Just...eh...

It seems, like always, there's too much crazy and too many things going on in Casa De Solitaryknitter.

Since the last time I wrote, my mother in law moved back in to her own house.  I guess she couldn't handle being around people who wouldn't put up with her BS.  I'm still concerned about her health, and we check on her daily, but on the good side, my husband and I are less stressed (at least in the sense that we don't have someone living on top of us.)

I've been knitting a bit, but mostly crocheting.  I've been incredibly scattered lately and haven't finished a single thing I've started.  Awhile back Walmart had some promotional yarn.  All it says on the label is Promo Fil, and Georga.  It's 100% polyester, but honestly, it feels pretty nice.  I bought 15 balls (they're 70 grams) and I'm making a simple granny square blanket.  I realized that granny squares were the first thing I learned to crochet, and that I had made granny square blankets for others, but never for myself.  So I'm just crocheting squares that take up the entire ball of yarn (13 round incidentally) and when I'm finished I'll sew them together and add a border of some sort.  I'm a bit excited to have a blanket for myself that's not too holey.  (I know granny squares are holey, but I do them with one stitch between clusters and it makes for a much smaller hole)

I know I'm rambling; sorry about that.  Like I said, I'm really scattered these days.

A sweet friend of mine is pregnant and I really want to make something wonderful for her.  I've gone through a ton of different patterns, getting in to the pattern a fair bit, then deciding I didn't care for it.  I *think* I've settled on a star afghan.  I'm a good ways in to it and it's turning out really cute.  I'm using  Bernat Baby Sport, in yellow, and an ombre in yellow, orange and white.  I'll try to get a picture of it soon.  Hell, I need to get pictures of quite a few things.

I think that's about it for now.  I just wanted to do an update because I haven't in quite some time.  I'm hoping things look up and settle down really soon so I can focus on a few things that I really need to get to.

As long as it fits!

I finally got a picture of the red sweater I made for Spock from my own pattern!  Except, you'll notice that Spock has...grown.  And is now black and white.  And is no longer a boy...

That's because this is Micah Sue, one of my mother in law's chihuahuas.  She came to my MIL in pretty sad shape - well, my shape really.  Super-chunky.  She's one of the sweetest dogs I've ever been around in my life, and though she can't get up on the couch by herself (she's just too portly - something we're working on) if you pick her up and put her next to you she gets SUPER EXCITED and hoists her super-sized frame over your leg and will just pant and make happy noises for hours.  Every few minutes she'll bring up her itty bitty leg and smack it down on your knee, reminding you she's there (in case you've forgotten) so you can love on her.

I knew Spock's sweater was too large for him, but I really had no idea it would fit Micah.  She was the only one of the 'little' dogs that didn't have her own sweater.  Now she's got a custom made one.  It could not possibly fit her any better - even if I'd made it specifically for her (Hell, if I'd made it specifically for her it probably wouldn't have fit her as well!)

I'm really thrilled that one of the dog can wear this and it makes me feel good that Micah has something special, just for her.  She (unintentionally...I *think*) gets left out sometimes when my mother in law is showering the pups with attention and Paul and I have been giving her extra loveys on the side.  She deserves it - she's a very sweet girl!




Bonus Monorail Doggie picture:

So, again, an update with no pictures.

I mainly just wanted to post because:

• My friend James really wants some stranded colorwork pouches for his xbox 360 and PS3 controllers.  The yarn came yesterday so I can finally start planning them!  One's going to have a Decepticon on it, the other, an Autobot.  (From Transformers, if you have no idea what those are.)
• I went to The Spinster yesterday and bought some fiber to spin!  It's gorgeous, and maybe I'll actually take pictures of that.

My stupid laptop screen keeps whiting out when I type, presumably from jostling the whole thing.  Well, it whites out for absolutely no reason when I'm not even touching it too.  I'm assuming there's a short from opening and closing it so much.  I need to have that fixed, because it really, really pisses me off when I'm in the middle of doing something, to have to restart the damned thing.

Things are still in transition here and I feel like we're not getting enough done.  I'm trying not to think about it much though.

That's all.

Times, they are a changin'.

