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Today, the boyfriend and I journeyed to Alexandria to visit Fibre Space:
The shop is lovely and bright and full of pretty, pretty yarns. Mostly stuff that’s a bit out of my price range, but I was pleased to be able to fondle things like Malabrigo and Blue Sky Cotton and MadTosh, which I hadn’t previously seen in person (they’re all lovely). The staff was wonderful and my non-knitting boyfriend even managed to strike up a conversation with another woman in the shop about knitting styles (I knit continental and noticed when the woman (who was throwing) was knitting differently than I do).
Anyway, I came away with a couple of things (and sorry about the flash photo, but the colors are basically accurate:
That’s a skein of Cascade Fixation (I love me my Cascade) in a lovely teal, which will become socks, two skeins of Malabrigo lace in black, which will most likely become another Featherweight (provided I have the patience), and a 4 oz. braid of BFL in “Ledroit Park” from Neighborhood Yarn Company, which is based in DC. Pretty pretty.
I’m in DC until Thursday (which is earlier than I intended, but the reason for my early return is partially my sister is graduating and partially very long and sordid, so we won’t get into it), and after that, I’ll have some big news about the blog (don’t worry; nothing bad).
You’ll have to forgive me for the non-crafty posts over the next week and a half. I am knitting (I promise!), I just keep forgetting to take pictures of the wip when there’s natural light outside. In my defense, I didn’t have a lot of time yesterday as the boyfriend and I went to the National Zoo. We saw things like elephants:
and prairie dogs:
and a large bird that tried to eat Joe:
I’d say it was a productive afternoon.
Specifically from inside of Borders, where I am spending the afternoon (or was at the time of this writing) because my boyfriend works there. It’s been a lovely couple of days and I am highly enjoying being here (well… DC. Not necessary specifically Borders). Yesterday we went for a walk to a very pretty park with a trail:
and tomorrow (today, when you guys get this) we’re planning on visiting the zoo (so I expect there will be pictures to share of that later).
I have also been knitting: I started a summery tank out of some Cascade Pima Tencel which is super soft and super wonderful to work with. I brought yarn for a variety of projects (including several socks) and I’m also planning to visit Fibre Space in Alexandria while I’m here, so on the off chance that I finish this tank (highly unlikely), I’ll have plenty of things to knit. As for pictures for this here blog of mine, I recently finished a gift for my friend Sarah’s birthday, but I still need to photograph it and send it, so a post about it will happen once she receives it.
Warning: This is not crafty.
Yesterday, I wore my Girl Friday sweater. I packed away all of my pants, but I would have been comfortable in them. The high was like… 65. Maybe.
This is what I wore today:
I went to the beach. It was 87 degrees outside.
The weather in Virginia Beach, man. It’s crazy. The high on Sunday is 73. **shakes head**
Where do you like to indulge in your craft? Is your favorite arm chair your little knitting cubby area, or do you prefer to ‘knit in public’? Do you like to crochet in the great outdoors, perhaps, or knit in the bath, or at the pub?
For the past two years (which is really the bulk of my active knitting career, though as I mentioned Monday, I crocheted and knit garter stitch before that), my favorite place to knit has been this chair:
That would be the comfy chair that is located in my boyfriend’s dorm room. Since that is where I spend much of my time (instead of my own dorm room), I spend a lot of time in that chair. I usually knit with my bare or stockinged feet propped up on his bed, my Macbook on my lap, knitting in hand. I am actually coordinated enough to knit quite successfully while browsing the internet (mostly while reading Ravelry–I pause to scroll and click, but I can knit stockinette without looking), so this set up works for me. I love it. I’m comfortable, I have everything I need within reach, and most of the time I have lovely company (see above reference to boyfriend).
Unfortunately, I have a number of breaks from school which require me to return home to Virginia Beach. When I’m home, I’m normally here:
That’s my living room couch (photo taken this past winter break, I believe). I do not prefer to knit there. But it’s the best place in the house, since that’s where the TV is (and I need to have something in the background when I knit–I have trouble just knitting since much of it is mindless).
I have also knitted a variety of other places. I’ve knitted in class, for example. I knit in most of my discussion classes–I get antsy if I’m not doing something with my hands, and knitting is a lot more productive than doodling (as I’m sure you all know). I’ve also knitted in the car. Again, idleness makes me antsy, so I knit if I’m going to be in the car for more than two minutes (though I’ve been known to pull out a wip for the mile-drive to the 7-11 up the street).
I have also knitted in amusement parks. My family is big on Busch Gardens (I go a lot in the summer and until March had a Platinum pass) and Disney World (my grandparents work there now, so we get free tickets, but we’ve been staying at the Disney-owned campground at least once a year since before I was born). I don’t know how familiar you all are with the Magic Kingdom, but I love knitting on the People Mover:
or in line for rides:
Next year (my last year of school!), I’ll be living in a University-owned apartment with two of my girlfriends (but probably spending much of my time in my boyfriend’s, which will be located exactly one floor below mine). I suspect I will do much of my knitting in that same chair, feet up on the bed.
