A Collection of Oddments

I posted a few of my patterns (r-link) to Ravelry yesterday, and have been compulsively refreshing the page to see how many people have added them to their favorites. It's just my armwarmer patterns so far, but I'll be adding other stuff as I finish setting up the patterns. Though I was proud of them before, it's kind of ridiculously gratifying to see that other people like them, too. Especially when I have been feeling rather dejected about my abilities over the last couple of weeks, it's nice to see that even though I can't manage to get a corporate-type job, I can at least produce a product people appreciate. I can't wait now to get the yarn for my baby sweater designs and see if they go over was well as the armwarmers.

The Swallowtail is doomed. That's the only possible explanation for why, ten minutes before I was going to unpin it from its blocking, the cat threw up all over it. Now the process must be begun all over again. Which I don't mind in theory, as I could certainly use the practice in blocking - it is a skill which does not come naturally to me. But in practice, I'm sick of the sight of the bloody thing, and would shred it into bits if only it wasn't intended as a gift for my mom.

Some other things I have finished lately include my lovely Lady of Guadalupe pillow. I quilted the image and then sewed it to a piece of fat-quarter and stuffed it with fiberfill. I had initially planned on appliqueing it to the front half of the fat-quarter and then sewing the whole thing up, but that resulted in an even more oddly shaped pillow, which I did not like. So this worked better, and I ended up with a very cute little pillow that cost me about $4.

On another snow day, I painted and decorated my earring holder, which Daddy built for me several months ago. White paint and the same purple and turquoise flowers that I put on those picture frames a few months ago, and the result is perfect. It made me realize, though, that I've lost several pairs of earrings, which makes me sad. I can't wait until I move and have to go through everything again, because I'm hopeful they're just hiding in the wreckage of my current half-life.

Ravelympics: Conclusion

Well. That didn't go quite as planned. It began well, with the mass mass cast-on during the beautiful, yet extremely cold opening ceremonies. By day three I had completed pair number one, Julia Tedesco's July Socks (r-link). I recognized that this speed was not quite fast enough to get me to my goal, but I resolved to knit a little faster and persevere. Seven days of knitting, and I had three and three-quarters socks knitted, out of a total necessary twelve. The Julys, one beautiful Hanging Vines, and 3/4 of a Tadpole. Even I could recognize that math was problematic. I blame myself, for choosing patterns with so many knit/purl combinations. It takes time to pass the yarn back and forth like that! So I resolved to be content without meeting my goal of six pairs, but instead being content with four.

That didn't go quite as planed, either. Having weighed the importance of a social life against the importance of completing four pairs of socks in 16 days, I realized the social life won out, and so I spent the last Thursday and Friday nights of the games out until ungodly hours, necessitating massive amounts of recovery sleep on Friday and Saturday that substantially cut in to my knitting time. Thus, I only completed three and three-quarters pairs by the end of the closing ceremonies, despite spending Sunday in a knitting frenzy, trying to complete the last sock.

So what can I say? It was a great experience. I learned a lot about my endurance as a knitter. I also learned to be slightly more realistic about my speed and abilities. But I, just like Lindsey Vonn, fell down a couple times, and there's nothing wrong with that. Though I aimed higher, I'm content with what I managed to accomplish, because it's more than I ever did before.

Man. I sound like a motivational infomercial. Eeesh.

So, to end on a more realistic note, and be a poor workman who quarrels with her tools, The Cathedrals were unlikely to get completed during the deadline, if for no other reason than the Frohelich Wolle is just what it says - wool - and it hurts us, precious. I couldn't knit something on a deadline when I was having to stop every thirty seconds to scratch. But I probably should have realized that sooner.

(Re)Construction: The Bed Saga

In my ever fruitless quest to encourage my dad to finish the construction upstairs, I decided to tackle some of the furniture that will eventually go in the bedroom I floored this past summer. It's going to be a guest bedroom, and after much arguing between my parents about the size and type of the bed/beds it ought to contain, my mom prevailed and we agreed to use the two twin pineapple-post beds we had up in the attic.

