Cold Sheep 2013

When I say Cold Sheep 2013, I don't mean that I want to take ALL the wool from sheep and to leave them huddled and shivering in the cold. Although my mom did accuse me of leaving behind plenty of naked sheep behind after our trip to Scotland in 2008. (Yeah, I bought a lot of yarn on that trip.)

Nope, I mean to evoke the phrase "cold turkey". Which means I'm going to attempt to not purchase any new yarn or fiber in 2013. If you've known me for very long, you know that I'm not all that good at sticking with challenges or resolutions. Nevertheless, I'm going to attempt it. I actually have a few goals for 2013.  

1. No new yarn or spinning fiber for 2013.

2. No new clothing for 2013. Any clothes should be either sewn or knitted.

3. I will pay down at least $8,000.00 of debt this year.

Something I haven't decided about yet is Yarn School. I'd really like to go in the fall and if I can manage to save enough to go AND still make my debt payoff goal, then I will have a new dilemma. How to make it through Yarn School without buying additional fiber? Off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure I spent close to $200 when I went in 2011. Of course, I haven't spun all of that yet so there's an incentive not to buy more. But seeing as how student get two pounds of fiber to dye, I can't see as how I would need to buy any more.

I am giving myself an exception for swapping or buying from someone's destash. But my main goal is to not accumulate more stash so I will be shopping my stash for any knitting and spinning projects this year. 

As far as the clothing thing goes, I really do have a lot of clothes. Most of them I don't wear for whatever reason. So I will be mending and altering this year along with sewing and knitting. I don't have as much fabric as I used to but I still have enough to make myself a few things. I also have a mending pile that has overtaken the craft room closet. I am giving myself an undergarment exception clause for clothing, though. (I have to draw the line somewhere.) Depending on the occassion that arises, I may have to get some clothing at a thrift store, but no actual new clothing this year.

I am creating a Fabric Recycles clause to my goals for the year. Fabric Recycles is a great local craft resale shop. I've found some great sock yarn there in the past as well as fabric and notions for my nieces' Halloween costumes. They also buy fabric, notions, etc. too and I've taken advantage of that as well. Since it's a resale shop, nothing is technically new. So if I need to sew or knit something and I don't have it in my collection already, I'm allowing myself to get it from Fabric Recycles. 

And the debt...well, at my current rate I should be able to pay down $7,000.00 this year. So I am going to push myself and try to find an extra $1,000.00 this year to put towards the debt. 

What it all comes down to for me is consuming less. Spending less money also allows me to pay the debt down faster. Buying fewer things helps me keep my living space less cluttered. It sounds great in theory, but this is the year for me to put it into practice!

How will you be challenging yourself this year?

"Fair Isle" Baby Surprise Jacket

So my friend Nikol, had a lovely baby girl this fall and I knit a variation of Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket for her. Technically it's a stranded design and not a true Fair Isle design. But most people seem to think that knitting colorwork with two colors per row is inherently Fair Isle, I'm going with it.

If you are familiar with a BSJ, then a stranded version might just blow your mind. If you aren't, let's just say I made a super simple knitting project into something much more complicated. Why? Oh, mostly to see if it could be done. I made one in 2008 and enjoyed the knitting part, but it's the finishing that is the real challenge.

A few progress photos:

And a few photos of the finished sweater!





Inside:

I might be a little proud of the sweater. Anyway, the brown yarn is from Fudgy the Whale (one of Nikol's sheep). I hand dyed the colorful yarn which is alpaca from Alpaca at Wildcat Hollow (a farm near Nikol owned by her friends, Marta and Ed Howe). 

All in all, I'm super happy with how it turned out but even more pleased that she liked the sweater. 

Blatant Commercialism

It's been pointed out to me that I haven't blogged in several months. I suppose that work, dating, knitting and spinning have been a higher priority lately.

