Rules for Feeding the Stash

Monday, December 14, 2020

Mondaying

Happy Monday, friends! I submitted my last papers of the semester on Saturday and it feels so good to be done! This fall was pretty rough, and I'm ridiculously proud of myself for handling it as well as I did. I have six weeks off until next semester, and while I'm looking forward to my spring classes, I really can't wait to spend the next six weeks reading for fun and catching up on movies and tv shows I haven't been able to watch the past few months.

Xmas knitting continues apace, and I'm happy with where I'm at so far. Apologies for no photo again today, but my mum reads the blog and I can't just go around ruining surprises. I also made an executive decision about a shawl sample that's been on the needles for a while now, and I'm hoping to get caught up on pattern writing before the spring semester starts. 

Yesterday I mixed up some pepparkakor dough, and I'll probably roll those out later today. I've not done any real holiday treat-making yet, aside from the Chex Mix, and pepparkakors sound like the perfect start. I also want to try making cardamom rolls sometime in the next two weeks—they've been on my to-bake list for ages, but I haven't managed to get around to them yet. 

Friday, December 11, 2020

More Numbers, Because Why Not

 1. I have half of my last final paper and a reflection left to write and then I am done until January 25th.

2. I finally started Xmas knitting last night. I do not know if I'll be done in time, but I will be giving it my all. Especially once my papers are done.

3. Using the food processor to make latkes is absolutely a game-changer. 

4. Lee Lee continues to improve. We have started going for (very short) walks again, and she has resumed stealing all the blankets in bed. I think over the weekend we'll scale down from one pill in the mornings to half a pill.

5. Yesterday I made Chex mix and ate two whole bowls of it and only barely managed to stop so I could put it all away. I haven't been able to find my usual GF bagel chips this year, and I don't know if the company has stopped making them or if they're a temporary loss due to Covid (it was really hard to get GF mac and cheese for a while), so I just added more nuts and pretzels. 

6. I hope you all have a good weekend! 

Monday, December 7, 2020

Numbers on a Monday

 Okay, we're doing numbers today because it's the last week of the semester and I am EXHASTED.

1. I'll be giving 25% of my December sales each to my local food pantry and emergency fund. The area I live in really struggles with poverty and food insecurity (35%!!), and these organizations work really hard and struggle to meet all the need even in non-pandemic years. If you're not already working with your local orgs, please reach out to them, especially if you have less to share this year than usual. They're the ones in the communities, with the connections and the boots on the ground to keep people warm and fed, and they've really been hit hard this year with the double whammy of increased need and less money coming in.

2. Lee Lee continues to improve! I'm letting her go cone-free most of the time now, and we're down to pain meds once a day, in the mornings. Thank you all again for all your support the last two months, it's so good to see her getting closer and closer to her old self.

3. It's the LAST WEEK OF THE SEMESTER. I have two papers, a project, and two presentations this week and then I am DONE until the end of January, I cannot WAIT. I have promised myself a Lord of the Rings marathon as soon as I turn in my last project and I plan to spend my break knitting and reading my stack of library books.

4. I just recently learned that you can shred potatoes for latkes in a food processor instead of grating them by hand. It blew my mind, and I'm extremely excited for Hanukkah now. I love latkes, but having to grate potatoes AND clean up from frying is usually Too Much for me to handle in one night, so the food processor tip is a real game changer for me.

5. There are eighteen days until Xmas and I have not started gift knitting. I'm not panicking. Yet.

Monday, November 30, 2020

Trying to Get Back to Normal

Okay. This week we're trying to get back to normal. Lee Lee's mouth is still bugging her a little bit, but I let her out of her cone for a few hours yesterday, and I'll let her out of her cone for a bit today. I'm hoping to be able to get a look in her mouth at some point to see if there are any stitches still hanging on, but most, if not all, of them should have dissolved by now. We're finally back to sleeping through the night (well, my sleep's been a bit rough, but that's all on me and not on Lee Lee being miserable), and I scheduled a massage for this Friday as both a reward for getting through the last month and a half and also to fix my poor back, which has taken the brunt of all this stress.

I haven't been knitting much, but I'm hoping to get back into it this week. I have a couple projects I've been working on for several months now, including this shawl which is almost at the halfway point. I also need to start knitting for xmas—I'm only knitting one gift, but given how my knitting productivity has taken such a hit the past few months, there's a change it'll still be tight. 

I'm also in the last two weeks of the semester! I have three papers, a powerpoint presentation, a screencast and how-to guide, and a libguide due in the next two weeks, and I am feeling the crunch. I took most of last week off from school work, which made the weekend a bit rough as I scrambled to catch up, but it was definitely the right call, and I'm feeling pretty good about where I'm sitting now. It'll be busy, but I think I can do it. I hope. Once I get these assignments in, I'm on break from school until the end of January, which is sounding really nice right now.

