through the back loop

Kozmos: Want.

2010-02-21T23:39:00.000-08:00

Purl just came out with Kozmos from Alchemy Yarns. It's a worsted weight mix of silk, mohair, wool and cotton, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I'd love to work with it, but it's expensive and I don't have room for it. So I promised myself this: If I finish 5 UFOs before Easter, I'll buy a hank or two of Kozmos and make a small project (read: scarf :P). Time to get to work!

Trendsetter Cha Cha: I am intrigued.

2010-02-20T15:10:00.000-08:00

Interesting. Only thing I'm not sure about is how you weave in the ends (maybe you just attach it by sewing it on?), but this looks like the kind of thing that would be good as trim. I wouldn't mind knitting an all-ruffle scarf, but the finished product might be a little over the top. Now, I won't actually be buying it anytime soon. I haven't bought yarn in ages. I am trying to get back into knitting, though. I've been doing it so rarely these days since work leaves me drained to the point where I've left a lot of things undone...like house chores. I'm working on that this weekend. But I digress. I'm starting to get into audiobooks, which seem like the perfect accompaniment to knitting. Sometimes I can do it while watching TV, too, but it depends on what's on. If it's a fast-paced sport (i.e. hockey) or some other program that needs my attention, I can't do it. Baseball is perfect, though...and when does that start up again, in a month or two? Anyway, I'll start by finishing off a bunch of half-done scarves and we'll go from there. One of these days I'll get around to designing toys since that is something I eventually want to do on a regular basis.

the lazy crafter

2009-07-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

The title of this post was the name of purl's last newsletter, and I thought it would be fitting to use here. :P I did indeed make that clapotis last June like I said I would, only needing three of those hanks like I figured. I have yet to do anything with the other hank. I made another clapotis last July using two hanks of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in Liberty, which I actually wore last night--Independence Day is usually on the cool side around these parts, and this year was no exception. After that, I haven't done much. I'm almost halfway through a garter-stitch striped blanket using assorted green colors of Knit Picks' Suri Dream, which I started...late last year, I think? I have a few scarves in progress that I pick up every now and again when I'm in the mood. I haven't bought yarn in a long time. No reason to, really. I have a ton of it and I use it up really slowly. Plus it's hard for my wrists to really be healthy, what with all the computer-related work I do. My hobby money has been going to cosmetics and video games, haha. I was asked last year if I could make a stuffed toy version of the logo for this site. It's possible, I know it is. It's just been taking me the longest time to figure it out. Part of me thinks I should just knit the fins to have at least part of it done, albeit the easiest part...anyway, that's what's been going on over on this front.

it's here!

2008-06-04T23:13:00.000-07:00

The yarn order arrived today! I'm really excited. Now, on with making the Clapotis! ...That is, as soon as I wind these suckers up.

oops, I ordered yarn / clapotis!

2008-06-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

My main knitting goal this summer will be to tackle The Clapotis for the first time. I wanted to make it as soon as it came out, but I wanted to make my first one out of Lion and Lamb, a yarn I have never owned...until now. I know, I know--I said I was on a yarn diet in my last post, but when Jimmy Beans Wool came out with their limited edition Lorna's Laces colorway for June, I couldn't resist it. I should have it later this week. :D I just finished off another UFO today, so I'm not feeling so bad about starting another project.

So here's what's been going on...

2008-05-31T01:25:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, I just realized that I last posted here a year ago. To the day, even, since it's after midnight. Wow. Let me try to bring you up to speed.

-My wrists could be better, though they could also be much worse. I can do my normal computer work, but I wear a brace on my right wrist most of the time and occasionally things will flare up a bit. Knitting activity was non-existent for a few months. I picked it back up again late last year. I'll probably stick to scarves and small projects for now and try not to buy any new stuff. I don't know if I'll be making hats. Knitting in the round seems to wear my wrists out more quickly than knitting flat. Since I started up again, I've finished off four of my many scarves in progress, including one of the Malabrigo projects (about damn time, really).
-My camera had some issues (mostly related to the flash) starting in November. I thought about getting it fixed, but I figured it might be cheaper to just buy another camera. I finally bought that camera in April, but in the interim I used my phone to take some pictures that I'll try to include in the near future.
-I'm obsessed with watching ice hockey. Have I mentioned that here before? Anyway, I recently came across Shokay in a Patternworks catalog and immediately thought that the Azure and Sunset shades would be really good for a Sharks-colored scarf...not by themselves, mind you, I'd throw the black and white equivalents in there too and probably do stripes of varying widths. However, I'd like to finish off a few more projects before I even think about spending serious money on new yarn.

