Knitters Know Everything

All the best little pleasures in life I've learned from Knitters. In person and online, Knitters know all the good stuff and their recommendations are unfailing. A very abbreviated list includes;

Knitting socks,
Making marshmallows from scratch,
Ace Cider,
Warehouse 13,
malabrigo Twist,
Maker Faire,
Hanabi,


And now from Knitters I've learned about the audio books read by James Marster. That man can read. He has a voice like warm honey and sandpaper, whiskey and chocolate, good leather and musty books. I normally find actors to be pretty but uninteresting, however I believe I'm developing a bit of a crush. My last crush I was a girl and it was running away with MacGyver. So yeah, it's been a long time.

Tour de Fleece

Today is the start of Tour de France. Since there is not much that I like to do more than to watch tv while knitting and then find a group of like minded people on line to chat about the show and, more importantly, the knitting of course I joined Tour de Fleece.

From July 5 until Sunday July 27th the goal is to spin every day. We will watch the race but more importantly we will be talking about spinning and making lots of new yarn. I've knit 8,000 yards since I last bought yarn so I really need some new yarn to coming in.

I can only spin for a minute today to say that I did. Then Joey and I are loading up for a day trip. I have trepidation about taking a 17 year old dog out for the day. Added to that, yesterday my car was hit while parked on the side of the road and the back door is, well, it's not good. I feel like it's a omen not to drive for six hours today. So far we are still going. I'm starting to pack our stuff up now but I will have a good look at that door before we actually go. I haven't had a good chance to review the damage yet.

Fireworks

My friends and I spent a quiet day protecting our dogs from the loud scary fireworks but first we went out to eat lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant.

As part of the meal they served us a huge salad that looked like backyard weeds. We recognized the Spearmint and Italian Parsley and Cilantro and, I think, Chervil. There was a heart shaped leaves that might have been Violet and finally a furry purple plant that I have no idea, except that it tasted like black pepper. As a salad it was too harsh but as garnish to my egg and rice flour crepes stuffed with whole shrimp and spiced pork it was delicious. I pretty much finished off that family sized salad on my own.

Then we spent the afternoon setting off our own kind of fireworks.

Hanabi is a cooperative gave where you see everyone's hand but your own. It's so much fun!

It was recommended to me by a member of my Nerd Wars team and yesterday I wanted something smallish I could buy to support my local game shop for their 20th anniversary. Ever since I started working the 10 hour days in February I've been going there on Thursdays. Yesterday, I looked around and realized I knew at least one person sitting at each of the 17 tables!

Drive By

I'm downloading photos from my camera and since it says it will take eleven minutes I thought I would do a drive by post.

In no particular order.

1. Last night on the way home from work late at night my favorite to listen to at late night radio station was playing Christmas music. This amused me to no end.

2. I love my shift of working four- ten hour days so much that I go around randomly telling people this. Mostly to other people at work that don't get to work four- ten hour days. It's amazing my chair hasn't been messed with out of spite.

3. However, it's exhausting. Three days a week all I do is eat, sleep, go to classes about work, and work. I even think about my job while eating and sleeping.

4. I've always been really good at my job but since this change I've become a superstar. The stack of awards I've racked up since March is going to collapse my desk. And I'm modest too. Seriously, my chair will be messed with one of these days.

5. But with the good comes the bad. My department, and my team in particular, we are being jerked around like a dog on a leash. The awards are because I can switch horses in the middle of the stream without complaining. Well, without complaining to the people that matter at least.  In the last five months I've been told four times on a Friday that starting Monday I would be doing a completely new job. Which is fine. Fine-ish.

What isn't fine is the day they say- "ok that's enough. We don't need this any more. We trained a new department to do this you are going back to your original job after lunch". After I've taught myself everything I can with no training about a new system, or a new way to present, or whatever and on my own time, going back is deflating. Mostly I'm excited to know more but part of me is just suppressed rage at the lack of control and the lack forewarning.

6. I was randomly invited to an award meeting last Friday and did not get an award and was rather surprised. That was the same day I found out the meaning of "The cake is a lie" and I went around muttering that to myself. It was very fitting. For context none of my awards came with a meeting or with anything, really.

