2010 Reflections

New year.

New post.

New relationship status (I'm engaged!).

New family.

New camera (Nikon D3100 starter kit).

New projects.

New goals.

New plans.

Same traditions ♥

Less than 70 degrees

I think this might be the first day since Spring that the temperature didn't go above 70°. Normally I hate to see the warm weather go, but more and more I'm finding that I rather like the month of October: gorgeously colored leaves, apple picking, pumpkin carving, and, of course, knitting. I sadly neglected it during the abnormally hot and sticky Summer but now I'm wishing I sucked it up and at least finished a hat.

Since I have little to show, here's a failed attempt from last year:

Ravelry project page: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/lgleo/lucky-7-hat

Ravelry pattern page: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lucky-7-hat

Pattern: http://knittywhipped.blogspot.com/2008/01/free-patterns-one-and-all.html (scroll down a bit)

Modifications:

Crown rounds 1 and 13: changed k2tog to ssk to match the direction of the cables.

Detailed project notes:

2009.12.06 CO 84 sts on size 5s; worked 10 rounds; tried it on; it fit ok, but stretched too much leaving non-wind-resistant gaps; ripped it out.

2009.12.07 CO 96 sts on size 5s (enough for 8 cables). As expected, this is too loose. Need to figure out a happy medium that still allows the ribbing to flow into the cables.

2009.12.08 Trust the pattern. Back down to 84 sts and size 7 needles. Yeah, typically ribbing is bigger that most else, but the sts seem even enough in the pattern photo and it fits ok. Plus, I’m impatient and really want to make this now with this yarn. After 18 rows of ribbing, I finally finished the left overs from Evangeline and began the second skein.

2009.12.11 Finished up through the noggin; on to the crown.

2009.12.13 Finished all but the last row of the crown, put in a lifeline and pulled tight, tried it on, and didn’t like it. I guess either my row gauge is way off or I have a bigger head than I realized because withOUT folding up the ribbing it fits. I want to fold it up for extra warmth. Ripped out the crown and will try adding another cable repeat.

2009.12.14 FROGGED I’m not happy with the fit so I’m stopping now because I know I’m not going to wear it. It’s short and tight. After following the pattern as written, if I fold the ribbing up I’d lose ear coverage. If I fold it up and pull it down, it’s tight and stretched and won’t be any sort of wind resistant in the upper half. It’s not a bad pattern and I like the hat, it’s just not what I was looking for right now.

I checked out others' projects and they seemed to run into sizing issues, too. It's a nice hat and I'll probably try it again someday (maybe with chunkier yarn?), but it's not going to be warm like I wanted. Of course, neither is the lacy beret currently on my needles, but that's another post...

Joining the Ranks of Sock Knitters

I finished my first sock!

Rav: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/lgleo/anastasia-socks

In progress photo:

I love it and I loved knitting it. The Koigu Painter's Palette Premium Merino hand-painted yarn is a bit, well, more colorful than I'd usually wear, but all the different colors and frequent changes made it much easier to see what I was doing on the short row toe and heel.

I started out with a different pattern (Leyburn) but didn't want to be so worried about tension on my first pair, plus I wanted a bit of openness. I found Anastasia after much Ravelry hunting. I could've saved myself a lot of time just by looking more into Leyburn's creator: pepperknit.com designed both!

Rav notes/timeline:

2010.03.21 I’m getting pretty good at making sock toes. Maybe this will be the project where I finally make it to the heel…

2010.03.24 Halfway through the foot. This is a much better pattern for this yarn than Leyburn.

2010.03.25 Took a break from knitting for a bit to weave in the toe end. I didn’t skim the sts yet, just wove it a bit. Must remember to finish this before washing.
2010.03.26 7.25”, 4th spiral is at the end of the needles, beginning the heel with a purl row. Stop wrapping when 10 sts are live (6 wrapped sts on either end).