Monday, November 23, 2020

Quickly on a Monday

 Happy Monday, friends! I hope you all had a restful weekend. I don't have class this week, so I took all weekend off from school. Saturday I did NOTHING, which was exactly the kind of break I needed, and yesterday I finished a comic book I'd been reading and did some picking up around my apartment. My bedroom's been a disaster for weeks, which is understandable, and I had a huge pile of boxes next to my dining room table that I needed to throw out. I feel so much better now, even though I still need to tidy up a couple small areas, so it was a weekend well spent.

Lee Lee is pretty much the same. She really hates not being able to scratch at her mouth, but I'm just as stubborn as she is, and she's only managed a couple quick scratches before I've caught her. We're seeing the vet for her post-surgery check on Wednesday, and hopefully her mouth will be healed by then and we can take the stitches out. I'm hoping that the stitches are what's really bugging her right now, but she did have quite a few sore spots in her mouth after surgery, so we'll see how she's doing. 


Friday, November 20, 2020

Hanging In

 Lee Lee is doing...well, we're hanging in there. Her surgery went well on Tuesday—they cleared out some infection and closed the fistula—but she managed to tear her stitches out on Wednesday, so we had to do a quick vet run for that. Her mouth only needs one week to heal and our primary goal for this week is to keep her from touching her mouth. I've been alternating keeping her in a backpack with only her head free and letting her wander around in a cone, and so far it seems to be working. Fingers crossed.

I'm still a bit behind on school—nothing's late, but I haven't started a couple projects that are coming up, and I'm not quite where I'd hoped to be on some bigger projects that I've already started. It turns out it's really hard to focus on anything when you're trying to keep a very resourceful dog from ripping her stitches out. I don't have class at all next week, so hopefully I'll be able to get myself caught up.

I've also not really been doing much knitting. I do have a shawl sample finished, and I've started writing the pattern, but it's on the back burner for now. I'm also feeling pretty burnt out—I was handling working full time, school full time, and pandemic stress pretty well, but then we got slammed with election stress just as I was also getting slammed with this whole vet mess, and, understandably, I'm pretty fried. I'm focusing on taking care of Lee Lee and paying attention to my self-care plan, and then whatever I have left goes to making sure I'm not missing anything for school. 

So that's where we are right now. I'm hoping that by the end of the weekend Lee Lee is healed up enough that she doesn't want to scratch at her face and we can try going for walks again, but we'll see how it goes. Take care of yourselves, kittens.

Monday, November 16, 2020

A Pupdate


This has been, without exaggeration, one of the hardest months of my life. Easily in the top five. As you all know, Lee Lee had her last nine teeth removed on October 15th. They were in bad shape and really needed to go, and we'd planned that surgery for a few months. 

Unfortunately, it turns out that the vet messed up, and her mouth is still bothering her, and she’s cut up her paws really badly trying to scratch at her mouth/cone during her recovery. Since November 6th, we have gone to the emergency vet twice, the original vet who did the procedure once, and a brand new vet once. The original vet believes she is doing as expected, which the emergency vet and our new vet both disagree with.

The emergency vet and the new vet both discovered two oral-nasal fistulas, which aren't uncommon after dentals, but they do open a path for infection and can lead to pneumonia. There also should be no reason for her to still be scratching at her mouth, leading us to believe there are some roots or bone shards that were left behind in her gums during her original surgery. She needs the fistulas closed and dental radiographs to see what exactly is bothering her so we can fix it. We have her scheduled for her (hopefully final) mouth surgery tomorrow. 

The past week and a half has been especially tough, with all the vet visits and learning just how badly my poor dog is doing, but I like the new vet so far, and we're both hopeful that by the end of the week she should be back to normal, apart from her paws needing to finish healing up. Honestly, none of this should have happened, and she should have recovered from her original surgery in a week with no need for follow-up care, never mind multiple visits to the emergency vet. 

The original vet maintains that she is doing fine, despite continuing to experience discomfort in her mouth almost a month post-surgery, and claims they cannot see any fistulas (which, even if they couldn’t see the holes in her gums, you can tell she has saliva coming out her nose). They also repeatedly did not respond to phone calls during her recovery and prescribed a too-large dose of pain medicine, causing my dog to be completely lethargic and soil herself, and it took over three weeks for her to be able to stand and walk around. The emergency vet and our new vet both agreed on a more appropriate dose for her, and she's almost been herself the past week, apart from the lingering discomfort.

So, that's where I've been. I'm tired, I'm burnt out, and I took the last week off from my day job because I was behind in school and just couldn't keep doing everything. I only just started being able to sleep through the night again the past couple days, as Lee Lee had been keeping me up with her discomfort, and while I hate to put her under surgery again, the new vet is confident that as long as there's not something severe hiding in her gums, like a broken bone, then she should be feeling some significant relief by the end of the week.