7. I just found out that FTW = For The Win and not WTF spelled backward for emphasis like I've thought for years. I found this out by watching Castle.

8. I've been watching Castle, Grimm, Doctor Who and the X-Men movies streaming over my compter. That's right. I've finally joined 2010 and bought a subscription for the instant teevee downloads.

9. I knit while watching the teevee and the reason I have so many photos it's taking eleven minutes to download. I hope to posting them here soon.

24

My current project, Lichen, knit out of hand spun yarn.

I don't have time to talk about it because it has an important deadline looming. Really, the only reason I took a photo is to capture what 24 hours of knitting looks like. That was cast on at 7pm Saturday and this is how much was knit by 7pm the next day.

I did sleep 5 hours, went grocery shopping, cooked and even cleaned my place for the length of an ABBA CD but the rest of my time was spent knitting. My ring finger is still tingling and it's midweek. I've hardly knit a stitch since and it's due on Friday so my goal, when I get up in the morning, is to finish it.

Reuse

I'm still working on the Weasley sweater. I'm still not buying any yarn to make it and am only using Cascade Eco scrap yarn. Except I'm running out of scraps.

The solution was to unravel a vest that I knit back in 2010. I had worn the vest all the time but the shirt I wore under it wore out. Without that shirt it was no longer fitting into my wardrobe. I decided that I was more excited about the blanket than keeping the vest until I could find a new shirt. I go cloths shopping about every other year so It was going to be a while.

I'm so excited to be working with a new color. 

Dye Lots

I haven't been swapping this year so for knitting community I've been joining KALs (knit a longs) instead. This one was sponsored by the Doubleknit podcast and the goal was knit a project that we has queued up long ago but never got around to knitting. Mine was a pattern I discovered back in 2009 the Simple Summer Tweed Top Down V-Neck by Heidi Kirrmaier.

The yarn was even older than that. It was my first real yarn (real=real expensive) and I saved up to buy a skein or two of it at a time back in 2006. My life was going to hell those few months and I would walk to the yarn shop on my lunch break and buy a ball as a treat. I then added to my pile until I had a sweater worth. I can't remember if I didn't notice the dye lot or if the first order ran out and a new one came in before I had enough. 

 The two dye lots are completely different. One is a smooshy and plump and the other is more string like. The colors are just related to each other and not at all a match. The thing is, this is not at all noticeable in the skein and doesn't show up until a few rounds are knit. I didn't even know I had two dye lots until I was part way through the sweater. Once I realized I planned the rest out in a trendy color block stripe design that is so popular now. 

Yarn is seven skeins of Rowan Summer tweed knit on size 5 needles. I didn't like the cast on number in the pattern so I changed that and then every single thing after that too. By the end of the second paragraph of instructions I set it aside and just designed my own sweater as I knit, looking at the pattern photo once and a while for inspiration. I'm quite pleased how it turned out and with the J Crew rolled edges. It's a sweater that I had wanting to knit for forever and it took the KAL to get it acomplished.

Rain, Rain, Rain.

This is the view from my front door.

It's rained every day this week and most days last week too. Instead of the small gurgling stream, at this point, with every rain it turns into a raging torrent. I've never lived so close to water and I enjoy watching the stream crest. I didn't know that it was such a physical thing. That it's possible to watch the high point move down stream as a wave and from that moment on the water level drops like a plug was pulled.

There are two ducks that moved in this winter and have stayed. On days like this they sadly stand on the grass just looking at their home in betray and horror. I'll be walking past them now as I go fetch my laundry with the same hunched miserable look. It wasn't raining when I started the load but it began poring before the wash cycle finished. Poring to the point that the stairs to my apartment are waterfalls and I can hear the roaring water even inside. The dryer cycle it over and I could stay up until the rain stops but it's midnight and I still need to fold and put away before bed. There is no sign that it's letting up anytime soon so I go out into the rain and I'll say "hi" to the ducks and they will waddle farther onto the grass with their bright orange feet and we will all be wet together.

