed IMHO.
Also cross-stitching is this little kimono card.
Also started long ago and picked up again. This little guy is living in my bed to work on while waiting for appointments and what not. Since I have a kimono hanging on my wall, I am regularly laughing my ass off at how completely not accurate that silouhette is. But at the same time, the actually outline of a kimono hanging with the side panels spread wouldn't translate well to cross stitch, so I can maybe forgive it. Although they could have been a little less extreme in the wrongness.
Also worked on a piece of crazy quilting:
I need to put the cross stitch down and work on this a bit more. The size of the tracing paper transfer isn't much smaller than the hoop, so I can't really take the hoop off between stitching. I don't want to leave it on indefinitely, though, because it can distort the fabric.
This is part of a piece that's going to be made into a duffle bag. The white basting you can see is lining out approximate cutting lines and where the straps will be. This are blocks that were originally intended for a coverlet back before I had a queen-sized bed, and now I'm trying to use them in other ways. Another week maybe I'll think to lay it out on the floor and take a picture of the whole thing.
And of course, there is the infamous Spiderman blanket:
Growth functions suck. You can see I'm really far along on this. I only have to do two more wide stripes, one in blue and one in red. The problem? Thanks to the growth function, on a stitch-count basis this is only about halfway done. I still have 46% of this bastard to finish. :P
It's TV and social knitting. Luckily it's a super-simple pattern; I hardly have to look at it.
First up, a ginormous cross stitch of a mama tiger and a few cubs. Ultimately it will by 10" by 28" and look like this:
This time around I'm using the parking method. I was so excited when I found out about this method. "Oh wow, you mean the cross stitch police won't come after me if I do this?! Yay!" When I was taught to cross stitch, that way was verboten, but it's very logical to me. I think it's come about because computer use in cross stitch design has resulted in a large number of modern patterns that are beautiful, but not what I would call well-designed. I'll go into what I consider a well-designed pattern in a later entry. For now, though, this one is not terribly well designed IMHO.
Also cross-stitching is this little kimono card.
Also started long ago and picked up again. This little guy is living in my bed to work on while waiting for appointments and what not. Since I have a kimono hanging on my wall, I am regularly laughing my ass off at how completely not accurate that silouhette is. But at the same time, the actually outline of a kimono hanging with the side panels spread wouldn't translate well to cross stitch, so I can maybe forgive it. Although they could have been a little less extreme in the wrongness.
Also worked on a piece of crazy quilting:
I need to put the cross stitch down and work on this a bit more. The size of the tracing paper transfer isn't much smaller than the hoop, so I can't really take the hoop off between stitching. I don't want to leave it on indefinitely, though, because it can distort the fabric.
This is part of a piece that's going to be made into a duffle bag. The white basting you can see is lining out approximate cutting lines and where the straps will be. This are blocks that were originally intended for a coverlet back before I had a queen-sized bed, and now I'm trying to use them in other ways. Another week maybe I'll think to lay it out on the floor and take a picture of the whole thing.
And of course, there is the infamous Spiderman blanket:
Growth functions suck. You can see I'm really far along on this. I only have to do two more wide stripes, one in blue and one in red. The problem? Thanks to the growth function, on a stitch-count basis this is only about halfway done. I still have 46% of this bastard to finish. :P
It's TV and social knitting. Luckily it's a super-simple pattern; I hardly have to look at it.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Ack, I'm going blind!
I am in the midst of a Hobby Hop.
I have a tendency to dedicate myself to a craft almost exclusively for a period of time ranging from a couple of months to a couple of years, and then switch with almost no warning. The "no warning" bit is actually rather annoying, because I have a bad habit of buying the materials for the next 5 projects or so, and then they don't happen. They usually don't happen on the next round, either, because they no longer interest me.
Well, it appears that knitting is swiftly being relegated to a social and movie-watching activity while crazy-quilting and cross stitch duke it out for new art-of-choice. Cross stitching appears to be winning. This is actually kind of unfortunate, because I have a plethora of crazy quilting materials and a use for the finished objects, whereas cross stitching just sorts of sits there being a picture.
Then again, I have wall space. Pictures are nice.
So anyway, I pull out this little cross stitch kit intended to be made into a greeting card (like I'm going to send that many hours of work to someone as a throw-away card. Pfph.) that I'd started during the last cross stitch round years ago and not gotten far on, and OMG! The stitches are so small! Were they always this small? Gosh, I'm getting old!
Actually, perceptually they weren't always that small. When I first started the project, I was wearing glasses with a weaker prescription. I love my contact lenses, but the convenience and improved distance vision comes at the price of near objects appearing smaller. Not blurry, just smaller. When I could only wear them for 10-to-12 hours a day I just gave up trying to estimate sizes of anything ever, because size perception between my glasses and contacts was just too different. Now that I can wear contacts all the time, I'm getting better at guesstimating sizes again, but yes, the this project does appear smaller, and it has little to do with me getting old.
So, that feeling that you're old when you're actually not? When you've got more than half your expected lifespan left, it's just that for the first time in your life, music you listened to when it was released is now on the oldies stations and childhood toys are now collector's items and clothing styles you've worn before are back in fashion? When does that feeling stop? When does it actually get into the deep part of your brain that this is normal adulthood and not "old", and the 'everything is new' was actually part of being really terribly young?
Because academically I know I'm not old; I've hardly started. But the deep down part doesn't always listen. I'd like it to get on the bandwagon and stop the whining, please.
Barring that, you kids get off my lawn. ^_~
I have a tendency to dedicate myself to a craft almost exclusively for a period of time ranging from a couple of months to a couple of years, and then switch with almost no warning. The "no warning" bit is actually rather annoying, because I have a bad habit of buying the materials for the next 5 projects or so, and then they don't happen. They usually don't happen on the next round, either, because they no longer interest me.
Well, it appears that knitting is swiftly being relegated to a social and movie-watching activity while crazy-quilting and cross stitch duke it out for new art-of-choice. Cross stitching appears to be winning. This is actually kind of unfortunate, because I have a plethora of crazy quilting materials and a use for the finished objects, whereas cross stitching just sorts of sits there being a picture.
Then again, I have wall space. Pictures are nice.
So anyway, I pull out this little cross stitch kit intended to be made into a greeting card (like I'm going to send that many hours of work to someone as a throw-away card. Pfph.) that I'd started during the last cross stitch round years ago and not gotten far on, and OMG! The stitches are so small! Were they always this small? Gosh, I'm getting old!
Actually, perceptually they weren't always that small. When I first started the project, I was wearing glasses with a weaker prescription. I love my contact lenses, but the convenience and improved distance vision comes at the price of near objects appearing smaller. Not blurry, just smaller. When I could only wear them for 10-to-12 hours a day I just gave up trying to estimate sizes of anything ever, because size perception between my glasses and contacts was just too different. Now that I can wear contacts all the time, I'm getting better at guesstimating sizes again, but yes, the this project does appear smaller, and it has little to do with me getting old.
So, that feeling that you're old when you're actually not? When you've got more than half your expected lifespan left, it's just that for the first time in your life, music you listened to when it was released is now on the oldies stations and childhood toys are now collector's items and clothing styles you've worn before are back in fashion? When does that feeling stop? When does it actually get into the deep part of your brain that this is normal adulthood and not "old", and the 'everything is new' was actually part of being really terribly young?
Because academically I know I'm not old; I've hardly started. But the deep down part doesn't always listen. I'd like it to get on the bandwagon and stop the whining, please.
Barring that, you kids get off my lawn. ^_~
Monday, September 28, 2009
If you didn't know better...
I am culling my library pretty hard and getting rid of the books that no longer delight me. As I go through I'm realizing that if you didn't know me and you looked at my shelves, you might think that I am a quilter.
More accurately, you might look at my discard box and think I was a quilter. That would be closer to the truth, but only slightly.
I did dabble with quilting briefly in and shortly after college. I even got so far as to finish one quilt top, get it basted (using three different techniques in a vain effort to find one that didn't make me want to hang myself with a spool of quilting thread) and started tying it as I had no room for a quilting frame. The kitties thought that its presence in my wicker project basket transformed both into a marvelous cat bed, and so it has remained ever since, half the safety pins and basting still in place. Binding was right out.
I don't mind a bit, because they love it more than any human ever would. It is still the sleeping spot; Bunny's in it right now this second.
That was the closest I ever came to completing a traditional patchwork quilt project.
The truth of the matter is, I love the look of a well-executed quilt. Particularly the tessellating ones like Snail's Trail or Milky Way. Absolutely beautiful. I admire the people who make them, because they require a great deal of planning and precision, and I do not have the aptitude to do that.
Actually, I suppose I do have aptitude for planning and precision, but the 40+ hours a week I get paid for it pretty much empties the storehouse. A quilt like that isn't fun for me to make. The truth is, part of the reason I have so many quilting books is that on some level I was convinced if I just looked enough, I would find a method that would make quilt-making not painful.
Didn't work so good.
I need to find a quilter who wants some large handknits done, so we can trade. They can make me a Snail's Trail and the paper-pieced Pegasus quilt I have a pattern for, and I'll knit them a couple of sweaters. We'll each pay for the materials for the projects we're getting back, and the labor will even out. And we each get to do a hobby we love on someone else's dime, kinda.
So anyway, most of the quilting books are going. Not all, though. I do crazy quilting, and some techniques, especially applique, still work. (And some of the stuff like in Fantastic Fabric Folding I will make work, because it's just too cool not to.)
More accurately, you might look at my discard box and think I was a quilter. That would be closer to the truth, but only slightly.
I did dabble with quilting briefly in and shortly after college. I even got so far as to finish one quilt top, get it basted (using three different techniques in a vain effort to find one that didn't make me want to hang myself with a spool of quilting thread) and started tying it as I had no room for a quilting frame. The kitties thought that its presence in my wicker project basket transformed both into a marvelous cat bed, and so it has remained ever since, half the safety pins and basting still in place. Binding was right out.
I don't mind a bit, because they love it more than any human ever would. It is still the sleeping spot; Bunny's in it right now this second.
That was the closest I ever came to completing a traditional patchwork quilt project.
The truth of the matter is, I love the look of a well-executed quilt. Particularly the tessellating ones like Snail's Trail or Milky Way. Absolutely beautiful. I admire the people who make them, because they require a great deal of planning and precision, and I do not have the aptitude to do that.
Actually, I suppose I do have aptitude for planning and precision, but the 40+ hours a week I get paid for it pretty much empties the storehouse. A quilt like that isn't fun for me to make. The truth is, part of the reason I have so many quilting books is that on some level I was convinced if I just looked enough, I would find a method that would make quilt-making not painful.
Didn't work so good.
I need to find a quilter who wants some large handknits done, so we can trade. They can make me a Snail's Trail and the paper-pieced Pegasus quilt I have a pattern for, and I'll knit them a couple of sweaters. We'll each pay for the materials for the projects we're getting back, and the labor will even out. And we each get to do a hobby we love on someone else's dime, kinda.
So anyway, most of the quilting books are going. Not all, though. I do crazy quilting, and some techniques, especially applique, still work. (And some of the stuff like in Fantastic Fabric Folding I will make work, because it's just too cool not to.)