Here's something new: Over at The Purl Bee they've added the Super Easy Baby Blanket project. If I knew someone having a baby I'd totally make one of these, though maybe I'd go fancy and use moss stitch or something like that. I especially enjoy the "Funky Monkey" color combination.

a taste of the dark side

2007-05-31T17:44:00.000-07:00

[swatch image pending, forgot I didn't upload it yet :P]

I made an attempt at that crocheting thing for the first time on Monday. I felt like I needed to accomplish SOMETHING over the weekend, so there you go. It was...different. I didn't hate it, but don't know that I liked it necessarily--my wrists didn't enjoy it and there seems to be no comfortable way to hold the yarn in my left hand. Also, I don't know the best way to weave in ends...I'm sure I can find that out somewhere, though. I figure I'll try out a project every once in a while, but it's not going to be something I do all the time. My first project is the "Strut" hat from the Stitch 'n Bitch crochet book. Since it's a felted piece, I'm not going to worry about the minor errors that I know will be there.

dishcloths etc.

2007-05-30T17:11:00.000-07:00

That's right, I've started making kitchen and bath accessories. I'm guessing two things attracted me to this: 1) they're small; 2) you can, you know, use them all the time. Completed projects from left to right: the nine-patch dishcloth from the Mason-Dixon Knitting website, the burp cloth pattern from the Mason-Dixon Knitting book, the reverse-bloom flower washcloth from Melanie Falick's Weekend Knitting. Sugar 'n Cream was used for the middle project, Crystal Palace Cotton Chenille for the others. I had the most fun making the nine-patch cloth as it gave me more experience in the picking-up-stitches department. I considered crocheting a border in the center patch color, but it's not happening with that yarn. (Did I just type the C word? ...I'll save that for the next post.) The flower was not as fun. I think the decreases were designed in such a way that the center of the cloth would be circular as opposed to pentagonal, but it wasn't dpn-friendly, so I kept having to switch stitches between needles. (If any of you know of an easier way to go about it, by all means, let me know.) Between that and my less than delicate touch, I accidentally broke the yarn when I was a couple of rounds away from finishing. Bah. I'm beginning to think that Cotton Chenille and I do not mix, which is a shame since I have quite a bit of it in my stash.

As for the other dishcloth, I rather enjoyed the garter + slip-stitch pattern, but I thought I could do more with it, like make the slipped stitch columns wavy. Here's how that's going so far. I have other ideas as well, but they're all in that initial / musing stage at the moment.

super ultra plush

2007-05-30T15:02:00.000-07:00

Time to catch up while I'm on break at work! Alright, so here are the two toys I made out of Red Heart Baby Teri yarn. I used 2 strands in both cases, for the bunny I used a strand each of blue and medium blue. The effect is so subtle that probably no one besides me would notice, but I think it adds depth to its color. (Also, I should learn how to properly use this camera so that I can take better pictures, but I digress. :P) I used the bunny pattern that was featured on Jess Hutchison's site a while back; slight modifications were made in the case of the bear (the ears, obviously, but the arms and legs are also shorter).

the gradual return

2007-04-10T18:25:00.000-07:00

Hi. It's been a while. It seems like this year's been full of ailments, illnesses and just plain all-around crap. But I'm getting over it. I finally started knitting again late last month. I started with one of those ruffle scarves--you know, the kind you do lengthwise and do nothing but kfb on some of the rows--except this time I did it using the yo increase just to see how it would look. I like it, I think. Right now I'm working on a bunny for the latest addition to my extended family. I didn't quite get it done for Easter, but it's almost there now, and I'll be happy if I can send it on its way by the end of the week. I also have a couple of hats in the works...I think I'll finish those off before I try to figure out what to make next.

bad wrists (again!) and TV

2007-02-26T18:28:00.000-08:00

Hey, guess what? That problem with my wrists (mainly the right, but the left's not quite 100% either) started up recently. So I'm stuck not really being able to knit again. I've done very little knitting this year as it is...I had an oral surgical procedure done late last month, and I was able some time the following week finishing up some scarves. Everything felt fine then. Only now did I realize that this was probably because I was on Vicodin at the time. After that I stopped because I caught a bad chest cold, and naturally I didn't want to hack all over my projects. (I'm still not quite over it, but at this point it's just a sort of leftover cough.) About a week ago I started feeling that fun tightness again, and last night the pain was back. :( Bah. At least it's not bothering me too much right now so I can type this.

Anyway, while I was sick I saw an episode of Knitty Gritty where they were doing a soft of odds-and-ends striped garter-stitch scarf using the Fibonacci sequence to determine the width of the stripes. The concept was interesting enough, and maybe if I'm bored enough one of these days I'll try something along those lines, but I wouldn't be able to bring myself to knot the loose ends in the middle of the row and turn them into fringe as they did. It would be an easy out, especially since I'm not the best at finishing, but I just didn't like the way it looked. I couldn't do it.

