A Little Yarn On The Side

As it turns out, quite a bit.  Going back to Finishing Friday,originally I was only going to knit, but a very stern sidekick persuaded me to do a bit of work on the bedspread.  which made one of us extremely happy. Not that I'm not thrilled to be making progress on it, but I would be a lot happier if I hadn't messed up the final seam on the top piece& had to rip it out and start pinning again.  It's taking a bit longer than it should because I'm reinforcing and serging all the existing seams as well, as it wasn't done initially and the remaining seams ripping out would really be just a matter of time otherwise.  Remind me to make all future bedspreads.  This thing is SO not worth what we paid for it--even though I actually bought it on sale.   Needing a break from repairs, I dug out the birthday socks that need to be finished in February, and figure out how to make the heel turn around the coin cable.  One side turned out fine,  b...

The GOOD news is: I have an entire day of knitting ahead of me. The BAD news is: I have  an entire day of knitting ahead of me because I'm sick today.

Make a note of how the bedspread goes back together BEFORE taking it apart.

The Loden Mist sweater that I started in October but had to abandon for smaller, faster projects.  It really made a good project because even though it's lace, I don't need a chart or pattern to do it. And, I enjoyed the knitting night at the library so much that my friend & I are going back next week.  One of the staff members at the library was there to answer questions and to teach anyone interested to knit, and the library keeps supplies  ready for anyone who wanders by & might want to give it a shot (which no one did, but there was a drumming group in the room next door, and that's sort of hard to compete with on a cool-group-to-join scale, though I have to say that I think knitting-in-public has GOT to be easier & a little more socially acceptable than drumming in public, especially on airplanes and while waiting in line....). So, I am now officially a groupy knitter.  Not to be confused with a groovy  knitter, which I have never actually...

Okay, not really.  Well, obviously.  But a friend and I are going to check out a knitting club at our local library, and I have no idea what knitting to take.  The idea is to talk to people while knitting, right?  So I probably shouldn't do anything really fussy, but then again, I hate to take my super-simple "knit while reading" projects as it seems like a good time to get something a bit more sophisticated moved along.  So, beading?  No, too fussy.  Lace involving charts?  Again, too fussy.  Socks that involve cables but that I'm making up?  Is this a good Knit Night sort of project?

So for Finishing Friday I was really hoping to dazzle everyone with a display of finished projects--and to be fair, the green scarf did get finished late Friday night, so there is a finished project number 10, which puts me slightly ahead of my goal.  Only very slightly, but I have a feeling this year will be a "grasping at anything" sort of year. Finishing Friday is the day of the week when my optimism is at it's highest.  Could I just work on the pink jeans jacket?  Oh no--that would have been far too rational for a woman facing an entire day of crafting freedom.  Instead.........In my very last fabric shopping trip of the year, I came across these: in the clearance racks.  The lavender is 12 yards of nice satin that I scooped up for $1 a yard and will be converted to a Halloween costume.  After one disastrous attempt to make a costume with cheap "costume satin," I have learned that cheap fabrics are never worth working with, so I hunt for good fabric...

It's possible that starting the Project of the Month bags next month  probably wouldn't have killed me.  However, since I didn't realize that until it was too late: there has been some serious knitting going on around here.  I think it might take the entire second ball of yarn, but that still means that I'm more than 50% done.  And what did I decide to do with myself today? A WHOLE NEW PROJECT!!!!! This one really  isn't my fault, though.  Two years ago, we redecorated the guest bedroom when I found this bedspread: We've even painted the walls a nice gold color to coordinate with the bedspread...and cat hair.  It wasn't the most expensive bedding ensemble, but it wasn't cheap either, so you can imagine my joy when several of these popped up.  One of the fabrics was really a drapery fabric, and it was ripping out at every seam.  I tried for a long time to come up with ways to patch it without it either looking bad or continuing to rip o...

