Yarn Thoughts

On the mend

This is what yarn storage used to look like! Bags of yarn hanging off the back of the the door, an old rug back there was puked on and the smell just wouldn't go away.  Why not store two bags of yarn right there? As you can see below we are much better off now.  Yarn is sorted by hat/scarf/mitten yarn, socks, cotton and then cascade and interesting things.

 

           

This is where I keep all my knitting books.  It's also the last stop for crap before it gets shoved into the attic.  There were about 15 books (non knitting) that were relocated.  So much nicer now, despite the dead plant my husband is convinced will resurrect itself)

 

This is general crafting supplies.  Why would I ever want to go into this mess and think I could find anything?  All that felt and fabric has been relocated to a cabinet in the closet with doors!

 

There's no before picture here because honestly, it was so awful, so filled with crap that it was actually embarrassing.  If my mother saw that before picture she would KILL me.  But look!  Floor!  Tidiness!
 

So this is why there are no modeled photos of my nieces wearing their fresh-off-the-needles gifts and why there's no chart for the hat I designed.  The clutter in my space was clutter in my mind.  I feel much more focused and streamlined and am ready to enjoy this home quite a bit as we pass the zenith of summer and spend the next four week ends traveling, stitching and adventuring.

Tomorrow we are going to spend the day with my sister and her 5 kids and NOT make a mess of the house.  There's more to do downstairs but that can be done tonight while the kids are sleeping.  Speaking of sleeping I just realized that I've been working since 9 am!  I should probably go feed my kids....

A twitch to itch

It's the most gorgeous blue summer Friday you could ask for. Puffy fluffy clouds are layered on a soft blue sky. The temps are incredibly cool and the humidity is way down.

And I'm manually comparing 1600 disconnected records across two spreadsheets.

To compensate I opened every available window in the office (4 total) and am sucking in fresh air like a fish out of water. There's a great view outside my window of a duck pond and trees so it's not ALL bad.

My husband and two boys are home today eating bananas and playing at the beach. They will be splashing, building castles and hunting down all types if sea creatures, vigilantly on the lookout for our favorite, the horseshoe crab.

And I'm manually comparing 1600 disconnected records across two spreadsheets.

The plan for this lovely, lovely weekend is to clean my house. A major overhaul of decluttering, organizing, sweeping, mopping and blanket airing. It's so disappointing and very much NOT newsworthy but the rest of summer is jammed with plans and if I do not mop the upstairs bedrooms soon I suspect the dust bunnies will evolve into sentient beings with a written language.

I have so many many many ideas in my head of things to knit and crochet that the disorganization in my home is preventing me from being able to think clearly. I actually have an end goal of this home overhaul to get to the yarn supplies. I have photos at home which I will post later that will unequivocally make my case for me.

I've been gazing at my stash the way you'd look at your first love if he broke both his legs. The affection, the love, the desire is all there but there's very little fun to be had and there's tremendous pity for the pain and suffering of his current state. My poor stash is shoved, mixed, manhandled and stuffed around my home in a very painful way. Poor stash, I'm gonna stick by you till we fix you up right!

And I'm manually comparing 1600 disconnected records across two spreadsheets. Which for the past 15 minutes has been dolefully waiting for my return.

Ugh.

Hopefully I'll be so immersed in my knitting on the ride home that I won't even notice the inevitable weirdos.

Sent from my iPhone

Commuting Files - Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

I was just thing the commutes have been a little mundane when I realized my tan, muscular (50+) train conductor with 3 buttons undone on his shirt was walking around with a leather clad Barbie hanging out of his back pocket. You can see her fluffy blond hair in this crappy photo. The guy has a soul patch which is an indication that a man is so confident in his alleged hotness that he will walk around with equivalent of a Brazilian wax on his chin. Not my bag but it must work cause the men continue to rock it.

Hollah back!

I'm back from vacation!  I only have cell phone pictures and frankly, I don't even know where my phone is in the huge tangle of luggage and crap that is strewn across my living room floor.

