][ in with the new

This is partly a re-post from a Ravelry thread; I wanted to do a 2013 wrap-up here and figured I may as well just use that as a rough draft, add in a few things I forgot, and increase the general level of tangential rambling.

2013 was a good knitting year for me. I think it’s safe to say I knit more this year than the rest of my life put together. I've knit more consistently, more adventurously overall, and with more variety than ever-- it’s quantity and quality and variety all at once.

I did a ton of baby knitting. I made twenty-one small hats for babies at the NICU in the first half of the year, after my twin cousins were born 2 months early. I've also knit 2 hats apiece for them, including a coordinated pair plus a pair of tube socks for each, and a matching hat for dad. I knit a hat and booties for a coworker’s niece, too.

I also knit my first sweaters-- tiny babby sweaters, okay, but I think they count. They were a big hit-- a little too big for the kidlets now, but the parents love them and that gave me all the warm fuzzy feelings ever. Pretty much the only standard baby thing I didn’t knit in ‘13 was a blanket, but that’s okay-- honestly, prior to 2013 I had knit one baby blanket and that was the extent of my baby knitting prowess. (I wish I had pictures, it was a nice one. But I digress.)

My most complex colorwork to date is a 2013 project-- my actually-scannable QR code, which is pretty darn cool if you ask me. It was also my first steek (and as a steek, a great learning experience, but perhaps not the wisest of choices.) I learned a lot abot cotton yarn and why it is not the best idea for certain projects.

I finished what is probably my oldest WIP this year. I knit a pattern in a language I don't speak for my grandfather. I made my first pair of fingerless gloves. I designed and knit three cowls. (Well, I knit four, but the fourth hasn't been gifted yet ;3) I spun on my wheel.

I probably knit thirty tiny pigs-- I've actually lost count of them. (A couple I kept, a couple I’ve already given away; the lion’s share of them have been tucked, flat, into my much-belated Christmas cards. Don’t tell, it’s a surprise.) I found something to do with my size 36 circulars. I made a hat I liked enough to get over my fear of putting pictures of myself on project pages. I knit more Christmas gifts than I ever imagined. (Some still aren't up there.) I made a lot of people I really love really happy.

I learned the basics of crocheting at Maker Faire. I got over my terror of tiny needles (and almost forgot how to use bigger ones.) I learned at least three new cast-ons and one bind-off. I finally managed a provisional CO that didn't utterly fall apart and make me start over. I allowed myself to frog a project I wasn't loving. I had a prima ballerina admire the scarf I made myself.

I organized my stash. I let myself buy way too much yarn because my stash was so organized. I bonded over knitting with my cousin. I talked to a dozen strangers on the subway who wanted to know what I was doing. I can't count the new stitch patterns. I bought roving from ridiculously cute sheep. I missed Rhinebeck, but I learned the art of a perfectly-executed mattress stitch. I managed to snag a Phat Fiber box. Iknit with my grandmother, who hasn't picked up knitting needles in the last 20 or 30 years, but who started cranking out NICU hats with the rest of us when she found out how much she likes bamboo needles.

I blogged more consistently, I *think*, than ever, though that's not saying much. I knit at the movies (simple ribbing at Thor 2 but 2-color drop-stitch colorwork during The Desolation of Smaug!) I published my first (silly) pattern and started writing up two more. I started actually talking to people (a little!) on Ravelry. I told my roommate more about fiber content and knitting technique than she ever wanted to know. (Sorry about that.)

I’m sure I’m forgetting things, but that’s okay. It’s been a busy one.

I am not big on making resolutions-- I love them in theory but I find they make me more likely to fail in the long term, because once you slip up once or twice it’s over. I had a sort of to-do list somewhere in the middle of this year that wholly got away from me, but I don’t really feel like it’s a failure, I just think I went in different directions. (See: the long list of knitting accomplishments above. Who really cares if I didn’t knit socks?)

But I do have some thoughts.

I’d like to blog more regularly in 2014, even though literally no one reads it. I like writing and it’s good for me to critically think about my knitting, what I’ve done and where I’m going. One of my weak points as a knitter has always been a certain reluctance to make big skill-jumps; I usually need to really want a particular thing to get there. I think if I end up writing about eighteen different scarves in a row, though, I’m likelier to notice the rut I’m in and be braver about getting out of it.

I would love to start the super-intimidating-but-awesome sweater kit my cousin gave me for Christmas; it’s going to be a trip, with cuffed sleeves and mesurement adjustments and fair isle and steeking and lord even knows what else. I’ve done a bunch of colorwork now-- some of it with proper floats, even!-- and I like knitting the kind of wool in the kit, so I think I’m up to it. I hope. But I’d like to read through the pattern a few more times before I start swatching, even.

