New Year, New Craft

For the last few months, I’ve been admiring woven scarves on Ravelry.  As I flipped through a Webs catalog awhile back, I casually remarked to Mike that maybe in a few years I’d look into weaving.  For the record, I knew absolutely nothing about weaving other than self-striping sock yarns made pretty woven scarves.  Looms?  No knowledge at all other than that’s what you use to get pretty woven scarves.  The actual process of weaving?  Well, weavers talk about needing to warp their looms, whatever that is.   And that would be the extent of my weaving knowledge.

You can imagine that I was a bit surprised when Mike handed me a box Christmas morning, and I unwrapped:

I may know zippo about weaving, but I know Mike deserves some major good husband points for taking an offhand comment I made about something I’d like to try and running with it.  I mean, the guy read loom reviews.  More points for helping me assemble the loom. 

Once assembled, I started pouring through instructions and learned how to warp the loom, which I now understand is basically getting the vertical threads all measured and threaded to weave. 

My small house is not exactly well suited to the task, but I made it work. Then, I poured through more instructions and actually started weaving.  My first attempt was appropriately a total mess.

I only wove about a foot of that blue and green yarn before cutting it off the loom and starting something else. Still uncertain about how things would come out, I chose a handspun skein that was a little lumpy and not quite my colors for the warp and dug out some Lamb's Pride from the stash drawer to use for the weft (horizontal threads).

The fabric was much more even, but not surprisingly, drab-colored yarn created a drab fabric.  Olive green, mustard yellow, and some brownish golds mixed with charcoal grey?  Blech.  The ugly project, however, gave me lots of practice and when I was finished, I finally felt ready to try making one of those pretty self-striping sock yarn scarves.  Still lacking the confidence to break into any of my really prized self-striping skeins, I dug out a club skein I got last year that I was pretty lukewarm on. 

And now I'm halfway to a self-striping woven scarf of my very own.  How cool is that?  And looms?  Freaking brilliant.  How does anyone ever come up with this stuff?  I know there are a zillion weaving techniques, patterns, and textures to learn, but right now I'm just enjoying keeping everything simple.  It's fun to know though that when time and energy allows I have a whole new craft to explore.  Thank you, Mike!

Past, Present, and Future

So let's wrap up the 2011 knitting goals:

1) 12 in 2011:  Objective was to knit 12 projects in 2011 from stash yarn.  Accomplished. 

2) Operation Conquer WIPs:  I started November with 7 WIPs and ended December with 1.  I may not have totally prevailed (cursed Vivian sweater), but both the WIP drawer and my stress level over languishing projects are much more under control.

3) Sock Yarn Stashdown:  Objective was to end 2011 with less sock yarn than I started with.  My calculations put me at five fewer skeins.  Not great but nevertheless, victory.

On the whole, 2011 was the year of low knitting productivity, especially when compared to what I finished in 2010.  In 2010, I knit 7 sweaters, and in 2011, only 3 (2 of which were vests).  But 2011 was the year I really started spinning. In 2010, I spun only a few ounces of fiber.  In 2011, over 5 pounds and somewhere around 26 skeins.

DAMN!

The wheel was an expensive purchase, but at least I know I'm putting it to good use.

And my goals for 2012? I've written this section several times now, and it changes significantly with each revision. Despite my tendency to plan and create to-do lists, I'm determined that in 2012, there will be no goals to knit a certain number of socks, sweaters, or any other projects.  No inventorying amount of stash used or number of skeins that enter the house.  No knitting or spinning quotas.  And no deadlines.  In 2012, knitting will not be work.  I am going to spin and knit what I feel like, when I feel like it.  If I see some pretty sock yarn, I am going to buy it (wow, I'm being really tough on myself with these resolutions).  In short, I'm going to relax about my crafting and use it for the escape a hobby should provide.  At least I'm going to try.

Of course, I still have plans.
1) Knit another 12 projects with stash yarn, a few of which should use handspun.  Hmmm, that sounds rather like a quota.  Correction:  Knit some projects with stash yarn.
2) Finish Vivian by the end of March  Um, that's a deadline. Maybe just finish Vivian at some point this year. Still a deadline, but a little easier to think about.
3) Knit some of the sweaters and socks I've had queued forever and have been waiting to start until the WIPs were under control.  Seems appropriately vague even if I do have 3 specific sweater lots of yarn in mind that I want to use up.
4) Continue spinning and knitting the Epic Handspun Afghan.  Ideally, I'd love to have all the spinning finished and at least 12-15 squares finished by the end of the year.  Uh, that's another quota...I better stop with this list right now.

Clearly, "relax about crafting" is going to be a little tougher for me than I thought.  At least there's no yarn diet listed in there...although I'm really trying to knit down the stash enough to give Mike another drawer.  Oh, I give up.  Maybe I should just resolve to not stress about the goals I will inevitably set?

Catching Up

Before I can delve into my plans for 2012, I have a bit to catch up on.  As Oranje waited for a photo shoot for most of December, I finished my fifth WIP.