Last weekend I participated in Creative Hand, an annual sale of wares from local fiber artists. We are all members of either the Kansas City Fiber Guild or the Kansas City Weavers Guild. It was my second year participating in the sale. I'm always so inspired by the creativity of my fellow artists. Oh sure, I should have done a better job at promoting myself ahead of time. But everything that I didn't sell will be making its way to my Etsy shop soon. 

Also, if you are doing any shopping at Amazon check out the link to the right hand side. You can click on that to take you over to the Amazon site. If you buy something after clicking through from my site...I get a few pennies. And it costs you nothing extra. Pretty groovy, huh?

Anyway, back to my knitting. I have several projects I'm working on for holiday giving. But since the recipients may or may not read this...pictures will have to wait until after the holidays.

In the meantime, feel free to leave links to your own blatant self-promotion in the comments. 

Spinning!

Spinning has taken a back seat to knitting lately. But I've taken to my wheel again with a passion. There's an annual spinning challenge called the Tour de Fleece that coincides with the Tour de France bike race. I'm a huge fan of challenges, even if I don't always have the best record of follow through.

However I have started the Tour de Fleece and have made some progress. I'm averaging an ounce spun every day so far. Which means I have four ounces spun up so far!

The first bobbin is four ounces of Polwarth wool dyed by Adrian of Hello Yarn for Yarn School 2010. The colorway is called Roasted and the colors make me think of a roasted veggie kabob. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. Ply with something else, chain ply, leave as a single...who knows?

Right now my goal is just to spin as much as possible and worry about the plying later. Of course, I may (and probably will) change my mind about that sometime along the way.

Bovine Dreams

So I had a dream this week that I had found a new rental house. A very cute little house in a city neighborhood that reminded me somewhat of downtown Muncie, Indiana.

In the dream, my dad helped me move. Not a practical thing to do in reality since he lives about eight hours drive from me. Before leaving me to my own devices, he left me a pet cow.

I know, right? Where did he get this cow? Why did he leave it with me? What the heck? But who is to argue with the logic of dreams. We just blithely accept these odd things as reality and move on.

So I milked the cow and made a bed for it on the kitchen floor. In the morning, I decided it should probably go outside in the yard. However, with no fence or leash I was concerned that it might run away. I decided that I should take the cow outside anyway since I really didn’t want cow waste on my kitchen floor.

Here’s the thing, I didn't want anyone to know that I had a cow in the city. I wasn't sure if something like that was permitted and did not really want to get into trouble. So I dressed it up in overalls. You know, as one is wont to do when attempting to disguise one’s pet cow. Yes, it made perfect sense in my dream but sounds ridiculous in reality.

Once thoroughly disguised so as to fool exactly no one, we walked down the street and I ran into a group of friends at an outdoor market. Surprisingly everyone is fooled by the cow except for one woman. She comes up to me and tells me I didn't need to dress up the cow after all. She had a cow in the city too and proceeded to assure me that it was no big deal.

So I turn to the cow and I see that it is standing on its hind legs trying to blend in with the crowd. He turns to me and says, "I'm going back to the house to change and clean up.”  I ask why and he says, "Because I just shit my pants." Looking down I notice that sure enough, there’s a huge load in the overalls. I ask if he wants me to go with him and he assures me he knows the way. That he'll meet up with me later.

At this moment, several thoughts are going through my dream state mind:

1. I feel kinda bad that I forgot that avoiding a messy cow waste incident was the whole reason for us going outside and I had dressed him in overalls. This only exacerbated the problem, of course.
2. I suddenly realized that this is a male cow. I’d been thinking of it as an it all this time but once I heard it speak, I knew it was male.
3. The cow was speaking. and standing upright. This just got a little strange.
4. Hey, if the cow is male, why does it have udders? Wait, are they really udders? Uh oh, I milked the cow the night before. What does this mean. Did I give a cow an awkward udder hand job thingy or what?