2010.03.27 Scratch all that. They don’t fit. I measured the ball of the foot as suggested in Socks from the Toe Up, did the -10% thing, etc. and it fits the ball fine. Where instep meets ankle, however, is about a full inch larger (8.5” vs. 7.5”) and the pattern gets very stretched and distorted trying to accommodate that. (Don’t think that changes my view on that awesome book--it was, after all, my fault for not measuring that in the first place.)
Option A: Rip out completely and start over with more sts. Currently, the toe fits (actually it’s a little big on the pinky side; apparently I have a big, big toe but that’s an issue for another sock) and the ball fits, and I don’t think either would fit if I upped the number of sts from the start.
Option B: Switch to a larger needle. I don’t currently own any other size dpn until going up to size 5. I already checked LYS availability for a 1.5 circular to switch to magic loop and found that the closest one is already closed for the weekend. I’m not willing to wait. Plus, I like my gauge as-is and think another size up will be too loose.
Option C: Do some math and increase somewhere in the middle. Then exactly repeat everything for the second sock. The most difficult to execute is, as usual, my favored option (wonder if I do that on purpose…).

2010.03.29 Finally got around to ripping out the heel and half of the foot. Slowly working my way back up, increasing 4 sts in one row (one per spiral, including future leg spirals) so right now I have 8 sts between spirals. Might do one more increase round like this.
Increase Round: To be worked on round 14 of my chart (maybe I should upload that…). At the end of round 13, M1 st on the sole. Round 14 instep: k2tog, yo, K1, M1, K5, (k2tog, yo) twice, K5, M1, K1, k2tog, yo. Round 14 sole: begin with a M1 and then k around as usual.

2010.04.02 Made it to the heel. Stopped at about 10 rows after the 3rd spiral, with 5 St sts at the beginning of each instep needle before the eyelets, and 4 pairs of eyelets completed for the 5th spiral. It fits much better this time.

2010.04.02 (later) Finished the heel. It still fits much better. Picked up 2 sts between the heel and the instep to close the gap, began knitting the instep in pattern and realized I messed up somewhere because there aren’t the right number of sts between the spirals. I’ve been tinking any mistakes made so far, but in this case it would mean undoing the heel to get to the rest of the instep. Or I can drop sts in lace work. Either way, the first order of business is finding out where it happened. This oughta be fun…
2010.04.03 Tried to fix the problem without ripping out, I really did. I can fix knit sts no problem, k2tog wasn’t hard to figure out, but even with techknitter’s guide to moving increases, I can’t figure out the moving yo’s and mixing those with the k2togs. I spent more time trying to figure it out than I did making the heel in the first place, plus the yarn’s starting to fuzz and stick together, so the heel is no more. Now my problem is with picking up a row of sts, which I surprisingly had no trouble with the last time I ripped out. I’m hoping a bit of sleep will help before attempting this again.

2010.04.04 Fixed the extra eyelets, re-knit the heel, started up the leg, and forgot to start making spirals on the back. At least I don’t have to rip back as far this time.

2010.04.08 Now that the heel’s done and spirals started, it’s moving along quite swimmingly. I’ve got a couple inches up the leg and seem to have enough yarn to get a good ways up the calf, if not all the way to the knee! May want to make an increase round or two before getting that high, though.
2010.04.10 Ok so maybe thinking I could make them knee-highs was a bit excessive, lol. I think I might take a break from the pattern to knit a cuff to see how much yarn it’ll take. I want to use up as much as possible on these.
2010.04.11 Save 40 feet for the ribbing

2010.04.21 Back on track. NOTE to self: there’s a lifeline after heel eyelet 49. If I need to rip out to there again, do another patt repeat as usual, then do the increase row.
2010.04.23 On to the ribbing! Trying TechKnitter’s slipping technique / Cat Bordhi’s hungry stitch at the end of each dpn.

2010.04.26 Bound off! I own a complete, hand-knit sock! Now to start all over again to make its mate.

Happy New Year!

2010 so soon? This is crazy.