We've had these bed-frames for close to 25 years now; one of them was my first big-girl bed when I was 3. They originally came from the old tobacco farmhouse of a friend and neighbor, and are consequently of indeterminate age, although I would hazard a guess of at least 55-60 years old. When I got them down from the attic, they looked something like this:
I tried sanding them with 80-grit sandpaper, but nothing doing. The paint would not budge, but the wood that showed was getting worn down to nothing. So I went at it with a paint scraper, which was actually a lot of fun. I discovered that sometime in the past, both beds had been painted pitch-black, and that was covering a burgundy stain (remember this, it will be important later). After getting most of the paint off, I glued down the loose pieces of the headboards, filled in the really obvious holes, sanded the whole thing down with 220-grit sandpaper. The result?

Because I knew I was just going to paint them, I wasn't as worried about getting every bit of old paint off. I just made sure the edges were smooth.

Then I started to paint. And paint. And paint. Because it was quickly becoming clear to me why the past-someone who had painted these suckers black had been so avant garde for their time - it was the only color that would cover up the ridiculously strong burgundy stain that had been originally applied. I applied the first coat of the ecru paint - it turned pink. So I went at these babies with Killz primer, which I usually find is strong enough to take on God himself, and after three coats of it (so, four coats of a paint-like substance), the beds still looked like this:

It took three more coats of the ecru paint before the beds finally came out ecru-colored and not pink. But they're done, now, and aren't they pretty?

I can't wait to put up the rest of the trim and get the room finished, so they can be put in their place of honor.

The Swallowtail

There are some patterns out there that are the knitting equivalent of the pop-culture fad - like sorority girls love ugg boots, or scene kids are drawn to neon, there are some patterns that have been made by pretty much everyone interested in that kind of knitting. For lace knitters, that pattern is the Swallowtail Shawl. A complete stranger, upon seeing my Melusine shawl at RenFaire, stopped me to tell me about the Swallowtail she had just completed. She broached the subject confident that I would know exactly what pattern she meant, and I did. At last count there were 6229 completed Swallowtails listed on Ravelry.

It's popular not only because it results in a beautiful lace shawl, but because the pattern is so clearly written out. Fairly often, lace patterns resemble nothing so much as the ramblings of a Japanese lunatic that have been translated into Russian by a French speaker, and then translated into English by a native speaker of Urdu. Some very important details get lost in the translation, and unless you're either extraordinarily brave or a mind-reader, these patterns are not always much fun to attempt. The Swallowtail pattern is not like that. If you follow it line by line, it is as easy as a basic dishcloth pattern. And this is something that everyone comments on. "Oh, start with the Swallowtail for your first lace project. It's so easy!" "You can't go wrong with the Swallowtail, it's so simple!"

Ha, I say, laughing the laugh of the bitter and potentially stupid.

If you do follow it exactly, I'm sure it really is easy. But, supposing, instead of using size 4s and lace-weight yarn, you end up using size 1.25s and some thread-weight cotton of unknown origin, which gives you a gauge of roughly 700 stitches to the inch (okay, so, maybe 25 stitches to the inch, but still...). Then, dearies, the Swallowtail is not easy. It is not simple. It is MATH. And MATH is something we all know that I, as a good History major, loathe.