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Just a random thought
I wonder: how well would beadwoven bookmark made of seed beads work? Would it be too thick, or would it be OK? I'm almost sure Delicas would work fine if the normal Czech beads don't. I know they're supposed to be the same size (11/0), but they're not. They're so not.
I'm going through my craft magazines and culling pretty hard, and the beadwork magazines are getting hit the hardest. Some of them have patterns for loom woven or peyote stitch bracelets. I don't wear bracelets, but I do use bookmarks. I'm just wondering how they'd port over.
I'm going through my craft magazines and culling pretty hard, and the beadwork magazines are getting hit the hardest. Some of them have patterns for loom woven or peyote stitch bracelets. I don't wear bracelets, but I do use bookmarks. I'm just wondering how they'd port over.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
That is some successful marketing
Just recently (i.e. in the last week), I thought I might try my hand at scrapbooking. I know, I know, that was the hot thing like 5 years ago. There's a story there, but it's a sad story (actually, it's the sad story), so I'd rather not go into it. However, I've always been a photo person and a diary person, so it seems like a logical thing for me to get in to.
I've decided to do most of the work digitally and have it printed, and then maybe occasionally adding some physical embellishments later. There are a number of reasons for this: I've done quite a bit of computer graphics hobby work before, I've got the equipment I need already, cost is lower, and so on. However, I think a lot of the advantage can be summed up by two words: "undo button."
So basically all I needed was an album or two, and as it turned out the local craft stores were having big sales on scrapbooking items this week. (I have had several such incidents of synchronicity in the last year, especially when I most need one. It's been very cool, and very appreciated.)
What amazes me is just how much stuff there is for physical scrapbooking. There's albums and papers and cardstock and punches and letters and quotes and geegaws and... stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.
Which makes me glad that all I needed was an album or two (OK, I got two, different sizes), because this could very ea$ily turn very dangerou$ very fa$t.
It amazes me that there's still such a market for the physical supplies, because I would expect a lot more people to be doing layouts digitally. After all, I think most people have digital cameras these days, and the more photos you take, the more likely you are be digital because film and developing are expensive. I look 93 photos at the zoo on Monday -- small local zoo and I don't have kids (but one of the giraffes was positively playful that day, so I got buttloads of him running around and goofing off). That would have been 4 rolls of film (24 exposure) at $2 a pop, plus developing and prints at $3 a roll (if I mail them off). That would have been at least $20. Or, more accurately, that would have been 69 photos that wouldn't have been taken.
So, most people are digital these days, especially if they are non-professionals who take a lot of photos, like scrapbookers. You're already on the computer. Why not do it all there? You've got all sorts of tools, you've got an undo button, there are tons of free papers and embellishments out there or you can even scan the ones you already have. (Ignoring the intellectual property issues, because I don't even know where that lies in scrapbooking. If EVER there was a fuzzy line around "fair use", scrapbooking has got to have it.) You never run out of supplies, and you never have to worry about a toddler glueing herself to what would have been your latest project. If you want to share with another family member, you just print out an extra copy.
Of course, I suppose I am looking at it like an engineer, aren't I? After all, scrapbooking get-togethers wouldn't be so much fun if everyone just brought a laptop. Also, a lot of people are very tactile. They just don't connect through a computer the way they do to physical paper and photos. I admire their abilities to be precise and flexible with their supplies, because I'll admit I get balled up trying to scrapbook physically.
And, there are a lot of people who think they can't "do" computers. Some of them will even tell you that they can't do computer while they are in the midst of correct photo red-eye, cropping out the messed up bits of a photo, and then correcting the exposure. *shrugs*
Still, I think there must have been some good marketing behind all the scrapbooking stuff out there. And maybe an "ooh, shiny" factor, too. :)
I've decided to do most of the work digitally and have it printed, and then maybe occasionally adding some physical embellishments later. There are a number of reasons for this: I've done quite a bit of computer graphics hobby work before, I've got the equipment I need already, cost is lower, and so on. However, I think a lot of the advantage can be summed up by two words: "undo button."
So basically all I needed was an album or two, and as it turned out the local craft stores were having big sales on scrapbooking items this week. (I have had several such incidents of synchronicity in the last year, especially when I most need one. It's been very cool, and very appreciated.)
What amazes me is just how much stuff there is for physical scrapbooking. There's albums and papers and cardstock and punches and letters and quotes and geegaws and... stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.
Which makes me glad that all I needed was an album or two (OK, I got two, different sizes), because this could very ea$ily turn very dangerou$ very fa$t.
It amazes me that there's still such a market for the physical supplies, because I would expect a lot more people to be doing layouts digitally. After all, I think most people have digital cameras these days, and the more photos you take, the more likely you are be digital because film and developing are expensive. I look 93 photos at the zoo on Monday -- small local zoo and I don't have kids (but one of the giraffes was positively playful that day, so I got buttloads of him running around and goofing off). That would have been 4 rolls of film (24 exposure) at $2 a pop, plus developing and prints at $3 a roll (if I mail them off). That would have been at least $20. Or, more accurately, that would have been 69 photos that wouldn't have been taken.
So, most people are digital these days, especially if they are non-professionals who take a lot of photos, like scrapbookers. You're already on the computer. Why not do it all there? You've got all sorts of tools, you've got an undo button, there are tons of free papers and embellishments out there or you can even scan the ones you already have. (Ignoring the intellectual property issues, because I don't even know where that lies in scrapbooking. If EVER there was a fuzzy line around "fair use", scrapbooking has got to have it.) You never run out of supplies, and you never have to worry about a toddler glueing herself to what would have been your latest project. If you want to share with another family member, you just print out an extra copy.
Of course, I suppose I am looking at it like an engineer, aren't I? After all, scrapbooking get-togethers wouldn't be so much fun if everyone just brought a laptop. Also, a lot of people are very tactile. They just don't connect through a computer the way they do to physical paper and photos. I admire their abilities to be precise and flexible with their supplies, because I'll admit I get balled up trying to scrapbook physically.
And, there are a lot of people who think they can't "do" computers. Some of them will even tell you that they can't do computer while they are in the midst of correct photo red-eye, cropping out the messed up bits of a photo, and then correcting the exposure. *shrugs*
Still, I think there must have been some good marketing behind all the scrapbooking stuff out there. And maybe an "ooh, shiny" factor, too. :)
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Official Knitting Fail
So, as I talked about a few posts ago, I started a 1/3 scale shawl with the, as it turns out, massive amount of laceweight I have that wasn't suitable for the intended project. (I thought I had three skeins. Turns out I had 10.)
This is not the knitting fail, but I very quickly discovered that triangular shawls have the same problem that circular shawls have and then some. They, of course, have a significant growth function, starting with just a few stitches per row and ending with a few hundred per row. This makes them prone to project slog. But on top of that, half of those rows are (dun dun dun) purling. I don't have an epic hatred of purling, but it is a little slower, and takes about twice the finger movement for me, so I rather avoid it.
That's not the knitting fail.
This is the knitting fail. My cat Malcolm (the tuxedo, and only boy) was on my lap while I was knitting, being surprisingly well behaved. He got bored. So JUST as I was about to finish the first motif on this shawl, in the middle of the final row of it, he stands up and jumps off my lap with tail held proudly in the air -- directly behind the knitting, in perfectly alignment with the small gap between the needles while I was working. Hits right where there is no needle to resist, and pulls the project half off them. Of course, I'm working with alpaca, so those stitches immediately make a run for the cast-on with no way to pick them up, and there's nothing I can do except rip out the whole shawl beginning.
Ouch.
At least I learned that when there were 9 and a 1/2 rows, not several hundred and just short of putting in a lifeline.
He doesn't get to sit on my lap while I'm doing lace any more.
This is not the knitting fail, but I very quickly discovered that triangular shawls have the same problem that circular shawls have and then some. They, of course, have a significant growth function, starting with just a few stitches per row and ending with a few hundred per row. This makes them prone to project slog. But on top of that, half of those rows are (dun dun dun) purling. I don't have an epic hatred of purling, but it is a little slower, and takes about twice the finger movement for me, so I rather avoid it.
That's not the knitting fail.
This is the knitting fail. My cat Malcolm (the tuxedo, and only boy) was on my lap while I was knitting, being surprisingly well behaved. He got bored. So JUST as I was about to finish the first motif on this shawl, in the middle of the final row of it, he stands up and jumps off my lap with tail held proudly in the air -- directly behind the knitting, in perfectly alignment with the small gap between the needles while I was working. Hits right where there is no needle to resist, and pulls the project half off them. Of course, I'm working with alpaca, so those stitches immediately make a run for the cast-on with no way to pick them up, and there's nothing I can do except rip out the whole shawl beginning.
Ouch.
At least I learned that when there were 9 and a 1/2 rows, not several hundred and just short of putting in a lifeline.
He doesn't get to sit on my lap while I'm doing lace any more.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Cue the Dammit Chorus
Middle of last month, I ordered 21 skeins of cotton yarn: 20 to make myself a Wonderful Wallaby Sweater, and 1 for swatching.
Got a ship notice.
Shipping company never updated that they'd gotten the package.
Waited a reasonable time, then contacted them asking for a status update.
Package is MIA. They will start a trace, but in the meantime, they'll put together a replacement.
Problem: They only have 19 skeins of that yarn left. Discontinued colorway, not getting any more.
I told them to go ahead and send it. It's a very good price and I'm sure I can find something to use it with. But I just don't think there's enough for the Wallaby. Maybe if it were wool, but cotton I have to wash a swatch to see how much it shrinks, and once it's shrunk I can't frog the yarn and use it to finish the project made of otherwise not-already-shrunk cotton. Even if I had enough, I'd be just squeaking in, and I wouldn't be sure until I was done. I wouldn't be happy with leaving off the hood, and pouch is knit in and can't really be removed later to unravel for the hoodie.
Nope, I just don't think it'll work.
I wonder how well it cables. There might be enough there for a Corona.
And now I'm back to square one on the Wallaby. :P
Got a ship notice.
Shipping company never updated that they'd gotten the package.
Waited a reasonable time, then contacted them asking for a status update.
Package is MIA. They will start a trace, but in the meantime, they'll put together a replacement.
Problem: They only have 19 skeins of that yarn left. Discontinued colorway, not getting any more.
I told them to go ahead and send it. It's a very good price and I'm sure I can find something to use it with. But I just don't think there's enough for the Wallaby. Maybe if it were wool, but cotton I have to wash a swatch to see how much it shrinks, and once it's shrunk I can't frog the yarn and use it to finish the project made of otherwise not-already-shrunk cotton. Even if I had enough, I'd be just squeaking in, and I wouldn't be sure until I was done. I wouldn't be happy with leaving off the hood, and pouch is knit in and can't really be removed later to unravel for the hoodie.
Nope, I just don't think it'll work.
I wonder how well it cables. There might be enough there for a Corona.
And now I'm back to square one on the Wallaby. :P
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Let's Talk Lace Knitting
1. I'm glad to say I did a little more on my Juno Regina weekend before last. This is a good sign, because it means for at least a few days my stress level had lightened enough that I felt up to lace knitting rather than nearly-brainless blankets in the round.