Pattern: Angostura from Little Red in the City by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Malabrigo Rios in Ravelry Red

The vest came out quite nicely.  It looked teeny when I finished it, but it blocked out to about the right size, albeit a rather fitted one.  I've knit many of Ysolda's patterns, and I'm always impressed with the little details. For this pattern, the armhole and neck i-cord edging is fantastic.  The edges look so clean and neat without needing to pick up stitches or create a crochet edge.  The back cable, however, is still my favorite part of the pattern, which is what drew me to it in the first place.

The only annoying thing?  Those light spots in the yarn.  I alternated skeins to spread out the color variation, but those flecks of pink still bug me a bit.  Not too much though, and Malabrigo Rios?  Overall it's pretty heavenly.

Once Angostura was out of the way, I turned my attention to the Chelsea skirt, which only needed the lace hem and new buttons, and the elaborately cabled Vivian sweater, which needed most of 2 sleeves and the entire top yoke.  Both projects were packed up for the trip to Connecticut for the holidays.  Within a day, I decided I hated the yarn I was using for the lace hem for the skirt, so that project was relegated back to the knitting bag until I could get home and find different yarn.  Then I moved on to Vivian and within a few rows on the first sleeve, I finally admitted to myself that I hated the shape. I started a new sleeve but was frustrated, tucked that project away too, and spent the rest of the trip knitting a cowl (I may have been determined to spend most my time on WIPs, but I'm still smart enough to bring a back up project.  Or two).  

After returning home, I spent the few days before New Year's Eve knitting the Chelsea lace hem with different yarn. After running 18 miles the morning of December 31, instead of heading to my bedroom for a well-deserved nap, I dragged my tired body over to the almost-finished skirt and settled in to sew on the lace hem.  I finished the sewing, weaved in my ends, tried on the finished skirt, and with a satisfied smile crossed the sixth WIP off the list before the end of 2011 deadline.

A few days into the new year, I realized that I had sewn the lace with the wrong side facing out.  And with that, I decided that rushing to finish a project just to accomplish an arbitrary knitting deadline is kind of stupid.

A Fresh Start

I have much to share about the final outcome of my WIP challenge and what I have planned for 2012.  I'm not ready to write that up yet though because I started a sock.

 

This sock is not on any of my to-do lists, and it's a mystery sock pattern, so I don't even know what the finished sock is going to look like.  It's exactly what I need right now.  I'll be back soon with finished projects, skeins of handspun, and details on the new craft I'm delving into.  But for now, I'm going to go knit a sock and enjoy a fresh knitting project.

P.S.  For anyone wondering, the sock is Blathnat, the mystery sock for the Sock Knitters Anonymous January knit-along.  Yarn is Sanguine Gryphon Bugga! in Lubber Grasshopper.

Finally Oranje

Oranje is finally finished.  Completely finished. Pictures and everything.

Oranje was certainly a long process beginning with several nights agonizing over whether I should buy yarn to start the project.  Then there were the color decisions.  When the yarn was finally settled on, the knitting itself brought many new challenges--fair-isle with three colors, nine Latvian braids, steeks, and sewing in my first zipper.  Phew!

After finishing the main knitting back in August, there was the pesky problem of reinforcing the steeks so they could be cut.  The sweater sat and sat until it finally made the trip to Atlanta with me in early November where I would have access to a sewing machine.  Not having worked a sewing machine in probably 15 years, I was hopelessly confused.  I'm all grown up, but sometimes I just need my Mom.

I love you Mom! Thank you!

I took the scissors to Oranje immediately after the steeks were sewn.  Leading up to this step, I had not been nervous about cutting my knitting.  I didn't approach the task with fearful anticipation, felt no need to down hard liquor before starting the actual cutting, and didn't hesitate to make that first cut.  However, after I started cutting, my heart started racing.  I think I felt a little dizzy when I hit the colorwork section.

Holding breath...heart pounding...

The steeks were finally behind me, and my pullover was officially a cardigan.

Uh, now what?

Of course since I wanted to be able to close said cardigan, I was left trying to figure out the whole zipper thing.  I had decided early on that I wanted to follow others' examples and insert a zipper instead of buttons.  Had I ever sewn a zipper into a sweater?  Nope.  Had I ever sewn a zipper into anything?  Nah.  I knit facings for the zipper following notes from other finished Oranje sweaters on Ravelry, and then finally sucked it up and sewed in the zipper.  After reading through many, many tutorials, I decided to follow this one.  And you know what?  It totally worked!  Perfectly.  I felt like a rock star when the zipper worked.  Seriously, a ROCK STAR.  I may have sat zipping and unzipping the sweater over and over in amazement and proclaiming to Mike my new rock star status.  Training for a marathon?  Eh, no big deal.  I had sewn a zipper into a sweater.  And the zipper WORKS!

Check out that awesome zipper action!

I have since come back down to Earth, but I have an awesome sweater to remind me whenever I put it on and zip it up that I am a rock star.