I would love to do some more knitting from stash-- and I’ve got plenty of it-- even though the siren song of New Yarn is pretty hard to resist. I also, definitely definitely want to do more spinning! I love it, and I love knitting with handspun. (Okay, so I haven’t knit with my handspun, but the Cowlbeast was a genuine pleasure and I really want more groovy adventures like it.)

I’m hoping to go to Maryland S&W and/or/and Rhinebeck in ‘14, though we’ll have to see how that really pans out in terms of time, money, &c, but I love fiber parties. I’ll definitely go to the Long Island show again, if I can-- it was an awful lot of fun last year. Same for Maker Faire… potentially I might agree to teach knitting there, but I’m not 100% decided on that.

I want more non-scarfy wardrobe pieces to wear-- a sweater would be nice, but I’m thinking of all the shawl patterns I have set aside just waiting for the right yarn or the right mood or the swift I don’t have to wind that gigantic skein of laceweight into a ball.

And?

Socks.

I’m casting them on as we speak, baby. Let’s wreck this new year.

][ ho, ho, ho boy.

When people ask me about my yarn stash, I like to use the word ‘dragonish.’ I hoard certain things with all the avarice of a huge, fire-breathing lizard. (This metaphor possibly brought to you by The Desolation of Smaug. We saw it. I knit through it. Two-color drop stitch pattern in the dark. I’m pretty awesome, yo.) There aren’t many things I collect this way: yarn is one; books are another; and, apparently, vacation.

Thanks to holiday closures and the fact that I haven’t taken half my time off yet this year, Friday was the first day of my break, and I don’t go back to work ‘til January 2nd.

I sat myself down Friday morning with a fresh pot of coffee, bad holiday films on Netflix (SIDE NOTE: Holiday In Handcuffs is like the best/worst film EVER, go watch it), and my to-do pile.

This was my to-do pile:


The red thing is nearly done; I may or may not add a couple more rows, but it’s at the point where it’s on Not Worrying About It hold; the black bag contains my bff’s secret gift, which of course I can’t talk about; the rainbow-and-black yarn doesn’t actually need to be done until after New Year’s; the two sweaters are knit and seamed, but one needs blocking and both need buttons and only one has buttons picked out, even; the clear bag is a side project that isn’t actually a priority; and the kicker, the green yarn is… well, I don’t even have a pattern, just a rough idea in my head. Ha ha hah. But I’ll manage something.

All things considered I wouldn’t be doing badly if I hadn’t decided to add two things last week or so… so I can’t complain.

Some quick updates on other things:

☆ The Cowlbeast is long since finished; if I recall I bound off Halloween night, and was wearing it shortly after. I love it. I wear it damn near all the time. I cannot actually stop raving about the thing. Go look at all the cute photos on my project page, I’ll wait.

Possibly will write up the pattern for it-- I’ve even got suggestions for commercial yarns it looks nice in… more on that some other time after Christmas. Hint hint. Not that I’m up to anything.

☆ I do also still want to post a pattern for 6H, but I need to make another for some step-out photos and I’m lazy as heck. But, someday.

☆ I knit like thirty tiny pigs. They are the potato chips of knitting for me. They are my new favorite use of tiny scraps. They’re getting stuffed in Ecksmuss cards when I belatedly send them out for everyone to fill up and keep and love.

☆ I’ve already given away three knit gifts-- two coffee-cup cozies and a set of cat toys-- and they were totally loved by their recipients. One of whom gave me a gift of a couple small things, including some really lovely stitch-markers and a needle-gauge card. I’m charmed because it means this coworker of mine cared enough to notice my hobby, go to a shop, and ask someone for advice on what to get a knitter. That’s just a bit touching to me. Happy Ecksmuss and all that.


ANYWAY, I gotta jet because this green thing (with picot edging, because why wouldn’t I do a complicated cast-on on a large last minute Christmas gift?) won’t knit itself, and I have a whole new pot of coffee awaiting.

][ producing... slowly... ish

My name is Hannah, and I am not a process knitter.

Sometimes I am. When I get an idea of a technique and want to try it, I'm a process knitter. My hideous washcloth? Really fun for the first dozen rows when I was learning how to make the gathers, really boring now that I'm on the third repeat. My cable swatch? Interesting when stitches crossed, mind-numbing making the bed of purls around it.

Bubble wrap? Actually pretty interesting to knit-- like my long-suffering and also just plain long scarf, the repeat's short enough that I have to pay some attention but not tricksy enough to drive me crazy. No chart needed. Good travel knitting or TV knitting or whatever.