The thing is, I'm just not feeling it any more. I know it's a odd. When I started it, I was so excited about it, and so eager to start, and it was going to be so awesome. Now I look at pictures of the finished stole, and they just kind of look boring to me.
For my own project, I've reached the widest point of the diamond and it's not as wide as I wanted the stole to be. And honestly, I look at the vast expanse of flat stockinette with the occasional YO K2tog, and part of me just cringes in anticipation of the boredom.
I think I'm going to put it on waste yarn, take the needles out, and pack it up completely for a few months. I don't have any projects I want the yarn for right now. Although honestly, even if the love comes back, I think I'll want to start over with a somewhat heavier yarn, more of a heavy lace or light fingering than the thin Alpaca with a Twist Fino. It's beautiful stuff; I'm just wanting a larger piece.
2) Me, and my thing with mystery shawl knit-a-longs. If I'm really honest, the shawls that come out of them usually strike my tastes somewhere between "Meh" and "eww!" That's not to say anything bad about the designs or the designers, not at all. It's just that mystery shawl designs tend to have certain design elements that I don't care for, such as pictorial motifs done in yarn-overs on a stockinette background, or a visible periodic nature -- not necessarily a hard break between clues, but shifts were you can tell where each clue was.
And yet when I find one while it's still open, I feel compelled to sign up for it. I've at least gotten to the point where I don't feel obligated to knit it until enough clues have come out that I can tell if I like the design. (One bad burn took care of that, methinks.) But I'm still there. I think it's that fear of missing out. What if this is the one that turns out awesome and just perfect for me and I missed it? That part of my brain doesn't want to listen to the answer "Then you plunk down $8 at the end when the pattern goes on sale." After all, if it was that awesome and perfect for me, odds are I'd buy the pattern at the end of the knit-along anyway to thank/reward the designer for making it.
Oh well, at least adding another group onto my Yahoo account is harmless.
3) I am dubious about triangular shawls.
But, before I get into that, let me get into a needlessly technical discussion about the nature and function of shawls with far more thought than anyone sane has ever put into the topic. Why? Because I'm an engineer, and as scary as this is, my brain actually works this way.
Now, there are two schools of thought on what a shawl is for. One school is that it is to warm your arms, much like a light sweater, while another is that it is to keep your shoulders warm, like a vest. To complicate matters, it's not unreasonable, and yet not a given, to argue that keeping your shoulders warm keeps your arms warm in the same way that fingerless gloves really do keep your fingers warm by warming the pulse point. (I was dubious about that, too, but experiment has shown me that it does indeed work. I wouldn't have a snowball fight with only fingerless gloves, but they're quite nice in a cold office or on a brisk fall day.) However, as the shoulders are much larger than wrists, and not wrapped by a shawl as completely as a wrist is by fingerless gloves, I am unconvinced.
So personally, I'm in the shawl-to-warm-arms camp, and a triangular shawl doesn't seem like a good way to do this. The most common shape is a right-angle triangle with the hypotenous at the top edge and the right-angle point hanging down towards your butt.
Actually, I'm going to take an aside here. A lot of women don't like triangular shawls because they feel the point forms an arrow pointing to their hinder. However, that's not my experience. At least the way I perceive things, the point is more of a container that holds the eye and keeps it away from the butt. The eye follows the point down, hits the bottom, and then is drawn outwards by the border or pattern.
But that's just me.
Anyway, we've got a right triangle, with the right angle pointing at your butt, and then the narrower points are brought around to the front. This usually means that the part of the shawl covering your arms is roughly half as long the distance from hypotenuse to point (varying on the size of the lady and the shawl). This is not enough cover on my arms for me, especially since triangular shawls are often made so that the hypotenuse length matches wingspan. Make it large enough for adequate arm coverage, and there's tons of material in the back that serves little purpose except to get sat upon. Extra unused material = wasted work.
And yet some of the patterns are so pretty.
A popular construction for triangular shawls right now is this: Still imagine your right triangle with the hypotenuse at the top. Now, draw a straight line from the bottom point to the middle of the hypotenuse, so that you have two right triangles next to each other, with the right angles at the middle and top. The shawls are laid out like that, start at the center top with a few stitches to start the right angles, and then increase outwards to build the two adjoining right triangles.
So, I'm thinking of ways to alter the patterns to get more arm coverage. An obvious one is to just double it and make a square shawl with 4 component triangles. And that's certainly valid. Ironically there, though, a solid square shawl is usually folded in half and worn as a triangle.
However, you can put a split in it so it is worn like a cape. Put it between two triangles, and you'll get something shaped like a poncho, only with an opening in the front -- so consider yourself forewarned. ;) Or, I have some patterns in my queue that are build like this, but have the slit from the center to the middle of one of the square sides. It takes a little (just a little) more work to locate that, but avoids the poncho look.
The other idea I've considered is three component triangles instead of the usual two, which forms a shape like a square with one side removed. It almost looks like a sailor collar laid flat, or a faroese shawl on steroids (or maybe just LSD ^_~ ). I don't know how this would lay when worn, though.
Then another possibility is to put a wedge of material between the two triangles to form a sort of mock Faroese shaping. This is probably the most design work, and isn't suitable for all patterns. But, on some you could do some very nifty things with the back panel. For instance, putting a dragon silhouette in yarn-overs on a panel added to a Dragon Wings shawl.
Now, I've got some lace yarn laying around that I ordered for a project, but found when it arrived that it was unsuitable. I'm thinking of balling up a hank of that, and doing some doll-sized shawls to study the trade-offs of the various shapes that can be done with a triangular shawl pattern. That may seem excessively anal (and I don't think I'm prepared to deny that), but at the same time, when you consider all the nice triangular patterns out there and all the time that goes into a human-sized shawl. Well, it'd be nice to open up my possibilities and yet know beforehand how much work I need to add. Two-foot shawls are a lot faster than 5-foot ones.
The thing is, I'm just not feeling it any more. I know it's a odd. When I started it, I was so excited about it, and so eager to start, and it was going to be so awesome. Now I look at pictures of the finished stole, and they just kind of look boring to me.
For my own project, I've reached the widest point of the diamond and it's not as wide as I wanted the stole to be. And honestly, I look at the vast expanse of flat stockinette with the occasional YO K2tog, and part of me just cringes in anticipation of the boredom.
I think I'm going to put it on waste yarn, take the needles out, and pack it up completely for a few months. I don't have any projects I want the yarn for right now. Although honestly, even if the love comes back, I think I'll want to start over with a somewhat heavier yarn, more of a heavy lace or light fingering than the thin Alpaca with a Twist Fino. It's beautiful stuff; I'm just wanting a larger piece.
2) Me, and my thing with mystery shawl knit-a-longs. If I'm really honest, the shawls that come out of them usually strike my tastes somewhere between "Meh" and "eww!" That's not to say anything bad about the designs or the designers, not at all. It's just that mystery shawl designs tend to have certain design elements that I don't care for, such as pictorial motifs done in yarn-overs on a stockinette background, or a visible periodic nature -- not necessarily a hard break between clues, but shifts were you can tell where each clue was.
And yet when I find one while it's still open, I feel compelled to sign up for it. I've at least gotten to the point where I don't feel obligated to knit it until enough clues have come out that I can tell if I like the design. (One bad burn took care of that, methinks.) But I'm still there. I think it's that fear of missing out. What if this is the one that turns out awesome and just perfect for me and I missed it? That part of my brain doesn't want to listen to the answer "Then you plunk down $8 at the end when the pattern goes on sale." After all, if it was that awesome and perfect for me, odds are I'd buy the pattern at the end of the knit-along anyway to thank/reward the designer for making it.
Oh well, at least adding another group onto my Yahoo account is harmless.
3) I am dubious about triangular shawls.
But, before I get into that, let me get into a needlessly technical discussion about the nature and function of shawls with far more thought than anyone sane has ever put into the topic. Why? Because I'm an engineer, and as scary as this is, my brain actually works this way.
Now, there are two schools of thought on what a shawl is for. One school is that it is to warm your arms, much like a light sweater, while another is that it is to keep your shoulders warm, like a vest. To complicate matters, it's not unreasonable, and yet not a given, to argue that keeping your shoulders warm keeps your arms warm in the same way that fingerless gloves really do keep your fingers warm by warming the pulse point. (I was dubious about that, too, but experiment has shown me that it does indeed work. I wouldn't have a snowball fight with only fingerless gloves, but they're quite nice in a cold office or on a brisk fall day.) However, as the shoulders are much larger than wrists, and not wrapped by a shawl as completely as a wrist is by fingerless gloves, I am unconvinced.
So personally, I'm in the shawl-to-warm-arms camp, and a triangular shawl doesn't seem like a good way to do this. The most common shape is a right-angle triangle with the hypotenous at the top edge and the right-angle point hanging down towards your butt.
Actually, I'm going to take an aside here. A lot of women don't like triangular shawls because they feel the point forms an arrow pointing to their hinder. However, that's not my experience. At least the way I perceive things, the point is more of a container that holds the eye and keeps it away from the butt. The eye follows the point down, hits the bottom, and then is drawn outwards by the border or pattern.
But that's just me.
Anyway, we've got a right triangle, with the right angle pointing at your butt, and then the narrower points are brought around to the front. This usually means that the part of the shawl covering your arms is roughly half as long the distance from hypotenuse to point (varying on the size of the lady and the shawl). This is not enough cover on my arms for me, especially since triangular shawls are often made so that the hypotenuse length matches wingspan. Make it large enough for adequate arm coverage, and there's tons of material in the back that serves little purpose except to get sat upon. Extra unused material = wasted work.
And yet some of the patterns are so pretty.
A popular construction for triangular shawls right now is this: Still imagine your right triangle with the hypotenuse at the top. Now, draw a straight line from the bottom point to the middle of the hypotenuse, so that you have two right triangles next to each other, with the right angles at the middle and top. The shawls are laid out like that, start at the center top with a few stitches to start the right angles, and then increase outwards to build the two adjoining right triangles.
So, I'm thinking of ways to alter the patterns to get more arm coverage. An obvious one is to just double it and make a square shawl with 4 component triangles. And that's certainly valid. Ironically there, though, a solid square shawl is usually folded in half and worn as a triangle.
However, you can put a split in it so it is worn like a cape. Put it between two triangles, and you'll get something shaped like a poncho, only with an opening in the front -- so consider yourself forewarned. ;) Or, I have some patterns in my queue that are build like this, but have the slit from the center to the middle of one of the square sides. It takes a little (just a little) more work to locate that, but avoids the poncho look.
The other idea I've considered is three component triangles instead of the usual two, which forms a shape like a square with one side removed. It almost looks like a sailor collar laid flat, or a faroese shawl on steroids (or maybe just LSD ^_~ ). I don't know how this would lay when worn, though.
Then another possibility is to put a wedge of material between the two triangles to form a sort of mock Faroese shaping. This is probably the most design work, and isn't suitable for all patterns. But, on some you could do some very nifty things with the back panel. For instance, putting a dragon silhouette in yarn-overs on a panel added to a Dragon Wings shawl.