I dislike the idea of New Year's resolutions--why wait until an arbitrary day to make changes?--and so already started making major changes last month. I toyed with the idea of killing this blog, but didn't feel ready for that. I am deleting other internet accounts, reducing the number of feeds I follow, etc. to make more room for non-digital life. It's nice: I spend more time knitting and reading and less time in front of a computer screen getting headaches.

I'm also FLYing to clean up my life. I need change. I strive so hard to attain a sense of flow, to be completely immersed in a project, forgetting about time and other, non-related worries, but I rarely even get close to that point anymore. I could blame a lot of things, but the bottom line is that regardless of why I keep interrupting myself, this isn't working for me anymore.

The FLY Lady was mentioned in passing on a Ravelry forum so I checked it out. While I don't agree with everything she suggests (e.g., I never wear shoes around the house), I've picked and chose enough where I think this really has a shot at working for a change. I know this is kind of off-topic from this blog's purpose, but if I succeed in this, I'll have more, guilt-free time for crafts, so I want to share these points here:

• Establish routines and habits. They're much more efficient than thinking and deciding about what to do next and when.
• Break down the place into zones to work on. Again, this takes away time needed to decide what to do next. I have one week to do everything I can in the current zone, then I move on to the next without looking back.
• Declutter. 'Nuff said.
• Spend 15 minutes each day in the current zone. That's it. If it's a weekend or I have time to spare, I still break it down into 15 minutes sessions to avoid burnout. The most important thing I've learned from this is that it doesn't have to be perfect or completed by the end of 15 minutes; I can come back to it later. As a perfectionist, I often freeze when confronted with multiple options and will easily spend more time planning instead of doing. By letting go of that, I'm free to move and actually be productive instead of just sitting still imagining the best way to do so.
• Each month, introduce a new habit.

After 3 weeks, I'm still going strong on this. I've made significant progress in two zones, and for the week of Christmas, I just stuck to my goal of breaking even (i.e., it doesn't get any messier than it already is). I plan to include routines for exercising, eating better, knitting, editing photos, and maybe even blogging. I feel good about this.

In more directly related news, the DBF and I baked about 600 cookies for Christmas to be shared amongst the families. Two batches each of Italian knots, snickerdoodles and Reese's mini peanut butter cup cookies. It was fantastic, but exhausting (and, consequently, photo-less).

I'm glad to be taking a break now. Have a happy and healthy new year.

Happy Halloween!

I carved two pumpkins again this year; Eric made "gourmet" pumpkin seeds. On with the photos! (All photos link back to my Flickr account, where you can find more pumpkin photos in this set)



I knew from the beginning of the season that I wanted to make an NY Giants pumpkin for Eric's fam. I checked out all of the different logos they use but in the end thought a simply one would be best and most easily readable from their porch. Apparently the last time they had a NY pumpkin the Giants won the superbowl. If that happens again... well... I see a lot of Giants pumpkins in my future.



Eric took the seeds from that pumpkin, did some magic and came up with fancy pumpkin seeds. They definitely have cinnamon on them, probably oil, maybe a bit of sugar, and I'm not sure what else. They smelled delicious.

His pumpkin only took an afternoon to clean out and carve, even with scraping an outline in addition to the carving. I wanted something more complicated, something challenging, but also something nerdy and preferably kind of creepy or scary for mine. I'm not quite up to carving a Jack Sparrow or Starry Nights pumpkin yet (those are my goals), but still wanted to push my limits and get more in the Halloween spirit.

Then I saw it. My preciousss.



I'm not a huge Lord of the Rings fan--it took me forever to get through the books and even after reading them I had some trouble following the movies--but I still think it's an amazing literary piece and movie and have a lot of respect for them (Tolkien created how many languages for those books??). Gollum, a corrupted and decrepit hobbit, was exactly what I was looking for. It's a free pattern I found it on The Pumpkin Wizard site and took hours to carve. At one point, I had a spent a lot of time on this without seeing results and was ready to give up. Boy am I glad I stuck with it.



