Bear With Me
04 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: knitting, life, pattern, project, yarn
Things have been pretty tumultuous lately. And by pretty, I am really. No, by really, I mean severely. It’s been a constant dance of doing what I can with the weather while getting more orders, circumvent the weather (to no avail), and pacify a needy family.
I’m failing.
For one, the weather is not cooperating. There are certain things that can only be done outside – for the safety and cleanliness of the household. And it has been raining or drizzling or misting all week.
For two, I have been edgy and tempermental because things aren’t going according to plan. The lack of professionalism in people I am working with is causing my schedule to be inaccurate.
Suffice to say I will not be at the Chocolate Festival in Long Grove due to a lack of coherent information in a timely fashion.
However, I have just signed a contract for the Evanston Famer’s Market – Home Grown Artists for several Saturdays beginning September 22nd and end October 27th. The Farmer’s Market runs all summer, beginning this weekend, and continues into November. I have just signed up for select weekends.
Also, I have changed around my June calendar a bit. Instead of the Pirate Festival, I will be at the Fairy Day event on June 2nd and 3rd at Witchy Wearables in Midlothian.
And the following weekend, you will be reading blog posts from Hawaii – as our awesome roommate is taking us on vacation. A much needed vacation. And that is the understatement of the year.
For this trip to Hawaii, I got it stuck in my head that I could knit something fun and summery by the time we leave. I got to thinking, and settled on the Tea Rose Halter from Interweave Spring 2007. It is something that has been on my to-do list since I first saw it. It is lacey and feminine and striking. So when I went to knit night, I dug through the summer yarns for the perfect one. The yarn is Firefly, by Classic Elite.
I got home, had a rough evening, and decided I was going to swatch and begin the top. I went to the knitting bookshelf and looked through my magazines, and it wasn’t there. I started rooting through every bag and yarn box in my studio looking for it. I pulled old suitcases out of the closet, I looked everywhere. Couldn’t find it.
I thought it would be ok. Interweave sells patterns online. So, I went to their website. This particular pattern, because it was part of the magazine, is only sold with the magazine, which is currently out of stock.
Crap.
Now, I have tons and tons of this yarn and don’t know what to do with it. I want it to become something. By June. Something summery, and flirty, and quick.
I was thinking Norah Gaughan’s Roundabout Lead Tank . This is another one I have been eyeing up for awhile.
Then, I started purusing Ravelry for projects using 900 yards of sport weight (or Dk or fingering).
There’s Stitch Diva’s Cecilia Vest and this really cool tank that I can’t pronounce. There is a very sexy top – The Knitting Bohemian - which is an option as well.
Lastly, I do have enough yarn that I could make the Dahlia cardigan, which may be a good summery cardi.
I am trying to distract my troubles with fancy yarn. What are your thoughts?
Allergies, Cats, and Hats
30 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: festival, hat, show, tasks, top hat, witch
A hard week (and weekend) left me sitting on the kitchen counter at midnight while consuming between myself and my roommate two bottles of wine as our aggravated minds took us all over the realms of reality and fantasy before bringing us back into our house. Slightly inebriated from alcohol and rather drunk from hopes and frustrations, we two hatched a plan before heading off to bed. I was a little too restless to sleep, so I paced the house a bit before sitting on the couch, pulling the blanket over me, and falling asleep.
This morning I woke up and remembered that, while I do love our fiendish feline, I tend to be rather allergic to cats. I am mostly ok so long as I do not lay with my face in their fur. Unfortunately, there was a cat’s worth of fur covering the couch, which I had been inhaling all through the night. I woke up with a very sore throat and incredible congestion. I have taken to drinking hot water with lemon and cloves to sooth the discomfort.
This all results in me being a little too weak, distracted, and unable to work on things that need to be worked on.
This weekend, however, I did manage to knock out all of the top hats that needed doing.
Done and Done.
This afternoon, all that I have accomplished thus far is to finish up the tiny witch’s caps I had going.
My fingertips are sore from the putting of pins through fabric all weekend. It hurts even to knit, but I persist. Although, there is an increasing chance that I will not be able to attend the festival this coming weekend as my contact are being very un-contactly and not providing me with information that is vital to my being there.
Stress levels rising. Duck and Cover.
Everyone Needs an Engineer
27 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: chart, graph paper, knitting
Last weekend I was complaining that it is so hard to find a good sized piece of knitting graph paper. Odin didn’t understand. Why couldn’t I just use plain ol’ graph paper?
Well, some of you probably know this, but knitting stitches are wider than they are tall. This means that, if I use normal, square shaped graph paper for a color chart, the actual knitting will appear much squatter than what is on the paper. Observe:
This is plain old stockinette stitch, which really shows the difference I’m talking about.
