o v e r b r e w e d

A longer and more comprehensive post will have to wait until next week…for now, a short list.

1.) I ended up cutting down my Christmas knitting to the absolute bare essentials…the Ravenclaw scarf, and a pair of cabled booties from One Skein. My grandparents and one aunt don’t celebrate any holidays period, so I didn’t see any point in pushing myself to get their stuff done. And since our weather is once again way too warm, the Spartan Pullover for Chris has been put on the backburner as well. Pictures of the scarf and booties will be waiting until next week as well, I want action shots! That, and they’re already wrapped.

2.) I just finished putting together a batch of Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats, and am now taking a much needed breather. The rest of the weekend is going to be even more hectic…lots of cleaning, baking, and last minute craftyness in the form of tiny pinata thingies to fill with candy and hang on the tree. I just have to remember now to make sure and hang them high enough on the tree so that Wrigley doesn’t catch a whiff of chocolate and decide to knock the tree over again. It’s amazing how much damage a 20lb dachsund can do when he sets his mind to it.

3.) I, erm, just mailed out Christmas cards today. Whoops?

4.) Chris managed to buy me the exact same thing that I bought him as a stocking stuffer. I only know this because I was moving presents out of the way so I could put more water in the tree stand, and Chris is a horrid present wrapper and just wrapped it without putting it in a box first. Oh well, one can never have too many salt grinders, right?

5.) I am ridiculously gleeful about the final Harry Potter title. I know, I know…my mega-geek is showing, but whatever. I’ll probably be completely off target once again with my predictions, but Deathly Hallows just screams Founders relics turned horcruxes in an almost perfect mirror of the Grail Hallows. I’ve been saying for years that the series matches up quite well with Arthurian legend, and oh, how I hope i’m right. Now i’m just crossing my fingers that the broken prophesies from OotP mean a release on the Summer Solstice of ‘08, but even if they don’t they still fit nicely with the release of the title.

So yeah. Next post will include pictures and resolutions…including my personalised Knit From Your Stash rules. Until then, Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you have a great holiday.

I should be knitting.  Christmas is in 16 days and I don’t have a single thing finished, so one would think I would be knitting constantly.  Ha.  I spent an entire day untangling a skein of KnitPicks bare sock yarn (Thanks again, Kimba!), and then another day dyeing/untangling again.  I really need to learn how to wind a warp board.

So, yarn!  I really really like this colorway, although if I do it again, I think i’ll add in some coppery brown to balance the brightness a bit.  I still have about 6oz of undyed roving, so I might dye it up instead and attempt to get some decent spinning done.  I used Wilton Icing dyes, since I have every color under the sun and i’m too cheap to go buy  acid dyes.

It’s ridiculously bright outside, so the colors aren’t exact…they’re quite a bit darker, and that orange-y color is actually a nice deep dusty rose.  Still, I think they will make some fun stripey socks, even if I didn’t pay much attention to keeping things even when I warped the yarn.

I’ve also been asked to knit a baby sweater for one of my aunts co-worker’s grandson, and I have NO idea what to charge.  I’m waiting to hear back on yarn preference, so I know that will play a part in deciding, but like…how do you figure up a total price?  It won’t be a big project, obviously…maybe 2 days of knitting.  Ugh, i’m clueless.

Just a quickie picture post before I plop down in front of the tv to work on ornaments.  The holiday cheer is out in full force this weekend…it pretty much hit me overnight as last week I was rather apathetic about the whole Christmas thing.  I have a feeling i’m going to drive Chris bananas before i’m done, heh.

First up, some newly dyed roving.  Wilton Icing Dyes + the dishwasher?  Love.  I like that I could pop them in the dishwasher and let it do its magic while I was out running errands.  This is all going to be ornaments, most likely in the form of felted balls.

Ah, my very first handspun.  It is absolutely horrid, but i’m going to work it into ornaments as well.  Eventually, i’m sure i’ll look back on it with something similar to fondness.

My first batch of kool-aid dyed sock yarn.   This was ridiculously fun to do…I set up a warp board so I could make it self striping then mixed kool-aid packets with wild abandon.  The colorway annoyed me at first, but now the neon eye-bleedingness of it is growing on me.  I can’t wait to knit it up, once I get all 500 yards untangled anyway.  Damn cat.