Now, I've got some lace yarn laying around that I ordered for a project, but found when it arrived that it was unsuitable. I'm thinking of balling up a hank of that, and doing some doll-sized shawls to study the trade-offs of the various shapes that can be done with a triangular shawl pattern. That may seem excessively anal (and I don't think I'm prepared to deny that), but at the same time, when you consider all the nice triangular patterns out there and all the time that goes into a human-sized shawl. Well, it'd be nice to open up my possibilities and yet know beforehand how much work I need to add. Two-foot shawls are a lot faster than 5-foot ones.
Adventures in Katidom
I went on a little road trip today. Today was the Illinois Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association's annual Alpacafest.
First, feel free to sit in surprise with me that there are enough alpaca owners and breeders in Illinois for there to be an association.
OK, anyway. The Alpacafest was held in East Peoria in previous years, but lost their venue, so this year they were an hour+ north in Princeton.
I'm not a "small town" kind of person, but I have to give some respect to any place that has a tattoo parlor named "Torrid Tattoos."
I've never been to the Alpacafest, but the fibery people in my life spoke rather gleefully about it, and I need to get out of the basement more, so I went up with not much idea of what to expect. It's a fairly small show: two buildings of I'd guess 1000 sq ft each of animals waiting to be judged, and another building with half a dozen or so vendors.
Alpacas are smaller than I realized. Most of them were about waist/ribcage high on me at the shoulders and as tall as me at the head -- and I'm right at 5', and short waisted. So about 3 feet at the shoulders and 5' at head. The nice lady who sold me toys told me they usually weigh around 160 lbs. I'll confess to jokingly thinking "a girl could just about hide one of those in her basement."
Seriously, it's one of those shows that makes you go "I wanna be an alpaca farmer!" Until you see someone sweeping alpaca poop, and then you think "On second thought, you be the alpaca farmer. I'll just pet your critters and buy some fleece."
No one told me that alpacas make the cutest noise! It's this squeaky whiney cooing thing. It's cute, especially coming from a critter this size.
And of course, I bought things.
That's 500 yds of laceweight alpaca yarn (enough for a basic shawl), 4 oz of cria roving (baby alpaca. It's soooo soft!), and a teddy bear made from alpaca. The bear isn't squishable, but it is really terribly pettable. The fur is so soft, you'll pick it up and not want to put it back down.
I got a chuckle out of the vendor with the roving and bear with one of my usual mannerisms. Said I wanted 4 oz of roving, and "one of the bears wants to come home with me".
I also do enjoy a show where when you walk up to one vendor carrying bags from another, they go "ooh, where'd you get that?" in a yummy voice.
If the Alpacafest is back around Peoria next year, I'll definitely go again, but I'll probably skip it if its in Princeton again. It was fun, but as I said, small. I only spent about an hour there, and spent more than twice that on the driving.
On the way back, I went through Chillicothe, and along the road saw a sign for an antique store that said "Big sale today". I'm not the type who stops in every antique store along the way, but I do enjoy them. They sell me fountain pens cheap. So I found somewhere in town to get lunch, then went back to it.
It was one of those places that isn't really so much an antique store, as the stash of a packrat who justifies their collecting by claiming it's a store. Very packed with everything to really old unopened soda bottles/cans (seriously, Coke in the old bottles, some M.A.S.H. Beer), to a Gameboy that was running around there. No prices on anything, and the owner absolutely talked my ear off. No fountain pens, either, but I did find some pirns with yarn on them, and a miniature spinning wheel.
Everything spins that's supposed to on the wheel. Just add a little driveband, and it'll actually work. Well, technically; you don't have a whole lot of capacity on the spindle there.
And, all of that there was $5. If I'd known he only wanted $1 each for the pirns, I might have cleaned him out. Not that I have any idea what to do with the things, but they're kind of cool.
Oh, it just hit me that most people don't know what the hell a pirn is. It's used in weaving to hold the thread in the shuttle that makes the weft (cross threads). Handweavers often use them, but I understand a lot of modern weaving mills no longer do (although they're still common in less developed countries). They end up in antique shops or eBay when mills close shop or upgrade, and often they still have the yarn on them.
So, that was my day. :)
First, feel free to sit in surprise with me that there are enough alpaca owners and breeders in Illinois for there to be an association.
OK, anyway. The Alpacafest was held in East Peoria in previous years, but lost their venue, so this year they were an hour+ north in Princeton.
I'm not a "small town" kind of person, but I have to give some respect to any place that has a tattoo parlor named "Torrid Tattoos."
I've never been to the Alpacafest, but the fibery people in my life spoke rather gleefully about it, and I need to get out of the basement more, so I went up with not much idea of what to expect. It's a fairly small show: two buildings of I'd guess 1000 sq ft each of animals waiting to be judged, and another building with half a dozen or so vendors.
Alpacas are smaller than I realized. Most of them were about waist/ribcage high on me at the shoulders and as tall as me at the head -- and I'm right at 5', and short waisted. So about 3 feet at the shoulders and 5' at head. The nice lady who sold me toys told me they usually weigh around 160 lbs. I'll confess to jokingly thinking "a girl could just about hide one of those in her basement."
Seriously, it's one of those shows that makes you go "I wanna be an alpaca farmer!" Until you see someone sweeping alpaca poop, and then you think "On second thought, you be the alpaca farmer. I'll just pet your critters and buy some fleece."
No one told me that alpacas make the cutest noise! It's this squeaky whiney cooing thing. It's cute, especially coming from a critter this size.
And of course, I bought things.
That's 500 yds of laceweight alpaca yarn (enough for a basic shawl), 4 oz of cria roving (baby alpaca. It's soooo soft!), and a teddy bear made from alpaca. The bear isn't squishable, but it is really terribly pettable. The fur is so soft, you'll pick it up and not want to put it back down.I got a chuckle out of the vendor with the roving and bear with one of my usual mannerisms. Said I wanted 4 oz of roving, and "one of the bears wants to come home with me".
I also do enjoy a show where when you walk up to one vendor carrying bags from another, they go "ooh, where'd you get that?" in a yummy voice.
If the Alpacafest is back around Peoria next year, I'll definitely go again, but I'll probably skip it if its in Princeton again. It was fun, but as I said, small. I only spent about an hour there, and spent more than twice that on the driving.
On the way back, I went through Chillicothe, and along the road saw a sign for an antique store that said "Big sale today". I'm not the type who stops in every antique store along the way, but I do enjoy them. They sell me fountain pens cheap. So I found somewhere in town to get lunch, then went back to it.
It was one of those places that isn't really so much an antique store, as the stash of a packrat who justifies their collecting by claiming it's a store. Very packed with everything to really old unopened soda bottles/cans (seriously, Coke in the old bottles, some M.A.S.H. Beer), to a Gameboy that was running around there. No prices on anything, and the owner absolutely talked my ear off. No fountain pens, either, but I did find some pirns with yarn on them, and a miniature spinning wheel.
Everything spins that's supposed to on the wheel. Just add a little driveband, and it'll actually work. Well, technically; you don't have a whole lot of capacity on the spindle there.And, all of that there was $5. If I'd known he only wanted $1 each for the pirns, I might have cleaned him out. Not that I have any idea what to do with the things, but they're kind of cool.
Oh, it just hit me that most people don't know what the hell a pirn is. It's used in weaving to hold the thread in the shuttle that makes the weft (cross threads). Handweavers often use them, but I understand a lot of modern weaving mills no longer do (although they're still common in less developed countries). They end up in antique shops or eBay when mills close shop or upgrade, and often they still have the yarn on them.
So, that was my day. :)
Friday, April 10, 2009
Design decisions
I'm working along on my Ondas blanket, which I've renamed "kitty crack" for it's feline attraction due to the yarn and all the stitch markers. And I think I'm pushing my luck on whether I'll have enough of the green yarn for it. If I can make it to row 27, I'm probably OK as long as none of the other skeins are shorter. But I'm just not convinced that's going to happen. And on top of that, oops, the LYS doesn't carry this color after all.
Now, I could probably buy an extra skein or two off another Raveler. But where's the fun in that. The LYS does carry a blue colorway I thought would work with it, so I got a couple of skeins of that just in case, since if I need them, I'll need them before next Knit Night. Pic:
I probably wouldn't have bought the two colors together for this, since the green is to the yellow side and the blue is quite blue. But I don't think it'll look bad. Sort of a "grassy bank to a river/lake/pond" kind of thing.
I've thought of several ways I could put the blue in, but what I'm liking most right now is this: The green skeins don't match each other. Normally one would alternate rows to blend them together to avoid color jumps, but when I thought I would use just the green, I intentionally didn't do it so I'd get some subtle stripes -- which I think would look nice in this pattern. So now I'm thinking a narrow stripe of the blue between each skein of the green. That'll be three blue stripes, and four green. The farther out to the edge of the blanket I get, the narrower the green will be due to the joys of growth functions. (Each row is an average of 4 stitches larger than the last. So the outermost rows suck up a LOT more yarn than the inside ones.) Then when I finish the last green stripe, I'll do a wider band of the blue, and maybe end with the Wave Edging from Walker's second stitch treasury (which happened to arrive earlier this week). And maybe I'll lop off that outermost row of eyelets on the edging.
The edging is still up in the air. It maybe be a little too much, in which case I would do either a simpler edging, or the garter band the pattern calls for. Either way, I'm going for that 'grassy bank' look.
If I have blue yarn left over, I really do think it would make a nice hat.
Now, I could probably buy an extra skein or two off another Raveler. But where's the fun in that. The LYS does carry a blue colorway I thought would work with it, so I got a couple of skeins of that just in case, since if I need them, I'll need them before next Knit Night. Pic:
I probably wouldn't have bought the two colors together for this, since the green is to the yellow side and the blue is quite blue. But I don't think it'll look bad. Sort of a "grassy bank to a river/lake/pond" kind of thing.
I've thought of several ways I could put the blue in, but what I'm liking most right now is this: The green skeins don't match each other. Normally one would alternate rows to blend them together to avoid color jumps, but when I thought I would use just the green, I intentionally didn't do it so I'd get some subtle stripes -- which I think would look nice in this pattern. So now I'm thinking a narrow stripe of the blue between each skein of the green. That'll be three blue stripes, and four green. The farther out to the edge of the blanket I get, the narrower the green will be due to the joys of growth functions. (Each row is an average of 4 stitches larger than the last. So the outermost rows suck up a LOT more yarn than the inside ones.) Then when I finish the last green stripe, I'll do a wider band of the blue, and maybe end with the Wave Edging from Walker's second stitch treasury (which happened to arrive earlier this week). And maybe I'll lop off that outermost row of eyelets on the edging.
The edging is still up in the air. It maybe be a little too much, in which case I would do either a simpler edging, or the garter band the pattern calls for. Either way, I'm going for that 'grassy bank' look.
If I have blue yarn left over, I really do think it would make a nice hat.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
That there be a finished object.
The Strawberry Pie shawl is off the blocking pads and ready to show on backgrounds that won't strike you blind.