But when it comes down to it? It's all about the product.


And this still isn't quite a product.
I totally guessed wrong about my quantities. The dark yarn, skeined, looked like a heck of a lot more-- but it turns out the light yarn was just balled very tightly, and there's a ton left. As you can see.

For the finishing edge (the "top" edge, I think), my current plan is to switch to smaller needles and knit stockinette rows a while to create a nice, rolled edge long enough not to eat the first bubble repeat.

But that bottom edge... man, I don't know what I should do there.

The stockinette curls badly enough to really interfere with the edge of the design, so I'd like to do something to weight or stabilize or decorate the edge, to even it out a little. Originally I was thinking applied i-cord, but I knit a few inches and I hate the way it'd look, so that's out.

I think my options are:

1. Stitch the rolling edge to itself right up at the end, which will stabilize it a little and hopefully keep it from rolling more
2. Try a line of crochet along the edge to stiffen it a little and hopefully tame the rolling
3. Pick up stitches along the whole way and knit more to give the roll some more room to go without eating the pattern
4. Pick up stitches and knit them in reverse stockinette, and hope the roll going the other way (on the inside) balances out the outside. May require stitching down of the inner flap thereby created.
5. Pick up stitches and use one of the books of edging to make something actually nice happen there.

I have no idea what I'm going to end up doing, but I do know one thing:

I really, really want to be wearing this, not knitting it anymore.

][ a wildly selfish interlude

It's gotten cold, which has made me want to be knitting twenty-four-seven, but when I actually get my hands on the needles it's a different story. Mostly I've just been soldiering away on Yet Another Washcloth, a wholly ideal project for riding the subway but not a very exciting one. (And it doesn't help that the Candy Dishcloth pattern I'm using, the freebie from the wrong side of the yarn label, is really not to my tastes. It's an interesting enough technique that I don't mind it, but it's not a thrill.)

Other than that the only things on the needles are R's Sekrit Holiday Knitting, which I can't work on (obviously) if she's around, and the Doom Blanket, which is too bloody big to carry at this point, though it's fantastic knitting for laying in bed or watching TV-- since I can throw the bulk of it over my legs to keep warm :3

I decided to stir up a little knitting mojo by casting on something new-- something for me, unlike the Sekrit Project and the bajillion washcloths, which are destined for gifting to someone sometime.

I decided to play around.


So I did.
I grabbed this mysterious handspun given me as a gift a while ago, looked at some cowl patterns, and decided to whip up my best approximation of a Bubble Wrap cowl in a completely wrong yarn. What I've got are two skeins of indeterminate size, in very similar colors, save that one is plied with itself and the other is plied with a much darker strand. Since the ball of lighter yarn looked to be smaller than the skein of dark, I'm using that for the "backing" and the dark for the "bubbles."

I'm loving the results-- the similarity of the colors of these two skeins means that the pattern is not as bright and noticeable as it would be if I were actually knitting... you know, the thing I was inspired by... but it gives the fabric an interesting sort of self-patterning illusion, since the "bubbles" are overall darker than the background, and they are indeed textured, though due to the thick-and-thin quality of the yarn it's a bit less pronounced than I'd hoped. Still, it's working up very prettily.


This is where I was at about two minutes before starting this post, and I cast on and knit lazily yesterday-- so it's pretty quick to boot!
It's much more interesting than striping, uses less yardage than proper colorwork (even accounting for the dropped stitches that make the texture happen), and still shows both colorways in a way that pleases me.

If I were to do this over I'd use smaller needles and maybe shrink it to 80 or 60 stitches instead of the 100 I'm doing. My only worry now is how the yarn's going to work out-- I really have no idea how much I have, so it's anyone's guess. I'll deal with it when I run out of one or both, and maybe use the leftovers to work something on the edging. Right now, it's got a few stitches of stockinette which I intended to let curl, but I wish I'd done more-- I didn't because I didn't want to waste yarn, though. Something will present itself, I'm sure. I'm not worried!

Anyway, if all goes well I expect I'll have a cowl by the end of the week at latest. Maybe sooner-- depends how much TV we consume, I think.

A few more details on my project page, as well as some other photos because I love progress photos. It's a sickness. Deal with it.

<3

][ still here.

And not in Rhinebeck.

The best laid plans of mice and knitters are no match for the cost of a dead starter in your best friend's car. That's how the old saying goes, right?

Yeah, so. I was pretty bummed.