As I promised myself I went to Fine Yarns at Kimbeemba while in the Outer Banks.  I was in there, having a look around and was kind of wondering why both stores were so light in the wool selection and so heavy in the baby yarns selection.  And then I thought of the sweltering, mind-melting walk from my car to the store in 110F heat.  There is little use for wool where there is 1 inch of snow per year, if that.  So I contented myself with some crochet thread, a wee bit of sock yarn and two awesomely awesome books.  These books are fantabulous!

First we have Color By Kristi and I'm just going to use the Amazon.com photo:

This book is by a woman, Kristin Nicholas of Nashua Yarns, whose head must be full of Skittles. The color just comes crashing out of this book.  She takes color work, beautiful color work and embroiders and duplicate-stitches all over it to add texture and more color.  You can judge this book by it's cover, it's fantastic.  The best part is the author includes pages and pages of motifs (along with 2 dozen project patterns) to get you creating your own designs.  It's gorgeous and technical, two qualities I like in a book.

The next book, HatHeads: 1 Man + 2 Knitting Needles = 50 Fun Hat Designs by Trond Anfinnsen is a super fun book.  Trond knit over 200 hats in 20 months, each a unique design and almost all custom for a particular person.  In this book are 50 hat designs and a photo and a story about each recipient.  The patterns are simple, almost all have some color work in them.  But the best part is the narrative of the book, how he got started knitting, why he knits hats and how this hobby turned into a large project.  There is a great section where he explains how to create new designs and to incorporate them into a pattern.  

(also swiped from Amazon, you can't really look inside from here)

If there is a theme noticeable in these two purchases its that I really want to get my head into designing.  I have an urge to leave my mark in this knitting community I'm so enamored with.  This whole knitting thing I got myself into over 4 years ago has been has been a top ten life changing event for me.  It's changed my whole life and honestly, my whole outlook.  It's become easier for me to make friends, to soothe myself, to discover creativity and I have such an appreciation for color now that I never want to lose.  My life is warmer, fuller and more vibrant since I became a knitter (and crocheter!) and I want to become a stronger voice in the knitting community.  I have Ravelry to inspire me and leading me off in new directions but I think blogging and designing is going to be what elevates me from a hobbyist to an enthusiast (what's beyond enthusiast?)

I still have a crap load of unpacking to do.  I have a whack load of new yarn that has to be squeezed in somewhere (and tallied on rav!).  My camera bit the dust and I have to haul out the old Kodak back up to document the new stash.  Right now I'm hot and need to head back downstairs to the AC.  I may just crack open a wine cooler and play with graph paper and colored pencils instead of unpacking though.  Hubs can take care of it tomorrow!

I'm on vacation this week

I'm on vacation this week in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. It's an annual extended family trip and something I look forward to every year. Since blogging is a pleasurable past time and not even remotely like work I figure a post was in order.
Part of the anticipation is the gorgeous beach and family fun. But I have a vacation policy- yarn shopping is a free for all. I spend a silly amount of money on whatever catches my eye or I get the yarn for that special project. I once had a free weeks vacation in Nantucket and bought enough Koigu to make a Babette blanket. That was ridiculous but I take those opportunities when they present themselves. (in the interest of full disclosure I was living at my inlaws and only paying $200 for rent. I'm not the Paris Hilton of yarn shopping)
In the Outer Banks there are 2 knitting stores that I am aware of. I made my first trip today and chose to visit Knitting Addiction. This store moved to it's new location and is HUGE. Gi-fahreaking-normous!! There are two large rooms bridged with a wide open space. There's even an alcove with a couch and toys where my 5 year old was quietly content with Legos the entire time I shopped. That alone was worth the trip!
The store had a lot of great yarns, I took home some Blue Sky Alpacas worsted for a hat. I have to admit that after knitting for 4 years and 5 months I have never cabled a thing. So glad to get THAT off my chest. I don't take myself too seriously but really, I should hold myself to a higher standard as a knitter...so that's on deck to be remedied. I also got some Malabrigo to make the hubs a hat and some Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton to make their knitted chickens pattern. I have loved and owned this pattern for over a year but the yarn has been purchased in bits and pieces and I now have all the colors I need. Even though vacation yarn buying is my pass to be frivolous, shelling out $40 for cotton yarn to knit a chicken is borderline insane. I already had half the yarn I needed so now I have the rest.
As for vacation knitting, I'm prepared for a hurricane to wipe out the road or for the house to fall into the sea and to be stranded for a year. And at the rate I've been knitting I could probably hold out for 4 years. With 8 little kids and 7 other adults to visit its hard to sit still long enough to get more than a few rows done at a time.
Before the week is out I will head over to Fine Yarns at Kimbeeba, a small cute shop on the nearby island of Manteo. I think I would like some yarn to make mittens for my boys this winter and try to find something local and unusual, there wasn't anything that really caught my eye in that vein at Knitting Addiction.
The weather has been hot hot hot and sunny. I have to make my 4 month old niece model the sweater I just finished for her. She'll love that! But that's my next post!