On the back of my couch:
It really would look nice there permanently, wouldn't it?
Full view of the circle:
And a modeled pic:
Me and the camera timer, we're not such good friends. But hey, I'm doin' what I can.
Unfortunately, the yarn went kind of... stringy feeling when I blocked it, I guess because it was stretched so hard in the process. It's a shame, because it was wonderfully soft and snuggly while I was working on it. I would absolutely use the Elann Baby Silk again, but not on something that's blocked so hard.
On the back of my couch:
It really would look nice there permanently, wouldn't it?
Full view of the circle:
And a modeled pic:
Me and the camera timer, we're not such good friends. But hey, I'm doin' what I can.
Unfortunately, the yarn went kind of... stringy feeling when I blocked it, I guess because it was stretched so hard in the process. It's a shame, because it was wonderfully soft and snuggly while I was working on it. I would absolutely use the Elann Baby Silk again, but not on something that's blocked so hard.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Ondas Update
I'm moving along on my Ondas blanket. The center set-up is finished, and I'm ready to start on the lace-y part. I have a feeling I'm going to have to buy more yarn, though. I definitely will if I want to make it Kati-sized rather than baby sized, but I think I may need another skein or two just to finish the pattern as written. Luckily, the LYS carries it, including this colorway, and I don't need to worry about matching dye lot. It's Araucania Atacama, which is hand-dyed. I got the drab green in a swap, which isn't a color I would have chosen but is working up fairly nice. It would have made a nice hat or beret, if I'd wanted to use it for that.
... And Ravelry tells me it's been discontinued. Dammit. Well, it won't take me too terribly long to get through the first skein, and I've figure out stitch counts for the whole blanket, so I can figure out if I've got enough based on how far that first one takes me. I'll keep a watch on the store's stock/the discount wall, and if I see it down to a skein or two before I can make a call, I'll pick them up. Shame, though. It's not bad yarn. A little 'rustic', perhaps (OK, it's scratchy as common wool), but not bad.
... And Ravelry tells me it's been discontinued. Dammit. Well, it won't take me too terribly long to get through the first skein, and I've figure out stitch counts for the whole blanket, so I can figure out if I've got enough based on how far that first one takes me. I'll keep a watch on the store's stock/the discount wall, and if I see it down to a skein or two before I can make a call, I'll pick them up. Shame, though. It's not bad yarn. A little 'rustic', perhaps (OK, it's scratchy as common wool), but not bad.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Whew! Blocking lace is hard work!
I haven't talked about my creative endeavors nearly enough in that past. I should remedy that, starting right now.
I have been working on a Strawberry Pie shawl converted to circular instead of semi-circular, and I finished it up yesterday, so I blocked it today. This involved a lot of crawling around and a lot of stretching wet knit. I do have photos, but let me warn you first that my blocking pads are bright neon green. Perfectly saturated 00FF00 green. This means they throw the camera's sensor for a bit of a loop because THAT color isn't supposed to appear in nature, and photos of things block on them tend to look not so good because of it. I've desaturated it so you can see the shawl without going blind, but it still looks a little funny.
Here it is blocking:
And here it is all curly pre-block so you can see the color. (Which is against the ass ugly carpet currently in my craft room, which is also green but not such an eye-bleeding bright color that it screws with electronic minds.)
I plan to take a final picture with a nicer background, or a modeled one, once it's dried off and ready to wear.
It's a pretty color. It's an alpaca-silk blend I got it in a swap for some of my wool yarn, which I really enjoyed. I've still got four balls left.
I should have kept going on the shawl a few more pattern repeats. It's about 4-feet across, which is shoulder shawl sized. I'm not big on shoulder shawls. I want something that'll keep my arms and chest warm. But, I'll figure something out with it. I bet it would look damn cute on the back of my couch. (The kitties would like that, too, although that's more of a detriment.)
This also has me thinking that I need to indulge my Startitis more often than I do. Startitis is the condition wherein a knitter starts projects more quickly than they finish them. Now, I've been a relatively monogamous knitter lately. Not truly "mono"gamous, but a limited number of projects with different purposes. One complex for a challenge, one easy for TV and knitting group, one small and simple for waiting rooms, for example.
Well, lately there's been a bit of a wrinkle in that. There is only one sort of project I want to do right now: relatively simple circular shawls and blankets. The complex stuff has been mothballed, the small projects I usually enjoyed are going "that's nice, but I don't want to do that right now." I know why this is: I'm under such a massive amount of stress between work and family problems that the last thing I need right now is a flippin' challenge. I want something meditative, comforting, and satisfying. Simple-but-not-boring circular pieces are the comfort foods of the knitting world to me right now, and I'm perfectly OK with that.
The problem there is that right now, for example, I finished my comfort project. Now I need to start a new one.
I don't want to start a new one, I just want to work on one. Starting is harder than continuing. Only I don't have that option right now. My options are start something new, work on something that isn't my comfort knitting, or not knit at all. So as soon as I feel up to dodging around the drying shawl so I can ball up some hanked yarn, I'll get going on an Ondas blanket. I know I said I was going to do a Radiating Star blanket next, but I don't want to work on the Radiating Star. I want to work on the Ondas. And in a couple of days if I want to work on the Radiating Star, I'll start it then. Or if instead I decide I want to work on my Maelstrom shawl, I'll cast it on. Hell, I might even get enough of a bug to order the yarn for a Spiderman blanket. (Yes, you read that right. Go look; how cool is that?)
I guess I've just got different hobby needs at different times. Before the economy self-destructed and I ended up doing the work of two or more people, I needed some challenge and the sense of accomplishment from finished projects. Sometime down the line I'll probably feel the need to stash knit, or to kill off UFOs. For now, I need lots of easy comfort knits I can just pick up and do. So, for now, when I get the urge to cast something on, I will do it right then and there so that I don't have to do it when I don't want to. At absolutely worst, there's not much in my stash that can't handle being frogged if I completely change my mind later. Project bags are cheap, after all. I can make project bags if I need more. And UFOs can be put onto scrap yarn for holding if I need to reclaim the needles for something else. There's absolutely no reason not to do this if it's what I need to help maintain my sanity right now.
I have been working on a Strawberry Pie shawl converted to circular instead of semi-circular, and I finished it up yesterday, so I blocked it today. This involved a lot of crawling around and a lot of stretching wet knit. I do have photos, but let me warn you first that my blocking pads are bright neon green. Perfectly saturated 00FF00 green. This means they throw the camera's sensor for a bit of a loop because THAT color isn't supposed to appear in nature, and photos of things block on them tend to look not so good because of it. I've desaturated it so you can see the shawl without going blind, but it still looks a little funny.
Here it is blocking:
And here it is all curly pre-block so you can see the color. (Which is against the ass ugly carpet currently in my craft room, which is also green but not such an eye-bleeding bright color that it screws with electronic minds.)
I plan to take a final picture with a nicer background, or a modeled one, once it's dried off and ready to wear.
It's a pretty color. It's an alpaca-silk blend I got it in a swap for some of my wool yarn, which I really enjoyed. I've still got four balls left.
I should have kept going on the shawl a few more pattern repeats. It's about 4-feet across, which is shoulder shawl sized. I'm not big on shoulder shawls. I want something that'll keep my arms and chest warm. But, I'll figure something out with it. I bet it would look damn cute on the back of my couch. (The kitties would like that, too, although that's more of a detriment.)
This also has me thinking that I need to indulge my Startitis more often than I do. Startitis is the condition wherein a knitter starts projects more quickly than they finish them. Now, I've been a relatively monogamous knitter lately. Not truly "mono"gamous, but a limited number of projects with different purposes. One complex for a challenge, one easy for TV and knitting group, one small and simple for waiting rooms, for example.
Well, lately there's been a bit of a wrinkle in that. There is only one sort of project I want to do right now: relatively simple circular shawls and blankets. The complex stuff has been mothballed, the small projects I usually enjoyed are going "that's nice, but I don't want to do that right now." I know why this is: I'm under such a massive amount of stress between work and family problems that the last thing I need right now is a flippin' challenge. I want something meditative, comforting, and satisfying. Simple-but-not-boring circular pieces are the comfort foods of the knitting world to me right now, and I'm perfectly OK with that.
The problem there is that right now, for example, I finished my comfort project. Now I need to start a new one.
I don't want to start a new one, I just want to work on one. Starting is harder than continuing. Only I don't have that option right now. My options are start something new, work on something that isn't my comfort knitting, or not knit at all. So as soon as I feel up to dodging around the drying shawl so I can ball up some hanked yarn, I'll get going on an Ondas blanket. I know I said I was going to do a Radiating Star blanket next, but I don't want to work on the Radiating Star. I want to work on the Ondas. And in a couple of days if I want to work on the Radiating Star, I'll start it then. Or if instead I decide I want to work on my Maelstrom shawl, I'll cast it on. Hell, I might even get enough of a bug to order the yarn for a Spiderman blanket. (Yes, you read that right. Go look; how cool is that?)
I guess I've just got different hobby needs at different times. Before the economy self-destructed and I ended up doing the work of two or more people, I needed some challenge and the sense of accomplishment from finished projects. Sometime down the line I'll probably feel the need to stash knit, or to kill off UFOs. For now, I need lots of easy comfort knits I can just pick up and do. So, for now, when I get the urge to cast something on, I will do it right then and there so that I don't have to do it when I don't want to. At absolutely worst, there's not much in my stash that can't handle being frogged if I completely change my mind later. Project bags are cheap, after all. I can make project bags if I need more. And UFOs can be put onto scrap yarn for holding if I need to reclaim the needles for something else. There's absolutely no reason not to do this if it's what I need to help maintain my sanity right now.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
I'm glad I hit Ravelry first.
I am desiring a skein winder if I am going to be spinning regularly -- and I certainly plan to be. I have a homemade one from a former acquaintance, and a horizontal 4-arm swift that can also be used to wind. Neither works well. The homemade one was not as well thought out or built as it could have been. As its aged, the 'windmill' portion has started to droop so that the heaviest arm hits the main post in use, and there's no way to fix it because that person used wood glue instead of bolts to fasten it to the post. The horizontal one does not work well for me because I'm five feet tall, which means short arms, which means it's difficult for me to reach the handle without having the end of the arm slam into my tummy.
So, I've been in the market for a vertical skein winder. I had it narrowed down to either a Fricke, or a Will Taylor. Both have marvelous reputations. The Fricke's disadvantage was higher cost, especially for an adjustable one. The Will Taylor's downside is a 2-4 month waiting period, and no built-in counter. A counter is really a necessary to me, and not nearly as common a feature as it should be on skein winders, so I would be hoping that Noellenoodle was still selling her electronic ones when the WT came in. I wouldn't want to order it in advance, since the counter warranty period is about the same as the wait for the winder itself.
It's shocking to me how hard it is to find those add-on counters. It's just a magnetic pick-up! (*eye roll* 'just'. That's the engineer in me talking. ^_~).