Speaking of the damn cat, here he is napping on the sock yarn after he tangled it up.  He loves wool more than catnip, and that’s saying a lot, considering he’s an absolute nip-junkie.

Sigh.  Apparently, my purse is his new bed.  If I leave it sitting on the bar for any amount of time, he crawls in and makes himself at home.  He’s a brat.

Of course because I posted yesterday that our temperatures were still in the 80s, I wake up to a high of 37. Oh, Texas, your weather never fails to drive me completely batshit. I suppose now I really should get those knucks finished.* Good thing I organised my stash a little bit last night, so I can actually find what I need.

Giftmas knitting is still going…slowly. Very slowly. I just can’t seem to concentrate, which is the reason I was organising my stash at midnight. If I actually could get my act together and stick with one thing, I would actually be able to finish in a reasonable amount of time. I only have 4 stripes left on the ghetto scarf, which I could easily knock out today and still have time to get started on the matching mittens. But no, i’ll probably knit a few rows, maybe half a stripe, then get distracted by something shiny. Someone needs to invent a pill for the KADD afflicted. Although, tonight is a new episode of Jim and Pam dancing around each other and driving me bananas, so maybe there is still hope for a decent amount of work being done. We’ll see.
*I’m sure once I do get them finished, we’ll have another spell of stupidly warm weather.

First off, to all of you talking about snow?  I hate you.  It’s still almost 80 degrees here.  I’m beginning to think my sweater boxes are going to stay under the bed all season.  Ugh.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and a little research, on opening a yarn store.  See, used to be, my ultimate dream/goal/whatever was to open a combination book store/cafe/tea shop thing.  I’ve had it all planned out in my head for years…what the store will look like all the way down to the color scheme,  even the types of books I would carry.  But lately, i’m thinking that adding in an area for fiber arts would really be the perfect store.  This area needs a decent yarn shop desperately…like i’ve mentioned earlier, the closest shop sells crap you can get at any Hobby Lobby or Wal Mart, and the next closest (while an absolutely lovely shop) is way too far to drive to really consider it worthwhile.  The problem, however, is how to gauge interest.  Are there enough knitters/crocheters in the area to support a shop?  Or, more importantly, are those same knitters/crocheters actually interested in working with quality fiber, or are they happy getting a “deal” by buying Red Heart and other cheap acrylics?  I’ve checked around the web, and from what I can find there are no SnB meetups, or any knitting meetups whatsoever in this area, so feedback from a local group is pretty much impossible. On the plus side, considering how ridiculously busy Hobby Lobby always is, I know this area boasts a large community of crafters in general.  Add to that, this is a university town, with a good size population of the new target demographic for knitters.

Honestly, considering the type of community Nacogdoches is, you would expect it to throw out the red carpet, host a parade, etc., etc., when it comes to someone opening a yarn store.  It’s still a Main Street town where pretty much everybody knows everybody else.  They welcome, and prefer, the small business owner over larger corporations.  So really, you would think this would be the perfect place to set up shop.  But how are you supposed to know if you can succeed?

I’m well aware of the fact that opening a shop would not make me rich.  That’s not what i’m in this for.  I simply want a place where people can buy quality supplies, and be comfortable.  When I visit other yarn shops, I feel like i’m coming home.  The atmosphere (for the most part) is inviting and warm.  You feel an instant camaraderie with both the patrons and employees…these are people with (generally) the same interests and values as you.  You feel like you can sit down, introduce yourself, and instantly bond with your fellow crafters.  That is what I want, and that is what this town would benefit from.  Now, i’m not saying that every shop i’ve visited is the same way…some shops snub their noses at beginners, some automatically think you are beneath them because you dared to visit the sales bins before looking at the full priced fiber.  But a good shop, a shop that embraces and practices what it truly means to be a crafter, is a shop that you could easily come to think of as you home away from home.  That is what I want.

Feh.  It’s  hard to put into words how I really feel about all of this.  I just know this is what I want, even though I am well aware of the fact that the chance of me actually achieving this is slim to none.  Oh well, it never hurts to dream, right?