Ravellenic Winter Games 2014

So much has happened since my last post it feels like a year, at the same time I can't believe February is coming to a close. Didn't it just start yesterday?

Another thing that is coming to a close is the Olympics. Today is the last day of the Olympics and that means Ravellenic Winter Games 2014 is also coming to a close. Ravellenic is a chance for knitters and spinners to ignore real life to watch the Olympics and challenge themselves to extraordinary knitting feats while eating chocolate. The chocolate is in rules, I don't make these things up. I couldn't let Ravellenic pass without note since this year has been such a big one for me.

I came home from a New Years Eve party to a push, a tease, from Bungalow312 to captain the Stash and Burn team. I had already been thinking about it but didn't want to step in on anyone else's plans but that push at 2am and me full of party exuberance I was off and running.

Never mind that 2am and full of party exuberance might not be the appropriate time to be picking out team names, tags, setting rules and planning prizes. But it worked out ok and that one moment has snowballed into an event!

Our team is low key and fantastic! As I set up a website to collect donations so Jenny and Nicole could buy us prize yarn at Stitches West, a team member spontaneously made artwork for banners, buttons, and avatars. While I asked designers to donate patterns as prizes the main board exploded into drama over Russian politics and a team members spontaneously knit a No Drama Llama that we now have as mascot.

One of the challenges I set myself was to spin some difficult fiber.

 I decided that I wanted to use the yarn as a prize and I wanted the prize to be meaningful.

Jenny has mentioned loving yak yarn more than once and I love yak fiber probably more than any other, proving yet again that Jenny and I am the same person, it was an easy choice to pull this yak/silk roving from my stash.

It took four hours to spin up 140 yards of DK weight yarn. This is the softest, most luxurious yarn I have ever made. Ever.

It wasn't spun without incident or injury either. As I watched Shaun White crash and burn on the snowboard track I also had issues with soft spots and control as the yarn hit rough spots or drifted apart. That pile of snarls are the casualties of the night.

Really Close to Reaching Goals.

This is my stash yarn (bought from 2004 to 2009) at the beginning of 2013.

This is what I have left.

I had forgotten that I had planned to spin replacement yarn in 2013. All I remembered was that I had fallen below a comfortable amount of yarn on hand and at the rate I was going I would be completely out in 2015.

I had gone on a knitting vacation and bought some yarn there. I started working all that overtime and bought two balls of Malabrigo Twist as a reward. Then I helped a coworker set up a yarn estate sale.

At that sale I was fraught with the "I like you and I want to support you" emotions and guilt similar to visiting favorite yarn store but magnified because it was a friend in a sad situation. Added to that was the greed associated with of clearance yarn. Clearance discontinued yarn. What an emotionaly fraught day. I wanted it all. Instead I bought enough for three sweaters and a shawl. That was some epic self control on my part.

After the sale I was adding up the yardage I had bought for the year against how much I had knit and thought wouldn't it be nice to break even. I could buy even more yarn to make up the deficit! Sadly, that wasn't in my budget.

That's when I had the thought (again) of spinning up the difference and I pulled out my spinning wheel and started spinning.

in 2013 I knit 13,668 yards

All the yarn I bought in 2013, 10,070 yards

With the addition of all the yarn I was given. Better with the addition of 1,664 yards

And with all the yarn I spun, 1,900 yards. That's a total of 13,634 yards of yarn.

Even with the gift yarn and hand spun I'm still negative 34 yards for the year but I got really close. Also? That is a large pile of yarn. I knit that much, more than that much, and my yardage was down this year because of working 50 hour weeks and school. My brain just exploded a little bit.

2014 is more of the same. I don't want to own less yarn than I have now. I want to save my yarn money for my yarn vacation in 2015. Again the plan is to spin the replacement yarn and to buy even less than I did in 2013. I have enough fiber stash that I should be able to do that, as long as I  remember to actually do it.

New Year

I didn't get time off at Christmas so I didn't travel to see family but we have scheduled several gatherings in January to make up for it.

Christmas Eve was with friends playing boardgames, eating good food, giving and receiving yarny presents, and talking about yarn. Then I had a very nice quiet Christmas day to myself where I knocked out this sweet little number. 