To illustrate my point: If you should decide to knit more repeats of the body pattern than the 14 that are called for, that's all well and good. Other people have done it, and it turns out fine. But if, and only if, you repeat in multiples of 5. If you knit 19 repeats, or 24, then you're good, and the Lily of the Valley pattern comes out perfectly with no finagling. If, however, you are too stupid to check your math and just pick a random number of repeats and go with it, you will find that nothing will work out right for the next 21 rows.
Supposing, of course, that you manage to catch the first little problem and spend twenty minutes doing the math to determine that the number of stitches you need before you start the Lily of the Valley chart is a little formula that looks like the total number of stitches - 5 border stitches - 34 set up stitches + 4 stitches from the set-up row = a multiple of 10, you are not home free just yet. There is still the problematic matter of the Lace Border chart, which is not worked across a multiple of 10 stitches, but a multiple of 8. So having spent another twenty minutes doing some math, you should realize that you must now have another formula that looks like the total number of stitches - 5 border stitches - 14 set up stitches + 4 set-up row stitches = a multiple of 8. This was a problem for me, as I had increased exactly 100 stitches, resulting in a number that was not a multiple of 8, and could not be a multiple of 8 no matter how hard I willed it to be.

So, in the tradition of all those who have gotten this far into a lace pattern and decided, "screw it, I refuse to rip the bloody thing back again after all this work," I fudged it a little, and did a second "set-up" row in which I increased the necessary stitches evenly across. And now, hopefully, fingers crossed, I can finish the damn thing without having to do any more MATH. Of course, I'm not holding my breath.

I still haven't figured out if the pattern is just not as easy as is claimed, or if I am really just not as smart as most knitters.

In sickness and in lace

I am sick. As it has been nearly a full year since my last cold, I just wanted to take a moment to announce my misery, and at the same time write a paean of adoration for my vitamins, which - through the magic of folic acid - have kept me from feeling this miserable for the past ten months. As someone who was used to succumb to epic illness if someone so much as looked at me wrong, this has been a wonderful experience, and I cannot recommend folic acid enough to any and everyone who wishes to stay healthy. My latest failure in this regard is due to solely to my inability to remember to take said vitamins regularly, and I exonerate them fully of all wrong-doing in having failed to prevent my getting sick. Today's lesson, children? Take your vitamins every morning, or face the dire and misery-making consequences.

But you know the thing one shouldn't do when one's head is stuffed up like a bag of fiberfill?

Attempt to knit lace.

Lace is the most magical of all types of knitting, for many reasons. One, because the lumpy piece of misshapen fabric you cast off your needles turns into a beautiful work of art when properly blocked. This is probably the most talked-about wonder of knitting lace, and it is a marvel. As the Wendy-lady described a few days ago, a shawl that comes off the needles measuring a lumpy 38 inches in length can become, when blocked, a smooth 52 inch piece of detailed imagery.
Two, because you take the two stitches all knitters know, and increase and decrease the number of them in such a way that amazingly intricate pictures and geometric designs appear where formerly there was nothing. It is exceptionally gratifying to make a dragon, or a rose, appear with two sticks and some string.
And three, because it is exceedingly logical, practical, and orderly. Once you understand how the pattern you are knitting works, it is fairly difficult to make a mistake without it becoming apparent almost immediately.

That is, of course, if you are paying attention. Which is something one finds harder to do when one is stuffy-headed and unfocused. So we'll blame the 45 minutes I spent tinking the Swallowtail a few days ago on the onset of this miserable head-cold, and not on my own stupidity. After all, we know I'm not stupid enough to notice and fix half the mistake, congratulate myself on my keen attention to detail and growing ability to repair mistakes without tinking, and knit four more rows before it became apparent to me that I had failed to fix the other half of the mistake. It must have been the cold. Right?

That's what I thought. I'm putting the Swallowtail aside for the duration.

Ravelympics: Pre-game Update

This just in from the Sports Desk of the Knitters' News Network:

Tragic Injury Could Lead to Sock Hockey Upset.
Team Austentatious athlete, Punkconformity, split open her left index finger during the fifteenth repeat of lace warm-ups on Thursday. Though the injury appeared superficial at first, by the end of the sixteenth repeat bandages were brought in, impeding her performance drastically. It is unclear at this point whether this will impact her performance in next month's Ravelympics, but given the appropriate rest and care, the prognosis seems hopeful.