I tried really hard not to be pretty bummed, but I spent most of yesterday in that stage of self-indulgent misery usually practiced by thirteen-year-olds with an inadvisable collection of eyeliners and fishnet gloves. It was pretty sad-- I mean, I was pretty sad, but the fact that I was as sad as I was was the pathetic kind of sad. Eventually I made myself push through it (mainly) by finishing another washcloth (I have so much kitchen cotton. Seriously. Even discounting the ridiculous amount used for my QR code banner/blanket/whatever you want to call that thing, I will be in washcloths forever, and since it's all end-of-summer sale stuff I think I spent less than $25 on the lot of it-- 2 big things of Bernat Handicrafter, a bloody cone of Peaches & Creme and a ball or two of Sugar'n Cream) and starting another other washcloth and doing a few rows on That Secret Thing for R for Ecksmuss and whatever else.

I also cleaned the kitchen, which I often do when I am sad. I think I have this crazy belief that tangible effects and products of my time will make up for how unpleasant it is.

Anyway, then I took a deep breath and steeled myself to do something I've really been putting off:

I seamed childHood. Yup.

Can we talk about mattress stitch?


Click to enlarge because this yarn is so pretty you just should. Do it.
Wow that is magical. Every time I've put off part of this project because I found it daunting it really... hasn't been so bad at all. And now, save the buttons, it's done done done and very nearly ready for the holidays. I just hope little A. doesn't outgrow it before he gets it.


Wool of the Andes worsted, Opal Heather and Pumice Heather, if anyone's interested.
I probably ought to block it too, though it still looks nice from the in-pieces blocking, save the hood (which didn't exist then), so I might be able to get away with not bothering... mainly my concern is I don't know that I have anywhere to pin it up. Possibly I'll go for steaming it instead. First, though, buttons, but I'm in no real rush with those.

B's sweater will get started soon, soon. I'd sort of hoped to finish both by end of October and then give NaKniSweMo a shot with something for me, but it ain't looking likely from where I'm standing now.

Still, that's a lot of progress for a day, and a heck of a lot cheaper than Rhinebeck would have been.

Next year, though. Next Year.

][ the boring kind of update

I haven't done too much knitting this week. Sort of. Actually I've done about five inches of [REDACTED] this week. But obviously I can't really talk about that too much. I can point you towards the project page but it's equally vague and useless. I don't actually think she'd see it, but better safe than sorry.

Other than that? Nothing, really. Having knocked out the rest of 6H I havent even got an alternate on-the-go project. Haven't started Brother B's sweater yet. Nor have i seamed Brother A's. I'm essentially attempting to be monogamous to this secret project which is fighting me pretty viciously.

And it's looking like no Rhinebeck, thanks to car troubles and the like. I am pretty bummed, but maybe it's for the best? I shouldn't spend more money with a stash like mine... No matter how much I want to. Sssigh. I means, knitting from stash isn't a problem, there's a lot of yarn and even roving with a specific or semi-formed project in mind (and, okay, a lot that is just random because I have a magpie hoarder shiny reflex) but there's a handful of stuff I don't have and really want... Plus the thrill of a road trip! A fair! Getting to be around people who care about all this junk!

Ehhh, I just shouldn't dwell.

Boring boring.

Hopefully by next week I'll have accomplished something, even if it's only a couple more inches of [REDACTED] or another few rows on the Doom Blanket.

][ imagine something witty here

An update without much substance, I'm afraid. Some quick notes:

☆ 6H is off the needles at last, after much procrastinating. Pattern may or may not be forthcoming depending on my willingness to knit another for step-out photos.
☆ ChildHood is knit up, but needs to be sewn together. I am dreading it.
☆ Started a new project, but as it's for my bestest friend and she could conceivably see this blog (though she won't), mum's the word &c.
☆ The Blanket of Doom plods along faithfully. I am actually short on shreddable black shirts, oops. I'm going to try soliciting donations from my family first.

But to make this not totally tl;dr and boring, have some pictures.


Look! I followed through on something!
As previously threatened, I knit a bit with that awesomely loud and chaotic yarn to see how the color runs looked comparatively. I'm much, much happier with the knit fabric.


Detail of the knit bits.
I tried a bit of garter on 11s (the first thing I grabbed in my needle case, and way too big,) then switched to 4s to roll off a little stockinette, a little ribbing, some linen stitch for kicks. The color runs are still very brief, but since knitting shows the transitions a little more clearly I think it comes across better that way-- less color vomit, more melted box of crayons I think. Definitely planning to make little tiny hats and/or booties with this stuff, the next time the baby knitting bug bites. Which will hopefully not happen til a bigger dent is made in the ecksmuss knitting.

In other other news, 2 weeks til Rhinebeck. We're planning to go. I'm half excited and half scared, and a little bummed I don't have anything grandiose to wear.

Ah, well. Better get back to the needles.