The pattern is Sparrow and because I used a bulky yarn, Minnow Merino, I only cast on 80 stitches. this used my 13th and 14th old stash yarn for the year, completing the UILI challenge. 

This week I used the last of my PTO for the year. I told my coworkers that I was out for a "Five day New Year's Eve Party" and while I said it in jest it turned out to be completely true. Five days of playing board games, eating good food, talking about yarn (I've cultivated knitting friends along with turning friends into knitters), being given more yarny presents, and watching Doctor Who.

It almost ran six days long but the blizzard canceled tonight and we rescheduled for the weekend. 2014 is shaping up to be a spectacular year (I totally typed yarn there).

Thrilling

And sometimes there is time to knit more than one.

I know these blanket square posts are just thrilling but I'm too busy going out and doing things to actually write about it. The good news is the blanket is now a fourth done.

Single Square

There isn't always time to knit multiple squares. Sometimes I'm lucky to get even one finished.

Christmas Socks

I cast these on May 28th, 2012. They are made from two socks yarns held double over 40 stitches on size 1 needles.

Knitters know to write such things down, that the important bits that we think we will never forget like stitch count and yarn information and even the size we are making, will be gone from our mind if we set the project down for more than 3 days. So we have paper patterns highlighted, notes saved online or on mobile devices, a knitting journal, or a spreadsheet.

I do all that. I did all that. I even gave these socks the name Christmas Socks but I didn't write down who I was thinking of when I cast on. So here they are, finished just in time, if a year late is just in time and in knitting it is, and I can't remember who they are for.

I'll tuck them away for next year and maybe I'll remember or, perhaps, I'll take them around like Cinderella's Prince Charming to find who they fit. 

Sitlka Rose

I started this project August 6th, 2012 in yarn that was bought for me in Alaska. That's pretty exciting.

It's Rabbit Ridge Designs in the color Sitlka Rose and the pattern is The Amanda Hat. I love how it turned out and it's a perfect match for my winter coat. It's also a great yarn/pattern combo. I will be knitting other variegated yarns in that pattern because the little floats break up the pooling and alow the color to shine.

The best part is the hat used just a little more than half of the yarn so I have plenty left to knit something else.

It's Not Easy Being Green

And back to the green. It's even more vivid in this pairing. I wouldn't have thought that was possible.

Made You Look

Look! They are not green.

A Bit Small

I finished Shilling and while it was supposed to be for my brother it came out a bit small. It fits me ok but I think would be even better on a kid. Since my brother has a super sized noggin I will have to knit him a different hat. 

The yarn is Berroco Vintage and very nice to knit and it's machine washable, although, the swatch really fuzzed up in the wash.

Clever Title Here

Not every post can be pithy.

More blanket squares.

Evil Bunnies

In July I tried the South Beach Diet. I wanted a gym membership but I thought it would be too expensive and healthier eating would be a good place to start. A month on that and the grocery bill showed what a bargain a gym membership really is. Rice and potatoes went right back into my diet but I haven't reintroduced sugar back into my apartment. I do eat it when out or with friends or I'm gifted candy in a swap box but it's not in my cupboards. 

So when my Secret Santa at work put a pound of chocolate on my desk every day for five days it was manna from heaven.

Earlier this year, in the silent mocking of the shrines coworkers put in their cubes, I had decided that my cube theme is knitted rabbits. This is the only one I got around to knitting. He is so cozy looking sitting between my awards and diplomas.

I had always planned on knitting more, on knitting a herd of epic proportions, although, it would never rival the Star Wars action figures five rows over or the Hawaiian Honeymoon shrine across the way.

However, it's been nine months since my last promotion and I've sucked every last bit that I can out of this position and I'm searching for my next place in the company. Looking around I'm thinking Hawaiian Honeymoon isn't going anywhere and I know that Star Wars action figure is not and keeping it subtle would be good way to go.

I still hope to get a few more bunnies up to soften my cube since I'm the only one that has left mine bare, even my supe (the most subdued of the bunch) has a mini shrine of cats, just not epic army of evil bunnies.