And after that? Who knows.
Is there a skill related to your hobby that you hope to learn one day? maybe you’re a crocheter who’d also like to knit? Maybe you’d like to learn to knit continental, knit backwards, try cables or attempt stranded colourwork.
As I’ve mentioned before, there are few things I couldn’t handle in knitting. I’ve done cables, lace, and colorwork with relative ease. I dabbled briefly in entrelac, though there are too many ends to weave in for my liking. I can knit both continental and English (I think that’s what throwing is called, right?), though I prefer continental because it’s faster. I crochet pretty well because it’s what I learned first, and the first sweater I made was crochet (it was pre-Ravelry and I used Caron Simply Soft, so my knots kept slipping out. I wore it once, maybe). I’ve covered much of the things I would want to cover. I even steeked a sweater and sewed in a zipper. Nerve wracking, yes, but not difficult.
I haven’t done mitered squares, I’ll admit, but there aren’t a lot of patterns that make me want to try it. There’s a pair of socks with mitered squares as the cuffs which look vaguely interesting, but I’ll probably never get around to them. I haven’t tried filet crochet either, and it does look interesting. It’s on my list of things to do maybe. And I keep meaning to remember how to knit backwards for narrow things like sweater shoulders, and I can pick it up alright, but I can never reeeeally do it that easily, and I usually revert to turning again.
There aren’t a lot of skills in knitting I lack (besides maybe patience), but there are crafts I wish I had the skills to do. I wish I were a better spinner, for example. I know it takes practice, and I am practicing, but I do wish I spun more consistently. And thinner. I’d like to be able to consistently spin fingering weight for socks.
I also wish I were more artistic in the traditional sense. I’m crafty certainly, and I can whip out a sweater like nobody’s business. But anyone can learn to knit. It’s a technical skill, like learning to walk or ride a bike. Easy peasy. Art though, that’s hard. I’m terrible with color and even worse with lines. I can’t draw to save my life unless I’m copying a picture exactly. I like to make notecards and the like, but I know there’s always a distinctly amateur air because I’m not very artistic.
Then there are things that I can’t imagine take a whole lot of skill but that I don’t have the space/funds/time to learn. Like weaving. I’d love to have a floor loom. I don’t have space or time or the money. I’d also like to learn to make hot or cold process soap (I imagine cold would be safer since I’m kind of a klutz). I’d like to work with resin. I’d like to work with nicer fabrics than I can afford.
Then there are things that I plan to actively learn and get better at. Over the summer, for example, I plan to take up cross stitch. Not in earnest, but there are some things I’d like to make, especially pillows and wall hangings. I love grammar and sarcasm and pretty quotes, and I love to have some of them cross stitched on my bed or the couch or my wall.
At the very least, with all the things I can do or am learning or don’t have the funds for… I’ll keep you guys posted. I love talking about the things I make. It’s nice to have a (relatively) captive audience that never tires of hearing my excited “Look what I made!!”
Welcome to day one of Knitting and Crochet Blog week! If you missed it, there is more information about the event here. If you’re a member of Ravelry, there is also more information (and a list of participants!) on the group The Blog Hub. Every day this week, I’ll be writing a post on various aspects of knitting/crocheting. To search for other posts participating, search “knitcoblo1” in Google and similar. That will give you posts about today’s prompt:
How and when did you begin knitting/crocheting? was it a skill passed down through generations of your family, or something you learned from Knitting For Dummies? What or who made you pick up the needles/hook for the first time? Was it the celebrity knitting ‘trend’ or your great aunt Hilda?
When I was ten or eleven, my mother taught me to crochet. I say she taught me, but what I mean is that she showed me how to make a slip knot and how to pull the yarn through the loop to make a chain stitch. She couldn’t remember how to do the rest. Since all you can make with a chain stitch and a pre-teen set on creating is a bunch of shoe laces, she bought me a learn-to-crochet kit from Michael’s for Christmas. She bought my sister a learn-to-knit kit from the same company because although my sister expressed no interest in the craft, you can’t buy a gift for an 11-year-old without getting a similar or equivalent thing for her 9-year-old sister unless you want a screaming fit. It took several weeks to convince my sister that she should let me have her Christmas present, even though, of the two of us, I was the only one even vaguely interested in yarn, but in the end, I was successful.
I borrowed books from the library and taught myself the rest of the crochet stitches. I made myself a big stuffed pig out of stiff, scratchy Red Heart acrylic. I didn’t know how to embroider, so I never gave it eyes. I loved it for a little while, mostly out of pride that I finished crocheting it, but then I cast it off to the foot of my bed, where it got squashed between the foot of the bed and the mattress, with all of the other stuffed animals and blankets I didn’t want anymore but couldn’t get rid of (there’s a surprising amount of room down there).
