Many Projects

Hello! After a fairly long absence, about a month ago I started to become really motivated to craft again. This came about because of a couple of things: really cold weather, which makes me want to make scarves and hats and gloves! Two of my friends having babies, which makes me want to create little treasures! And just last weekend, a geek-themed trivia night, which put me back in touch with my geeky interests and made me want to start churning out Jane hats and Dr Who scarves!
In a word, I'm excited!

Today I'm just going to share a quick run-down of what I've been doing in the last month, so get ready for some photo-spam! Later on, there'll be more in-depth posts.

So the first thing I did was make these baby booties. This was about a month ago. S and B came over for a craft/card-playing afternoon. I decided to start some booties from the Quick and Easy Baby Knits book. It's a simple pattern and I thought I'd get a good way into it. In fact, I worked hard and I finished them in one afternoon! Yay me! I was able to give them to Ms E at her baby shower.

I also started a project that I'd been meaning to make for a couple of months - cat toys! They're semi-urgent because I want to make them for a friend as a thank-you gift for something that's rapidly moving further and further into the past! My plan is to make a set of 3 in simple shapes. I'm about half-way through the spherical one:

I've also been working a little bit on my rainbow-coloured afghan, which doesn't really have a name. I've nearly finished this section, and I think I only have about 2 or 3 to go. I'm very happy about that!

I have a few ideas in mind about other afghans I'd like to work on, so it'll be good to have that finished off so I can start one of those. Or, knowing myself, I'll just start one of them anyway!
I'm also coming along well with the Jane hat for Husband. I want to get both his and my hats finished before the charity Firefly screening, which is in about 6 weeks. I think I'm well on track for that (if I don't get distracted by other projects!). I altered the original pattern so it's more fitted. That means less stitches, which means finished quicker. Yay!

I'm still on a bit of a Hama bead kick, and a few weeks ago I made this little storage box. My perfume vials kept falling over all the time, and it was really annoying me. So I made a box to put them in!

I made it with a lip on the bottom edge for stability, and just the right size and height for all my mini perfumes. It also fits perfectly on my mirror base, just where I wanted it to go. The pattern was something I just made up. The polka dots are a little uneven, but I like it that way! I made each piece separately and glued them to the base with epoxy glue. I don't know if I would use this method again. I found the edges of the beads were a very small surface to glue together. It came out how I wanted it to, but I don't think it's very strong. It holds together fine for its purpose, but I wouldn't want to test its strength. There are a few other methods you can use to make a 3-D box; I'll try one of those next time. I'm pretty excited about this - being able to make little containers in just the right size and shape that you want them (not to mention colour!), instead of hunting around the shops for hours and usually not finding anything. I love Hama beads!

I'm so inspired at the moment! I even had a dream the other night about making an afghan. It was a 70s retro-ghan, made out of granny squares. Each square had an orange centre, a couple of rounds of brown, and then a couple of rounds of cream to lighten it up. I want to make it in real life! Though I don't have any orange or brown wool, funnily enough!

I'm just completely wired at the moment!

{ Monthly Zakka } - Shiny Socks

Zakka : A Japanese term, literally "many things". An everyday object that, with its whimsy and charm, improves one's home, life or appearance. It makes you smile whenever you use it.
Monthly : Here, "monthly" means whenever I feel like it, or whenever I finish a project that I feel could be described as Zakka.

This month's zakka is a pair of socks I've made. I made them with variegated acrylic yarn in pink, blue and yellow that I was given a while back. At the cuffs I added in some fluffy eyelash yarn which happened to match. They're deliciously horrendous, but every time I wear them they make me smile to think that I made them myself. And they keep my feet warm, which is pretty important seeing as we're about to have the coldest winter here in possibly 10 years.

Another finished project!

In my last post, I wrote about a project that took me a year to complete. You thought that was bad? Check this out. This is a pair of baby bootees that I knitted from the Paton's Quick and Easy Baby Knits book.