Sheldon

2006-12-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

How cute is this?

I'm sooo going to make that for my cousin's kid's first birthday. And I'm sure I can make that deadline, because it's not until next October. :D

a brief story

2006-12-07T17:41:00.000-08:00

The other week my co-worker was looking at a pattern on Knitty. Noticing that from about five feet away, I commented that I had some of that yarn leftover in a fuchsia-ish color. Her reply: "You're sick."

Well...yes, I suppose I am. The stuff my mind can access scares me sometimes. Anyway, it's a cute pattern. I thought about using that leftover yarn to make a pair once I've healed ~~(the post regarding my injury is currently in draft mode, sorry)~~, but then I read on Yarndex that it pilled rather badly, so maybe I should try it with something else.

the state of my wrist

2006-11-03T12:40:00.000-08:00

This can't be good. There's frequent tightness on the outside of my right wrist and occasional pain on the inside. Logic would tell me to go to the doctor, but my morbid fear of them cancels that out. :P Anyway, if I do straight knitting, it feels better, but knitting in the round kills it, so all my hat and glove projects will have to go on the backburner for now. Man...

[edit: I ended up having it checked out about a week later. I was diagnosed with a strain and "possible tendonitis". Or is it spelled "tendinitis"? Not sure about that one.]

the hat entry (finally!)

2006-10-03T12:40:00.000-07:00

And here we are. The hat in the bottom center is that WWII-era-pattern one I mentioned earlier; the blue camo hat next to it was made in a similar fashion. I think the ribbed hats look better on heads than they do sitting flat, but I did what I could. I don't know where some of these hats are going...the green cable-twist one is mine, the red one's definitely mine, the upper right one was also mine but it came out too big (!?), so one of these days I'll frog that one and do something else with it. But the rest...charity, maybe?

Paige's Noni bag

2006-09-22T17:40:00.000-07:00

And here is the finished product. I also have pictures of the pre-felted bag and flowers. Instead of using a double strand of Cascade and a size 11 needle, I used a single strand and what I at first thought was a size 8 needle but was really a size 7...but since I was felting the thing, it didn't matter. Also, I made one large flower and two small, only making two layers of petals for the small ones. I assembled the whole thing before throwing it into the washing machine because I'm lazy like that, so the flowers were only slightly felted. But I like the way it turned out.

stash enrichment

2006-08-28T17:12:00.000-07:00

I was at Nine Rubies today to get some Cascade 220 for a felted bag project. I've bought Cascade 220 before, but not from them, so I don't know if their price for it was good or it's gotten cheaper lately. Either way, yay me! But of course I didn't leave with just that. :P I also bought a skein of Cascade Pastaza, two skeins of Malabrigo Merino Worsted and two skeins of Schaefer Anne. I will definitely make something out of this stuff because I'd really like to work with it, but for now it shall enrich the stash. Especially the skeins of Anne. I was thinking of using one to make that Pooling Colors scarf from the Winter '04 IK, but I doubt I actually will. I've tried to p3tog before, and it was such a pain that I don't know if I could go by a pattern where that regularly occurs.

Other than that, work has been frying my brain and I've had hardly any mental energy left over to even do so much as knit...except for the hats. In my next entry I'll post a picture of all that I've made recently.

the marin county adventure

2006-08-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I went up to Sausalito for a few days for a head-clearing retreat. (And it may have worked. It's one lovely place. I'm considering heading up there every 2-3 months, though in the future I think I'd make it a day trip. But enough about that.) One day I decided to go to Dharma Trading Co. because I thought it might be interesting. So I took the #22 bus to Marin City and transferred to the #70. The store was alright...it was all stuff I could find on the peninsula, of course, but they had a decent selection of stuff, a mix of the lower and higher ends...I will say that's the only place I've been to where I've seen that mix. I bought a couple of skeins of yarn from a company I hadn't heard of before, so I felt like I accomplished something, I guess. I took the #22 back to Sausalito instead of taking the #70 first because I felt like taking the scenic route. In San Anselmo, there was a bus stop near Atelier Marin. I noticed that too late to bother stopping there...which is too bad, because I think I would have liked it. Oh well, some other time.