Harmony Double Pointed Needles

A few weeks ago I placed an order with Knit Picks. I was feeling a little flush with cash and I bought a set of Harmony Wood Double Pointed Needles (DPNs). Before this I had bought cheap bamboo DPNs, metal ones, stupidly expensive wooden ones from Blue Sky Alpacas and Sock Stixx. I prefer 5" or 6" needles for knitting socks and mittens as the longer needles feel awkward and cumbersome.

Now I'm no Yarn Harlot or Cookie A, banging out socks in my sleep. I don't always have a sock going (though I should). I do enjoy making them however and I'm the type of person who believes the materials and tools used to make something are as important as the item itself. I buy real vanilla and good chocolate and use my stand mixer for baking a cake, the same goes into my knitting.

When I was buying some yarn at Knit Picks I decided to treat myself to a set of Harmony 5" wood DPNs. My friends at Stitch and Bitch have some and they seemed nice. The set I bought includes 6 sizes of needles from 2 mm to 3.25 mm with every .25 mm difference. A drawback is that needles aren't marked at all so when my two year old dumped all my needles on the floor I quickly realized I should have bought the needle sizer as mine don't have all the incremental sizes represented. As for the needles they are wonderful. Firm, not bendy but not as hard as metal. The finish is super smooth and slick, which I think more than makes up for not being marked with their sizes. I hate that snagging feeling when the yarn catches on a needle. The needles have some weight to them too, not that they're heavy but they feel like they have some substance to them unlike some bamboo needles that feel like they're going to snap in half if you look at them funny. However, if one did break or you lost it each size comes with 6! needles. This is huge for me because I often lose things, especially small things which will be a whole other post someday cause it's practically comical.

Lastly we have come to the points. These are pointy needles. Not impale your hand as you reach into your bag pointy, not purl5 together through the back loop (not that I have tried that) pointy, but perfectly pointy for socks. The pointy tips combined with the slickness of the wood make decreasing, increasing and casting on much easier than with grabby bamboo.

-*+There's one thing about ordering from Knit Picks, shipping is expensive. Unless you spend $50 and then it's free. When I went to buy the $3 needle sizer I needed I asked my knitter friends if they wanted anything so I wouldn't have to pay for shipping. In an hour they were past $70. So great for me right? $3 and I'm done. Well yarn shopping never works out so easy! I'm now in possession of 6 new balls of yarn, a needle sizer and some bobbin thingies for color work. Even through a computer screen wool fumes knock the sense out of me every time! PS image taken directly from the knit picks website.

The Commuting Files- The Convict

I take two trains each day on my way to work. This morning the first train was a little crowded so I sat next to someone. I'm not terribly social before I've had coffee and I usually prefer to sit alone. We are riding along and I pull out my knitting. It's all stockinette at this point and I'm just speeding along. As the train pulls to an intermediate station I ask the man next to me if this is his stop (so I can get up to let him pass by). He says no and then remarks on my knitting. The usual comments of 'oh that looks hard, can't you just buy something, but it looks really cool.' I reply that I like having something to do with my hands on the train. He smiles and says, nodding towards his bag, "I like to drink beer". "Work wouldn't really like it if I did that' I laugh. He replies he wouldn't know and does the wistful stare out the window. We get to talking and the man lives in upstate CT with his wife and kids and has been out of work for years because he can't get into any unions. Then he goes on to say he earns $7 at the temporary labor office but today he found work painting elevators for $150 in New York. I ask him how come he doesn't work at the casinos which are huge employers? He replies that he has a bit of a record. In fact he's been in and out of jail since he was 17. He looked about 40 to me. We talk a few minutes more about kids, gas and the price of food and our stop arrives and we part ways. This is the kind of conversation you have to be prepared for if you knit in public!

