Digging Up Old Projects

I've come to realize I'm neglecting some of my other crafty loves.  In specific, I haven't really made any dance costumes in what seems like forever.  I know part of that is simply because I haven't had the money.  Dance costumes aren't always inexpensive to make and I don't have quite the stash of supplies for that as I do for knitting.  My yarn stash is enough to keep me going for quite some time.  If I can spare enough change to order some new needles in the sizes I want now and again, I know I'll be fine.  Dance isn't quite so easy.

I used to make beautiful hair pieces.  The last ones that I made were for a Gothic costume for Halloween last year.  It's almost been a year.  I hate that it's been so long.  I love my beautiful hair gardens.  They're such an elegant piece to add to my costume, and so big and dramatic.  It really helps to create a solid feel.  Without them, I seem so much more plain.

These projects are so simple, but the cost is something that's holding me back right now.  I hate to say it, but I think the whole economy turning down has disappointed me more than anything else because of it.  I love my gorgeous hair pieces and wish I could make some more.  At that, I wish I could make a costume to go with every color of hair piece I wanted to make!  And veils to match would be a nice touch!

I guess I'm just going to have to wait until I can start selling hair pieces at events or online.  I don't really want to be a vendor, but it seems like it's all I can do to keep my love of beautiful hair gardens alive.  Maybe it will turn into a hobby that will pay for itself some day.  One can only hope...

Crafty, but not?

I've just spent a good deal of time not really crafting.  I know, it's shocking.  With a shawl to be finished, longies to be made, and everything else, one would think I'd be knitting like crazy at the very least, but no, not a single craft has been undertaken.

What have I been doing with my time then?  Braiding my hair.  I've been adding bunches of tiny braids to my hair.  Why?  Because I've been using this as a set up preparation for trying dreads.  I know you can't dread braids, but there's no reason why I can't use braids to start dreads, or more appropriate to me, use them to decide whether or not I'll even be able to tolerate dreads.

All of this has gotten me on another crafty project.  I'm going to make my own dread extensions!  Because I'm the kind of girl I am, synthetics just won't do.  I'm not much for synthetic hair.  I hate the way it feels and I'm not terribly partial to the way it looks.  Instead I'm going to make myself some wool dread extensions.  I've got plenty of roving from a spinning project I never dared to try, so I'll have plenty to work with.  Now I just need to get off my butt and do it!

So pictures will be following, but all the braiding is done, so that's about as far as I'm going right now.  I need a break from it all!  So, now, back to your regularly scheduled knitting...

Progress Slowing...

I'm starting to remember why I don't make more shawls.  The rectangular shawls are pretty easy.  Yes, it can get long, tedious, and boring, but at least the rows are pretty regular.  Triangle shawls just seem to get more and more endless.  It seems like I'm knitting forever and no progress was ever made.  I can imagine round shawls are the same, or similar at least.

This shawl is so pretty.  I'm really going to enjoy it.  I can't wait until it's done so I can wear it around.  Still, I'm wondering if it's ever going to be finished.  There's just so much work to be done on it.  I've got to admit, I don't have as much time to knit as I may like these days.  I've really been distracted with moving and all of that.  Even if I did, I don't think I'd be done by Christmas!  Knowing my luck, it won't be done until it's getting too warm for a shawl and the colors are totally in the wrong season!

Knitting Needle Review: KA 9.5" Circular Knitting Needles

While I was at the LYS, the owner, Dawn, showed me these wonderful new knitting needles.  She was working up a pair of mittens on them.  They looked wonderful and just what I needed!  The needles were a small diameter circular needle, 9.5" as I would find out later.  The needles themselves were tiny!  I had to wonder how practical they were to use, but Dawn swore they were wonderful.  I decided to give them a try.  I picked up the KA circular needles in a size 6 and size 4 at 9.5".

