Famous Last Words

"Sure, I can knit that!"

Well, Grumpasaurus no. 1 was completed on Friday night, but some issues had arisen as to who would retain ownership of Grumpasaurus. Therefore, faced with a snow day on Saturday and the fear of bloodshed on Monday, I decided to settle the issue by creating a second Grumpasaurus.

Therefore I present Grumpasaurus:



And Grumpasaurette:



And now there shall be peace. I hope.

I've finished the final agave chart on the Aeolian shawl and I'm working on the edging set up. I was a bit confused at first, but as with most knitting directions, if you quit trying to understand and just do what it says, it starts to make sense. I have visions of finishing by next week, but I am trying to talk myself back into reality. That is to say, I am trying to remind myself of the reality of how even when you only have fifty rows to go, those rows get longer and longer and take longer and longer, and if you only have fifty rows to go but it takes you forty minutes to do a row...well. It seems unlikely that finishing will happen this week. I hope I don't run out of beads. I have already gone through the entire first tube of my order. These tubes are smaller than the Bead Obession tube and the beads themselves are less uniform - I keep having to pick out ones that are malformed or wierdly shaped. I'm close to the end but there are areas that are very heavily beaded, so--I have apprehensions. I am not at all worried about running out of yarn, on the other hand. I seem to have plenty left on the cone. I am so unworried that I am not deleting that last sentence. See. It's just sitting there. I'm not deleting it at all.

I have been knitting the shawl fairly faithfully. I just love the project so much that I don't even really want to work on anything else, so I haven't got much else to show. I have completed one plain stockinette sock in the Blacklight BFL from Fly Designs, and I cast on for the second one last night, but that's it. Hopefully, I will soon have the finished shawl to show and then I can be more interesting.

Nupp Time

Nupp, nuppy nupp, nupy nup, nuppy nuppy nuppy nupp

Am I the only one who hears that old Salt 'N Peppa song "Shoop" whenever nupps come up? I am, aren't I. Sigh.

("Nupp, nuppy nupp, nuppy nupp, nuppy nuppy nuppy nupp, Here I go, Here I go, Here I go again, Girls what's my weakness? YARN!")

Ahem.

So this weekend I got to the first row of nupps on the Aeolian shawl and...well. It wasn't pretty. I guess I was overconfident since I had no trouble nupping when I took Nancy Bush's workshop. It did occur to me that doing a 9-stitch nupp in a non-elastic yarn prone to splitting might be a little more difficult than doing 5-stitch nupps in 100% wool, but I didn't take the danger seriously. I thought I made the stitches loosely, I really did. I even went back a couple of times and put my needle back through and tugged just like Nancy said to do. But, I had a terrible time purling back across, and making several attempts at repairs as I knit back across. Some repairs worked out, some didn't. I'm a little frustrated at the sloppyness.

I also cracked open my next tube of beads, and found that the beads I ordered are not exactly the same as the beads I bought at Bead Obsessions. The color is the same (which is what I was really worried about), but these beads are a little bit more of the traditional donut seed bead shape, while the ones I had before were a little bit longer, just enough to look a bit cylindrical. I'm hoping it won't matter, and telling myself that even if it does, it's okay because I'm in a different section of the pattern so it will just add character. Ah, character. Is there a flaw you can't explain away?

I am at the second nupp row, so tonight I will be doing my best to pretend I am a relaxed knitter. I'm not, I'm a very tight knitter, but I will have to try or risk another row of ratty looking nupps.

Spring time is coming and so I picked up Hanami again last night and gathered all my pieces. I'd like to have a new shawl to wear for my Easter performance at church, so I'm hoping I can finish that one in time. The SO bought me some Sundara lace yarn some time ago that I am also thinking would make an absolutely beautiful lace shawl, and because I am stupid, I'm thinking of making the Triangular Summer Shawl from Estonian Lace. Because there is no way that nuups in silk could go wrong, is there? Of course not. I can't help it, though - the colors are just perfect and the shawl is so beautiful. The bit about sewing on the edging gives me pause, however. I am not good with sewing.