Now, I have a small (3×5) notebook of graph paper, blank pages, and lined pages, for jotting down thoughts throughout the day. When it comes to the graph, however, it just doesn’t hold up. Who wants to knit a tiny little swatch of color? It didn’t suit my design needs at all, but it so difficult to find large sheets of the appropriately sized graph paper.
So, Odin set to work. Two days ago, he came home with a roll of paper for me. When I opened it, I discovered perfectly sized rectangles on sheets of 11×17. They were charted in 3 different ways. One had 10×15 sections outlined, one had 10×10, and the other did not have outlines. I was very excited.
He made the paper himself at this free website. I spent some time today playing around on it. You can make any kind of graph paper you want for a variety of projects. I had a hard time figuring out what Odin did for the graph, so I googled “knitting stitch ratio” and found this site: the knitting site, which is freaking fantastic and you need to check out. I linked you to the graph paper page.
During lunch today, I printed off 50 copies of the portrait and the landscape options and used my office’s bind-o-matic to make a notebook:
And to think, none of this would have happened if I didn’t have my personal engineer.
Pieces
26 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: afghan, knitting, tech square, technique
Last week at knit night I finished the very last square of the Tech Square Afghan that I began two January’s ago. The very last square was the fair-isle square, with steeking. It was my first steek. I tried to get pictures of the process, but alas, my camera battery died at the very beginning. For a brief second, I contemplating postponing the cut until the battery was charged, but I was already in the proper frame of mind for taking a pair of scissors to my knitting, and I didn’t want to chicken out.
This morning, remembering it was Thursday and I have been trying to have non-essential knitting at Knit Night, so that I can remember the joys of knitting instead of the tedium of churning out tiny top hats for a living, I quickly washed and blocked the last two squares.
They were dry when I got home from work, so I started laying them out to decide how I am going to put them together into the afghan.
It was remarkably difficult trying to find the right balance of color and stitch pattern. I didn’t want it to seem color heavy on one side and texture heavy on the other. I didn’t want too much action on half the blanket and not enough elsewhere. If you look in the second row up from the bottom, you can see in the picture the salmon pink I started out with (the cables and lace square) all the way on the right, and the darker mauve (Intarsia square all the way on the left) I ended up with on my next LYS trip to restock on yarns. This isn’t too much of a problem since the colors didn’t ever come together in a square. Would you believe it is the same color, too? Dye lots are essential!
I just hope the two different dye lots of brown I picked up for the edging aren’t too obvious.
Universal Realignment
25 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: award, blogs, craft, creative
It was as though the universe new that there was something not quite right this morning. Yesterday was not a happy day in the house, and I think that seeped into my bones because when I woke up this morning, I just felt drawn and sad. I couldn’t exactly pin-point why – it was simply that things did not feel right in my world.
When I arrived at work, there were daffodils on my desk. Apparently, it is Administrative Professionals Day, and the company I work for is pretty good at making the employees feel good. I’m the one that goes out before work to pick up the treats on employee’s company anniversary, so I know how seriously they take it.
Then, I checked my email, and discovered that The Thing About Joan nominated me for the Kreativ Blogger Award.
I was very curious about this award – wanted to the know the who, what, and why of it. As far as I can tell, there was no organization that started it. It sort of originated out of nowhere and has been getting passed around like a chain letter. I did find this blog, which has some good info and thoughts on this particular “award.”
I’m not a fan of chains, or memes. But I do like that part of what this has been doing is getting people to share blogs that they enjoy reading. It opens up the blogosphere 7 fold, and that’s pretty exciting, if you ask me.
Who do I follow that I would nominate?
Of course, I am always finding really cool blogs to follow, so narrowing it down to the ones I look forward to most was kind of difficult.
Anyway, I’m not going to force this to keep going since I can’t find the source of it, or the meaning behind it. Either way, those blogs I listed are pretty awesome, enjoy.
Things I Will Not Do
23 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: craft, home, Procrastination
I will not open a bottle of wine.
I will not vacuum the carpet.
I will not watch a movie with my daughter.
I will not rearrange furniture.
I will not use cleaning as an excuse.
I will not convince the 7 year old to do it for me.
I will not make dinner.
I will not have the 7 year old make dinner for me.
I will not text a dozen people.
Even if it is to tell them that I love them and I am thinking of them.
I will not search for quarters in the couch.
I will not do laundry. (I have no quarters).
I will not read a novel.
I will not help with homework.
I will not cuddle the cat.
I will not check facebook.
I will not peruse Ravelry.
I will not knit things I do not need.
I will not dust the shelves.
I will not make the bed.
I will not blog.
I will not procrastinate.
Pink and Purple
21 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: craft, fairy, knitting, production, tasks, wings, work
I have been trying to tell myself to work on the big things. The little things are not difficult and do not require much time (although, granted, I do need more little things than big things). The big things are not things to procrastinate. Especially the big things that require a lot of waiting, like paint drying.