It's been insanely busy around Casa de Solitary Knitter.  It's a long story, but we're in the process of moving my mother in law in with us.  My father in law passed away in July and things have been going downhill health wise for her ever since.  It's for both monetary and health reasons that she's coming to stay with us.  So, we've been cleaning, decluttering and spending time at her house packing things up.  We also have to get our garage cleaned out so we have storage room and our yard cleaned because...it just really needs to be cleaned.  It hasn't left much time for being solitary, nor knitting.

I have been sneaking moments here and there, mostly late at night or sometimes mid-morning before we get to work, spinning and knitting.  I haven't done any spinning in awhile and decided it would be a way to get some fiber fun in in small increments.  I can spin for ten or fifteen minutes at a time and stop abruptly without worrying about where I left off.  I use a 1.6 ounce purpleheart wood top whorl spindle that my dear Aunt Loretta bought for me at our local yarn shop, The Spinster.  She and my cousin Rita were in town to visit and took me down there as a surprise and let me pick out a few things I wanted.  It was an incredibly thoughtful gift and one that continues to give as I use it to spin yarns out of beautiful fibers.  I'm what I'd consider a very newbie spinner - I don't know a whole lot and my yarns are far from perfect.  But with every little bit I practice, the better my consistency gets.

Here's a picture of my spindle.  I think she's beautiful!

There's a group on Ravelry called Yarn Stormers.  People suggest a person to get a random box of yarn goodness and if you're chosen, you receive a surprise box chock full of all sorts of balls and skeins and hanks of yarn, as well as, on occasion, fiber to spin.  In the box I received (I was nominated by my good friend Jen in Las Vegas) there was a few ounces of a green so dark I thought it was black until I held it up to the light.  I'd say it's a mid-quality wool; not the best I've spun, but certainly not the worst - a good workhorse fiber.  I'm currently spinning it pretty fine (by my standards), near a laceweight.  I'll be plying it I think, into a fingering/heavy fingering 2-ply.

Beyond that, I've been working on a scrappy modular square afghan.  I like it because:

• The squares are only 29 stitches.  They can be finished in less than 20 minutes of solid knitting.
• Each square uses very little yarn.
• I can use up a ton of my odds and ends.
• I'm finding all sorts of colors to add to it as I clean my craft room and neaten my stash.
• No sewing the squares together.  You pick up stitches off the squares already knit and knit the new squares directly on to the afghan.  If you weave the ends in as you go, there's really no finishing!

Most of my stash is acrylic, and as a downside, as these squares are  stockinette, they're trying to curl.  Since the squares are put together and they can't really curl, they're just kind of pulling in on themselves.  As mentioned above, the squares are acrylic, which means I can't block them.  What I think I'll wind up doing when I finish is I'll kill the acrylic with my iron.  As nefarious as that sounds, it just means I'll place a towel over the blanket after smoothing it out, and iron it until the squares lie flat.  It means that the squares will never go back to how they were, but that's the goal - to get them to all lie flat and smooth.  I'll have to try to get a picture of it to post when I get the chance.

Another dear friend in Vegas will be sending me some yarn soon.  Alas, it's not actually for me, but for a project he wants me to make for him.  He has both a PS3 and an Xbox 360.  He loves his gaming, and his consoles and wants me to make pouches for his controllers to keep them safe as they are the special edition ones.  He loved the Transformers hat I made my husband a few years ago so much that he wants me to recreate the Autobot and Decepticon design on some drawstring pouches for the controllers.  I enjoy stranded color work a lot and was happy to agree to making them.  I'm a little iffy on gauge so I warned him that they may not be incredibly close fitting, but he was fine with that.  Despite my gauge handicap, my color work is pretty nice and even so I feel confident I can do a good job.  It's improved since I made my husband's hat.

I made his hat in October 2007.  As you can see, there are some spots in the color work where the stitches show through in the white.  For the most part I really don't have an issue with that anymore.  Admittedly though, despite working with double pointed needles for several years (which I'll need to do the upcoming projects), I still get ladders in my work.  A ladder is a loose spot between stitches between the needles.  I plan on combating this by changing my stitch count on my needles every few rows so there won't be a consistent line where the stitches are separated by the needles.

Anyway.  I used a size 3 circular and dk weight yarn for Paul's hat, so I'll be using size 1 dpns and fingering weight yarn for the controller pouches.  I wanted a finer gauge and I'm hoping that going down in size will give me a good sizing for the charts since I have to have a specific amount of stitches for the charts.