Grumpasaurus has been sitting around unloved all weekend. I'll get back to him soon, just...not right now. However, it's become clear to me that I am going to have to make at least two lest he get torn apart in the frenzy. It's good to be appreciated, I guess?

Still Playing Catch-Up

Well, it's all chaos and busyness around the CraftNinja household as usual. I don't know how people with families do it - I'm unmarried with no kids and I can barely keep up with myself and the dog.

I furiously knitted my late Christmas presents this month, finished them, and promptly left them sitting around the house for a week. I really need to get them out to the post office since they are already so severely late!

These are iPhone pics, so I apologize for the quality, but, you know - beats no pictures at all.

Frost Diamonds Shawl

I wanted this to be as wash and wear as possible, so I washed it normally but instead of pinning it out to block, I smoothed it out flat and shaped it. The corners wanted to flop inwards so I did pin those, but did nothing else. The end result looked fine so I'm satisfied. The yarn is Stahl Merino Mix and it's splitty, but it wasn't too much trouble. I got it on sale. It's a merino-microfiber blend, so it's machine washable and I hope it will be a bit durable. I just worry when I knit for non-knitters because I don't want to give them something that either makes a lot of work for them to take care of, or that they won't wear for fear of damaging it.

Anyway, since it was a worsted weight project it went pretty quickly, but I'm just now getting it in the mail today (at least, I hope I am - cross your fingers for me. years of post office lines have given me a natural inclination to avoid the place, even though those little automated machines they have now make mailing packages a LOT simpler.

For one of my other friends, I made a dish towel and some dishrags.

...Yeah, I think I owe her something better after being this late, but what can I do? I put a couple little non-knitted extras in the package for her.

I recently finished the pair of socks I have been working on since the beginning of time, also.

This pattern is the embossed stitch from More Sensational Knitted Socks and the yarn is Sereknity. It's a seacell-wool blend and I have to say...I didn't like knitting it. It felt dry in my hands and it was a little splitty. However, now that the socks have been washed they don't feel nearly so rough or dry, so maybe that's the trick. The colorway is beautiful, though - Black Forest Raspberry, I think.

One of my coworkers accused another coworker of being a grumpasaurus the other day, which I believe led to a discussion about the validity of 'grumpasaurus' as a word, and a google search resulted, which turned up this. I was immediately petitioned to knit one, and being tickled with the idea and pleased to be asked to knit, I started one.

I call this the 'angry pickle' photo. The picture is a little out of date; he now has a tail and one hand, and so looks considerably less pickle-like. I am considering knitting an army.

And, last but not least, I have started another sock, which is proceeding extremely rapidly, in great contrast to the previous pair. However, that tends to happen with me, socks proceed quickly until I get to the heel of the second sock, and then they sit in a bag for ages. But for now, I'm trucking along! This yarn is Fly Designs BFL superwash in colorway Blacklight.

Now, I must go and write some type of grovelling note to put in my packages so that I can get these things mailed off and gone. Wish me persuasive words so that my friends forgive me.

Happy New Year, I Think

I feel like in all the rush and hustle bustle and worrying, that I missed the whole Christmas/New Year season. Not a good feeling - I will have to try to find a way to get back in control next year instead of letting the prep control me. I have always loved Christmas, but the crush of obligations that come along with it as an adult has become kind of crippling. I have a lot of end-of-year responsibilities at work which, when added on to my church obligations and the way December always feels shortened because I travel to my parents', just makes it really hard to relax into the flow. I'm going to have to find a way to fix it.

Part of my brain went into a bizarre kind of denial at the beginning of the month, and I just plain didn't plan Christmas presents for a number of people. Because I'm gone over Christmas, most of my gift-giving for non-family members happens in early January anyway, so I just kind of put it aside. I got stuff for my immediate family and pretty much no one else. So, now I'm in kind of a scramble of catch-up gift giving. At the time it seemed totally reasonable, and now I'm sitting here thinking, holy crap. I'm totally late with presents. Guilt and panic descended and I have ended up with a slightly delayed version of It.