Happy Halloween, indeed.

Flickr and Photoshop Levels

First, as if I needed another place on the internet to regularly not update, I got a Flickr account: click me. Facebook doesn't seem like a good place to put my good photos, deviantArt doesn't seem like a good place to put non-art photos, and Ravelry isn't a good place for photos not based on yarn, so I needed a good place for all of the above.

I went apple picking with a couple friends last weekend and while there weren't m

any apples, there were lots of trees and a gorgeous blue sky. Photos from this trip made up my first Flickr set are saved in Hillview Farms, including...*

Also featured in this set is my newest love: Photoshop's levels feature. I'm thoroughly addicted to manually editing levels--especially the individual RGB channels. Don't get me wrong, I love my Canon PowerShot SD550, but is ultimately is a point-and-shoot with a small lens and small sensor and can use a little tweaking.

Ok, so there was a lot of tweaking. I'm probably overdoing it (just learned today about alt + white/black point to see what might be cut out when adjusting the point), but the colors are so vivid. I don't know how long I've stared at this progression in wonder so far. The first image is after noise reduction, sharpening, and cropping (to straighten it; it still looks crooked to me though), but no levels/contrast/color/etc. adjustments; the second is after applying a levels layer to the whole photo; the third is after applying a levels layer to just the sky, with the ground and trees masked out. Vivid!

Expect many more of these. Eric can only stand to watch me hide and show a levels layer so many times so this obsession needs an out somewhere. Hello, Internet.

* Click on the photos to go to their respective Flickr pages.

Origami- Contest and Mini Photo Album

Contest
Craft: Origami

Hosted by: DeviantArt's Artisan Crafts club

Deadline: when the 1500th member joins (they're at about 1350 now)

Prizes include features on dA, dA subscriptions (for premium membership), deviant dollars, and a cell charm

For ALL details (requirements, prizes, etc.) CLICK HERE

To quickly summarize...

• The theme is Origami, but "You can be as creative as you like to incorporate this theme."
• You need to be a member of Artisan Craft (how to join), which also means you need to be a member of dA (membership form). Both are completely free to join and don't spam your email.
• You can submit up to 3 entries.
• You can use a tutorial so long as you reference it in the deviation description.
• They're taking experience into account so if you've never done origami before, don't worry--you're not exactly going up against people who have been doing this for years.

My Entry

I found this tutorial for a mini origami photo album shortly before I read about this contest. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to make it. It was just too good to pass up.

I hadn't done origami in years and even then I was only doing simple stuff and following directions exactly, but I was so excited for this (and rushed since the deadline is "open") that I quickly made a prototype with regular, white paper, dug up an origami kit from years ago, picked out the four designs that least clashed, and came up with an album of my own--all within an hour or two!

Ok so the colors/designs kind of clash, but it's the best I got right now.

Not long after putting this together, I kidnapped the boyfriend for a quick photo shoot. He's been working out, eating right, and just generally losing weight (you can check on his progress here /shameless, un-asked for promotion) which is probably why he was surprisingly quick to agree to a shoot. Doesn't look like he minded...

I cropped and desaturated them a bit, printed them out on nice photo paper, and put them in this order in the album, starting with the red frame and ending with the blue. It made quite a nice no-reason gift for him and now lives on his nightstand. My only regret was that I didn't get a picture of the photos in the frames, but I was too excited to give it to him to wait. It'd probably be a good Photoshop exercise to put them in digitally, but I'll save that for another day.

I'm not "in it to win it"; the contest theme coincided with plans I had already made and the deadline--especially the vagueness of it--gave me the motivation I needed to get it done within a reasonable time period. I know there's much more complicated things even a beginner can do but this is what I wanted to do and the results--though by no means perfect or professional--are quite satisfactory for the circumstances.

