For Debbie - Progress!

Lookie! The heel of Crystalline Lattice sock #1 is done! It looked wide and short before I started, and it looks wide and short now, but, remarkably, it fits pefectly! Like the others, it will benefit from a gusset above the anklebone, but that's no problem (well, except for trying to keep the pattern across the instep...).

Here is my first attempt at fair isle. Don't ask about the back; it's craptastic.

Hope you're having a great time; miss you - see you when you're back!

Big Things to Give Thanks For, Little Things to Make Me Happy

Hope everyone had a nice, and safe, Thanksgiving, spending it with loved ones. (I was about to say something pretty snide about families not necessarily being 'loved ones,' but that's not really in the spirit of the season. So nevermind.)

I am thankful, as always, that my family has always thought that I could do no wrong, and stood beside me and loved me, no matter what bonehead thing I was about to do, or had just done. I'm thankful for my 'family of friends,' the friends who live nearby who act as my surrogate family and have the added benefit of giving me in-person hugs when I need them. They may not think I can do no wrong, but they are here beside me (well, some of them may be behind me, looking at my butt... you know who you are... and I think you for it!) I'm also thankful that, although it took me three tries to find him, KW is in my life, at my side, together where we belong. Yes, still madly in love. *sigh*

As for the little things that make me happy, take how yarn is displayed in a yarn store. Back when I first learned how to knit, a friend took me to a LYS in a nearby town (names will be changed or not mentioned to protect the silly). I was whacked out by the collection, which was all over the place - messy, disorganized, only the owner seemed to know where anything was. I bought some novelty yarn (mostly because I didn't know any better) and swore I'd never go back there again. Turns out, that was a pretty common assessment among knitters. (BTW, the store has since moved, and I still haven't ventured to their new location. I'm a'feared they brought their organization 'system' with them...)

Even the other LYS known for its randomness, the one I used to work at, treated the yarn with respect, and we tried to keep like things organized with like things, but many people don't like the arrangement, the sense of messiness, the randomness of the hours it's open. The other 'growed up' stores have varying ways of organizing their stash-for-sale, and a quick glance as you walk through the shop is all you need to find what you're looking for or be an informed browser.

So there's one yarn store in the area that stood out from the rest - Madonna Needle Works. It's a lovely store, mostly designed for needleworkers, but with a separate petting zoo (yarn room) for the knitters and crocheters among us. There is just one teensy little bit of weirdness about it - the yarn was arranged by color. She carries good stuff - Cascade and Reynolds and Crystal Palace, among others - but there were multiple bins of blues and multiple bins of greens, and god help you if you were looking for a teal - was it in the green bins? Was it in the blue bins? Most importantly, could you find enough skeins to make a sweater from it? Who knew?

A lot of the regulars who hang out there love the store's personality, but we often found ourselves shopping elsewhere (just not at the other LYS in town - we'd go 20 miles to *not* shop there, but that's anohter blog) - and I even teach knitting classes there. We hated to go somewhere else, but we just couldn't find what we thought we needed or wanted. The idea of arranging yarn by color was pretty cool, but only until we actually wanted to buy something. Then, the novelty of the arrangement became frustrating, since it was really hard to find enough yarn for a multi-skein project.

Well, Teri (the store owner) agreed to change the organization, and it's been converted from being arranged by color to being arranged by brand and type of yarn. I stopped by today for the first time since it was done, and thought I had walked into a new local yarn store. It made such a difference, seeing the yarns arranged by brand and type! Now, I don't have to restrict my thinking to embellishment yarn or one-skein project yarn; the prospect of shopping there for projects and patterns has now opened up. Plus, she just got a boatload of new yarns in - and now you can see them!

See? Little things make me happy, like a sense of organization.

Other little things that make me happy? Taming chenille. That tangled mess hanging on the chair? Well, I did have to cut it - but only once. Now it's in two nicely wound balls, and as soon as I figure out what it wants to be, I'll start knitting. Maybe.

Chenille, before :-( Chenille, after :-)

All Wound Up

Blog just lost what I typed! So much for autosave...

Anyway, the day was supposed to be wind a skein, write a few words, wind a skein, write, wind, write...

Turned into wind, wind, wind, wind, bake, wind, wind, work, cook, Ravel, blog...

So here's documentation:

KW got this shot of me trying to make sure the yarn wasn't getting stuck. That's the
unknown-for-sure-but-probably-hand-spun-and-hand-dyed-wool yarn
I got in Stockholm at Anntorps Wav.

Mid-way through the day.

And here's what I ended up with. And most of it is sock yarn. Yummy!

TYoFD, exception addendum

I knew there would be updates to the rules for The Year of Finishing Dangerously, and here's update the first:

- Pass-around projects are okay. Especially if it means I'll get a new knitted item out of it! (In wonderful Colinette Jitterbug.) (In a gorgeous shade of soft sage.) (Not that I'm anticipating getting a sock or anything.) (Much.)

In other news, I went to my first NaNoWriMo write-in today and got to meet some faces behind the names I've seen on the forum posts. And I got one day caught up in my word count. (Didn't actually get caught up to today's expected total, but at least I'm only 1 day behind instead of 2. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to write any more today, so tomorrow I'll be 2 days behind. But at least I'll only be 2... oh, nevermind...)

The Year of Finishing Dangerously, or Something Finished This Way Comes

Nope, it's not too late to start framing New Year's resolutions. And for this one, we have Ravelry to thank...