Easy - yes. Quick - no! I started these in December 2005. Yes, 2005, people - that's not a typo! And I finished them earlier this week. So that makes 5 1/2 years. I made them for a baby that's turning 6 years old this year. It's possibly the most pathetically long time it's taken me to complete a project - ever! They're too small now even for Baby Nephew, who's over a year old now.

So what motivated me to finish them now?? I'm due to have another little Baby Niece/Nephew in a few months time. Plus, they'd been sitting at 95% on my list of Works In Progress for so long that it was really starting to drive me nuts. I decided a while back that I would limit the number of projects I have in progress at any one time to 30. Well, that's all good, but the first thing I had to do was get the number down to 30!

I've had so many ideas lately that I want to get started on. I don't need these old projects cluttering up my hobby room. I'm proud to say that my WIPs count is 28 at the moment. However! When we moved house I found a few half-finished sewing projects that I'd forgotten about which aren't on the list. Oops! It'll be interesting to see whether that top - which I started sewing 10 years ago - would be something I'd be caught dead wearing now. =)


All photography today courtesy of Boy. xx

Comfy

On the weekend, Boy and I visited his lovely, lovely parents. We had a gorgeous roast lunch, and I was lucky to come away with some yarn and this pattern book:

The two aren't specifically meant to go together, but somehow a new project magically appeared soon after I got home:

It's a pair of bedsocks! I have some nice warm slippers, but they're the type with no back, so I can't really wear them when I'm curled up on the couch. Also, they fall off whenever I get up from my computer chair. So I thought a pair of socks would be the perfect solution. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the first sock already. Despite the fact that it's a 'beginner' pattern, some parts of were quite confusing, but I nutted them out in the end.

I hope this unseasonably cold weather lasts long enough for me to finish them!

I've also been working on the Giant Granny Square Baby Blanket quite a bit, while watching such TV shows as Man Vs. Wild with Bear Grylls. In a perverse way, I enjoy watching him struggle through the wilderness eating raw bugs while I sit with a hot cup of tea crocheting with a warm wool blanky spread over my lap. I'm not knitting it to a pattern, so I can make it any size I like, but think it only needs a few more rows. Here it is at the moment:

Sox

After a long time spent ummming and ahhhing, I've finally decided to spend my money on upgrading to a Flickr Pro account. [Link is to my photos.] It was a toss up between that and the bookbinding kit I was drooling at on Etsy last week. It was the promise of three free months that swayed me.

As far as I can tell, you don't actually get much with the Flickr Pro account. Much that I would find useful, anyway. I get access to all of my photos, not just the last 200 (there's currently 262 on there). I can have as many sets as I like, not just 3. This appeals to the organisational side of my personality. Though at the moment it looks like I'll only have about 5, until I start putting photos from trips, etc on there. The other features - like increased upload limit and ability to upload videos - I'll probably never need.

So it was kind of a waste of money.

Oh well.

Busy busy busy

Guess what people? I finished my socks a week ago!:

How up-to-date am I!?

I haven't knitted much lately because I have been

... working from 8.30am to 5.00pm every single day of the week for the first time ever and going to work every day and learning lots of words I don't understand and filling in lots of spreadsheets that I have no idea what they're for and printing out hundreds of useless pieces of paper and filing them in a big cupboard and trying to look like I'm listening attentively while being totally bewildered inside and cringing every time the phone rings and ...

Oops, sorry about that. I tuned out for a second.

I haven't been doing very much knitting, but I've found this really great website that I've been working on a lot: Ravelry. See my Ravelry here. It's a site where you can list all your projects, stash yarns, needles, etc in one place. It's really exciting. For example, if you are thinking, "how many coathanger covers have I actually made?" you can use the tags to find that out. Or if you are thinking, "I'd like to make a ___ but I need 3 balls of pink cotton to make it" you can look that up in the stash section without having to dig through cupboards of stuff.