Renate Hiller Transcription

ETA: Embedding youtube is an at-home activity!

I watched this movie on www.masondixonknitting.com and in the comments someone asked for a transcription. I have to learn how to embed videos while posting from my cellphone but in the meantime I have included the transcription.

This woman speaks so eloquently about the necessity of doing handwork that I will not interfere with my own commentary.

Renate Hiller
On Handiwork
 
I’m spinning wool with a stone spindle.  This tool has been used probably for more than 30,000 years. And when we twist fibers into yarn we are actually creating a spiral.  And the spiral is a cosmic gesture of creation.  When we look at our galaxy from outer space it is a spiral.  And we find spirals in many, many places – in the plant world, in, in - on the back of our head we have a spiral. Uh so, this is an activity that brings us closer to the cosmos, you could say. But at the same time we create something that is useful and beautiful because with the yarn that we have spun we can create sweaters, hats and mittens and scarves and so on.
 
To have the skill of knitting, to have the skill of crocheting, of felting, makes it possible for us not only to make something but it makes us skilled in general.  The use of the hands is vital for the human being, for having flexibility, dexterity.  In a way the entire human being is in the in the hands.  Our destiny is written in the hand.  And what do we do in our modern world with our hands? You know we move the mouse, we drive and so on.  We feel plastic most of the time.  The hands are relegated to very little that’s actually bringing dexterity to our times.  So we have come ever more estranged from nature and from also what other human beings are doing.  The whole social element comes into play as well because if I make something then I think hmm, how was that yarn made? 
 
In the past there were all the professions of the shoe maker and the tailor and so on and that’s also being lost.  If you do practical work somewhere on the school grounds, there is practical work going on, the children will all go to that, they’re really drawn to that.  They want to experience it and however the reality is that there’s less and less of that.  In the home, you know you can use already bought vegetables, all chopped up and ready to eat.  There is very little activity like kneading the bread, and you know children grasp first an item and then they grasp with their mind.  So if they have very little to grasp other than plastic readymade toys then what their mind grasps is very little. The toy automatically moves and you know children can only be kind of astonished by that. 
 
So though there is this loss of understanding the value of things, of the meaning of things, and in hand work, in transforming nature we also make something truly unique that we have made with our hands, stitch by stitch, that maybe we have chosen the yarn, we have even spun the yarn – even better uh and that we have designed.  And when I do that, I feel whole. I feel I am experiencing my inner core because it’s a meditative process.  You have to find your way; you have to listen with your whole being.  And that is the schooling that we all need today.  Because we’re so egocentric and this makes us think of what is needed by something else.  So we are in a way practicing empathy -empathy with the material, empathy with the design.  I think this practicing of empathy that we do in the fiber crafts is paramount for being healing to our world.  And it’s a service for the divine that we are surrounded by. 
 
 

A Single Sock So Far

I made this sock for my two year old. Since he actually has two feet I should probably make it's mate but we have almost two months before sock weather hits again. The yarn is Knit Picks Felici Sport weight. The self striping just worked out perfectly giving me the red on the heel flap and I will replicate that on the second socks. These socks were knit on 5" Harmony DPN US size 3 with 44 stitches cast on. My son happens to have giant clod hoppers for feet, I thought these were going to be too big on the instep but were fine. I have a few things in the hopper right now, namely a pattern submission for publication that I'm hoping turns out well. If not I'll just post it on Ravelry and try again another day :) My goal for this blog is to write patterns and create designs. I'd love to be able to quit my day job and work in the fiber industry some day. The only way to reach that dream is to start taking steps. Onward and upward! Now this stuff doesn't knit itself so I must get cracking. Be back soon!

Beautiful

Not a bad view for a morning walk