Well, I was about ready to order the Will Taylor, realizing there was a risk of not being able to get a counter for it later. But before I did so, I decided to stop in Ravelry's 'Spinner's Marketplace' group to see if anyone was selling a skein winder, or even if I could get a Will Taylor secondhand without a potential 4-month wait. And from there, I was directed to WoodenSpinner's Etsy shop.
Wow. I ordered one of her skeiners right there. I won't be able to comment on the manufacturing until it arrives, but the engineering looks positively brilliant. It's adjustable, but with pegs instead of screws -- no stripping holes with age or having yarn tension slide your skein a little smaller as you go. There's a tensioned bobbin holder right on it, so you don't have to dig out a lazy kate. And of course, a counter. I am a little concerned about one feedback comment that complained about the windmill hitting the main post, which I didn't see until after I had ordered. I'll just have to see how it goes there. With cotter pin construction, though, worst case scenario I could probably knock out the pin and put a shim in place to fix that if it happens.
Anyway, I'm excited. I can't wait until it arrives and I can try it out. I guess I should ply something between now and then. (Ah, plying. My mortal enemy.)
So, I've been in the market for a vertical skein winder. I had it narrowed down to either a Fricke, or a Will Taylor. Both have marvelous reputations. The Fricke's disadvantage was higher cost, especially for an adjustable one. The Will Taylor's downside is a 2-4 month waiting period, and no built-in counter. A counter is really a necessary to me, and not nearly as common a feature as it should be on skein winders, so I would be hoping that Noellenoodle was still selling her electronic ones when the WT came in. I wouldn't want to order it in advance, since the counter warranty period is about the same as the wait for the winder itself.
It's shocking to me how hard it is to find those add-on counters. It's just a magnetic pick-up! (*eye roll* 'just'. That's the engineer in me talking. ^_~).
Well, I was about ready to order the Will Taylor, realizing there was a risk of not being able to get a counter for it later. But before I did so, I decided to stop in Ravelry's 'Spinner's Marketplace' group to see if anyone was selling a skein winder, or even if I could get a Will Taylor secondhand without a potential 4-month wait. And from there, I was directed to WoodenSpinner's Etsy shop.
Wow. I ordered one of her skeiners right there. I won't be able to comment on the manufacturing until it arrives, but the engineering looks positively brilliant. It's adjustable, but with pegs instead of screws -- no stripping holes with age or having yarn tension slide your skein a little smaller as you go. There's a tensioned bobbin holder right on it, so you don't have to dig out a lazy kate. And of course, a counter. I am a little concerned about one feedback comment that complained about the windmill hitting the main post, which I didn't see until after I had ordered. I'll just have to see how it goes there. With cotter pin construction, though, worst case scenario I could probably knock out the pin and put a shim in place to fix that if it happens.
Anyway, I'm excited. I can't wait until it arrives and I can try it out. I guess I should ply something between now and then. (Ah, plying. My mortal enemy.)
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Nice try, but no dice
Some news agencies (ooh, nebulous blamee! You know what you're in for here ;) ) have been reporting more people turning to fiber arts like sewing and knitting during this recession 'to save money over buying'.
That's a stupid statement that can only come from someone who doesn't knit, sew, or otherwise make things for themselves.
The simple fact is that an individual can not compete with a large corporation where manufacturing costs are concerned. You're saving labor costs? Big whoop. Labor costs are a very small part of a soft product's cost. Furthermore, you are often competing with workers making less than $1 a hour and working on machinery that pumps out clothing far faster than the best hand knitter or seamstress could. And forget about getting ahead on materials. You've got to pay retail; the big manufacturers are buying such huge quantities that they can get massive discounts.
If you want to save money, you don't make it yourself; you go to Wal-Mart.
So why are more people knitting and sewing (assuming that is the case)? Because it's a stress reducer. I knit and spin a lot more often when I'm stressed, because it helps relax me. Furthermore, you've got affordable luxuries, another way to take the edge off. When you don't know if you'll have a job in a week, a new TV doesn't seem like such a good idea. $10 of yarn, though, that isn't such a big deal, especially when you're looking at at least 10 hours of stress relief and entertainment.
That's a stupid statement that can only come from someone who doesn't knit, sew, or otherwise make things for themselves.
The simple fact is that an individual can not compete with a large corporation where manufacturing costs are concerned. You're saving labor costs? Big whoop. Labor costs are a very small part of a soft product's cost. Furthermore, you are often competing with workers making less than $1 a hour and working on machinery that pumps out clothing far faster than the best hand knitter or seamstress could. And forget about getting ahead on materials. You've got to pay retail; the big manufacturers are buying such huge quantities that they can get massive discounts.
If you want to save money, you don't make it yourself; you go to Wal-Mart.
So why are more people knitting and sewing (assuming that is the case)? Because it's a stress reducer. I knit and spin a lot more often when I'm stressed, because it helps relax me. Furthermore, you've got affordable luxuries, another way to take the edge off. When you don't know if you'll have a job in a week, a new TV doesn't seem like such a good idea. $10 of yarn, though, that isn't such a big deal, especially when you're looking at at least 10 hours of stress relief and entertainment.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
In Which Kati Waxes About Yarn
My favorite LYS is having a big sale this week, and I didn't go to knit-night as usual because I was sick, so I went in this morning to do a little stash enhancement. And ooh, I thought I'd found the yarn for my Wallaby sweater. It was all cotton but not stringy, pilly, or excessively heavy; surprisingly inexpensive; there was a colorway I really liked and there was just enough of it on the shelf to make a Kati-sized sweater if I cleaned them out. Only one problem: I finally had to admit that as much as I liked it in the skein, that colorway was just not going to look good with my complexion. It was too pink, and too much of a ruddy pink. A little more lavendar could have worked, but not this.
I did, however, buy enough of it for a throw I plan to make next, a radiating star blanket. (The pattern is on Ravelry, but this way all y'all can see what it looks like.) I was planning to do it in Plymouth Kudo, a long-color-repeat cotton/rayon/silk blend I'm looking forward to trying, but the LYS won't be getting it in for a few weeks yet, and I expect to be ready to start my next project before then. Besides, photos of finished projects suggest that the Kudo's color transitions are fairly harsh, and I haven't liked the radiating star blankets I've seen with hard stripes. This may work out better. What I've got is multicolored but not striped. Each ply is a different color, so it should knit up with a tweedy look that hopefully will add visual interest without overwhelming the star pattern.
As I'm shopping, though, I'm realizing that I don't really like buying just one ball to sample with the wool-free stuff. Maybe not so much the alpaca, but with non-animal fibers, I question the usefulness of that single ball in my knitting life. I can do a lot of projects with a single ball of wool (or alpaca, really), depending on the yarn weight: winter hats, scarves, mittens. But cotton or linen doesn't make good winter wear. And there's not a whole lot of other one-skein projects I'm into.
So I'm thinking that I should buy enough for a project I would actually make. Granted, it will cost more that way, but yarn that is never used and never will be is money wasted. A lot of people do this and buy sweater quantities. I'm not willing to go that far, though. I am not a small woman.
Actually, an aside here. I'm a slightly-below-average woman -- which is absolutely unforgiveable in this country. This article here makes an excellent point right in the first 2 paragraphs: the average American man is a little bigger than designers think, but he can walk into any non-specialty store in the country and find fashionable clothes that fit him, look good on him, and unless he is very eccentric, suit his tastes.
The average woman, on the other hand, is defined as "plus size". If you've ever tried to shop plus-size clothing (and statistically speaking, more than half the women reading this have), then you know that plus-size is the nemesis of fashionable, or good fit, or variety, or generally worth wearing except to not be naked. More than half of the female population is defined as niche! It's insane, it's stupid, there's no logical reason for it, but institutionalized sexism sure explains it well.
I also like the quote from the model on the second page, who is considered "plus size" because she wears a 10 (horrors!): "On the street, I'm skinny. At castings, I'm a cow." This is getting into "scary stuff" land.
Anyway, back to yarn. A sweater for an average size person takes between 1500 and 2000 yards of yarn. I don't care to buy quite that much at once, especially since that would typically be over a $100. Not always; the yarn I was looking at today would have been around $50 for the 1800 yards I need for the Wallaby (as I said, unusually inexpensive), but usually good basic yarns starts around $3/100 yards and goes up from there.
However, I have REALLY been enjoying working on a simple circular shawl. Specifically a Strawberry Pie Shawl somewhat blasphemously converted into a circle instead of semicircle. (I say blasphemous because the design specifically made it semicircular because she doesn't like circular shawls.) The radiating star blanket is the same general idea, as are several others on my list to do. They're easy, sometimes I don't even have to carry the pattern which makes them excellent waiting room knitting, you can pick them up and put them down at any point because they're circular, and they look awesome. The nasty critical part of me gripes "isn't that a waste of your mad knitting skillz", but the rest of me goes "Maybe, but I don't care because it's so damn fun! Nyah!"
One of those in worsted or bulky takes 500 to 600 yards of yarn. That's a doable quantity to buy at a time. Not necessarily cheap in some stuff, but doable. And there's a lot of flexibility in what fiber you use. Even a cotton blanket can be nice when the themostat is just a little low, or if you want something to sit on at the park. Or just to look nice draped across furniture.
Thinner yarns will take more yards, but they also come more per skein. I'll just have to dig into some patterns I like and figure out some average yardages.
So, in conclusion: Yay yarn!
I did, however, buy enough of it for a throw I plan to make next, a radiating star blanket. (The pattern is on Ravelry, but this way all y'all can see what it looks like.) I was planning to do it in Plymouth Kudo, a long-color-repeat cotton/rayon/silk blend I'm looking forward to trying, but the LYS won't be getting it in for a few weeks yet, and I expect to be ready to start my next project before then. Besides, photos of finished projects suggest that the Kudo's color transitions are fairly harsh, and I haven't liked the radiating star blankets I've seen with hard stripes. This may work out better. What I've got is multicolored but not striped. Each ply is a different color, so it should knit up with a tweedy look that hopefully will add visual interest without overwhelming the star pattern.
As I'm shopping, though, I'm realizing that I don't really like buying just one ball to sample with the wool-free stuff. Maybe not so much the alpaca, but with non-animal fibers, I question the usefulness of that single ball in my knitting life. I can do a lot of projects with a single ball of wool (or alpaca, really), depending on the yarn weight: winter hats, scarves, mittens. But cotton or linen doesn't make good winter wear. And there's not a whole lot of other one-skein projects I'm into.
So I'm thinking that I should buy enough for a project I would actually make. Granted, it will cost more that way, but yarn that is never used and never will be is money wasted. A lot of people do this and buy sweater quantities. I'm not willing to go that far, though. I am not a small woman.
Actually, an aside here. I'm a slightly-below-average woman -- which is absolutely unforgiveable in this country. This article here makes an excellent point right in the first 2 paragraphs: the average American man is a little bigger than designers think, but he can walk into any non-specialty store in the country and find fashionable clothes that fit him, look good on him, and unless he is very eccentric, suit his tastes.
The average woman, on the other hand, is defined as "plus size". If you've ever tried to shop plus-size clothing (and statistically speaking, more than half the women reading this have), then you know that plus-size is the nemesis of fashionable, or good fit, or variety, or generally worth wearing except to not be naked. More than half of the female population is defined as niche! It's insane, it's stupid, there's no logical reason for it, but institutionalized sexism sure explains it well.