Ravelympics: Committment

Despite finding the Winter Olympics about as enjoyable as watching paint dry in the Antarctic, I'm committing myself to viewing at least the opening ceremonies, the figure skating, and snow-boarding (assuming those are on TV at times convenient to my viewing pleasure). Shawn White is, after all, just about the only thing that makes staring at a lot of snow worthwhile. I would avoid the whole thing, like I usually do, if not for the small fact that I have decided to participate in the Ravelympics.

For the uninitiated, the Ravelympics are the Olympics of Knitting, which takes place every two years, on the occasion of the actual Olympics. There are teams (Team Hopelessly Overcommitted, Team Bitchcake, etc) and events (Sock Hockey, Hat Halfpipe, Stash Jump), just as there are in the actual Olympics, as well as awards, prizes, and medals. The idea is, of course, to challenge yourself to complete many small projects or one large project during the two weeks the Olympics airs.

I have decided to participate in the Sock Hockey event, and will be attempting to complete 6 pairs of socks in two weeks.

• July Socks by Lucia Tedesco
• Norfolk Ramblers by Emma Haigh
• Hanging Vines Socks by Kelly Porpiglia
• Basket Rib Socks by Traci Heiner
• Cathedral Socks by Shana Kreikemeier
• Ribbon Candy by The Wendy Lady
  

That's right. 6 pairs. 12 women's size 8.75 socks to be completed in two weeks. Considering my average knitting time for a pair is a week, this is a bold goal, but I don't think it's beyond the reach of my abilities. With a deadline spurring me on, I think I can bash them out with little-to-no trouble, especially considering some of the patterns I've chosen are extraordinarily simple.

Then again, I may be hopelessly optimistic. But that's cool. Maybe that can be the name of my team.

I'd rather be a Dorothy than a Daisy

I am inordinately right-handed. And do you know the worst part about being extraordinarily right-handed? When some injury befalls that side of your body (say, a vague tearing sensation in the muscles somewhere between your clavicle and shoulder-blade) you become unable to do just about anything productive. For the last two days, I have been slathered in aspercreme and dosed with Aleve, taking shallow breaths lest the shooting pain that runs from the top of my shoulder down through my ribs get any more annoyed at me than it already is, and have been unable to do anything that involved moving my right arm more than two or three inches in any direction, which means activities such as manual labor, drinking, playing guitar, reading, and cooking have all been put on hold. Needless to say, I’ve been doing a lot of knitting. I am half-way done with a gorgeous pair of Grace Note socks, made from lightweight STR in the Haida colorway, that I may frame and put up on the wall, I love them so much. I finished the first skein on my stupid impulse lap rug. And yesterday, while watching the Panthers and the Dolphins fail to show up to their season openers, I made myself a felted cloche.

While the first part of that statement ought to be surprising enough (I voluntarily watched football! I think I must be growing as a person), the second part is actually far more surprising, as I am, in fact, allergic to wool. But I used Patons Classic, which is only marginally itchy, and I plan on lining it (just a good plan, anyway, when you get hat-hair like I do), so I shouldn’t have too much of a problem that way.

I used Cirilia Rose’s Stirling Cloche pattern, which expressly tells you not to use 100% wool, but as I play at being a knitting anarchist, I went ahead and used wool anyway. Which would have been fine, had I not had a slight miscommunication with the resident felter of the house – my mom. Of course, as the pattern is not intended for heavy felting, it creates a hat only slightly bigger than the finished product ought to be. When Mom commented on how small the hat seemed on the needles, I explained that it was intended to be lightly felted, like thrown-in-the-sink-and-done-by-hand felted, and she said oh, okay, that’s fine, then. So far, so good. But when the time came for me to put it in the sink and hand-felt it, my mother insisted that would take forever, and I should just toss it in the washer for 15 minutes. When I protested that 15 minutes seemed like an awfully long time, she compromised with 10, and we went from there. After 10 minutes, it was likely the perfect size, but as there were still row lines visible, my mom tossed it back in the wash for another 10 minutes.