So I hang out with my friends at the outdoor market for a little bit and then walk the few blocks back to my place.  Thinking all the time about how awkward this is going to be when I get to see him again. I mean, I didn't exactly act shocked when it started talking to me or anything...but I was kinda weirded out.

As I walk back to my place I try not to freak out about whether this strange cow wanted more awkward udder jobs from me or perhaps even more. That’s when I see that the cow is all cleaned up in the back yard and is not alone. He is hanging out with an elephant that is painted all over to look like a cow. They are cuddling in the garden in the back yard and are clearly together in a romantic sense. I didn’t witness anything graphic, mind you. Thank goodness as I’m sure my head would most certainly have exploded at that point.

I walk into the house but they saw me and the elephant immediately leaves. The cow saunters into the house (still on hind legs, mind you) and says that he can't stay with me any longer. That he and his boyfriend are moving in together and he just needed to crash at my place the one night. I'm cool with that so the cow leaves.

Shortly after that I wake up and realize, I was just dumped by a gay cow.

Well, I’ve had worse relationships.

Join me at the Maker Faire

I will be at the Kansas City Maker Faire this weekend along with Christine, the TreasureGoddess. We had a blast last year and I'm planning to demonstrate spinning again this year. So if you are near Kansas City this weekend, come on by and say hello!

Moving right along

I'm still working on the silk and rayon sweater. I'm thrilled with how it is knitting up so far. The yarn itself is pretty slubby which is giving the final fabric a lovely appearance.

I'm doing a simple stitch pattern of three stockinette rows and one purl ridge row. It is easy to keep track of and also helps me see the progress as I'm going along.

I have been trying it on as I go...about every eight rows or so. Overkill? Perhaps. But I think that if I remain conscious of how it's fitting then I will be able to identify any issues right away. Here's something radically different that I've done from past sweaters: I cast on for the medium size. Which seems a little crazy since I'm actually a couple sizes larger than that. However, this is a top down raglan and so the whole sweater hangs from my shoulders. And as I've gained weight over the years, my shoulders have stayed in the same place. So, I've increased as appropriate for my size but I think starting with the smaller size is going to be a trick I will be using again in the future.

New beginnings

 I started knitting a new sweater about a week and a half ago. It's a top down raglan which should surprise exactly noone. 

The yarn is a silk and rayon blend (Classic Elite Fame) that I've worked with before. I like the way it knits up and its softens so nicely when washed. 

As far as the purple sweater goes, I thought I was back on track and then my needle broke. I became despondent and threw it in a corner and it is going to remain there while it sits and thinks about what it has done to deserve such treatment.

Something resembling knitting

It seems like forever since I have actually finished a knitting project. There are several reasons for that. Jumping back into the dating pool seems to have taken up a great deal of my time. I also did a ton of prep work for Knitting in the Heartland last month.

But the main reason for not completing anything since December is my main current knitting project. I've been working on the Somewhat Cowl by Wendy Bernard since last October. October was a bad month for me to try to knit a sweater. October is also the same month that I sew Halloween costumes for my nieces every year. Last year for the first time, I travelled to Michigan to visit them for the holiday. Thirteen hours of driving each way severely cut into my knitting time. So I put it down until the beginning of this year. 

Then it happened. And I'm not really sure what to call "it". Knitters will know what I mean. For non-knitters I will describe the process.

1. As you are knitting, you notice a slight anomaly in the fabric you have already knit. You look at it closely and decide to ignore it. It can't be that noticeable, you think to yourself...and keep on knitting.
2. You get a little further along and try on your sweater in progress. That mistake is still there but you are quite certain that you are just imagining it now since you are looking for it to see if it actually is noticeable. You continue knitting.
3. Now you have made some significant progress with your knitting. Now you are pretty sure that you are hyperfocusing on the issue with your knitting. You rationalize to yourself that once it is blocked it will look fine. Plus you have knit so much already, it would be a shame to rip it all out now. You keep knitting some more.
4. It's too late. You can't fool yourself anymore. Your knitted item looks horrible. If only you had ripped it back at the time you suspected an error. You may as well give up knitting forever because everything you make ends up looking like crap in a box.