So now I am knitting some late presents as fast as I possibly can. This is incredibly rediculous to me since I could have had all this stuff nearly done if I had just thought about it before hand and knit while I was at my parents', but I didn't, so now I'm behind. And I can't even really say what I'm working on because the two people in particular I am speed-knitting for (who happen to both be named Rebecca) may or may not be reading this blog. I will only say that one set of gifts involved a lot of knitting cotton, leaving my twist hand too sore to reinstate Tuesdays are for Spinning last night. Instead Tuesday was for frantically knitting as fast as I could to try and get at least partway through the first repeat of Chart B. The good news is, that both projects are worsted weight and therefore appear to me to be flying.

One benefit is that I have been forced to halt work on the Aeolian shawl, which has prevented me from going insane while waiting for my beads to arrive. I needed a project to knit while I was gone, and I wanted something fairly attention-heavy, since I expected to have a lot of down time without much else to do while I was gone. I didn't plan very far ahead, so I had to plan on working with stash yarn. I knew I had two cones of Valley Yarns laceweight, one of Colrain lace in grey-green, and one of their alpaca-silk laceweight in eggplant. I looked for a shawl pattern that had different lace sections (I get very bored doing the same pattern over and over) and settled on the Aeolian shawl. I needed beads, though, so I went upstairs and looked through my beads. I found a set of beads that I picked up at Bead Obsessions because they were pretty, without any special project in mind for them. They went great with the purple alpaca-silk so I was set. Since I had plenty of yarn, I figured, might as well go for broke and make the big version (although, I question the wisdom of this decision a little bit, because the 'shoulderette' version looks plenty big to me, but, you know, why not). While I was gone I completed the 12 repeats of the first chart (so much for not wanting to do the same thing over and over) and started the transition chart. By the time I came home, it was very, very obvious that I was going to run out of beads. I called Bead Obsessions, and was told, very nicely, that they usually carry the beads I wanted, but they were out right now, and she gave me the name of another store I could try. I called them, and got the same response and the name of a third store. I called the third store and struck out there as well. I gave up and ordered them online, but I was worried I would go crazy before they arrived. Happily, since I have been working on Christmas projects, the beads have arrived before I needed them.

I took my long-term garter stitch project with me (the 3-scarf ruana from The Knitting Experience Book 1) to see Avatar this past weekend, and very nearly had a yarn crisis just before the movie started, but I got it sorted out just as the last preview played, right before they dimmed the lights. Phew. So I knit all the way through Avatar and put several inches on that project. I had heard a lot of conflicting opinions on Avatar before I went, and oddly, I agreed with all of them. Just as oddly, I didn't really have much else to say about the movie, except that I thought the bad guy was so over the top it was practically comical. Very unusal for me. Normally I am a font of opinions.

Anyway, that's where I am. Everything kind of on hold while I finish up last year's business. I am giving serious thought to ripping out Eris. I'm just not happy with it. I don't think the yarn is right, I don't think the decreases are right - I just don't like it. And I have finally admitted to myself that I really don't like the color. I bought it because it was on closeout and it was the only color they had and I lost my mind. This is a real problem since I bought I think I need to back up and reconsider. This is a frustrating conclusion to come to after having done all the work on the collar, I admit, but it's not bothering me as much as I thought it would.

I LOVE the Vivian sweater posted on the Rainey Sisters' blog. I love love love the way it fits. I am of course not as skinny as the recipient but I still really like the sweater so...I may put some thought towards that.

I don't have a very good handle for what makes a good sweater yarn. I like soft yarns, but I don't want the sweater to pill and look shabby right away, either. I just have a general impression that the best sweater yarns are 'hearty' yarns, and I don't generally do hearty so much...so I will have to put some more thought into this. I am definitely feeling in a sweater-making mood, though, so I will be giving something a shot sooner rather than later.

You know...after the gift knitting is done.