That's really about it in my little world at the moment.  I've been enjoying these stolen moments of knitting and silence, though I really can't wait until the hard work and stress are done and everybody's settled in after the move.  My mother in law has been living with us for two weeks already, but things are still up in the air with all the cleaning, organizing and packing.  I'm very much ready for some normalcy.

Overdue update

Since my last update things have been hectic and sad.  In less than a weeks time my family found out that my beloved Uncle had cancer and he passed.  It happened so quickly that there was no time for preparation.  I live almost completely across the country from most of my family and I feel detached and unable to do anything of any real value to help.  He was an amazing man and one of the few truly good men I've had the honor of calling family.  He will be missed greatly and never forgotten.

We're also making some big changes here at home and I won't bother going in to detail, but I've been really busy around the house and haven't had much time to craft.  We're going to be really busy cleaning and culling and moving things around for awhile so crafting time will be sparse for awhile (except late at night when I can't sleep, which tends to happen more often than not lately).

I did finish my mother in laws socks though!  Once I quit dragging my feet the second sock went really quickly.

I snapped the picture moments before Carmen snatched them and put them on her feet!  They fit perfectly, which makes me happy because I'd forgotten to have her measure her feet and I'd lost my notebook that had everybody's measurements in it.  Wouldn't you know, just two days after I finished them I found my notebook.  All the information I had is now safely tucked away in an online notebook via my email so I don't run in to that problem again.

A couple months ago, before I started blogging again, I made myself a hat.  I like knitting hats, but I rarely wear them so I tend to give most of them away.  Not this one though!  It's the first hat that I've:

• Actually worn more than once
• Fits perfectly - not too form fitting, not too slouchy
• Is in colors that look decent with pretty much anything I wear
• Is pretty darn warm, despite being acrylic
• Was totally simple, but is visually interesting

It's the Turn a Square hat by Jared Flood.  He designs some beautiful stuff (Like the Hemlock Ring afghan that I knit a couple of years ago for my mother) and I'd had the hat queued for ages before I finally cast on for it.  It was a really fast knit with worsted weight yarn and size six needles and I can totally see myself making more of them because I like it that much.

It's been pretty cold here in AZ, so I've been keeping it in my purse for when we run around and do errands in the late afternoon and evening.  I don't think I look particularly good in hats, but with this hat?  I don't care at all, because it's comfy and I love it.

I post all of my craft pictures to an album on Facebook, and when my sister saw the One Row Handspun Scarf I knit, she liked it a lot.  I thought about boxing it up and sending it to her, but my pride kind of got in the way and I didn't want to send her something scratchy.  Instead, I decided to knit her an Old Shale smoke ring.  It's a cowl in a feather and fan pattern and I'm using my prized skein of Zwerger Garn Opal Cotton (which I just now found out is discontinued!)  It's a fingering weight yarn and it's shades of soft purples and blues.  It's soft and beautiful and if I didn't love her lots and lots I would be greedy and use it for myself.  I just started on it this evening, so I'm only about an inch and a half in to the pattern.  It's on a 16 inch size six circular though and it seems like it's going pretty fast.  I'd like to have it done soon enough that I can send it to her and she can get some use out of it this winter.  She'll be able to use it quite a bit no matter when I send it though because she lives in northern California and it stays damp and chilly most of the time.  I think I'll keep my lips zipped though and send it as a surprise.  I always love getting surprises in the mail so maybe it'll brighten her day :)

That's about it for now I think.  It's late and finally quiet in my house so I'm going to take the opportunity to drink coffee and knit and maybe read a bit.  I have to admit that times like these are some of my favorites - little bites of personal time bliss.

Happy New Year, And A Scarf

Happy New Year to all!  I hope everyone had a wonderful (and safe) New Year's Eve.  Paul and I stayed in and rang in the new year quietly, just us, Moxie, Spock and Gutter.  We were invited to my parents house for movies and snacks, but the cold I have isn't letting me out of its grip just yet and to add insult to injury I managed to pick up a stomach bug somehow.  Still, we made the best of it and enjoyed cuddling on the couch in our nice warm house.  It was 23 degrees last night, frigid for this area!