When I got back to Sausalito, the bus driver told me that I could have taken the #70 to Marin City and transferred. Yes...yes, I know. Thank you.

hat obsession

2006-07-11T17:16:00.000-07:00

Lately I've really been into making hats. Not that it's a new thing to me, and I still like making toys, too, but...I procrastinate big time when it comes to assembling the pieces together. (The pig still needs to be finished.) With hats, I can just go around and around and decrease and draw the yarn through the last few stitches and poof! The hats I'm making right now involve ribbing because I wanted to learn how to decrease in ribbing. I left an opening in the top of the first hat I made because I normally wear my hair in a ponytail. I didn't go by a pattern for that one, I sort of decreased in the purls first and I thought that would look alright. It doesn't, it looks funny, but I'll wear it anyway. Right now I'm making a hat in this stuff based on a WWII-era pattern I saw online. I'll definitely post a picture of that when I'm done; I'm really happy with the way that one's turning out.

knitting and the gothic lolita aesthetic

2006-06-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

The other day I finally checked out Purl's custom colors of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock...said colors being self-striping white + [insert color here]. Holy crap. I immediately thought of how well it would go with gothic lolita stuff. The gothic lolita (or EGL, or whatever) look can be seen here if you haven't heard of it. Fun, fun Japanese fashion. I've always been a fan of it, but when I first heard of it I was already in my early 20s, which...in my opinion, is too old to be dressing like that. Especially looking the way I do. :P I make up for it by making up comic characters that dress that way. Anyway, yeah, once I've forced myself to plow through a good-sized chunk of my stash, I'm definitely getting a bunch of that stuff, if only to make some socks and/or gloves just to have a little bit of oddness in my wardrobe. For the record, I haven't tried knitting socks yet.

a recent mistake

2006-06-29T20:16:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make myself some gloves like the women's pattern in Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. However, since my hands are gigantic as far as women's standards go, I had to alter the size. I made the first glove in February and finally got around to making the second one earlier this month. While making it, I didn't really look at the first one or check my notes on it. I just assumed that I had gone through the same number of rounds before the thumbhole that I go through when I follow the men's pattern. Well...I didn't. :P I only remembered after the fact that I had done four fewer rounds. I cried inside. Oh, sure, I could rip it back, but remember, I'm lazy. I'll just wear them as is. Who around here is going to notice the difference while they're on? Besides me, I mean?

good times...good money-wasting times

2006-06-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

I was at Nine Rubies today. I told them I'd been into making toys lately, and it was suggested to me that I check out the Rowan All Seasons Cotton. Despite its having six plies, I thought I'd give it a shot, so I picked out a few colors for the "Four Seasons of Kate" project I'm going to be working on this month. But I'll have to go back either tomorrow or Thursday to get some additional colors I suddenly wanted for said project. :P They're not going to have the print I want, but hopefully they'll have the other solids. Also, while I was there I made the mistake of touching a hank of chunky Misti Alpaca.

Sold!

stitch and...pitch?

2006-06-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

I was looking at the list of special events taking place at Giants home games, and they're having "Stitch 'n Pitch Night" on July 20th.

Is that wrong? Or do baseball and knitting somehow go together? I used to be into baseball, but I haven't been for the past few years. I can still go to a game and enjoy it, but it's hard for me to watch it on TV if I'm not doing anything else. I'm normally knitting if I'm watching it for an extended period of time, now that I think about it. ...Hm. Interesting. But I don't know that I'd knit at a game. I mean, depending on where you sit, you have to keep paying attention to what's going on around you, you know?

crochet issues

2006-05-31T21:49:00.000-07:00

So...crochet is something I feel like I should learn for the sake of learning it. I haven't actually wanted to learn, but I wasn't sure why. I've had the Happy Hooker book for some time now, and I like some of the patterns. I have a set of hooks that I bought a while ago, but I've only used it for end-weaving and provisional cast-ons. I've even had some free time recently, yet I still felt no desire to learn the craft. Then it finally came to me. It's an aesthetic thing. For some reason, I don't really like the look of most crocheted fabric. Of course, that brings up a new question...but at least I've cleared that little bit up.

pig! - project notes

2006-05-15T17:49:00.000-07:00

I meant to backdate that last post. D'oh. Not that it really matters. Anyway, after Lent was over I bought a few knitting books on Amazon, "World of Knitted Toys" by Kath Dalmeny being one of them. I like the variety; however, it's interesting that a) not much if anything is done in the round (I haven't looked at all of the patterns closely, so I don't yet know if there's any of that), and b) there only seems to be one kind of increase and one kind of decrease. I started working on a pig based on the pattern in this book, but I'm modifying the crap out of it, knitting most everything in the round and reducing the number of total pieces from nine to seven. I've started the head/body piece at the snout. Check it out! At this point I've finished the legs, and I've added the ears onto the main piece. I have not yet decided whether to embroider the eyes or purchase some of those eyes with washers. Either way, I hope to finish it off this week.