I'm also feeling like I should do something with some of my handspun. I'm thinking a scarf with a commercial yarn as the base in a fairly basic or neutral color (black?) with stripes of different handspun yarns. The colors of my handspun are all really different, though, so I don't know if I will have enough that coordinate to do that. At least, though, I am thinking of getting some black yarn and knitting it with stripes of some purple and white sparkly handspun that I spun from a Butterfly Girl batt some time ago.

I also received a Slice for Christmas, so I want to sit down and play with making some cards with it. I got so excited thinking about all the different shapes I could do. But, as usual, the mess in my craft room is holding me back a bit. I have to clear enough table space to have room to play, first. I don't want to move all the stuff down to my kitchen table again and end up making a huge mess down there that then migrates back upstairs the next time I have company.

I've also gotten my computer upgraded to Windows 7, which means it's no longer slower than my grandmother on IM (love you mamaw), and I have a copy of lightroom and photoshop installed, so I can get my photogrpahy act together. I have a lot of pictures to process, not only from my vacation but also from several church events that have happened already.

With so many possibilities I should feel inspired and invigorated and excited, but most of the time I just feel frustrated and overwhelmed because I can't do everything at once. The years seem so short to me, that it always feels like I didn't get a fraction done that I wanted to. I think I need to really examine what things I do make me happy (like knitting), and what things I just do because I feel like I should (like eating healthy, haha). In short, I feel like my life is too full to enjoy, and I am trying to cram stuff in to make every minute count. It is especially frightening to think that I feel like this now, while I am single and my time is at my own disposal. If I should ever have a family to manage, I might lose my mind!

I have many friends who are "gung-ho" kind of people, who want to plunge in and seize the day and all this other kind of stuff. The enthusiasm is catching and I appreciate those people in my life for the way they broaden my horizons and thinking. However, sometimes I get so caught up in their definition of what it means to live a full and satisfying life, that I become dissatisfied with my own life. However, living life the way they do would never make me happy (in fact, if I lived like most of them, I'd be downright miserable), and so I really need to work on remembering that it is okay to find happiness in my own way, and that no one is judging me but me. I need to slow down, not speed up. I need to do less, not more. I remember once reading a book when I was young, and I can't remember the title of the book, but it was about two children who ran away from home and lived in a museum and tried to prove a particular statue was carved by Michaelangelo. The girl in the story made it a point to learn one new thing every day. Near the end of the book, they met a lady, who said that it wasn't necessarily a good thing to learn something new every day. Sometimes you need to take a day to just let the things you've learned well up inside you, to think about and appreciate them instead of having a bunch of random facts rattling around in your head. That's a bit how I feel. I don't want to just let the days flow by and suddenly I look up and the year's half over, but I don't want to be cramming every minute, either - nor do I want to feel that time spent resting and recharging is wasted. I want to appreciate the things that are close to home and easy to do, as much as the things that are far away and a big adventure.

In short, I want to feel that the only time really wasted is the time I spend worrying and unhappy. So that is my goal for 2010 - don't worry, be happy.

Sucked In, and Just Plain Sucking

Blogging will continue to be sparse until the holidays are over (as an aside, the last name of one of my coworkers is 'holliday' and after working with her for this long, I have been rendered completely incapable of spelling holiday correctly on the first try).  I am deep in the bowels of my own version of the YH's "It," and sadly mine does not involve much knitting. 

 

I am mostly blogging, therefore, to report that I have been sucked in by the French Press Slipper Mania (FPSM) and I delightedly knit my first pair last week over a couple of days.  I was really, really excited, until I realized I had to sew them together (UGH) and weave in the ends (UGH!!!) and then felt them (which I have never done before).  I put it off a bit, and then finally sewed the tops of one slipper together one evening.  I then put it down and waited until the next day to sew on the foot.  Having fortified myself with some rest and denial, I returned to the slippers and sewed on the foot, and after that I felt so sure that I had gotten the hang of this seaming thing, that I went to sew the two tops of the second slipper.

 

And discovered...they didn't match.  I mean, they did match, and that was the problem.  You knit two slipper tops as written, you see, and then you knit two slipper tops with the directions reversed, so that in the end you have two sets of slipper tops that, when placed facing each other, have all the shaping matched when the wrong sides are together.