What came out of the washer was roughly the size of your average cereal bowl, and shaped similarly. The brim that I had so carefully constructed was nowhere to be seen. After five or ten minutes of strenuous tugging, I had something that more closely resembles a toboggan with a floppy brim than a cloche, but I’m not completely unhappy with it. I think once I attach a ribbon to it, it will be quite fetching, and it certainly serves the purpose I made it for, which was to make a classy hat to cover my ears for winter.

However, the kicker to the whole story is that afterward, when we went back upstairs, my mom snagged Cirilia’s pattern and looked it over. At which time she announces, “It says not to use 100% wool! If I had known that, I wouldn’t have told you to felt it for so long.” When I offered that I had told her it was supposed to be lightly felted, she responded with “There’s a difference between lightly felted and barely felted at all. This wanted barely felted at all.” Thus, ladies and gentlemen, are the pitfalls of the English language and attempting to use it for communication.

What I'm listening to: "How Do I Fix My Head" by Straylight Run

"...for small town girls"

We all recognize that the recession has made things extremely difficult. If you have a job, no matter how annoying and horrible you find it on a daily basis, be grateful, because there are so many of us out there who would very much like to employed who simply cannot find work. There is an average of 6 people applying for every one job out there right now, and something like 80% of them are overqualified for the positions they are attempting to fill. Which is really just a long-winded way of saying that I graduated with my MA three months ago and can’t even find work as a glorified filing clerk. But rather than waste this time sitting on my backside, contemplating my navel, I have made a list (the Shit to Get Done Before I Find a Job list). This list is as follows:

1) Lay the flooring in my parents’ upstairs guest bedroom. As some of you may know, my parents have been constructing their house since roughly the time of my birth. It is unlikely to ever be completed, as every time the end approaches, my father either ceases all efforts to reach it or decides another addition is in order. In an attempt to prevent this by slipping in some completed projects under his nose, I am putting down the beautiful Brazilian hardwood flooring upstairs. It’s not particularly difficult, just time consuming, and I hope to have it completed by next weekend.

2) Make my own entertainment center. I’ve built furniture in the past – the bookshelf bed that was at my first apartment, the shelves that house my cds and all my language books in my room at my parents’ – but never anything as involved as an entertainment center. Since I’m at home, where all the tools are and where my daddy (who has the knowledge and skills) is, I might as well use this opportunity to learn to make myself a piece of furniture that meets my several and slightly odd criteria. These criteria include not only dimensions and design elements, but the all important requirement of weight. If the answer to the question “Can I move it (or at least lift one end of it) by myself?” is a resounding no, then I’ve done something wrong. Having lived with Susie, whose entertainment center weighed roughly the equivalent of the combined weight of the entire Chinese population, I’ve learned that I never want to have a piece of furniture that people ask if you still own before they agree to help you move. So, as long as I can hold my father back from his natural tendency to build furniture for giants, I will hopefully end up with an entertainment center that can hold my TV, DVD player, receiver, and record player, as well as all my DVDs, and still be light enough that I can – with some maneuvering – move it around my apartment by myself.

3) Make a rag rug. For some unfathomable reason (actually, it’s pretty fathomable. I blame the large display of DIY books at Barnes and Noble that included the Better Homes and Gardens New Cottage Style), I have become possessed of the need to make rag rugs. I had already intended to make one akin to Kay and Ann’s Tailgate Rag Rug, for a bathmat, so it would have to be blue and turquoise to match all my bathroom fixtures. But somehow, when I started cutting my pretty blue sheets up into strips (which, by the way, is hell. You will never truly understand just how big a full-sized sheet is until you attempt to cut it into ½ strips.), I began to realize that I wasn’t just imagining a single rag rug, but one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen. So, as frequently seems to happen, my project list has multiplied yet again, as I now have to make two rag rugs – the blue and crème one (for a bathmat), and a red and crème one (for the kitchen). And now I’m thinking that I may make another one of solely blue rags as a doormat for outside the back door. But I haven’t started knitting yet, so I don’t know. I’m still stuck cutting strips.

