Category: Knitting

Winter (knit) progress report 2

PiaChit Chat

Firstly, I’d like to wish everybody a happy New Year, I hope you made it through the celebrations well in whichever manner you prefer. 😀

It’s time for reckoning! How much did I accomplish?

We also need to talk about the other challenge I set myself.

I had decided beforehand to make a report whether I succeeded or failed – and really, if you make the effort, can you truly call it a failure?

I did make an effort. In good spirits too, no pointed fingers. I didn’t exactly make the finish line with 3 items done, but I’ve decided to be pleased with myself nonetheless. (is that one or three words?) I could have knit every day and met more goals. Worked really hard until my fingers bled, but I’m also determined to only hurry so much that I don’t get stressed out about it, since that is (still) poison to my system. I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from that completely, and perhaps it’s a good thing if I don’t. The only “danger” is, once you allow yourself some slack, more slack has a tendency to follow when it’s not a life or death situation. So yes, I could have knit more. But I did finish one big thing without getting caught in second sleeve syndrome or starting up a number of random displacement activities.

Of course in my eagerness to have at least one sweater not fitting like a sausage skin, I made this one enormous. As in, I really should reknit the whole thing…. And this is why I made my no-knit resolution! I must be some sort of closet masochist. It’s a bit odd though, I swear it was ok when I tried it on around halfway through?! A shapeshifting sweater?

bluedelight2
Ribbit!

Worse is, the slack oozed over to my paint challenge. In fact, I more or less forgot about it. Resistance does that to you. We’ve determined that faking it doesn’t work, I do in fact have to be “in the mood”. And Resistance makes sure I’m not in the mood if I know I only have half an hour before somebody visits/turns on the tv/asks for dinner. I could say that I lucked out on opportunities for uninterrupted worktime, which is true, but there were things I could have done to prepare for “the moment” in advance, such as making sketches in the relative safety of my kitchen office, and I carry the full responsibility for ignoring that option completely. The truth is, I did not touch my canvasses AT ALL apart from clearing them from my work table to convert it into a dining table for a family visit.

inktense0001 Played a bit with my new waterbrush today just to have something to show. We are NOT quite friends yet, all of a sudden it gushes a huge drop, making all the colours bleed and spread. I guess here’s my chance to try working on the same image multiple times! 😉

It’s a bit like writing with ink and old fashioned pens, the way they splatter just as you’re working an elaborate curve or dotting the i.

And I know I said I’d been getting better at keeping a schedule, but the real truth is, I spent most of the time planning projects, not doing them. Oh I’ve played with photos, made yarn, knitted, read books. Gotten more ideas for things that are not paintings. (I now desperately need a rigid heddle loom 😉 ) So I need even more focus. I’m going to keep pushing until I find the right combination of work flow for me, if that’s even possible when you don’t have control over your workspace.

When I was running my bizz, I had the house to myself most days, but the last couple of years, G has discovered the joys of working from home too. I was grateful for this while I was feeling poorly, but now I’m having a hard time kicking him back out LOL. And I can hardly blame him!

new hat
My brother brought me this thinking cap the other day, when I wear it nobody is allowed to talk at me. Just have to remember to take it off when the doorbell rings…. I think it’s made for grown up heads, but if I tuck my hair in it stays put.

How about making a habit of doing housework in the evening before bedtime, when I’m too tired to think useful thoughts anyway? Tidy up especially, but even laundry and such (no dusting). Fewer things to clutter my brain during peak hours so to speak. Because I AM getting things done, it’s just the wrong things, you know? It’s usually tv time then and it’s an excellent way to avoid that. Never met anyone who felt accomplished after 2 hours in front of the box. As for entertained, no, not really, only thing I watch is The Doctor. Oh well, it’s worth a shot.

And now, for a new calendar. Are you doing anything new this year?

Winter knit progress report 1

PiaKnitting

Really, just to kick my own butt in public, I’ve decided I want to make 2 sweaters by end of the year + a hat AND tell everyone how it’s going. Talk about setting yourself up for failure! Are we scared of failure? Hell no! Bring it on…. 😉 In fact, after I started the countdown I never did anything about it for the first 4 days, and I didn’t give a hoot. That bodes well for my stress levels I think?

bluedelight1 I’ve started with the blue mix, wanted the green more after knitting the all blue sweater, but was unsure what to do. Now that I’ve progressed I can see how far the yarn type goes, so I think the green will be a jacket with some sort of thin yarn along too, I’ll have to see what I’ve got. In just 5 days I’m past the waist of my blue tunic and have used 2½ skeins of 6, so I think I’m good since I’m planning on short sleeves?