 

Well.  Apparently, I was too busy steeling myself for the sewing to notice, but I sewed two identical sides together, so...one of them is upside down, and I now have two identical sides to make the second slipper with.  CURSES.

 

Options:

 

-- Sew the two sides together with one upside down, felt, and hope for the best.

-- Knit another top, sew the second slipper together correctly, felt, and hope for the best.  If the best does not happen, knit a third slipper and felt it to match the correct one.  Have no idea how hard this would be to accomplish, having never felted before.

--Burn this pair and knit a new one.

 

I am currently leaning toward option 2.  I have enough yarn to knit another full slipper if necessary, I think - although it will be a bit of a challenge to figure out how to get three strands of yarn to come from a single ball!  Last time, I pulled from both the inside and outside of one ball, and the inside of the second ball, in order to make the three strands.

Beads and Frills

Flamenco is done~~~~ yay!!

It took some very dedicated knitting and I really was tempted to stop before I got three inches on the ruffle, but I did all three inches and then some. It took me three evenings to bind the thing off. Oh, ruffles, why must I be so drawn to you when you are so very boring and tedius to knit (and bind off)? It is an unhealthy love.
I am somewhat at a loss for how to block this piece, though. There are instructions included for blocking the ruffle, but no blocking diagram or anything like that. I am contemplating whether my blocking wires will go all the way around it, or whether I should use string, or whether I should actually block it in wedges. I have to contemplate this further. I plan to wear this to my choir performance on Dec. 13 so I have a little bit of time to get it done.

I worked on that project with such dedication and exclusivity that I am kind of at a loss for what to do now that is done. I have run into some difficulties with my Christmas knitting, and have kind of put it on hold until I can figure out how to handle the difficulty. Unfortunatley this means that my Christmas knitting is not progressing, and time flows ever more swiftly. This season is really busy at work, plus I have all of the church activities, plus family traditions. I am really tight on time, especially because I have to fly to my parents' the Sunday before Christmas, so a huge portion of the stuff that has to be done, has to be done quickly. This is not at all conducive to knitting anything complicated or learning new techniques.

Speaking of which, I failed to start another pair of socks for me because they are toe up and I couldn't get past the cast-on. I think I need smaller needles or something, but I used the smallest ones I had. It uses a figure 8 cast-on and no matter what I did, it seemed like there were huge gaps between the stitches and the whole world would be able to see my pedicure, which can't help keep the socks from wearing out. I ripped them out and fumed for a bit. I haven't decided whether I am going to try again or...not. Maybe I should try a heavier fingering weight yarn or something. I do have a skein of Casbah left over from the Yellowstone shawl, but it's not in the colors I wanted for this sock.

I don't know. I like to think I am a pretty open-minded knitter but I am just not feeling the love for the toe-up sock. Maybe I will give the short-row toe another try even though that is not what the pattern suggests. I didn't really have a problem doing the short-row toe the last time I tried it, I just - don't hate me - thought it was kind of silly. I kept thinking, if I were knitting cuff down, I'd be starting the pattern by now. Instead I am going round and round on this silly toe. I kind of hated the yarn I was using too so that made me less tolerant.

A few months ago, I went to Catonsville, MD for a wedding, and while I was there I stopped in at Cloverhill Yarn Shop, which is always one of my favorite booths at MD Sheep and Wool. I picked up an ornament kit from Ornamental Knits, for the Beaded Lace Ornament. Every year the ladies in my church have an ornament exchange and every year I have brought a hand-made ornament - some, I admit, more successful than others. I do sometimes get a little nervous about handmade ornaments because my mother can't stand them, but - too bad!! It just adds a little extra fun for me for the ornament exchange. I did have some reservations because I just haven't seen that many knitted ornaments that looked really good, and the photography on the kits is not really stunning, so I felt like I was taking a chance. I put it off and put it off and finally picked it up last night, since the ornament exchange is, you know, today. I was able to finish it all in the single evening (thank goodness because I couldn't find the beaded ornament cover kits that were my backup plan) and it came out looking really darn good. However, I have sometimes been very proud of something that took me a lot of work to do, and then later said..."what was I thinking???" so I brought in to work today for test opinions. Both my coworkers gushed, so I feel reasonably confident that it will be well received. I am a little nervous, just because I didn't follow the finishing instructions, which were to wrap the 'yarn' around the top of the ornament five times and then glue it. Instead, I put the yarn through the last row of loops a second time and then kind of wove it in. It looked kind of pitiful while I was knitting it, but as all things, it improved when blocked (which is to say, it improved when the ornament was shoved in it, which had generally the same effect as blocking.