(On a funny note, Chris and I were discussing this same topic the other night over dinner.  He, getting the look on his face that says he’s just stumbled upon the answer to solving the latest global crisis, informed me that if I ever did open a shop, I should call it KnitWits.  I tried (really I did), not to laugh as I informed him that Knit Wits was, in fact, a very common name in the knitting world.  This didn’t phase him though…he just went on to ramble about how, instead of a book shop, I should combine a yarn shop with a laundromat.  A laundromat with clothes eating machinery, no less.  Sometimes he worries me.)

So yesterday the plan was to head over to the old home place and help my aunt set up her new computer. Instead, I made the mistake of glancing through the yarn store lists at the back of the new IK in the desperate hope that a new yarn store would have magically appeared somewhere within driving distance. Lucky for me and unfortunately for my credit card, I actually found one. So, instead of spending the day tangled up in wires and USB cables, I dragged my aunt and grandmother out of the house to join me on my quest for non-icky yarn.

To be completely honest, I wasn’t holding out much hope that this shop would be any better than the last I tried. While it wasn’t quite up to par with The Woolie Ewe, Rose Path Weaving was a lovely little store. I knew I (or rather, my credit card) was doomed the minute I walked in…the very first thing you see is a shelf full of gorgeous sock yarn. Opal, Lorna’s Laces, Claudia’s Handpainted, Koigu, Regia, and Supersocke 100 all jumbled together in colorful abandon. No Lion Brand or Red Heart anywhere. It was a beautiful thing. I think I spent over an hour in this teeny tiny shop…I dug through every shelf at least 3 times. The staff was ridiculously friendly and helpful; they were even nice to my grandmother (who is just learning to knit)…all the other stores we’ve been to, the staff has looked down their noses at her and basically gave her the brush off when she tried to ask questions. The back of the shop was taken up by ladies working at looms, which was very interesting to watch. If I didn’t live over an hour away from the store, i’d probably take weaving lessons there, just for the hell of it. They also had a good selection of fiber, spindles, and wheels, the latter of which i’ll be taking advantage of once I have some extra cash. I can definitely say I will be headed back to this shop sometime soon, gorgeous yarn that close to me is not something I can ignore. Plus, they have a spinning workshop twice a year…I can’t pass that up.

I picked up a ball of Opal, 2 hanks Lorna’s Laces, another skein of Ultra Alpaca (originally for some cabled fingerless mitts, but now possibly for the Brea Bag because it’s adorable), some Silky Tweed for a modified Dream Swatch for my grandmother, a drop spindle, and 1lb of Corriedale roving. I absolutely cannot wait to start spinning…I just have to decide whether I want to dye the roving first, or spin it up and then dye it. I also grabbed a copy of Spin to Knit and Knitting Vintage Socks from Barnes and Noble, both are excellent.

And finally, before I go on rambling about my stash additions, two FOs.

Pattern: My own…just a plain round yoke cardigan
Yarn: Bernat Cotton Tots…ugh. Never ever ever using this yarn again, it pills and fuzzes like crazy and kept me sneezing all through the knitting. It also makes the knitting a bit bumpy, so the finished object doesn’t look very polished. The button band got all bumpy after washing too, even though I know I didn’t pick up too many stitches…it looked fine before washing.

Pattern: Dream Swatch Head Wrap
Yarn: Berroco Soft Twist. This yarn is pretty, and looks great knitted up, but it’s a bitch to work with. The rayon splits and breaks easily and you have to pay really pay close attention to your work.
Mods: I love this pattern but I didn’t want a scarf, so I knit a 3 stitch I-cord for a tie then worked bar increases until I got to the cast on number for the original pattern. I worked in pattern until it was a good length for a headband, then decreased back down to 3 stitches and finished it off with another I-cord tie. Eeasy peasy. (And sorry about the horrid picture…it was the last picture before my camera batteries died, and now that I have new batteries I can’t be bothered to take another picture of myself. My hair isn’t usually that 80s-esque. Unfortunately, however, I am always that pale.)

Apparently, all one needs in order to successfully break through a knitting funk is a new project, a Harry Potter dvd, and an extra large cup of tea.