I made the mistake of printing out a list of all my queued up projects - all the things I've identified both pattern and yarn for, most of them already bagged together. Yipes. Nineteen things. Some of them have been sitting in those bags for two years. And those 19 don't include the mmph-teen projects currently identified as works-in-progress. Double-yipes.

So who do I thank for this resolution? Let's blame it on the affliction known as KADD (knitting ADD), which is closely related to being a startaholic ("Hello, my name is Meg, and I cast-on three new projects this week..."), which is unfortunately usually diagnosed with its corollary Evil Twin of finish-itis. They're the ones responsible for those little plastic bags of promise-y goodness stuffed in the craft room and forgotten. Until Ravelry, that is.

So, here goes... 2008 will be the Year of Finishing Dangerously. Emphasis on danger, I might add.

I can cast on only from queued projects or project bags (I'm assuming there are still bags of Things I'll Make One Day that aren't yet found and entered on Ravelry).

Purchasing yarn is A-okay. But man, what a bummer it would be to buy fresh new pettable yarn and not be able to cast on!

The goal is to get down to only two un-knit projects by the end of 2008.

If all my identified WIPs get made, it's time to go shopping in the pattern books and work through some stash.

Naturally, there will be exceptions (there have gotta be exceptions, right?):

- Store samples for classes, swatches for display, and items for demos are exempt. Hey, it's a business.

- Rockin' Sock Club shipments are exempt. Totally. Don't even think of arguing with me about this one.

- Oh hell, all socks are exempt. (If it's true for this year's yarn-diet KAL, it can be true for The Year Of Finishing Dangerously, too!)

- Pre-identified KALs are exempt (seriously, it wouldn't be cool to plan a knit-along in 2008 and not be able to knit-along now, would it? Especially when I'm the organizer, I mean, c'mon!). So far, there are 2 KALs: the Eunny Jang entrelac socks, and an as-yet-unidentified-item with my Monday and Thursday groups. Maybe I can convince them that the second KAL should be one of my pre-bagged projects!

- Other items which may seem like a good idea to cast on at the time. (Don't look at me that way; even the Constitution has a "and other laws that may seem reasonable" clause, too.)

I'm sure there will be more rules (and exceptions!); I'll work them out going forward.

Fun at the New LYS

Hello to my friends old and new, and those on and not-yet-on Ravelry who were at Bobbin's Nest today. Erin had a good turnout for the grand opening of her sewing studio and knitting lounge, with lots of smiles on lots of faces (well, okay, that would be one smile per face...). I gave a"formal" demo of cast-ons/bind-offs and increases/decreases to three knitters, then was able to help two knitters while I was sitting in the lounge area working on my socks. Happy to be of service, and glad to be there on studio opening day. (The studio looks fabulous, too!)

Prepping for the Opening

While it's nothing as crazy as what Erin (the owner) is going through, I'm busy prepping for the opening of the sewing studio in her store, Bobbin's Nest Studio (that would be in Santa Clara, CA). I'll be doing demos of increase and decreases, and cast-ons and bind-offs. I've been knitting swatches showing the CO/BO; next is to do some swatches showing the inc/dec, plus identify which sample projects to showcase each one.

And then.... getting the pattern sheets for "Quick Knits" nights (Wednesdays in December). It's harder than I thought it would be! I'm no better with my own patterns than I am with others... when I knit from other patterns, I make little tweaks and changes along the way. With mine, even though I've knit them and wrote down what I knit and double-checked it, I still read through it and tweak it! Again! Why can't I just knit a pattern as is?!

Anyway, come join us this weekend (11/10) for the grand opening of the studio!

Gratuitous food photo - adorable Wee Bee pumpkins,
filled with a garlic and Parmesan cheese custard. Mm-mmm good. And cute!!

Sick and Twisted Department - This is the rug pattern at the Marriott Suites in Scottsdale, Arizona, taken during this year's spring training trip DH and I took in March. (That would be baseball, for the non-baseball folks.) Can you guess what's coming next?

Yes. I want to knit something in this pattern or something similar. Yes, I know I don't like intarsia. Yes, even if I liked intarsia (which I don't), this would be seriously sick and twisted. Don't know what to say. Just that every time I come across the photo, I think, "Wow, wouldn't that be cool?" And no one is around to smack me upside the head.

Does Knitting Drive Laundry, or Vice Versa?

Since I felted the Great Big Bag (now the Moderately Large Bag), I've been trying to finish the shoulder cord for it, so it could get felted, too. Today, I was sorting laundry and have three pair of jeans and a set of great big towels - The Perfect Felting Storm. I still need about four feet of I-cord for the bag, so I'm going to work the cord 'til my fingers are bloody stubs. I will NOT do that batch of laundry without the bag cord in it!

Felted bag with the cord-in-progress on the right.

(Yes, I'm using a little spool thingy to do the I-cord. So sue me.)

(So, before felting, was I this passionate about my jeans wash? I don't think so...)

Converting The Masses

Another week, another two students who have learned the two-at-a-time toe-up sock technique. Let's see, now, that's... nine who have come to the dark side!

Aren't they just adorable when they start out this way? *Squeeee*

Aaaaaaand They're Off!

NaNoWriMo is off and running... and I'm already 18 words behind on the daily word count! I was proud of myself for having done 300+ words in the first half-hour of Nov. 1... but writing tonight was like pulling abscessed teeth. At the end of the s-l-o-w process, I only had 1649 words, and nary a plot in sight. Oh well... keep going. A story will develop. Somehow. How? It's a mystery...