Zirkel Socks

My last sock-in-progress is finished--Zirkel Socks, pattern by Stephanie van der Linden.  I just looked up the meaning of "zirkel".  It really should have occurred to me that "zirkel" translates to "circle" without needing to look it up.

I mean look at the pattern and say "zirkel" out loud.  It's not rocket science.  Anyway, moving on.  These socks were mystery socks I started in July. After having so much fun with mystery fair-isle socks last year, I couldn't resist participating in another fair-isle mystery.  And since I adore Stephanie van der Linden's designs, I was even more excited to start getting the clues.  While I didn't love this mystery experience quite as much as before, there were several good lessons learned.

• Lesson #1:  don't mix yarns in fair-isle that have different fiber content. The green is Three Irish Girls McClellan, a merino/bamboo blend.  I threw it together with a random undyed skein I dug out. Having one shiny yarn and one fuzzy yarn just looks a little weird.  
• Lesson #2:  remember contrast is key!  There's enough contrast between the green and white but just barely, and a darker color against the white would have looked much better.  
• Lesson #3:  try not to have expectations for a mystery sock.  I admit I was rather disappointed with the pattern at first, but that was because I had certain expectations based on my earlier experience.  I figured that the design in a mystery sock would evolve so I got bored early on with the same repeating pattern.  
• Lesson #4:  damn I love knitting fair-isle! (okay, not a "lesson" but an important reminder).  Even with a pattern I wasn't jazzed about and yarn choices that could have been much better, I could barely put these socks down the past week.  Again, fair-isle is calming to me in a way no other knitting can equal.  I've been a little sad since finishing the sock, and it is taking a great deal of restraint for me not to forget the other WIPs so I can cast on more fair-isle!
• Lesson #5:  I love knitting fair-isle, but really need to get away from fair-isle socks.  I hate the lack of stretch in the leg.  I see mittens in my future.  
• Lesson #6:  I love stripey feet!  No question, the soles are my favorite part of the pattern. 

Is that a "lesson"?  Probably not, but it needed to be pointed out nonetheless. Finishing Zirkel brings me to 11 projects finished with stash yarn in 2011 (totally going to hit the goal of 12!) and brings the WIP count down to 4.  Only 4!  And 2 of the last 4 are in the finishing stages--I'm totally going to prevail in Operation Conquer the WIPs.  Yup, feeling a little overconfident today.  This will disappear as soon as I finally resurrect the Vivian sweater.

But, let's forget Vivian for now.  Here's a sneak peak of what's coming next!

November on the Wheel

A few weeks ago I was brainstorming ways to get myself going on this blog again.  The WIP challenge was a big part of it, but I wanted to include some spinning as well.  My first idea was to do a weekly post on my current spins. Though when I thought more about that idea, it seemed rather boring.  Unfortunately I don't have unlimited spinning time so the posts would inevitably be something like "hey, here's the ounce I did this week on the same fiber I posted last week so it looks pretty much the same.  tune in next week for another identical picture".  Uh, yeah, lame.  So the weekly idea was pushed to monthly.  I'm not exactly off to a timely start since I'm posting my November spinning in December. Oh well.

A couple of months ago, I stumbled upon the  Completely Twisted and Arbitrary Spinning group on Ravelry.  The group is filled with some awesome spinners and fierce fiber enablers (let's just say, Etsy has jumped to the top of the list of websites I visit), but the main feature of the group is a bi-monthly spin-along (SAL).  Members nominate and vote on pictures inspired by a certain theme, and winning pictures are presented to a featured dyer who dyes fiber for the SAL.  I jumped into the group for the August/September SAL with Fiber Optic.  The fiber was awesome and I couldn't resist this brightly colored gradient.

It took several weeks, but I ended up producing a skein I was thrilled with.

What does this September spinning have to do with November?  Well not much except that I never posted that pretty skein, and spinning that fiber got me really enthused about participating in future SALs.  When the group's October/November round started up, I barely hesitated before buying two of the colorways, this time by Two if By Hand.

The two on the right occupied most of my November spinning time.  It took me some time to get started since I was being my typical indecisive self. How thick should I aim for?  Dunno.  How was I going to ply so I could divide evenly?  Couldn't decide.  I gave up on planning and just spun up 8 ounces of singles.

It took several more days of hemming and hawing over what to do next. I finally decided that the colors might come together really well as 3 ply.  I wound a third of the singles off each bobbin and set to plying.

I so love the end result.  So much so that one picture really isn't enough.  Here's a close up.

The only bummer is that I still spin really densely, so both skeins together are only about 325 yards of worsted weight yarn. I have yet to learn the magic by which spinners will get almost twice that yardage. Still, the 300+ yards should be enough for a scarf which is what I was planning on when I bought the fiber, and I'm officially hooked on SALs.  The December/January dyer is Julie Spins.  I've drooled over her shop for a long time but never purchased anything.  Doubt I'll be able to say that much longer.