Knitting Angel

Spring? Or Summer?

It got very hot rather suddenly over the weekend..... Like we skipped spring and hurled towards summer (its been in the eighties all weekend.) 

And the animals suddenly slooooowed down.

Milo took over Chloe's dog bed in front of the windows in the living room.

Chloe has abandoned her three dog beds for the cool of the faux fireplace.

I guess the tiles are cool on the belly.  One of the nice things about the heat is that I was able to give Chloe a bath and not worry about her catching a cold. She is now sleek and shiny, and smells like Suave shampoo. 

Meanwhile I finished my Star stitch square.

The square is in need of blocking because it is rather wonky and misshapen. But I really enjoyed learning this stitch. It has a nice texture and was really easy. Plus it is really satisfying to finally finish something. I have started on the next square, which is called the Honeycomb Cable. It is not as intuative as the Star Stitch, and I have to pay more attention to the chart while knitting, but I think I finally have the pattern established. 

Finally, I finished up a long, long ago UFO- it is going to be a gift for someone, after I starch and iron the tea towel, it will be rather cute.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy simply embroidery. The patterns come from iron-on transfers by Jenny Hart (Sublime Stitching). She does super cute stuff, and I plan to make a couple more tea towels as gifts. 

Kinda fun eh???

Hi my name is A____ and I have a yarn problem

Every year I look forward to the Webs anniversary sale with anticipation. I actually save money just for this sale, and once I get my sale flier I plot out what I am going to buy. In years past, I often would stock up on Cascade 220, but this year, I realized that I have to start changing the nature of the stash.

I have placed several orders now. Two have come, and I am waiting on one more (stuff was backordered.) Ahem. It is a lot of yarn.

Yeah. A problem. So the green yarn is Plymouth Encore- enough there for an afghan. The Taste of Aran afghan actually, which I have begun knitting. (More on that in a minute.) The Cascade 220 Superwash is for the Great American Afghan (I got all the colors that Webs had- they don't have a couple of the colors that the pattern calls for which I will have to order from another source). The aqua is Ella Rae Silkience for a pullover (cotton/silk blend). The Yellow is Lyndon Hill from the Bristol Yarn Gallery, for a crocheted cardigan and the pink is Valley yarns Longmeadow for a crocheted pullover.

So yeah, I went a bit overboard at the Webs sale (and more is coming eventually.) Almost everything is stuff I am knitting for myself, and when I went to put the yarn away and realized that it did not fit ANYWHERE I had to stand and re-evaluate.

I am going cold sheep for the next few months for many reasons, which I stated earlier, but the main one, is frankly, I have too many projects backed up into the pipeline and I feel burdened (actually burdened!) by my knitting. 

The second big issue is that I will be moving soon, and while the move itself is not inherently problematic (with it being a cross-country move and all), the bigger problem is that I might be moving to a smaller place. I don't know. In a few weeks I will be going back to Texas in order to look for a new place and I will be renting and the rents near my new university are very high. (It is in downtown San Antonio). I would like to have a 2 bedroom apartment, but I don't know if that is financially feasible. Right now the stash takes up the better part of my dining room, which is not a problem, because my dining room is enormous, but I want to get it down in size. 

So no more yarn for the next three months. I would like to hold on for the year if I can, but we will see. I think three months is a reasonable goal.

Meanwhile I have been working on my crocheted Alpine Frost scarf

I am well into the second ball and I have become more enamored with the scarf as I work on it. The airy feel of the silk/kid mohair yarn and the crocheted pattern get oohs and HHS from everyone that I show it too. It is an easy, almost boring pattern, and is ideal for a beginner crocheter, or for an advanced crocheter who doesn't want to be forced to think while working. I hope to have this done soon.

Finally I have started the Taste of Aran Afghan. I have long wanted to make the Great American Aran Afghan, but since I have committed to work on the Great American Afghan, I felt that two super-insanely hard afghans was probably more than I can handle. So I got the pattern for the Taste of Aran Afghan (by Janet Szabo) and I like it. Most of the patterns are repetitive, and while they require thinking, its much more like knitting 20 interesting and complicated dishcloths then tackling the behemoth that is the GAAA. Since I will be traveling a bit in a few weeks, these little guys will make good airplane knitting. I have started with the Star Stitch square.

Its easy and slightly addictive. Plus these squares are like little projects in and of themselves, and I kinda felt like I needed a large project that could masquerade as a bunch of small projects.  