There should be a word for this phenomenon. As I was telling my friend Christine yesterday, there has to be a better term for this than "dumbass knitter is in denial syndrome". If any of you have thoughts on what to call this, let me know.

My recent experience with the Somewhat Cowl had to do not with an error in a stitch pattern since it is a very plain knit. This had to do with the fit. I thought I had figured it out correctly this time.  But I'm starting to think that the problem I have with fitting myself in knitwear has to do with the fact that I learned to sew first. In sewing, you pick the pattern size according to your largest measurement and then alter everything down from there. After you assemble the pieces, you can always take the seams in for a better fit.

Yeah, you can't do that with knitting. So while I did decrease significantly for the waistline after knitting the bust section...I still had eight inches of ease around my waist. Yes, the sweater was too big in the waist by eight inches! This was after I thought perhaps the armhole was a bit too big. And so I finally decided to rip back.

So can you see how much fabric is gathered under the arm? And how there seems to be no waist shaping at all? This sweater is making me look very boxy when in fact I have a defined waist in comparison to my breasts and hips. Plus I was dangerously close to running out of yarn. (Elsbeth Lavold Silky Wool is the yarn for those that want to know.) And I should have had plenty. So I ripped it back.

Now we come to the big problem. I forgot that the neckline was lower than the armholes in this sweater. In fact, I had already picked up stitches all around the neckline, knitted the ribbing AND stitched it down on the inside. And now I need to rip this all back to point where the armhole meets the body of the sweater.  Can it be done without taking out the neckline?

Hold me. I'm trying it.

 Also, send vodka. And chocolate.

Knitting in the Heartland recap

Knitting in the Heartland was great fun this year! I attended Franklin Habit's keynote address which was all about antique knitting patterns. Boy, I'll bet that sounds tedious and boring to non-knitters. But to be true, I found it fascinating and the idea of deciphering old patterns is endless intriguing to me. Some local knitters are planning a knitalong of his pineapple bag and I am seriously considering tackling it myself. 

I wasn't able to get into any of Franklin's classes before they sold out, but I did take Spinning for Knitting with Jacey Boggs. I've taken two workshops with her in the past on textured yarns so this was the opportunity to learn a bit more on the technical side of spinning. If you are a spinner, you need to take a class with Jacey. Even if you aren't interested in creating textured yarns (also know as art yarns), her technical knowledge of spinning is superb. I've learned so much about the process of spinning from her. Plus she is so generous with her time and knowledge and is incredibly inclusive of all types of spinners and knitters. We did an interesting experiment with spinning and then knitting swatches of Z-twist and then S-twist singles. There were marked differences of whether twisted was added, removed or stayed the same during knitting the swatches based on whether one was a Continental or English knitter. I knit in a style known as Eastern Uncrossed. My method seemed to match up with the Continental knitters which wasn't surprising to me since I hold the working yarn in my left hand. I'm looking forward to experimenting more with my spinnning and how it relates to my knitting.

The vendor market was huge this time around. Which was really great for the students and shoppers.  Perhaps not so good for those of us who were vendors. Too much competition meant only two sales for me for the entire weekend but I had fun anyway and learned so much about booth presentation.  I shared a booth with my dear friend Christine, the TreasureGoddess. She has amazing handspun art yarn and handdyed fiber and yarn especially the most luscious lace yarn you can imagine. 

I debuted some new embroidered pieces this time around and was lucky enough to sell one. I'll be taking some photos this weekend and adding them to my Etsy shop. Here's what they looked like in the booth.

I'll be adding some of the pieces to my shop soon. If anyone has any ideas or requests for words or phrases they'd like to see embroidered, let me know!