My hands are screaming bloody murder each night, but I haven’t been in the mood for doing something “complicated” the last few days. In keeping with the tradition of both knitting method and of contradicting myself, I’m making it up as I go along rather than use a well documented pattern.

You can see under the arm it looks a bit big on Mimi, and it is, I didn’t pad her yet to match my new dimensions and I also made sure this time that it’s wide enough for me to wear clothes underneath, as I can’t wear wool against my skin. And, well, just in case I keep growing (Heaven forbid, it’s not in my budget!). I just hate the feeling of clothes that are like sausage skins ready to pop. Or if you wear a belt on your jeans the buckle sticks out under the sweater like a huge belly button! And I believe that’s as much of a fashion statement as you’ll ever get from me.

Inspirations 4

PiaChit Chat

Since I didn’t have any fibery links for you last time, I decided the next one should be only mostly partially wool related. Hope you enjoy! And as usual I’d love to hear which links you liked.

Felted paintings from Scotland

Nifty drop spindle whorls

Chichester the Pig

Felted bowls

No dig garden

God’s Chorus of Crickets

You Don’t Have to Be Pretty (well of course I have to say that!)

ram
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=616703535035715&set=pb.490193807686689.-2207520000.1386350507.&type=3&theater

Knitting this winter

PiaBooks & reading

reversible2Once again I’m going to contradict my own decisions, I guess it’s even becoming something of a rule. I said I’d knit small items rather than sweaters or begin to weave tapestries. Right. As it happens, all of a sudden I’ve become fat, no change in my diet and I’m moving more than last year, but still, here is the cold season and my closet is filled with sausage skins. So I have to do something about that, and I have yarn long ago dedicated to this anyway. It’s going to be much faster than losing the lard, even at my knitting rate, I’m not exactly from a family of fast metabolism.

Last year I began my reversible sweater, and made it all the way to starting the sleeves. But it was juuust an inch too tight all of a sudden, the neckline too, whereas the sleeves were too wide. The raglan method I’d invented worked in theory, it just didn’t look very good, and – the whole thing was a bit short too. So I decided to start over, change the design a bit accordingly and then it never happened. Well, now it has. I’m actually DONE! Sewing in the ends invisibly doesn’t count. I’m on it already. Needs a little wash to even out stitches too. And I suppose I need to get Mimi padded up to match my current proportions!

Drop's delight

Next up are two hopefully quickies in the same yarn from Drops, two colourways. One I’m knitting with a strand of slate coloured alpaca, it was destined to become a Forest Nymph dress, but I can’t wrap my head around cables and shortrows at the same time just now, so it’ll be another raglan and then I’ll just keep going until I run out of yarn. The other one will be a sideways garter thing real simple on large needles because I only have 6 skeins. Just for an over the top of everything else in the cold, could become a vest actually, I’ll have to swatch. Possibly I could knit with a natural Mulberry 6/1 single that I have stashed somewhere? Any other ideas how to stretch the yarn?

aurora8

The remainder of the blue yarn I thought of using for a two sided hat, with some of my handspun on the outside, the blue is absolutely non-itchy but of course not as warm as wool and I have very delicate ears, so it needs to be fairly windproof.

Further projects I probably shouldn’t even begin to think about, knowing my track record of sticking to plans. Feel free to hold me accountable for these however! 😉

And to make it a WIP Wednesday too, here’s some of my current reading material.

decbooks

Vinterstrik

På trods af min erklæring om ikke at strikke trøjer mere, er der alligevel hele 3 på pindene til denne vinter. Jeg er simpelthen blevet så fed i løbet af året, at det meste af mit tøj sidder som pølseskind, selvom jeg bevæger mig mere end året forinden og spiser det samme!

Den blå omvendesweater jeg begyndte sidste år er sådan set nærmest færdig, den måtte strikkes om, da den også var blevet stram. Og så improviserer jeg lige et par hurtige med noget Drops jeg har liggende, den ene farve skulle egentlig have været denne model, men jeg kan ikke koncentrere mig om at lave vendestrik og kabler på samme tid, så nu bliver det bare en top-down raglan indtil der ikke er mere garn.

Og så må jeg hellere lade være med at lave flere planer, for jeg overholder dem jo alligevel ikke.

Og så vil jeg strikke en dobbelthat af noget hjemmespundet udenpå og rester af det blå trøjegarn indeni, så mine sarte inderører er beskyttet og min sarte hud ikke bliver kradset af ulden.

Hodgepodge

PiaBooks & reading
october view
How the view from my office window distracts me from matters at hand.

What, no plant dyeing post this Monday? Well, yes, I do have a couple in my drafts, but they are rather dull and not very urgent, so I thought I’d find a time where I push the lot out at once “final natural dyeing week at the colour cottage 2013”, like. I do have a few more dye jobs waiting too, but as I’d mentioned, I needed a break, because I feel no urgency whatsoever.