I also like the quote from the model on the second page, who is considered "plus size" because she wears a 10 (horrors!): "On the street, I'm skinny. At castings, I'm a cow." This is getting into "scary stuff" land.
Anyway, back to yarn. A sweater for an average size person takes between 1500 and 2000 yards of yarn. I don't care to buy quite that much at once, especially since that would typically be over a $100. Not always; the yarn I was looking at today would have been around $50 for the 1800 yards I need for the Wallaby (as I said, unusually inexpensive), but usually good basic yarns starts around $3/100 yards and goes up from there.
However, I have REALLY been enjoying working on a simple circular shawl. Specifically a Strawberry Pie Shawl somewhat blasphemously converted into a circle instead of semicircle. (I say blasphemous because the design specifically made it semicircular because she doesn't like circular shawls.) The radiating star blanket is the same general idea, as are several others on my list to do. They're easy, sometimes I don't even have to carry the pattern which makes them excellent waiting room knitting, you can pick them up and put them down at any point because they're circular, and they look awesome. The nasty critical part of me gripes "isn't that a waste of your mad knitting skillz", but the rest of me goes "Maybe, but I don't care because it's so damn fun! Nyah!"
One of those in worsted or bulky takes 500 to 600 yards of yarn. That's a doable quantity to buy at a time. Not necessarily cheap in some stuff, but doable. And there's a lot of flexibility in what fiber you use. Even a cotton blanket can be nice when the themostat is just a little low, or if you want something to sit on at the park. Or just to look nice draped across furniture.
Thinner yarns will take more yards, but they also come more per skein. I'll just have to dig into some patterns I like and figure out some average yardages.
So, in conclusion: Yay yarn!
Saturday, March 21, 2009
I'm going to be testing yarns FOREVER...
I went and became obsessed with the Wonderful Wallaby sweater pattern. It's a pullover hoodie with a kangaroo pouch, that's all, but it looks like it'd be fun to do and comfy to wear. The problem now is choosing a sweater yarn.
A year ago, this would have been easy. I would have gone to Jojoland and ordered a buttload of Rhythm in either M05, M06, or M13.
But nooooooo, I have to have a wool-allergic cat and an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. :P
Doing a search on finished projects on Ravelry with wool and merino filtered out doesn't really bring up anything that grabs me and goes "Me! You want to make one just like me!"
I'm probably going to have to swallow my pride and use an acrylic blend. The idea of doing this in pure cotton makes me woozy just thinking about it. My poor hands, to say nothing of the weight! Linen and hemp have the same hand problem, although less weight, but more cost. Alpaca would cost, maybe not more than I'd care to spend, but enough to make me think twice or thrice about my choice, and I think it would be too hot for me to wear most of the time. Not that acrylic is much better in the heat department. Acrylic yarns have this unfortunate trait that they don't breath, so I personally tend to get hot wearing them in moderate temperatures, but at the same time they don't insulate well in cold temps.
Still, since the Uber-fiber is verboten, the fact is that none of my remaining options are really ideal. So, I think I'm going to be doing a lot of sampling before I commit to a yarn, although you never know. I might get lucky on my first or second try and go "yup, this is it."
I at least have a start on it. I went to Hobby Lobby today and picked up skeins of several different yarns I wanted to try for it (although I forgot to get one of Lion Cotton-Ease. I seem to have this mental block where Lion yarns are concerned). They include Caron Simply Soft Shadows, a 100% acrylic but with a long color repeat, which I like; Bernat Denim Style, which was on sale and looked like it had potential; Hobby Lobby's house brand I Love This Cotton, which is probably a bit thin and would have to soften up quite a bit in the wash; and Patons new Silk Bamboo, which is surprisingly around the middle of the price range I'm willing to pay.
I decided to borrow the "swatch tube" idea from the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook, except work it comfortably around 16" circulars for heavier yarns. Who knows, maybe down the line it'll make a nifty scarf, or can be turned into Christmas stockings, or something. In any event, since I'm not nearly as familiar with wool-free yarns as I am with the wool that's out there, there's going to be a lot of swatching in my future until I get some staple yarns settled on.
I started the sample tube off with some Andean Treasure from Knitpicks, which is 100% alpaca. It actually feels pretty nice, but it's the most expensive option on my list right now AND none of the colors really grab me. If only one of those were true, I'd probably have my sweater yarn picked out already, but with both of them working against, I'll probably try a few other things before making a decision.
I guess I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed. There doesn't seem to be a clear best choice for me right now, and it's going to take some patience to come up with the best of available options.
A year ago, this would have been easy. I would have gone to Jojoland and ordered a buttload of Rhythm in either M05, M06, or M13.
But nooooooo, I have to have a wool-allergic cat and an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. :P
Doing a search on finished projects on Ravelry with wool and merino filtered out doesn't really bring up anything that grabs me and goes "Me! You want to make one just like me!"
I'm probably going to have to swallow my pride and use an acrylic blend. The idea of doing this in pure cotton makes me woozy just thinking about it. My poor hands, to say nothing of the weight! Linen and hemp have the same hand problem, although less weight, but more cost. Alpaca would cost, maybe not more than I'd care to spend, but enough to make me think twice or thrice about my choice, and I think it would be too hot for me to wear most of the time. Not that acrylic is much better in the heat department. Acrylic yarns have this unfortunate trait that they don't breath, so I personally tend to get hot wearing them in moderate temperatures, but at the same time they don't insulate well in cold temps.
Still, since the Uber-fiber is verboten, the fact is that none of my remaining options are really ideal. So, I think I'm going to be doing a lot of sampling before I commit to a yarn, although you never know. I might get lucky on my first or second try and go "yup, this is it."
I at least have a start on it. I went to Hobby Lobby today and picked up skeins of several different yarns I wanted to try for it (although I forgot to get one of Lion Cotton-Ease. I seem to have this mental block where Lion yarns are concerned). They include Caron Simply Soft Shadows, a 100% acrylic but with a long color repeat, which I like; Bernat Denim Style, which was on sale and looked like it had potential; Hobby Lobby's house brand I Love This Cotton, which is probably a bit thin and would have to soften up quite a bit in the wash; and Patons new Silk Bamboo, which is surprisingly around the middle of the price range I'm willing to pay.
I decided to borrow the "swatch tube" idea from the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook, except work it comfortably around 16" circulars for heavier yarns. Who knows, maybe down the line it'll make a nifty scarf, or can be turned into Christmas stockings, or something. In any event, since I'm not nearly as familiar with wool-free yarns as I am with the wool that's out there, there's going to be a lot of swatching in my future until I get some staple yarns settled on.
I started the sample tube off with some Andean Treasure from Knitpicks, which is 100% alpaca. It actually feels pretty nice, but it's the most expensive option on my list right now AND none of the colors really grab me. If only one of those were true, I'd probably have my sweater yarn picked out already, but with both of them working against, I'll probably try a few other things before making a decision.
I guess I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed. There doesn't seem to be a clear best choice for me right now, and it's going to take some patience to come up with the best of available options.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Project Musings
I am wanting to make a Strawberry Pie Shawl with some pink Elann Baby Silk I got in a swap.
Well, kinda.
I don't get how she wrote the strawberries. When I follow her instructions I get lopsided thingies I don't care for. I don't know if it's her or me, but I recharted the strawberries.
And I don't think the shape was fully thought out. It appears the thought process was "I don't want a solid circle. What I want to do is take a circle and cut a slit in it so that it goes on like a cape." So there are normal circular increases, but when you reach the end of a 'round', instead of going around, you turn and knit back in rows. Sounds like it should work, right?
Not if you're using spiraling increases.
It's got this odd shape where one side is straight and the other's flared. It's very obvious why that happens. Each 'wedge' has increases on the right side, only. So your right side has increases, and the left doesn't. In circular knitting, you just keep going around and that's cool, but in back and forth, not so much.
So, I'm trying to figure out how to address this.
I could just do it as a circular shawl. That actually makes things easier, because it becomes all knitting instead of having to purl back across some long-ass rows at the end there. But, I'm not completely sure I want a circular shawl. They take more futzing to wear, and really need a shawl pin. (Although that would be a good excuse to get myself a nice shawl pin. ;) )
To keep it cape-like, I don't think I could just put another increase at the other end, because then that last wedge is going to grow faster than the others. Even if that would work, then both ends will flare, and that will hang oddly. Trying to straighten the increases wouldn't really be practical; single increases in circular knitting naturally want to spiral.
So, after mentally rambling for far too long, I guess my options are J-shaped or circular. If I can't have what I really want without lots of redesign, I'll go for the option that saves me metric buttloads of purling. I'll do circular.
Well, kinda.
I don't get how she wrote the strawberries. When I follow her instructions I get lopsided thingies I don't care for. I don't know if it's her or me, but I recharted the strawberries.
And I don't think the shape was fully thought out. It appears the thought process was "I don't want a solid circle. What I want to do is take a circle and cut a slit in it so that it goes on like a cape." So there are normal circular increases, but when you reach the end of a 'round', instead of going around, you turn and knit back in rows. Sounds like it should work, right?
Not if you're using spiraling increases.
It's got this odd shape where one side is straight and the other's flared. It's very obvious why that happens. Each 'wedge' has increases on the right side, only. So your right side has increases, and the left doesn't. In circular knitting, you just keep going around and that's cool, but in back and forth, not so much.
So, I'm trying to figure out how to address this.
I could just do it as a circular shawl. That actually makes things easier, because it becomes all knitting instead of having to purl back across some long-ass rows at the end there. But, I'm not completely sure I want a circular shawl. They take more futzing to wear, and really need a shawl pin. (Although that would be a good excuse to get myself a nice shawl pin. ;) )
To keep it cape-like, I don't think I could just put another increase at the other end, because then that last wedge is going to grow faster than the others. Even if that would work, then both ends will flare, and that will hang oddly. Trying to straighten the increases wouldn't really be practical; single increases in circular knitting naturally want to spiral.
So, after mentally rambling for far too long, I guess my options are J-shaped or circular. If I can't have what I really want without lots of redesign, I'll go for the option that saves me metric buttloads of purling. I'll do circular.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
If it pisses off the bigots, it's gotta be good!
1) The "Conservative Knitters" group on Ravelry might as well be renamed "Bigots R Us." (Stumbled into it by accident via another member's profile.)
2) Although not directly related to that, they made me laugh quite heartily with their hypocrisy, too. Direct quote: "No surprise that she is a nasty lefty (but that’s redundant). She isn’t satisfied with talking about her book, she has to go insult conservatives." Look me in the eye and tell me you didn't snert.
3) This is the book that has them all a fluster. You can see just how horrible and insulting it is. (Hell yes I want a copy.)
2) Although not directly related to that, they made me laugh quite heartily with their hypocrisy, too. Direct quote: "No surprise that she is a nasty lefty (but that’s redundant). She isn’t satisfied with talking about her book, she has to go insult conservatives." Look me in the eye and tell me you didn't snert.