Witness the beginnings of Baby Cardigan #2, currently unnamed as I haven’t decided if i’m going to use any sort of cutesy motifs when I finish it. The pattern is just a super simple top down round yoke cardigan…the yoke and ribbing will be in that pink, with the body and sleeves in a  stripey pink-purple-white. I just finished the yoke, and will be splitting to start the body during my normal Thursday night tv. So yeah. I think i’ll be doing all my knitting in front of the tv from now on.

I forgot this picture was on my camera…Kimba spent an entire evening snoozing on my feet/practically under my legs while I worked on Baby Cardigan #1 last week. It was too cute not to post.

I should have known it was going to be one of those weeks when I woke up Monday morning and thought it was Thursday.  I’ve been out of sorts all week, nothing seems to be going as it should.

Case in point: Christmas knitting.  I actually got started on it last, oh, Friday I think.  At first, things were going fairly well.  I wasn’t knitting consistently time-wise, but I was making progress in between cleaning house, checking on the build progress of the new room, shopping, etc.  I started with one of the two baby cardigans, a simple top down raglan hoodie.  I got the bulk done in probably 6-8 hours or so, all together.  All I have left now is the right sleeve.  I picked it up again on Monday and had a mild panic attack that it’s not going to fit, because what do I know about the size of a baby?  This one is for a newborn that’s due in the next week or so, so i’m hoping actual real life babies are as small as I seem to think they are in my head.  I’ll probably finish the last sleeve tonight during The Office, unless this weeks knitting purgatory continues.

As for the other Christmas knits…ugh.  I swatched for the Spartan sweater for Chris, and my gauge is way, way off.  So I frogged, and swatched again.  Repeat 4 times, with 3 different needles.  No go.  Fiddled around with the math, and discovered that at my current gauge, not even going from the second smallest to the  largest size sweater would be big enough, and that’s knitting loosely.  So now i’m just going to have to suck it up and order some bulkier yarn. This isn’t the end of the world I suppose, as i’m also sneaking in some undyed superwash so I can dye up some stripey yarn for a pair of Jaywalkers and i’ll have 10 skeins of light worsted in a pretty green that i can use for myself later.

The bath sets are…pretty much non-existant at the moment.  I just can’t seem to settle on a stitch pattern.  I’ve frogged my pattern swatch I don’t know how many times.   The socks for my grandfather aren’t moving along any faster either…it’s impossible to find a decent sock pattern for a man.  I’d rather these socks not be a generic stockinette, but at the moment that seems like my only option unless I want to abuse my poor addled brain even more trying to come up with a pattern on my own.  The only gift knit that is coming along nicely with no hair-pulling is the Ravenclaw scarf.  I sat outside one day last week and knitted while watching the men work on the new room and made quite a bit of progress.  I think I only have around 9 stripes to go, which I could easily tackle in a day or two if I could make myself sit still long enough.

Anyway.  Last night I said to myself that I desperately needed something quick to knit up, as hopefully a FO would break me out of my slump.  I settled on a wide headband (how happy am I that headbands are back in style?), and started knitting.  After frogging at least 5 times because I wasn’t happy with the stitch patterns, I gave up and very nearly threw a fit.   Then, because I picked up SnB: The Happy Hooker at the library the other day, I figured maybe I just needed to step away from knitting and do something else.  That didn’t help either.  Basically all I ended up with last night was a bunch of kinky yarn and a bed that looked like a tornado had hit a yarn shop.

I’m also in the process of working up a pattern for a felted Hobo, so far there are no issues with it, but we’ll see.  And the Ultra Alpaca I bought to make a new pair of Fetching is begging to be knitted up into something much nicer, so I might have a pattern for some long, cabled, fingerless gloves soon as well.  I’m not making any promises though, considering my recent luck.

I would say that today was going to be better if I hadn’t woken up at 7am thinking it was afternoon because i’d spent the last 2 hours throwing whatever I could reach at the feline bitch fight taking place at the foot of the bed.  Feh.