No worries, in fact my entire first page of wordpress posts list are drafts! Surely I can find something else to talk about, right? Except they all pretty much require me to do things that I can show and tell. The knitting, the coughcough tapestries, the WIP paintings, the daily(?) postcards etc. etc. Lots of sketching/designing going on behind the curtains though.

yarn sample spinning
Yarn sketch showing how I do not intend to spin this fiber. 2×2 cable.
dried leaf
What happens to leaves encased in acrylic painting medium?

There is in fact some knitting. I’m almost, well sort of, back to the same place where I frogged my blue reversible sweater, now in a longer, slightly wider version with I hope a better looking raglan. And I’ve decided to first knit a hat in some old leftover yarns from my stash (needs busting anyway) before I commit some of my handspun, as I’ve never knit a hat before, so sizewise it’s a bit of a mystery. There’s something to be said for small items like this, though. You get it over and done with pretty quick compared to sweaters. Unfortunately I go through a lot of the latter and don’t really use accessories much. I may reconsider of course: The hat looks tiny on the needles. If I end up having to knit it three times, not much time is saved. Or I suppose it could become a Thing-finder pouch, to have something to show for it.

knitted hat wip sweater

I “accidentally” ordered some more random library books instead of reading the ones on my shelf/ordering from my study list. I did have an ambition to order only one or two at a time, to take my time reading them and perhaps remember more of what they say. Problem is, sometimes they take almost a year, at other times I get 10 in a week. So I need to finish these and then try to be more systematic with my reading, so it doesn’t take away my crafting time because I have a deadline. Twice I can renew – sometimes. And only if nobody else is in line, so I sometimes have just 30 days for a whole pile. Fine for novels, I can do one per day, but the others I need to put down regularly.

books

Then I thought I did have some really exciting news to share with you, but right now I’m almost afraid to jinx and postpone it even more if I say it out loud. An exercise in patience for sure. Going on three weeks now… And I’m not even superstitious! I need to learn to not agonize over other people’s tardiness and supposed intentions. Do you master calm in the face of “bad” excuses? I seem to be getting better at seeing the logical side of it and not just fret, you could say I stand aside and watch myself do it for a bit. 😉 So while it still distracts me I seem to be getting over it faster, even when things happen in droves, as they are prone to do.

october garden belle de boskoop
I really should be making apple sauce before we have another frost.

Blandet landhandeldanish

Denne mandag er der ingen plantefarveindlæg, dvs. jeg har et par stykker, men de er kedelige, sÃ¥ jeg regner med at udgive dem i en bunke. “Sidste farverunde i 2013-uge”. Jeg har nogen flere ting jeg vil farve med, men jeg trænger stadig til en pause kan jeg mærke.

Heldigvis har jeg jo masser af blog-kladder, en hel side fuld. Nå, ikke, de handler allesammen om noget der ikke er færdigt til at vise frem. Der sker en masse forsøg og skitser bag kulisserne, men mere om det senere. Lidt spinding, lidt collage og maling og forskelligt andet.

Strikket lidt har jeg ogsÃ¥, sÃ¥ jeg kan blive færdig med min ret/vrang omvendetrøje som blev en anelse for smal og kort men for stor i ærmegabene. Nu næsten tilbage hvor jeg var nÃ¥et til sidste Ã¥r, og forhÃ¥bentlig ogsÃ¥ en lidt pænere raglankant, jeg fik eksperimenteret lidt for meget sidst. Det virkede i teorien som jeg ønskede, det var bare ikke særlig kønt! Og sÃ¥ forsøger jeg mig med en demo-hue i restegarn – er lidt spændt pÃ¥ den, for den ser godt nok bette ud pÃ¥ rundpinden. MÃ¥ske det i virkeligheden er en tingfinderpung?

Jeg er “kommet til” at bestille flere tilfældige biblioteksbøger, sÃ¥ nu har jeg igen travlt med at læse faglitteratur pÃ¥ deadline, det holder virkelig ikke. Jeg mÃ¥ prøve at holde fokus og ikke bestille sÃ¥ meget og kun fra min officielle liste, sÃ¥ jeg bedre kan fordybe mig. Romaner sluger jeg hurtigt, men fakta kræver at man lægger det fra sig og fordøjer i ny og næ.

Og ellers har jeg gået et par uger og ventet på at fortælle en spændende nyhed, men den lader vente på sig. Selvom jeg er blevet bedre til at træde et skridt til siden, så lader jeg mig stadig gå lidt på når ting går i hårknude uden min indflydelse og jeg er i tvivl om den anden parts intentioner. Er du god til at sige pyt og fordrive tiden med noget andet imens?