I'm still here!

There have been some pet related crises in the past week chez CraftNinja, so appologies for the lack of blog. I just haven't been in the mood. Also, you know, we are in that Christmas knitting period where it's difficult to talk about things because you become paranoid that the recipient might run across your blog. Like, they never read blogs, and barely even know what a blog is, but you know, you KNOW, that if you put a Christmas present for them up on the blog, somehow they will find it. So some of that is going on.

So the stuff I can tell you:

--I started a sock out of Schaeffer Ann, which I have never used before, and had to frog it because there was this funky twisted stitch thing on the top that looks really cool but made it too tight. Considering whether to try again or browse around for a different pattern.

--I am still working on Flamenco, in the hopes that I can finish it in time to wear at Christmas, since it is really, really red. However, since I have Christmas presents that also must be worked on, I feel this deadline is kind of tight. I'm on row 26 of 75, but the rows get progressively longer and then there is the ruffle. I don't know why I persist in knitting things with ruffles since ruffles invariably mean that either the cast-on or the cast-off is a nightmare, but I am apparently ruffle-addicted. (Yes, I know of the flirty ruffles shawl from Fiddlesticks, and also the Musetta shawl, and many other ruffled shawls I am trying desperately not to remember)

--I bought a skein of the mink/cashmere yarn that has been making the blog rounds that I intend to make into handwarmers for my mom to put in her stocking. I wish there were some way of verifying the claims about this yarn, but either my OOH YARN impulse or my general tendency to believe people are telling the truth led me to go ahead and purchase it. Angels did not sing and there was no light from heaven when I opened the bag, as I had been led to believe, but other blog readings have convinced me that in order to get the angel choir, you have to add water. So we will revisit this when the mitts are knit and washed, and I will let you know whether there is any angelic apearance. (My mom is the one person who I am dead certain would never find this blog nor read it if she did, so I can say this safely)

--I am working on <censored> from <censored> for <censored>, in <censored> as a Christmas present for <censored>. I also plan to make <censored> from <censored> but I haven't picked the yarn yet. (The great thing is, this bullet point can actually cover multiple projects depending on what you fill in for the censored spots. Saves me some typing!)

--The Rogue sweater is in time-out until I get over my bitterness at these cabled increases along the ragland seams. I really hate knitting them. It galls me that this sweater will fly by when I get through that mess, but that I have to get through it first.

--I finished the first sock in the raspberry black forest yarn and am on to the second. I still don't like the fiber blend very much, but the finished sock is absolutely lovely. I'm through the cuff and into the patterned part of the leg, and the nice thing about this pattern is that it is easy to look at the sock and count repeats, so I know how many I have to knit in order to get socks of the same length. (I know, I could count rows or weave a thread back and forth or whatever, but I'm comfortable with eyeballing it and accepting that there may be a row's difference in the length between my socks. I am pretty confident no one else is going to measure.)

--Veronique and the Featherweight cardigan are advancing a row at a time. This is a consequence of having too much stuff on the needles. I think I'm finished with the collar on the Featherweight collar - or, to be more accurate - I'm done with it. I'm totally done with this stupid collar. I can live with it being maybe a teeny bit shorter than it was designed to be. So when I get around to casting it off, I should be able to knit the sleeves which I desperately hope will go quickly, because I could really use a dose of 'finish-it' self-esteem.

--I can't show you pictures of any of this because Photoshop Elements 3 is not compatible with Vista and I am still waiting on my new copy of Photoshop to arrive. Woe.