Saturday, December 22, 2007

Newbie Mistakes and Happy Anniversary

I made a newbie knitting mistake this week. Not dropped stitches or something like that but an overestimation of my own abilities. I've been working on the Calla Lily Bag for a couple weeks - too late for pictures tonight, but I'll include process pictures when I post the FO next year (probably) - and am down to the LONG strap and the felting. However, a few days ago, Husband and I had the brilliant idea to knit scarves for two of his female relatives that we always struggle to shop for who will probably enjoy the handmade gift a lot more than what we might buy. This was a good idea, but perhaps not a great idea given the time constraints. I've got Husband (a non-knitter) working on one while I do the other, and they are about 25% and 35% done respectively. He's doing the garter stitch main portion and I did cabling at one end with plans to do more at the other. This too wouldn't be such a big challenge except that we have to spend all day tomorrow cleaning our house and we leave the next day.

I'm going to make him knit on his a little before bed and that's what I'm going to go do now. I was even knitting on mine in the car today as we drove to breakfast and the movies. We went to two movies for our anniversary and then came home to frozen pizza. Yum. :)

On to scarves! I'll take pictures and try to post them before we leave. In case I can't - happy holidays and happy knitting!

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

My Too-Big-Mitts, Mouse Pillow and Unoriginal Hat

MittsMy first FOs! Only a week later than I promised myself, but there's three! I've included details of all of these on my Ravelry account too.

My first knit project was a scarf that is fairly useful but not really worth mentioning. My second was the mitts - I call them my Too-Big-Mitts - at right. (Pictures of all projects are available at my Flickr account.) These were my own design, so to speak, of a tube on the blue KK loom, knit in the round except for the thumb hole created by knitting back and forth without completing the round, and a simple cast off. They work very well for their purpose, which was that I needed something to pad my wrists and palms at my laptop during NaNoWriMo. My currently in progress paper has more design flair, is more fitted, and only has the yarn doubled on the bottom (palm) side in order to make the back more breathable.


Mouse PillowThis is a mouse pillow inspired by pieKnits' pattern. It's really just a moss-stitch square seamed on three sides except for the little bit of flair created by the cast on. Last but not least, this is a hat I made in my first attempt to convert something complicated - cables - from an existing pattern - the Yarn Harlot's Unoriginal Hat.

HatI'm happy with how all of these turned out, but I definitely learned a different lesson from each of them. (Make the thumb hole bigger, be more careful with stitch patterns, and that technique of cabling didn't quite work, for example.) If you've got comments or questions about how I did anything, I'm happy to chat about it. Now to sleep!

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Deleted Posts

Hello again, blogland. Anyone who has been checking on this blog has probably noticed that I deleted a few posts. I decided a minor facelift and some house cleaning was in order. For those who never read it before, just know that I vented some feelings about work that I decided were better kept out of the public record and have decided to self-edit.
I fully intended to get out and take some FO pictures this weekend, but I left one of the FOs at work on Friday after a bad day and have seen very little sun this weekend. The good news is that I've made substantial progress on my first to-be-felted project instead. I will document the stages of that and hopefully have time to post here and on Ravelry later this week.
I'll get the hang of this soon enough.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

NaNoWriMo

Awesome-sauce!
NaNoWriMo 2007 - my first - is done, and I finished! Well, I won, meaning I wrote 50K words in 30 days, but "winning" sounds so competitive. Then again, "finished" isn't exactly accurate either since my last three or four chapters are more like outlines with vignettes of critical moments.
I think I'm going to take a couple days off from it and start back up after my birthday. I have a few things to do for work. I was fully intending to start a new WIP this weekend, but am unable to get to my yarn - long story. If I can get through today's work, I'll take some pictures when I get home. If not, Tuesday. I'm promising this to myself, not you. :)

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Dear Blogland...

Welcome to my humble blog. I'm sure you've heard that before.
By the time you're reading this, I've already posted a few more entries (3? 10? dozens? we'll see!) and come out of the blogging closet. For now, I'm keeping it quiet. For now, this is my much-needed outlet of anonymity and knitting goodness. For now, I can confide anything here I want to and hopefully build up to being out about it.
In the meantime, here’s a little about me. I'm a not-quite-thirty with a bit of a problem with tension. Two kinds, really - the kind that makes for good consistent needle knitting (yay!) and the kind that gives you ulcers and chronic pain (boo!). My problem with them is not enough of the first and too much of the latter, but I've recently discovered much love for loom knitting. Tension is important on a loom or rake or board, but it is not so difficult to maintain. Like life, it’s about balance, and yet the act of creation on the loom still takes away a bit of that other deplorable kind of tension.
Having been sucked in by some of your beautiful knitblogs (namely Yarn-a-Go-Go, PieKnits, and brooklyntweed), where I lost time but gained far more invaluable inspiration, I wanted to try to bring the same freshness and personality to knitting without needles (KWON). We'll see if I succeed, right?
I have a houseful of cats, a best-friend dog and a best-friend husband who are the only souls who know about this blog. Only a couple of people even know I knit. Perhaps you're wondering what the big deal is? This new hobby comes at a point in my life where I'm considering leaving the safe comfortable exhausting job for which I spent a lot of time in school in favor of the risky creative job I think I might like a lot more. For me knitting is about more than a hobby. It's about finding out some things about myself. It's about exploring a side of my personality I keep locked up (and shouldn't we all do that?). And most of all, it's about finding pride in what I do... whatever that turns out to be.
And it's all brought to you online. Cool, eh? All hail the gods of bloggy goodness.
FO photos in a couple of days, and more!