4) Make stuff for my etsy. As my penchant is for knitting small, relatively quickly completeable things, it makes some measure of sense to attempt to sell them to other people, because, let’s face it, how many arm-warmers does one person really need? So I’m trying my hand at designing and coming up with some pretty patterns, and then I’m hopeful people will give me money for them. If not, no great loss – I recognize that there’s a ridiculously large quantity of arm-warmers on etsy, and it’s not like I won’t wear them myself. But it’s a shot at making enough cash on the side to pay for my yarn habit.

5) Finish painting all the Christmas decorations from years past. Once upon a time, many, many years ago, I painted resin and acrylic ornaments and statues as a hobby and to keep myself off the mean streets. Then high school and college happened, and I haven’t so much as looked at my collection of half-painted Santas, angels, et al, in years. But as the studio is rapidly being taken over by uncompleted projects of my mother’s doing (or not-doing, in point of fact), I think it only right that I should get some of my stuff out of her way (not to mention gain the moral high ground for arguments about stash enhancement and the developing new artistic interests). So, I have begun to paint again, and have finished my 3D nativity scene, a puppy ornament, and begun work on an angel.

6) Pictures. I don’t love clutter. Clutter makes me antsy. So while I loved living with Susie, I was disinclined to put up my own artwork and photographs on the walls in our apartment because of the sheer volume of stuff already up there. The minimalist in me would have been overwhelmed by anything more. But now that I will be living on my own, every wall in my home will be up for grabs. In preparation for this, I have begun sorting through my pictures and printing out hi-def copies of the ones I love best to adorn my walls. I have also been busy painting and repairing old frames so that they are ready when the time comes.

What I'm listening to: "It Was a Very Good Year" by Robbie Williams and Frank Sinatra

Purchases

Recently, I have purchased many things for arts and crafting that are outside the realm of my typical interests.

These include, in no particular order:

3 fat quarters of fabric, from the etsy-ers precioussewingbox and rainbowfabrics.

The Christmas birds and the Virgin of Guadalupe are for quilted pillows, but the other one is a spur-of-the-moment piece that I have no real plans for. Perhaps it will be an art panel for the wall? I don't know yet, but we shall see.


2 skeins of Patons wool in charcoal grey, for the making of a cloche. Winter is coming far too fast, and my ears are already cringing. Granted, that may be due to the fact that I am allergic to wool, and the idea of wearing a solid wool hat for any time at all is making my eyes water and my ears turn red in anticipation. But as I plan to line the stupid thing, I doubt that's really the issue.



A red and white striped tablecloth/sheet (of obviously unknown use), c/o Goodwill, intended to be shredded into a gigantically long strip and turned into a rag rug for the kitchen I don't yet have. (More on rag-rugging in a later post. Prepare yourself.)





3 spools of 100% spun polyester thread, which, when held together, might turn out to be lace-weight (maybe. if I squint), and will hopefully turn in to some yet-to-be-determined lacy and attractive something.




A black bar bead from the wonderful folks at Fresh. What it will get used for, I have no idea. But it was 50% off and beautiful, so I had to get it. Maybe I'll make a bag or a camera case or something with it.




And I also bought, not for crafting, but just because, a canvas hamper with a bird screenprint and a cotton rug printed to look like a peacock's tail, both from urban. While I'm not usually such an indie hipster, I couldn't help myself this time. I've been looking for a nice hamper since I moved, and both things were surprisingly reasonably priced for urban, so I don't feel as bad as I might otherwise. But when I have money, I'm gonna have to avoid that webstore the same way I avoid the Pottery Barn.