A couple days ago, RobinH left some directions for button placement on a women's blouse that I thought were so helpful that I just had to share.  Some of you might have already figured this out on your own, but for those of us that would have struggled along for years with bad button placement, here 'tis: As for button placement- a trick I learned from my mom so long ago I don't really remember when I learned it: Try the blouse on. Mark the location of the largest part of the bust. You *must* have button here or the shirt will gap. Then mark the spot where the top button will go. Then (depending on the distance between them and the size of your buttons) mark spaces for the buttons that will go equidistant between them. Then, using the same spacing, put buttons down the rest of the front until you run out of shirt. These are the places to put the button holes. Once the buttonholes are in, line up the two shirt fronts, pin them, and use them to mark the button location...

After two days of crafting torture, one long-standing sewing WIP is finished: and I hate to have to admit it, but I love how it turned out.  It still needs to be washed, and there is no way I would ever be dumb enough to use microsuede on a shirt like this again, but it turns out that I will NOT be roasting marshmallows over a bonfire featuring this pattern.  However, I shall not confirm nor deny the possibility that Theo wasn't the only one lying flat on the floor when this sucker was finally finished..... It occurred to me yesterday that I really missed picking a project bag every month, so I reached into the bin & was admittedly trying to "cheat" just a bit by grabbing the handles of what I thought was a sewing project, to pull out: which serves me right for cheating, albeit cheating badly.  So....I now have a scarf to finish in 15 days.  This would be a good time for the one-row scarf, so being me, I decided to do something different.  It's a bit ha...

If mistakes are learning experiences, I am on track to become the smartest person on the whole dang planet. So, today was finishing Friday, and one of the things I hoped to bribe encourage myself to do with the 100-project challenge was to tackle the bin of sewing WIPs (for purposes of this story, we're currently ignoring the bin of knitting WIPs), so today I dug out this: with the accompanying shirt I started at least 5 years ago.  I had the material cut out, a couple seams sewn, but as it was my first attempt at sewing microsuede (and that there were ever subsequent attempts is testimony to my stubbornness/optimism/foolishness or the fact that I bought a bunch before realizing that it was second only to those bizarre fake-fur things on the "worst possible fabrics to sew with" scale), it was soon banished to the Bin of Bad Projects and I probably spent a night or two curled up in bed in a fetal position to recover. While I had learned to sew through sewing 4-H at ar...

Well, as anyone who has had a near-cross stitch experience can tell you, it was quite a harrowing ordeal.  My future blogging life flashed before my eyes with such titles as "Maybe going to finish TWO projects this year" and "I gained another inch today."  I would have to start handing out "I.O.U." cards instead of gifts....er, that is, more often than I do now.  If THAT isn't enough to set a knitter quivering down to the very bottom of her WIP pile, I don't know what is. Taking a page from the vaccination idea, tonight I dug out this and worked on it for 20 minutes.  I think this is an "after" picture, though it hardly matters.  I'm not doing the best job in the world on this as I've gone all sorts of directions & the threads are crossing every which way, but I'm 40 now, and by the time I finish this sucker no one I know will have the eye sight to notice its flaws. Just in case this was not a thorough enough inoculat...

Since I was out running errands today, I ran by Joanns to pick up black buttons (exactly 4 buttons), one square of orange felt (for the next round of snowmen, not the current ones), and black embroidery thread.  I was really good.  I didn't even LOOK at fabric or yarn, but obviously the stress of a severe stash diet might have weakened my brain.  While trying to figure out if the 5-, 8- or 12-sized balls of black thread meant "embroidery" thread, and whether or not it was more economical as balls or the little floss skeins (no idea), when I was viciously assaulted by a display of half-priced cross stitch kits.  It took 20 minutes to extricate myself from the wily little pouches without having to bring one home with me, but I positively FLED the store before they could rally for a second attempt. Obviously, my brain has snapped.  For one thing, I have a cross stitch kit here at home that I started at least 5 years ago, and which I do occasionally drag out to wo...