If/when I do this again, I'd like better coordinating paper and maybe try to push the corners of the frame back a bit so more of the photo is exposed and the paper doesn't meet at the middle of each side (more like a traditional photo album I guess). Some day. As usual there's so much to do and so little time.

Über Yarn Pr0n Available Now on Ravelry

[2009.08.05] UPDATE: You can check out the winners here!

Well, yarn pr0n has always been available on Ravelry (click here* to start drooling), but this is just insane. I'm not usually swayed by the yarn page nearly as much as the pages for patterns or finished projects, so to say that I'm glued to the screen is a big deal. What's got me in a tizzie?

It's Sock Summit's Dye for Glory contest! They have a dozen categories with so many beautifully dyed yarns in each. The catch? You can only vote for one in each category. If you're already a Ravelrer go vote now! If you're not but are a knitter, crocheter, dyer, or just yarn appreciator sign up and vote now!

* As of this writing, access to pages within Ravelry is still members only, but it's free to sign up and they really don't spam your email address.

Cleaning House

Tomorrow's Independence Day here in the U.S. To celebrate, I was hoping to paint my nails. Nothing fancy or time-consuming (like the flowers, hearts, etc. I'd paint on my nails years ago) but still keeping with the red-white-blue theme of the day. I dug out my many bottles of nail polish only to find that I don't have a good red anymore--the two I used to use are too congealed from heat and lack of use. It was kind of eye-opening to realize how little I've painted my nails in the past few years. I should work on this, starting with a trip to a drug store to pick up some red (and probably another color or two in the process, lol).

Even if that falls through, I'm hoping the day won't entirely lack art/creativity. I've got a blank SD card and a borrowed mini-tripod ready to go to capture fireworks. This'll be my first time trying to seriously photograph them.

Speaking of photographs, I actually documented something yarn-related recently:

This pile of Red Heart was donated to a lady who worked in the same school as my boyfriend (I think the fifth-grade school around here) in early May. There were a few other smaller, stray balls but this is the bulk of it. Some of them (e.g., the watercolor colorway in the middle) I was rather attached to but honestly I didn't have any projects in mind for them. I've been slowly moving away from Red Heart Super Saver; I don't like the feel of it for garments and lately have been knitting things designed to be placed next to skin. I also want to move away from worsted weight for a bit and try other other weights. I did keep a few very tiny balls that I wasn't sure she'd want; they make good stitch markers, lifelines, etc.

I'm learning to let go of things I haven't/won't use. This is good.

Back on Task

I started making arm warmer for a friend. I already made a green and purple entrelac scarf for her (ravelry) and had some yarn left over so I thought I'd make arm warmers out of it. This was the second of three entrelac scarves I completed in a row, so I've been pretty entrelacked out lately. I thought a simple stripe pattern loosely based on Knitty's Voodoo would be cool and quick. It was neither.

First, the colors still bother me a bit (they don't even photograph right--all these photos were adjusted to try to get the real life colors). The purple's a bit too blue and the green just doesn't have enough pop to match what I saw in my head (of course in the store it looked perfect ...just like clothes shopping!).

Then there's the fit. That's my left arm modeling the warmer. My friends arm, however, isn't long and lanky. This comes within an inch or so of her elbow (a good place for the glove) meaning they'll be about 8 stripes total. I pictured a lot more. I already ripped it out once to make each stripe two rounds shorter.

Speaking of color-changing in the round...

I got mixed results. The picture pretty much says it all, but allow me to add that this is no reflection on the TECHknitting article I used to learn how to make traveling jogless stripes [for future reference: while looking for the link for this article, I found this one which looks like it would have been a better idea for this project to eliminate the jogs around the purl valleys]. My favorite part: all joins are back joins so I don't have to weave ends in after (Russian joins, while lovely, are also not in my near future after using them exclusively in all three aforementiong entrelac scarves. Yes, I am crazy, why do you ask?).