Shortly after I won the learn-to-knit kit from my sister, I taught myself to cast on, knit, and bind off. I bought all the furry, fuzzy novelty yarn I could get my hands on and made garter stitch scarves for anyone who would take one from me (my best friend still wears the one I gave her for Christmas in tenth grade). It was several years later before I got the hang of the purl stitch and could make anything except big, fuzzy scarves.
When I started college (the August before last; I’m just finishing up my second year this week), I brought with me a collection of odd balls of cheap acrylic, all of the crochet hooks I owned, and several pairs of thick knitting needles. I mostly crocheted, I figured, and I wouldn’t need my entire 30-odd collection of yard sale and thrift store straight needles.
Oh, how wrong I was.
I joined Ravelry on August 27, 2008 (according to my profile page). The sudden access to what seemed like all of the knitting patterns on the Internet with the ability to search (and see thumbnails!) convinced me that A, I needed to learn to purl, and B, my collection of yarn and needles was sorely inadequate.
My first knitting project (with purls!) was the Mrs. Darcy Cardigan. Yes, the one in one size that’s rife with errors and curly curly fronts.
I had some black wool from the thrift store and some 5 mm needles. I did not make a gauge swatch and instead dove right in and tried my best to purl. It did not go so well. I didn’t get the hang of it until about two inches into the stockinette, so the back of the sweater looked like this:
Still, I was too stubborn to frog, so I plugged away at it. The yarn I had for the fronts of the sweater was a mess of short ends, which I tied together and knitted (I didn’t know about moths then but thankfully, none of my other stash has been affected by this stupidity). I finished the sweater, sans sleeves, which I didn’t have enough yarn for. I wore it exactly once. It fit, technically, but it was too short (the pattern, not my fault–it’s written to be quite short), and it didn’t stay put.
My first knitting project was a sweater, and since then, I have not been intimidated by patterns with techniques I don’t know. I dive fearlessly into lace, colorwork, and cables (which I taught myself to knit using a tutorial on my BlackBerry while I walked the mile and a half to the public library). I cast on with abandon, knowing I can conquer any difficult parts of the pattern so long as I try.
Most knitters I know learned to knit (and purl) with dishcloths or scarves or other rectangular items. I believe this makes them more easily intimidated by things like lace or colorwork. I say, dive right in. Knit something because you love it, not because you want to practice.
You can always frog it (or felt it, which is to eventually be the fate of my vest) later.
…about this Ravelympics sweater thing. I steeked it. And it was scary. And I’m still not convinced the whole thing won’t unravel.
Before steek:
(Nice and safe.)
After steek:
(Holy Christ, it’s all gonna come apart.)
Hot hot steek action:
(I shouldn’t even touch it.)
Hot hot colorwork action:
(Awww yeah.)
Ahem. Anyway. So. Let’s snag a peek at the calendar. It’s Thursday, February 25. This sucker is supposed to be DONE on Sunday. Cast off, finished, caput. Wearable. And my thought on Tuesday, when I did the steek, was that it would be. Except for one thing.
I BOUGHT THE WRONG ZIPPER A MONTH AND A HALF AGO.
Cause I thought I could fiddle with it and make it work. I though I could fix one side of a regular zipper and make a separating zipper.
Turns out, you can’t.
So I have a sweater with an OPEN WOUND.
Fortunately, I was able to get to Walmart and get a new zipper. It’s not the color I wanted, but I suppose it’ll do. And it means I’ll still be able to get gold with my sweater. Cause that’s totally happening.
Look for a FO post on Saturday or Sunday cause this sucker is gonna be DONE.
I had a post planned for today, but instead I played in the snow.
We got something like four or five inches, which, as a gal from Virginia Beach, is basically the snowpocalypse.
I managed to fit seven different knits on my person:
My superman sweater, my knee-high boot socks, my geometric spirals hat, my cotton/silk triangle scarf, my llama cowl, my blue Regia fingerless mitts, and alternatively my purple gloves and my shark mittens (I switched to the mittens when my gloves got too wet).
My boyfriend had on some of my knits too:
That’s the Counterpoint Scarf and the hat I made him last year.
I hope you guys had as lovely a day as I had. : )
Merry Christmas everyone! Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a nice, relaxing day (or as close to it as you can). I’m currently out of town at the moment (in Florida, visiting my grandparents and Disney World), and I won’t be back until Jan. 3. Fortunately, I’ll have some posts scheduled (and I’ll be in and out of the internet periodically, so I’ll be checking in and maybe posting). For example, I’ve already got a post scheduled for Sunday (day after tomorrow).
Happy Holidays, and I’ll be sure to talk about my trip when I get back. : )
Stitch, Brinn, Stitch! 