There are a few niggling things with it - it uses Flickr as its host, and I had all my photos on Photobucket. I created a Flickr account and I'm transferring them over, but it's taking time. So whenever I upload a photo, I have to do one copy for my blog, and another for my ravelry.

The other thing is that it's still in beta stage. I'm pretty excited to have received an invitation (I guess they thought my blog was good enough - Squeee! as Violet from Lime n Violet would say.) Today a few new fields have appeared on it, which means if I want to make sure everything is consistent, I have to go through and change all the entries I've already made so those fields are filled in. Meh! Who has time for that? ...

When there are so many podcasts to listen to! =)

New ones I am loving are:
* Sticks and String. Firstly, he's Australian. Secondly, he's a man! A really interesting and different perspective on knitting, in a lot of ways. He's technical, philosophical, and has a couple of great cats.
* Craftypod. I love, love, love this podcast! Each episode is on a different craft. It's only about 15 minutes long, so it doesn't tax my short attention span. The musical interludes are really retro and fun.

It has been 29 days since I last bought yarn.
You may be surprised to see that, but it hasn't been that hard. You see, since I've been working full-time, I haven't been able to get to a yarn shop. I don't have a car, so I carpool with my flatmate to work. The office is in a place so far out of the way of any yarn shops, that they would all be closed by the time I got there. I spend all weekend with my boyfriend, and either don't have time to go, or he talks me out of it. So, I guess that's a good thing really. *sighs* Really. *Resists the urge to log on to Ebay. Gives in*

Here's another doiley I made years ago and have been using all this time, and not realised it wasn't in my list of projects:

It's made from the left-over cotton from the Flower Facewashers. I did plan on making a series of different-sized ones, but that microbe-sized attention span got in the way again. D'oh!

Sock Time!

I've been knitting like a crazed knitting banshee lately! Though I've had the attention span of a goldfish with ADD. I've worked on the G.R.O.A.N.S coathanger cover, AIDS Baby Vest 2, even the stitch sampler bedspread. I've been in a more experimental mood lately. But mostly I've been working on my Socks! Here is the finished sock no.1* (right) inside out waiting to have the ends woven in. On the left is the start of sock no.2. I have just finished the 26 rows of ribbing and am ready to transfer it onto double-pointed needles:

Normally, a person would knit the whole sock on DPNs, but I read a great tip a few years ago saying that the ribbing (or everything down to the heel really!) can be knitted on a straight needle, and then the seam sewn up later. I really prefer doing it this way, because:
a) I hate using DPNs to knit purl rows. I find it very awkward and can't be bothered practicing until it goes more smoothly. Life's too short!
b) I hate knitting with DPNs full-stop! They are a pain in the arse! Not to mention in your stomach where they stick into you. The less I have to use them, the better. (Now I'm wondering why I bother to make socks at all?!)
c) It's easier to see where you are up to and follow the ribbing pattern.
d) The cast-on end of the yarn is far enough away from your live knitting when you do transfer to the DPNs that it doesn't get mixed up in what you're doing and piss you off.
The only drawback is having to sew up the seam when you are finishing the socks. But the cast on yarn end is already there and you already have thread it onto a needle to weave it in anyway, so it's not a huge inconvenience.

Here is sock no.2 at the heel stage:

What a nightmare!

Yes, I know, it looks like the cat puked on my instructions and I stuck a whole bunch of knitting needles in it, but I know what I'm doing! Mostly. I made a pair of socks from this pattern once before, many years ago, ended up with the most horrible, vomit-inducing, blood-chilling pair of socks known to man. This was not the pattern's fault. It was because I'd used bargain basement black acrylic and had never used DPNs before. Yeah, I tend to bite off more than I can chew sometimes. The pattern, however, was technically perfect and easy to understand. So theoretically these socks should turn out to be just fine. Hmm.

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* Not that it was all smooth sailing until that point!:

Sock no.1 with dropped stitch. Picking up stitch with crochet hook and many gasps of horror.