So as I said, I ripped it out once after a couple stripes, started again and got this far, and then didn't touch it for weeks. I'm trying to be as monogamus as possible to reduce clutter, so this means I didn't knit for weeks. Completely unacceptable. It's now tucked away in a drawer and I have a new arm warmer on the needles. Let's hope this one gets completed (as well as its mate, of course!).

Healing nicely

Shortly after finding my dpn's two weeks ago, I developed a pain in my right wrist. It wasn't a dull, short-lived, maybe-I-had-too-much-to-knit pain; it was a serious, sharper pain occasionally coupled with a prickly feeling in my hand. I freaked and didn't touch yarn for a week but it still hurt. So I picked up a snazzy wrist brace, wore it most of last weekend, then just slept with it on every night since then and I'm feeling much better! I don't have any more pain at all and I'm feeling confident I can knit tonight at my weekly, two-person S&B without worry.

Of course, I couldn't go two whole weeks without touching yarn. The second week I broke down, but didn't knit. Instead, I dug up many of my partially used skeins of various Caron Simply Soft colors, measured them out (I'm starting to doubt the measurements, but more on that later), and wound them up with my makeshift nostepinde.

The seven yarns outlined in red are all new to my Ravely page this week (yes, a Cascade Venezia also snuck in there; again, more on that later). I'd still say it was a productive week, but I'll admit I am longing for my needles.

Also to compensate, I broke out my camera for slightly more artistic uses than merely documenting my new obsession with measuring yarn. I bring you, the Leaning Tower of Yarn:

Ok, not all that impressive yet, but at least it's not another straight-on, one-skein, one-color shot. (Ok, you caught me, now I'm actively trying to include more hypenated phrases in this post =P)

Still, can't wait to start actually knitting again!

Found!

I finally found my dpn's! Apparently the third time you search through every place they could be really is the charm. Now I can start even more projects that I won't finish!

Nostepindes and Resourcefulness

I'm getting ready for an exciting project (more details later). The person I'm knitting it for wants yarn that's already in my stash, I'm just not sure if I'll have enough. While I wait for her to let me know length, width, etc., I needed to find out how many yards I actually do have on hand.

My desk drawers are mostly opened with knobs, two of which are spaced exactly two feet apart, so I used those to measure out the yarn on the slightly used skeins. Since the knob is at the end of a skinny post, I wrapped a spare shoelace around each until the post was about the same width as the knob so I could wrap the yarn around them and be able to pull it right off when done.

I wrapped the yarn around the knobs 50 times, tied it off into a hank (without actually cutting the yarn, of course), and repeated until done. Then it was just a matter of some simple math to figure out the total yardage: # wraps * 4 ft per wrap / 3 ft in a yd. [I used this same method to figure out how much yarn I need by measuring, then ripping out a swatch and counting the yards used. It ended up being 1 yd per sq. in. of knit fabric--how convenient is that?]

From there, I took the hanks and wound them into balls ...with an empty roll of toliet paper nostepinde! I followed the instructions at http://www.hatchtown.com/nostdir.html. I'm quite pleased with the results; even the first one looks much better than any other ball I've wound:

Intarsia Wins Seed Stitch Match

Lesson learned: the 'purl bump' is actually created from the st in the previous row, not the st currently being purled. It's the top of the loop of that st.

This makes it physically impossible to introduce a new color with a purl bump of that color. When knitting in a new color, on the other hand, the top of the loop of the old color st lands on the WS of the fabric, giving the appearance that the new color really does start there.

So my red seed st heart on black St st background is impossible to knit in the way I planned it. I don't think altering the placement of the 'seeds' will be a good work around for this--already on both sides of the heart are many places where the first/last red st are knit... which would make them purls if I altered the seeding and then I'd be in the same predicament.

I think it may be plausible to introduce the red in the row below and then purl with it to get a red bump, but I'm not 100% sure that will work out the way I picture it.

Either way, I've decided to knit the entire chart in St st. This wasn't supposed to be a very challenging project, just a way of getting familiar with the very basics of intarsia.