I'll be honest, when I first picked up the stitches for the leg of the longies I was making, I was a bit skeptical.  They were quite fiddly to use.  I didn't know if I would get the hang of them.  Of course, Dawn had told me that they were best for more than 56 stitches and I was using decently less, only 44, but I decided to give it a go.  I wasn't sure how much of a disaster they would turn out to be, but I would get there, and I could always switch back to DPNs, right?  At first I was beginning to think I'd have to.  I had to decrease to 38 stitches before I was done!  Then I had to switch to smaller needles for ribbing!  This would be a nightmare!

Even so, I would give these needles a fair chance.  I'd knit through he whole leg, no matter what the slog, and then I'd decide once I got to the other leg.  I wanted to make a fair and accurate judgment, and I know to make up my mind after knitting only a couple inches wouldn't be fair.  Besides, these needles weren't exactly cheap!

As I worked with these needles for a while, I found that I did get used to them.  It took a while, but then I started to work with them as naturally as any other needles.  They just flowed.  Even though the diameter of the leg on the longies was smaller than suggested, I found that I stopped having problems after a while.  I was able to knit much faster than on DPNs, and without the problems like laddering.  I absolutely love that benefit, as laddering is a problem that gets on my nerves more than any other.  I found that the needles just soared!  Yes, they were still a bit fiddly at times, but I didn't have any of the struggle that I originally did.  I think I just had to get used to them.  Better still, they were the perfect needles to use for the legs on the longies.  They were just the right size and so convenient.  I'm finding I adore them!  I may not use anything else!

I have to admit, when it got to the ribbing, I had some questions in my mind.  At first the stitches seemed a bit stretched out, which I thought might get in the way of ribbing doing exactly what it was intended to do, but it seems like it won't be a problem at all.  Now that the leg is finished, I'm finding that the ribbing looks exactly as it should.

These needles are actually quite lovely.  The bamboo is excellent, but I can imagine it would be problems for anyone who doesn't like bamboo.  The needles spin freely on the cables, avoiding any problems with the needles and cables twisting.  They're really a wonderful product.  I'm finding that I quite enjoy knitting with them and will probably use them in a variety of sizes for a variety of projects.  I just can't wait to get some for socks!

Projects from the Past

I've finally posted pictures of some of my older projects.  Took me long enough, didn't it?  After all this time, I'm finally putting up photos of my berets!  The sad part is I don't wear them near as much as I used to...

The Meret Beret was my favorite for a very long time.  I adored it.  It was just the perfect shade of purple, even if it was kind of a bit neon, in a way.  It was made of Caron simply soft, which isn't the best of yarns.  When I made it, there was no yarn shop.  I was convinced it was the best pattern ever.  To be honest, I think the pattern is actually kind of lacking.  I'm not as impressed with it as I once was.

In a way, I think there's a lesson to be learned in all of this.  While I may have loved something in the past, that doesn't mean it will always be a favorite.  I outgrow things, and not just in size.  In this case, my style has greatly changed over the years.  I shouldn't be surprised.  It's a normal reaction to life.  On top of that, I'm also a very different kind of knitter than I was back then.  I look for different kinds of projects.  The things I find challenging have changed.  All in all, I'm drawn to more complex and interesting projects.  I've grown up, I guess you could say.

The green beret I make is still an all time favorite.  No matter what I do, I'll always love it.  It's the perfect color for me, even if it is made of that same acrylic yarn as the Meret.  I do love it.  It's got just the perfect amount of slouch and drape.  Better still, it's got all those little holes that allow just enough air flow in the winter.  It's become the perfect addition to my wardrobe.  I swear, if all my clothes matched the style, I wonder if I'd ever take it off!

I find it funny that a simple thing such as knitting can say so much about a person.  It's more than personal style at that point, it's also choices.  A project that I may love to knit could easily be a give away project that I could never stand to wear.  A project that I love to wear may be something I'd never want to knit again.  It's almost like knitting has it's own whole existence, it's own flair.  It says a lot about a person, and sometimes absolutely nothing about their own sense of style.