He doesn't get one: Truth be told, I almost never give snowmen noses anyway.  Of course, this decision was helped along by the fact that I didn't have any feltable orange yarn either (can you tell orange is my absolute LEAST favorite color in the world?)  I may eventually add a pompom to his hat, or the pattern calls for earmuffs made from a 2-inch pompom and a pipe cleaner (at least I have the pipe cleaner), but I thought he was pretty adorable as-is, so he's now on the shelf in our stairway.  In the future, I'll be doing something different for snowmen scarves.  The scarf Frosty has is actually two bands--one going around his neck, and one draped over, then gathered to look like it was tied.  It would have been far, far, FAR easier to just have one band and actually tie the thing than to fuss around with making this one look tied, so his buddy with the red buttons will get a real scarf.  Maybe even a knitted one? And we finally have a picture of t...

Yesterday I finished the neutral chemo cap and a secret surprise project, and today I came really, really close to finishing one of these: which are snowmen-to-be, just in case it isn't obvious.  They are from this pattern: and Theo was so excited to be sewing again that he didn't even let me get the pattern pieces cut out before "helping." I might have actually finished at least one of them today had the unthinkable happened:  I didn't have all the materials the pattern called for.  Now those of you who have seen my sewing room realize how amazing this is.  I have stashes of beads, felt, zippers, buttons, elastic, braid, thread--all the things that I need to complete projects in one sitting.  They aren't HUGE stashes (unlike, you know, the yarn one), but they do usually meet the needs of any project I attempt.  Until now, of course.  It started with black buttons.  I have a large stash of craft buttons, "real" buttons, and just cleaned up on...

Day 6 and the third project is done: leaving me with 108 left to go.  I admit, it is seriously daunting to have to work my way down to 100, rather than just starting there.  I'm hoping to at least get below the 100-left-to-go mark by the end of the month.  That would help, I think. I finished the scarf in the morning, then actually caught myself reading without a knitting project later this afternoon, so I immediately cast on another chemo cap: As my old Lutheran great grandmother probably would have said, "Idle hands aren't going to read 25,000 yards for the year."  Okay, I never met the woman, so I'm not sure she would have said anything of the kind, and even if she had, it would have been in Norwegian so I wouldn't have understood it anyway, but as a strict teetotaler and a woman who never allowed card games of any kind, I'm guessing there would have been SOME remark about idle hands somewhere in her arsenal.  At any rate, I've used up 424 yard...

So, I have approximately 149,000 yards of yarn in my stash.  At the rate I have averaged, that's about 10 years of yarn.  BUT IF I COULD MANAGE TO KNIT 25,000 YARDS A YEAR, IT'S LESS THAN A 6 YEAR STASH! Okay, so I actually haven't ever managed 25,000 yards in one year, but until last year, I hadn't managed 100 projects in one year either.  Incredibly silly crafting goals do tend to motivate me, so there IS a chance.......

Actually, 72% off:  http://www.elann.com/Commerce.web/product.aspx?catID=&id=126406 I get brownie points or something for this, right????????????????

Thanks largely to Theo's help, I'm getting up a bit earlier than usual and getting in a little crafting time before my day gets going.  Not that this was actually my plan , but it is working, so who am I to argue?  Besides, Theo does not have a snooze button.  So, the February birthday socks are moving along at a decent pace: and I'm liking the results, though I think if I were to do them over, I might start a reverse stockinette stitch triangle to build into the first row of the pattern, creating a diamond effect.  I'm not sure I like the abruptness of the switch to the pattern, but I really liked how this looked on the leg of a pair of socks I made for Andy and I wanted to play with having it start on the foot & having that little coin cable run all the way up the side.  We'll see how it turns out. And if you're wondering why the scarf is now really long that would be because I can't do cables at Theo's new wake-up time, nor after about 9:00 P...