And in non-knitting tantrum news: If I have to hear about Anna Nicole Smith one more time I will scream my head off.  Seriously, this is ridiculous.  Yeah, it’s sad about her son, but the woman is an absolute moron.  There’s only so much bleached-brain stupidity a person can handle, you know?  And this new story ET is running about their reporter in a fat suit?  Ugh.  Since when is a size 12 grotesquely fat?  The last I heard, the real average size for a woman was a size 14.  Morons.  I’ll be glad when the current trend of weighing more than 100lbs = lard ass is over.  Bones poking out all over is not attractive, people.  This post is long enough, so i’ll stop here before I go into another tl:dr size rant.

My KnitPicks order came in today!  Am very excited, of course.  I bought 13 skeins of Wool of the Andes in Pumpkin, 9 in Fern, and 1 each of Snickerdoodle and Maple Syrup; 3 skeins of Essential Tweed in Flint, 2 hanks of Memories in Redwood Forest, and 1 hank of Shimmer in Maple Leaf.  The Pumpkin was originally for Viveka, but now i’m not sure.  I’m ridiculously fickle about sweater patterns, obviously.  The Fern and Snickerdoodle are for the Spartan Pullover from IWK, Chris picked out the pattern and colors himself.  Essential Tweed is going to be socks for my grandfather, if I don’t steal them for myself first.  As for the Memories and Shimmer, I have no clue.  I just bought them because the colorways were gorgeous.  I got the Maple Syrup to see how it would work on a Ravenclaw scarf…way, way too dark under house lights, but we’ll see.  I actually think the Pumpkin would work quite well though, but i’ll need to look at it outside in natural light before I decide.  Now to just wait for my new needles to get here so I can get started.

First things first: I actually finished stuff!  I’m still suffering horribly from what Kay  so aptly called “startitis”, but as Christmas gets closer I figured I should at least try to see things through to completion.

I had some Sugar ‘N Cream kitchen cotton sitting in my yarn basket, so I decided to knit up that soap saver i’m planning to use for bath baskets just to make sure I liked the pattern.  It was super quick, super easy, and actually pretty cute.  I made a couple of alterations, namely going up to a US 8 needle and increasing the CO from 28 to around 40-something. My homemade soap is generally pretty large, and the original pattern would have been way too small.  I don’t think i’ll use this pattern for all of the ones I need to make, but it won’t be bad for one or two of them.  I’m in the process of working up a new pattern, i’ll post it once I decide on something I like.

Next up, I actually finished Fetching.  I went through so many fits and starts with this pattern, I just knew it would end up never being finished.  But, with the weather finally getting cooler here, I figured I should get some finished before my hands froze.  I originally started this pattern with a self striping Bernat acrylic, but the cables looked like ass.  I ended up using about a skein and a half of Lion Kool Wool I picked up a few months ago for about $.50 a skein, simply because it’s been discontinued and I won’t be able to buy more to make something bigger.  This yarn is bulkier, so I had to go up a needle size, drop my CO down to 40, and work fewer rounds of ribbing, but it still worked pretty well.  The yarn is a 50/50 merino/acrylic blend, and it’s actually quite soft.  These are most likely just going to be my around-the-house gloves, i’ll make another pair once I get the Berroco Ultra Alpaca I ordered.

I also decided I needed to try my hand at crochet again.  It baffles me that crochet is the one thing I can’t master…pretty much every female in my family is a whiz with a hook, my mother could practically crochet in her sleep.  Me?  I end up makiing things that look like this:

That’s supposed to be straight.  Head, meet Desk.  Obviously I need to stick with knitting and only pulling out the crochet hooks when I need a chain, or i’m working fringe.

Remember the Debbie Bliss Donegal Chunky Tweed I posted about?  I went to cast on for a bag with it, since I can’t be bothered to order enough for something larger, and the damn yarn broke 3 times just while casting on.  This pisses me off because A.) The yarn is gorgeous and I want to use it badly,   B.) I just ordered another skein in a different color to use with the skeins I already have, and C.) I didn’t pay $42 for 330 yards of yarn just to have it fall apart on me.  I guess my only option, other than just glaring at it, is to knit very carefully and then felt it so it will actually hold up.  I had wanted to use some sort of cabling on the bag, but I suppose that’s right out now.  Maybe i’ll do some sort of intarsia instead.  Meh.  Very disappointed.