A Little Yarn On The Side

As most of the knitting world knows by now, if you have purchased anything from Knit Picks in the past few years, your credit card might have been swiped and been receiving fraudulent charges in the past couple months (this in spite of the fact that their web checkout SPECIFICALLY says they don't store your credit card information).  They weren't actually hacked--it sounds like the server was sort of unsecured.  Now, if you are aware of this, you didn't hear it from Knit Picks themselves.  Nope. You would have found out from someone else, most likely Ravelry.  That is because vigilant knitters finally found a security breach announcement on the California Attorney General's office, here:  https://www.privacyrights.org/node/55899 The California notice says that the breach was made public on February 11.  It was cross-posted to a group I'm in on Ravelry on February 15.  Knit Picks customers were notified by email or mail...........NEVER.  In spite...

How many times do you have to fail the "prove you're not a robot" test before you start to wonder?

Okay--as I'm knitting the mistake-ornament while having my morning coffee (having had to undo one row already because I did one too many increase rows), I was beginning to get a bit nervous about the 365 ornament plan, possibly because it seems that I will be knitting THIS particular ornament the rest of my natural life.  Between kicking myself for not getting a bit more white embroidery sewing thread and trying to think of other colors that could be used for the snowflake and icicle ornaments without it looking too stupid, it finally hit me: The spending ban will end November 1 - NOT December 31! I can BE a little behind, because I will have two whole months in which to make icicle ornaments with newly-purchased thread!  Whew--so if I'm still working on this stupid little stocking in JULY, I might still be able to catch up!   Whew!

I'll bet you thought there might be a picture of a newly-knitted ornament today, didn't you?  Nope!  It turns out it wasn't enough to do it wrong and have to start over again.  Nope!  I had to restart it a SECOND time, and frankly, we're not on speaking terms right now. Instead, I decided to "sew" for Finishing Friday, which is in quotation marks because MOST of the crafting time was spent laying out and cutting pattern pieces, which is always the most frustrating part of this jacket.  Or used to be. It's my own fault, really.  Having made this jacket from this same fabric before, I knew that the regular metal foot was very slippery on the fabric as it's usually treated with something.  Luckily, when I bought Emma on Ebay,  she came with a couple feet I didn't already have, including a Teflon foot: Under normal circumstances, this is supposed to BE more slippery on things like vinyl, but as anyone who has ever made a garment from home...

So, you know how embarrassing it is to be 5 rows into a project only to discover you misread the directions?  Well, imagine doing it on a Christmas ornament you've already made three times.  When one has been THAT clever, maybe it's time to get some sleep...............

Okay--I really only joined March Madness the night of the first, but I was hoping to have used up the first ball of yarn by now.  I'm really, really, REALLY close, but I am obviously working with magic yarn, because I've been almost at the end of the ball of yarn for an entire day.  Not that a never-ending supply of yarn is anything to sneer at, but I sort of already HAVE that.  It's called the stash.  If something were going to magically never be all used up, why couldn't it have been my bank account?  Sigh.......... Aside from being mired in the never-ending-ball-of-yarn, I love this sweater.  The pattern is interesting, but not so complicated that I have to be checking the chart on every row, and I love the shaping.  The only concern is that while I am getting gauge, gauge is measured over a pattern involving cable and ribbing, so I think I could have gotten "gauge" with about 4 different needle sizes.  I suppose the good side to th...

I'm glad I had a big yarn-stash-busting year last year, because this year is likely to be dismal.  I did know that when I decided to make 365 ornaments, and because so many ornament patterns are improvised, I have no idea how much yarn they're using so will just count the entire skeins when they're finally used up, but it still makes for some very embarrassing February numbers: skeins of yarn used:  2 yards of yarn used: 689 yards of fabric used: 15.875 ornaments made: 18 I guess as long as I can see a visible dent in ONE of the stashes each year, that's something, isn't it?