2010 was a really rough year for our family.  I'm looking at 2011 with hope that it will be a better year.  As I've said before, I don't do new years resolutions, but I do have some goals I'd like to work towards.

• Participate in NaNoWriMo again this year.  I'd wanted to try my hand at NaNoWriMo for a couple of years, but after procrastinating several times (until it was too late!) I finally jumped in with both feet in 2010.  Though a little bit nerve wracking, it was a lot of fun, and I'm really looking forward to doing it again this year.  Unlike last year, where I joined four days in to the month, with no outline for a story and no idea where it was going, this year I plan to prepare myself.  Though it was fun to fly by the seat of my pants and allow my story to unfold as I was writing it, I hit a lot of walls trying to progress my story.  This time around I really want to have an outline and not only win by hitting my 50,000 words, but actually finish my story.  And, you know, have a title and all that good stuff.
• I have a few knitting goals.  2010 was a very uninspired year.  I just didn't seem to find anything that thrilled me to knit.  I mainly worked on things to keep my hands busy, and nothing really amazing - most of my projects were simple things that I could mindlessly knit while reading or watching tv.  I'd like to work on some more detailed projects this year - lace, stranded knitting, maybe some bead work.  I'd like to challenge myself to pay attention to the piece I'm working on instead of staring at a screen.  Charts will be involved.
• Again, on the knitting front: I'd like to do some charity knitting.  I've already cast on a baby hat.  I'm hoping to get a nice little pile of hats to donate to NICU locally, if at all possible.  If they won't accept them I'll look in to shipping them somewhere they will be accepted and used.  I like all the patterns from Carissa Knits.  While I want to do some more detailed work, I still want projects that I can work on while I'm reading or watching tv, so these would be good.  I also want to make more blankets for the Snuggles Project.  Moxie and Spock are both rescue puppies and I remember feeling so sad while walking through the enclosures that none of the dogs had anything soft and warm to lie down on.  I made a few last year, but I'd like to make more this year.
• I definitely want to continue blogging and journaling.  I finished a journal shortly after midnight this morning, just in time to start a fresh one for the new year!  I'd been writing in it since mid-October and I was pretty happy that I'd kept up with it regularly enough to finish writing in it after only a few months.  The blogging is self-explanatory.  I've felt much more driven to continue working on and finish the projects I've been starting.

That's just a few of my goals for the year.  There's plenty more, but I haven't been to bed yet and I'm feeling forgetful.

A month or so ago I started working on Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's One Row Handspun Scarf.  It's a nice, simple pattern and I think it looks really pretty in variegated yarn.  I finished it up and washed and blocked it, then forgot all about it!  I went in our back bedroom to grab an extra blanket yesterday and there it was, hanging there just waiting for me to remember it!

My phone's camera didn't do a very good job of capturing the colors - they're much more purply/violet/aqua in real life.  I used (the dreaded!) Red Heart Super Saver in Ocean on size 8 needles.  It went pretty quickly and I really liked how it turned out.  I do have a couple of things I'm not entirely satisfied with though.  One, it's scratchy.  I know that over time, with washes in hot water and a hot dryer, it will soften up.  I can live with that.  Two, I used a partial skein of yarn and just knit until I ran out.  Unfortunately, it's not really long enough to my liking.  I'd say it's around 50 inches long or so.  I like long scarves that can be doubled without being too short and I've found that a scarf as tall as I am is a great length for me.  It's all good though.  It was an enjoyable project and next time I make a scarf I'll be sure to use a full skein, or at least buy a second if necessary!

 

Again, the colors are washed out.  Boo :(  Of course, it didn't help that it was pretty overcast when I photographed the scarf yesterday.  Anyway, I'd give the pattern a 5 out of 5, and my work a 4 out of 5, mainly because of my yarn choice and the length.  Still, not unhappy with it.

In other knitting news, I'm slowly (ever so slowly!) plugging away on my mother in law's second sock.  I'm working the decreases on the gusset right now, so if I stop messing around with all the other stuff I'd rather be doing, and actually work on it for more than a minute at a time, I could be finished with it in less than a day.  Matter of fact, I think I'll pull it out and work on it when I finish this post.

Happy New Year to everyone in this big 'ol world!  I hope it's a happy and prosperous one for each and every one of you.