I have to wonder where I'll end up as a knitter.  I have my own very distinct sense of style right now, one where knitting really doesn't belong.  Knit goods don't really work with much of my wardrobe, though I keep trying to fit them in.  I wonder if that means my sense of style will change.  I suppose that's just how people are, always changing.

Frustrated and Ripping my Yarn Out!

This is infuriating!  I realized that I somehow managed to miss knitting one of the strands of yarn a few rows back.  It wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't just broken the yarn and started on the next section.  I was so proud of myself!  Two sections were already down!

I had thought to myself, "This will be easy.  I'll just drop the stitch, unravel it all the way down, and fix it.  I've done it a million times.  It's my common solution when I don't want to rip back several rows, or there are just too many stitches in each row to make it worth it.  I don't want to spend hours undoing my work just to knit it all back up again the right way.  That's pretty pointless, right?

Everything started pretty well.  I unraveled everything, picked up the lost strand, and was on my way again.  Things seemed okay.  There were a couple odd spots, but I was making progress.  It would look a little funny because of the way the stitches get pulled up, but that's normal.  I've kind of come to expect that.  It's better than always noticing the spot where it's wrong to the point where I can't tolerate to wear the thing.  That's a lot of yarn to put towards something I'll never wear, so fixing it was definitely better than leaving it.

Things don't always work as well as they seem to, and I've learned I can't fix garter stitch to save my life, especially with the row of eyelets beside the stitch I was focused on.  I pulled up all the stitches finding that, when I got to the top, I had done something wrong, and I couldn't see where.  The top stitch should have been a purl!  Why was it a knit?  I found the culprit, a stitch that never got picked up.  I dropped back and fixed it again, once more turning out with a knit stitch.  After the fourth time I decided I was giving up and I was going to undo it all to the point it was wrong and work it all up again, not only wasting my valuable knitting time, but frustrating the heck out of me in the process!

As if that wasn't bad enough, when I started working from both the center and the outside of the ball, the yarn tangled so badly that I wanted to cry in trying to work it all out.  I had my Chesh help me with it, but it still wasn't enough.  It's still a huge mess as we speak.  I'm trying to figure out if I have the patience to work it out.  I may never have the patience, to be perfectly honest.  Cutting it out might just be in order.  I just hope to avoid that at all costs.

It seems like my yarn is determined to make me angry.  It doesn't want me to ever be happy again, I swear.  Well, this shawl is not going to get the best of me.  I'm going to finish it if it kills me!

By the way, small edit to note that I did manage to get it all out without cutting the yarn in the end, but I had to knit with the yarn all wrapped up around my hand until I got back to the ball to keep it from getting tangled.  This is how I had to work:

Feeling Homesick

Is it bad when your knitting makes you miss home?  It makes me want to move back up to New England today!  I'd love to be back in beautiful, scenic, historic Salem.  That's the place I truly call home.  Why is it that my knitting wants to be one more reminder?

The shawl I'm working on is beautiful.  It's fall colors into winter.  I'd worked through the whole solid green section with no issue.  The little leaves were coming out so beautifully!  Then I moved on to the two colored orange and green.  At first I thought it was pretty.  The color combination was surprisingly beautiful.  I loved it!  I couldn't wait to see it blend into the next color, straight orange, and on as it progressed.

Not all things can be as simple and wonderful as that.  In this case, I realized that the colors reminded me of fall.  The almost dappled appearance of the yarn reminds me of a mix of fall leaves.  It reminds me of pumpkins.  I think of Halloween and Thanksgiving.  It makes me homesick for the colors on real leaves.  It makes me wish I could feel the clear, crisp air.  It makes me think of the one place I want to be, Salem.

I love this project, and I think once I get over this little inconvenience of homesickness, I think I'll adore it.  I'm loving the patterning on it and the way the yarn blends.  I just wish I could live in a place where the season change would be perfect for such a garment.  I wish I was living back home.