One corner of my studio has become the “painting” corner. The tarp is semi-permanent, and there has been a steady rotation of wings needing to be painted. Unfortunately, the wings I need are all of the pink and purple variety, and I am really starting to resent little girls’ obsession with those two colors. You could say my biggest loss from sales comes from the lack of remaining pink and purple wings. It’s kind of a bummer to realize that this is truth. So, I am trying to preempt that by having on hand dozens and dozens of pink and purple wings.
While batches were trying, I was steadily making roses and pompoms, and at least that is something I can do while talking/playing games/watching movies with the family, so we all are satisfied with “quality time”.
On the subject of drying, I have also been felting and blocking top hats and other felted goodies:
It has been getting increasingly difficult to find appropriate articles of clothing to throw into the washer with finished knitted items. I had to take a shower just to have a “dirty” towel to toss in with them. Not that I wouldn’t have taken a shower otherwise. Maybe.
Moving on.
Tomorrow, a friend is coming over to help in any area she can. I am handing her the bolts of sparkly fabric for the “Celeste” wings and the template and having her cut for the rest of the day while I sew. Either that or putting her to work making wands and hair clips while I work on top hats and wings. In any case, tomorrow will be a big crafting day and I look forward to showing you what I have finished.
I feel like I’m a little ahead. Enough so that I am making dinner for the family before the bolt of lightening strikes me down again.
A Dance Called Progress
19 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: craft, knitting, production, repair, sewing machine
Step to the left:
Step to the Right:
Forward Step:
Back Step:
Again!
Deadline Approaching
16 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: cat, crazy, exhaustion, family, life, production, shows
There is an official sign in my kitchen, taking up the entirety of the white board. It was prompted by a very bad weekend all around. The house hated me, I hated them. I had a bad week last week – I fell ill on Wednesday (probably should have seen a doctor, but I was too sick to get out of bed), and didn’t fully recover until Sunday. I spent the last half of the week mad at everyone, curled up on the couch working away at a chunky scarf. Wrong time of year for a scarf, and definitely not what I should be working on. The weekend saw me with headphones in place while I warded off the demands of family in favor of sparkly pompoms which are slowly becoming magic fairy wands.
So far behind am I that I reached into the drawer this morning as I was getting dressed to realize that I didn’t have clean undies. Oops. So, this afternoon, Ellette and I loaded up the little red wagon and took an excursion to the laundromat two blocks away. While it may be slightly more expensive than doing laundry in the machines supplied by the landlord, they had two dozen washing machines – we have two. All ten loads of towels, clothes, and winter blankets were washed, dried, and folded in one almost smooth moment (the blankets had to be dried multiple times – stubborn little beasts). We loaded the wagon back up and walked home. I told Ellette to start boiling eggs for egg salad sandwiches and I wrote this note to the household:
Dear House:
I am officially declaring the next two and a half weeks NO MOMMY TIME. I am on a deadline. And I am behind. It is important that I am ready for the slough of show that is my May and June. I cannot be held responsible for snarky comments, dirty floors, grumbling bellies, and lonely nights. No, I do not want to go out. No, I do not want to chat. No, I do not care. Protect yourself. Avoid me. At least until May 20th.
Then I ran out of room, or I would have written much more than that. May 20th is the end of my May calendar. I then have a few weeks before my June calendar. I am still filling in the gaps, however. A lot of the shows inbetween are not actually stock shows – just face painting or other gigs that don’t need as much prep.
This happens every year though. I procrastinate until the very end, and then I scramble and get irritated. I always tell myself I will get it together next time. And I never do. You’d think the family wouldn’t be at all surprised that I lock myself in my studio (or whatever at the time takes on the form of my studio) and work for hours and hours without human contact. You’d think they would know better than to bug me about going out for dinner, doing laundry, and reading them stories. Every time. No one gets it. Except the cat – who insists on helping.
Oodles and Oodles of Tulle
09 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: craft, fairy, skirt, task, tulle, tutu
The repercussion of the efficient tulle cutting yesterday led to a living room that looks like this:
The only one who doesn’t seem to mind is the cat, who prowls through the colors, pounces, and then rolls over for a nap. She nips at my feet when I try to move her. What has been going on this afternoon is me playing music (Cake Bake Betty, Dresden Dolls, The Pippini Sisters, Etc.), and making fairy skirts galore.
This only redeeming quality of this task is the myriad possibilities of color combinations.
I’m loving the rainbow combo. It makes me happy inside. I’ve made so many of them by now, and I’ve had to restrain myself considerably and remember that little girls like pink and purple, and I need to concentrate my energy on making pink and purple tutus, while silently cursing gender stereotypes. I’m an earth-tone girl myself. I’ll take the willow and chocolate and ivory any day.
Up next: the felting of tiny hats, otherwise known as LAUNDRY!