Actual stuff

Guess what? I'm not all hot air! All this talk about making a pair of socks - well, I've actually started one:

Needles a-kimbo!

I know it all looks pretty crazy, but double-pointed needles always do. The pattern is one I copied out years ago from a book called Homespun Kandknit: Caps, Socks Mittens and Gloves by Linda Ligon, which was at the State Library. It's just about the simplest turned-heel sock pattern you can get. It's still pretty hard though!
I got a little bit excited and finished about 2/3 of it before I took a photo of it. I'll document the other sock a bit more closely.
Speak of the other sock, I'm worried I'll come down with the famed "Second Sock Syndrome" that all the cool kids are talking about in their podcasts. Just when you've finished a lovely, amazing, fantastic sock (or mitten or ear warmer, etc) and are busy admiring it, it hits you! You have to go to all the trouble of making another one before you can wear it! D'oh!
That's why I got such bright, shiny variegated wool. I'm hoping it will keep my interest for long enough to complete the pair.

I've gotten a couple of knitting books from the library lately:

1. right: So Simple Knits / Hilary Mackin. Creative Homeowner, 2006.
The projects in this book range from the bizarre to the just plain fugly. A cardigan with large multi-coloured wooden beads around the neckline, an ankle length coat made with such large needles it makes the model look like a little kid wearing her Mommy's jacket.... Actually, there are a couple of interesting-looking projects that I'm going to photocopy - a two-tone tank top and a scoop neck jumper with lacy edgings.

2. left: No-Pattern Knits / Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer. Milner Craft Series, 2006.
This book puts forth the intriguing craft of modular knitting, i.e. knitting small shapes (squares, diamonds, triangles, etc) and attaching them together to create any kind of project you like. Unfortunately, the name is a misnomer - you do have to follow patterns, it's just a different concept of a pattern. It's the kind of pattern that involves a ruler and a pencil and paper and a calculator, and a large supply of erasers. Actually, it's a pretty interesting concept. It's very similar to patchwork. Personally, I'm not the kind of person that would be caught dead wearing a patchwork garment but hey, everybody's different! I think some cushion covers, toys or even a hat would be very worthwhile. The book really encourages the reader to think laterally, work with different materials, textures and design their own projects, which is great. At the end (like a grand finale) there's an amazing jumper made of pale green diamonds that look just like leaves. It's so different to the thick, gaily bright, gartery consistency of the rest of the book that it actually made me gasp. The construction looks like a nightmare, but I'll photocopy it anyway and keep it for best.

3. middle: Alterknits / Leigh Radford. Melanie Falick, 2005.
I was quite excited when I picked up this book. It just looks so gorgeous. I suppose it was inevitable that I'd be a bit disappointed after going through it. A lot of the projects are just fairly standard patterns with a little something extra, like some ribbon threaded through, or fabric paint applied. Some are quite different, like a cardigan made of various panels of different colours and patterns, or a crown made of crepe paper. The exercises are supposed to make you think outside the square (e.g. choosing random needles, wool and pattern to make a swatch with).

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Rant: things that annoy me slightly #262:
I do have to say at this point, cause I've seen it in a few books lately:
it's hard enough to find felting wool at a specialty yarn shop, let alone old jumpers from op shops that will felt. Generally, commercially-made jumpers are made especially NOT to felt! So therefore finding 8 to 10 of them to cut up, felt and make a blanket, etc out of is not going to be an easy process! Heck, even finding jumpers that are made of any kind of real wool and not acrylic is gonna be kinda hard! I feel so sorry for the poor sods who don't know much about felting and are gonna wash their old op shops jumpers 20 times before they realise it's not gonna work.

It'll all end in tears. That's all I have to say at this time.

Project thought long dead.

I thought that, seeing as I'm on a roll, I may as well finish a few other things as well.
This is a pair of socks that I actually knitted about 5 years ago. All I needed to do was sew them up. And I finally did it. Then it took me another week before I put them on!

Notice the little oversight in the stripes?

I don't think I'll wear them in public....