The weaving is also going well. I am moving along slowly, mainly because I am just slow. Its a learning curve thing I am sure- I am new to it, so I won't be knocking out stuff a mile a minute. Plus I have all my knitting and crocheting to work on...

Finally, my dissertation. I am in the final editing stage, which I think is the hardest and is what is really contributing to my general dissatisfaction with life. Ideally I want to finish it before I go to Texas in early May, so my advisor can check it over one last time and give it the seal of approval. It won't be defended until September because my committee can't be rounded up over the summer, but it will be done. And goodness knows, I need the darned thing done. So I have been working on that, and it puts me in a bad mood, and makes me not want to knit or  be social or do much of anything. I call it dissertation torpor. Sigh.

slogging

You know how sometimes, you seem to get stuck in your own life? Like, everything just seems stuck--

I think part of it is the wild spring weather. I need sun. Sun has not been happening.

This is Chloe in the blowing snow last Tuesday. Luckily it melted quickly, but now it has just been rainy and grey. 

On Friday I went back to the LYS where I bought the loom and the owner gave me a lesson on how to warp properly. I learned all about the importance of tension and that it takes a long time to warp. It took us about three hours to get everything going, but I am now working on a scarf. The warp is Cherry Tree Hill, and the weft is Claudia's Handpaints. (Lazuli gave it to me last year.)

It is coming out really nicely. Except the edges. I need to work on the edges, but I guess all new weavers need to work on the edges.

My camera washed out the colors a bit- the colors are richer than in the picture. I am enjoying weaving... I have found yarn for another project and I am already considering weaving dish towels, but I need a different heddle for that, (the one the loom came with supports worsted yarns- I need to buy the heddles for finer yarns for the towels) so I might put those off a bit and just work on scarves from the stash.

Meanwhile, I am working on a crochet project. Haven't been knitting much because of the arm pain, but I am working on the Spring Market Bag from the latest Interweave Crochet. It is crocheted in linen (and I have to say, I think I like crocheting with linen more than knitting with it) and the technique is tapestry crochet. It is quite easy, but is taking time.

But I like the colors and the spiral effect. Very fun.

On a final note, I have been thinking about my yarn buying habits lately. I have a lot of yarn, and a long list of UFOs and projects that I intend to start someday. Plus I need to cut back on some expenses (I will need a new car once I move to Texas. Groan. Its nice not to make payments but my car is 11 years old now, and I have to prepare for the inevitable.) So I am thinking of severely cutting back on yarn purchases-- you know, knit from the stash and all that.

But yarn diets rarely work for me, so I am still thinking of how I will go about cutting back on buying yarn. Perhaps setting a budget (You know, like $20 a month or something) or maybe a reward plan... not sure yet, but I am thinking of it..... any ideas for a successful stashbusting/yarn diet?

Loomed

For the last week or so I have been having trouble with my hands. It hurts to knit and it really hurts to crochet, so I have been taking some time off from the crafts.

This of course, meant that life is boring at the moment. But last week, I went to a LYS and unexpectedly placed a large order....

For a loom.

Oh yes. I went with a colleague just to get out of our small town and see what the LYS had in stock. Then in the back room I saw that the owner had the Ashford Knitter's loom. I asked her about it and she brought it out, and let me weave on it. It was addictive and easy, and before I knew it, I walked out the door having placed an order for one.

So I picked it up today. Now I am supposed to get a lesson on how to warp and weave with the loom, but the owner was not in. I am going to go see her on Tuesday. Anyway, I came home and assembled it (there is not much to assemble) along with the stand, and began to follow the directions to warp it.

I found some brown alpaca in the stash and followed the directions for "peg warping" in the booklet. That was easy. Threading the loom however, turned out to be harder.

That took me few tries before I got it correct (the booklet was sorta vague there, so it took some trial and error.)

So I got it set up on a stand in my messy living room and started weaving with some grey yarn (didn't have enough brown to weave with that)

And once I got into it, the scarf began to appear. Now the weaving is slow, and the tension inconsistent. My ends are all wonky and the beating is not all the same, plus I am having trouble keeping the reed in the down position (it falls out of its slot- my guess is that the tension of the warp is off. I will ask the LYS owner when I get my lesson.) But aside from all that, I am weaving.... a really ugly scarf....

Oh well... I will try to finish this off before Tuesday so I can have the teacher show me how to warp (so this time maybe I get it right without many hours of cursing and staring at the manual) and will start something less.... brown and grey. Gotta stash dive.

My mom is already requesting a green table runner. I told her that she is going to have to wait a while, at least until I get this right.