3) This is the book that has them all a fluster. You can see just how horrible and insulting it is. (Hell yes I want a copy.)
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Today's Awesome Vendor Award Goes To...
Sophie's Fine Yarn Shoppe.
Due to my new wool-free status, I was looking for some alpaca or llama in yellow/gold to make a Gryffindor-colored felted hedgehog. (No, I don't have a reason for a Gryffindor hedgie. I just want one.) My wonderful LYS identified a likely candidate, Alpaca with a Twist Baby Twist in Lemon Zest, but they don't carry it themselves and I couldn't make up the minimum order.
Well, a search of the internet suggests that Sophie's is the only place in the States that carries the Lemon Zest. Which is awesome, but not why they get the awesome vendor award. I placed an order with them for (1) 50 g ball of yellow, (1) 50 g ball of red, and (1) 50 g ball of grey to fart around with.
Package arrived today. I opened it, dumped it out, and out came (1) 50 g ball of yellow, (1) 50 g ball of grey, and (1) ginormous hank of red. Baby Twist comes in two sizes, 50 g and 250 g. The 250g hanks do not give you a discount. So immediately I think "Oh no, what stupid-ass thing did I do? I could have sworn the check-out was priced for three small balls." So I look for the invoice to try to figure out how I screwed up this order, and on it is a little sticky note:
"We have sent a jumbo hank of Red at no additional charge as the small hanks are backordered."
O_O
Guys, one hank costs more than my entire order. They just sent one along instead of making me wait for a back-order or asking if I want to cancel? First time, small order customer? WOW! That is above and beyond in the area of customer service.
I know where I will be getting my Alpaca With A Twist from now on.
Due to my new wool-free status, I was looking for some alpaca or llama in yellow/gold to make a Gryffindor-colored felted hedgehog. (No, I don't have a reason for a Gryffindor hedgie. I just want one.) My wonderful LYS identified a likely candidate, Alpaca with a Twist Baby Twist in Lemon Zest, but they don't carry it themselves and I couldn't make up the minimum order.
Well, a search of the internet suggests that Sophie's is the only place in the States that carries the Lemon Zest. Which is awesome, but not why they get the awesome vendor award. I placed an order with them for (1) 50 g ball of yellow, (1) 50 g ball of red, and (1) 50 g ball of grey to fart around with.
Package arrived today. I opened it, dumped it out, and out came (1) 50 g ball of yellow, (1) 50 g ball of grey, and (1) ginormous hank of red. Baby Twist comes in two sizes, 50 g and 250 g. The 250g hanks do not give you a discount. So immediately I think "Oh no, what stupid-ass thing did I do? I could have sworn the check-out was priced for three small balls." So I look for the invoice to try to figure out how I screwed up this order, and on it is a little sticky note:
"We have sent a jumbo hank of Red at no additional charge as the small hanks are backordered."
O_O
Guys, one hank costs more than my entire order. They just sent one along instead of making me wait for a back-order or asking if I want to cancel? First time, small order customer? WOW! That is above and beyond in the area of customer service.
I know where I will be getting my Alpaca With A Twist from now on.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Why I Am Sad.
That's minus a week's worth of stuff I've already traded off, BTW. There's still some stash that needs to be sorted, but it's mostly... yeah.
In general, there's also a big quality difference between the stuff in tub A and the stuff in tub B, too. :P
I'm thinking I might as well drop out of my "stash knit down" group. That tub on the left there, that's not a stash. That's leftovers. I can't go shopping in there! :P
Look, you didn't even get your PUN right.
Ravelry sells ad space to knitting stuff. Tasteful, out of the way, they've got to finance the largest fiber arts site on the planet, and some of the stuff advertised is really awesome, so that's cool.
One ad I was today was for Knitch Magazine, a new online magazine for knitting fashion.
Uh huh. I'm not going to say anything bad about the content except that I really sincerely doubt that monk's robes are going to be the hottest thing in evening wear this year. Or day wear, for that matter.
However, the word I think they're trying to pun there is "niche". Notice the 'e' on the end. Despite what teh internets seems to think, "nitch" is not even a word. And "knitch" is a terribly arcane word meaning a bundle of plant stalks.
Suffice to say, I am less than impressed.
One ad I was today was for Knitch Magazine, a new online magazine for knitting fashion.
Uh huh. I'm not going to say anything bad about the content except that I really sincerely doubt that monk's robes are going to be the hottest thing in evening wear this year. Or day wear, for that matter.
However, the word I think they're trying to pun there is "niche". Notice the 'e' on the end. Despite what teh internets seems to think, "nitch" is not even a word. And "knitch" is a terribly arcane word meaning a bundle of plant stalks.
Suffice to say, I am less than impressed.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Source of All The Trouble
Some very nice people wanted to see the kitty for whom I am dumping most of my wool fiber, so here's my pretty girl:
Here she is with another cat, Malcolm. No good can come of this.
See, I told ya.
This photo here succintly demonstrates the problem:
(That's pre-haircut and pre-house-recovery, BTW.)
She knows she's worth it.
Here she is with another cat, Malcolm. No good can come of this.
See, I told ya.
This photo here succintly demonstrates the problem:
(That's pre-haircut and pre-house-recovery, BTW.)
She knows she's worth it.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Well, that was depressing.
As I wrote about the other day, it turns out that my cat Mara is allergic to wool among other things. The vet is sending me a complete list of what she was tested for and what substances were positive. (So there's always the hope that maybe it was lanolin or sheep dander and not actually wool. The vet tech on the phone was having trouble reading off some technical term and then went "oh, wool!", so maybe she made a mistake. I'm not going to plan on it, though.)
Although she has other allergens, wool is the easiest of the ones I know about for me to manage, so for now I'm concentrating on it and the dust mites. Of course, I knit and spin, so this is not a trivial activity.
And that what brings me to what was depressing: preparation for major destash. I've decided that if it's got wool and I don't love it, I'm going to try to destash it.
In the next few days, I'm going to try to put together a page of some of the wool-containing yarns I need to destash, and open a "want to trade" post on the nicer of my regular knitting boards. I'll come out ahead if I can trade for wool-free yarn, even if it isn't a one-for-one trade, but that's probably not going to get a whole lot of takers. What's left there will go up for sale on Ravelry, where I won't get much for it. I don't know a better place to go, though.
Although she has other allergens, wool is the easiest of the ones I know about for me to manage, so for now I'm concentrating on it and the dust mites. Of course, I knit and spin, so this is not a trivial activity.
And that what brings me to what was depressing: preparation for major destash. I've decided that if it's got wool and I don't love it, I'm going to try to destash it.
- I have a lot of wool and wool blend yarn. I divided up the portion of stash I already had organized so wool was in one storage tub and wool-free in another. The wool tub was about 1/4 full. The wool-free had four items in it. :P
- If you're not a retailer, you can't get a good price for yarn. Especially the single balls I've got. If I get back half of what I paid on any given item, I'll probably be lucky.
In the next few days, I'm going to try to put together a page of some of the wool-containing yarns I need to destash, and open a "want to trade" post on the nicer of my regular knitting boards. I'll come out ahead if I can trade for wool-free yarn, even if it isn't a one-for-one trade, but that's probably not going to get a whole lot of takers. What's left there will go up for sale on Ravelry, where I won't get much for it. I don't know a better place to go, though.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Oh no! She's allergic to WHAT?!
Last month I had a pretty impressive vet bill for my cat Mara because she needed an allergy test. She just keeps getting infections and irritations in her ears and other parts, and it will help her a lot if we find out what it is and work to desensitize her to it.
Well, the results came back today, with several positives. Ragweed and a few other weeds that don't surprise me. The dust mites I was dreading, but that can be handled. But then came the last thing on the list: sheep's wool.
SHEEP'S WOOL?! O_O
I knit and spin. There is sheep's wool EVERYWHERE. You walk in the living room, there's sheep's wool cat toys. (Well, not any more, but there was one sitting right in front of me as I talked to the vet.) Walk into my bedroom, there's a wool hat and pair of slippers on my dresser. We won't even talk about the craft room, with the wool spinning fiber and the wool yarn. Go downstairs, there's a flippin' fleece in the laundry room. My mittens are wool. My winter hat is wool. The scarf I just finished is wool! The sweater I'm knitting on is wool. The shawl I'm making... Well, that one's alpaca, so that's OK. But still!
I'm really not sure how I'm going to manage this one. I'll do my best to keep wool away from her, but there's so bloody much of it! 90% of my stash just became verbotten. And technically the other 10% is contaminated. Thankfully it's not a matter of life and death. Given that, though, and given how much of it there is,I think I'm going to have to go for a "minimal harm" model. Keep her out of the craft room, put wool items in that room as I find them, put her in another room if I want to work with wool outside of the craft room, always wash my hands after doing so (or wearing my mittens) before touching her,and trying to minimize or eliminate wool from future incoming stash. Any other ideas?
I guess, as much as the cover offends me, that a copy of No Sheep For You is in my future. I know my LYS carries it.
So, how about some vibes for the desensitizing medicine to work and work fast? (And hope she doesn't bite my hand off at getting pilled every single day.)
Well, the results came back today, with several positives. Ragweed and a few other weeds that don't surprise me. The dust mites I was dreading, but that can be handled. But then came the last thing on the list: sheep's wool.
SHEEP'S WOOL?! O_O
I knit and spin. There is sheep's wool EVERYWHERE. You walk in the living room, there's sheep's wool cat toys. (Well, not any more, but there was one sitting right in front of me as I talked to the vet.) Walk into my bedroom, there's a wool hat and pair of slippers on my dresser. We won't even talk about the craft room, with the wool spinning fiber and the wool yarn. Go downstairs, there's a flippin' fleece in the laundry room. My mittens are wool. My winter hat is wool. The scarf I just finished is wool! The sweater I'm knitting on is wool. The shawl I'm making... Well, that one's alpaca, so that's OK. But still!
I'm really not sure how I'm going to manage this one. I'll do my best to keep wool away from her, but there's so bloody much of it! 90% of my stash just became verbotten. And technically the other 10% is contaminated. Thankfully it's not a matter of life and death. Given that, though, and given how much of it there is,I think I'm going to have to go for a "minimal harm" model. Keep her out of the craft room, put wool items in that room as I find them, put her in another room if I want to work with wool outside of the craft room, always wash my hands after doing so (or wearing my mittens) before touching her,and trying to minimize or eliminate wool from future incoming stash. Any other ideas?
I guess, as much as the cover offends me, that a copy of No Sheep For You is in my future. I know my LYS carries it.
So, how about some vibes for the desensitizing medicine to work and work fast? (And hope she doesn't bite my hand off at getting pilled every single day.)
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Lookie what I finished!
My tiger eye scarf!
They look more like owls than tigers to me, but I still really like this pattern. I've been working on this guy since late May. Not exclusively, of course, but it has been my main project for the last month or more.
Just in time for the cold weather to move in (again).
They look more like owls than tigers to me, but I still really like this pattern. I've been working on this guy since late May. Not exclusively, of course, but it has been my main project for the last month or more.
Just in time for the cold weather to move in (again).
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