This all would have been so much harder without my communities on Twitter, Instagram, and Ravelry, and to all of you who have already heard all this and supported me, thank you so much. It's so good to know that there's a whole community out there that cares about us, and I hope to have a better pupdate for you all soon.

Monday, November 2, 2020

Shawls and Recovery

Happiest news first: I am just twenty rows from starting the border on this shawl. It's so soft, and it's been such a great knit. I'm hoping to get it finished by midmonth, but given everything in my life and in the world right now, no promises. You'll get the pattern as soon as I can get it finished.

Mixed news: the good news is that Lee Lee is healing enough that she has the energy to cause a lot of trouble. The bad news is, she's causing trouble, and she's still miserable. I got a cone for her on Friday, and she hates it. She vacillates between lying on her side like she can't move and furiously thrashing around trying to get the cone off—and I mean furiously. She's launched herself off the bed, essentially backflipped onto the hardwood floor (and the concrete outside), and if I try to hold her still then her little nails just dig in everywhere.

I'm back to having her on pain meds, because she's obviously not ready to be off them yet, and those keep her pretty stoned most of the time, which is a relief. The last few days have been especially rough—she's accidentally peed the bed a couple of times, and she also managed to absolutely cover herself in poop twice (once she got herself trapped under a chair and was stuck in it, the second time she was too busy trying to get the cone off to realize she was pooping and kept rolling around in it). I am exhausted. Hopefully we're almost done with all this. I promised her no more surgeries, because if she's this miserable for this long after dental surgery, I don't think she'd make it through a more invasive surgery.

At least focusing on Lee Lee takes up most of my energy so I don't have time to doom scroll and think too hard about the election. If you're able and you haven't done so already, please vote. Also make a plan to take care of yourself for the next couple days/weeks, because it looks like they're going to be stressful no matter what. My good friend Patricia rounded up some good tips in her newsletter.

Monday, October 19, 2020

Monday Numbers

 1. Lee Lee is recovering. We're both a little worse for wear. I wish she was doing better than she is—she's still quite uncomfortable and pretty stressed. I finally got a full night's sleep last night, for the first time since her dental.

2. Because watching your dog recover from getting all her teeth pulled out is super stressful, I got pretty much nothing done this weekend. Saturday I did my weekly grocery shop and then slept all afternoon. Yesterday I managed to get my homework done, but that's about it.

3. This week looks like it's going to be pretty school-heavy. I have one of my major assignments due this weekend, but we won't know how to do it until Tuesday, so it's going to be a busy few days towards the end of this week.

4. After some thought, I decided I'm not going to do NaKniSweMo this year. I always enjoy it, but I don't think I have time to knit a whole sweater this November, and I'd rather get some of my WIPs finished up. I will, however, be participating in NaKniMo, and setting a stitch goal, but mostly I'll be focused on trimming down my WIP pile.

5. I think that's it for now? Honestly, the past few days are just a blur of worrying about my dog and watching her be uncomfortable and wishing there was anything I could do about it. Hopefully I'll have a good update and some actual knitting content for y'all on Friday.

Friday, October 16, 2020

Vet Day

Yesterday was Vet Day for Lee Lee, who now has no teeth. I also brought Abby, who longtime readers might remember (she's a papillon and she lives with my mum) to cut down on trips out of town. I ended up waiting at the vet for six hours, and while I brought some knitting and a stack of readings for school, my focus was pretty shot. Fortunately, Lee Lee had her dental done first, and the vet let her come out to the waiting room to hang out with me while she came out of anesthesia. After both dogs were done, we all hung out at my mum's for a few hours.

Lee Lee is pretty miserable today. She had a lot of bleeding from her mouth through yesterday evening, and it was a rough night for both of us. I ended up opening the futon and covering it with an old stained blanket so she wouldn't have to be alone in the kitchen. She's still in a lot of pain, but I did manage to get a painkiller into her this morning (at least, I'm 90% sure I got it in her).

The plan for this weekend is lots of homework. Usually I get a bunch done on Thursday nights, but clearly I wasn't in any shape to do anything last night. I'm hoping that since I got that first pain pill in Lee Lee this morning that I'll be able to stay on top of it and keep her drugged up until she's not so sore anymore. It turns out it's really hard to focus when you know your best pal is hurting. She's getting spoiled with as many gentle pets as she wants, and eggs and rice for every meal, and hopefully by the end of the weekend she'll be feeling more like herself again.

Monday, October 12, 2020

Weekending

Kind of a weird weekend here. The vet called late on Thursday needing to reschedule Lee Lee's dental, which kind of threw off all my plans. Her appointment is now scheduled for this Thursday, and hopefully there's not another scheduling issue. I ended up spending most of Friday with my mum, which was the plan for after the dental anyway. We watched some Diagnosis Murder and I got two mum-cooked meals, so it was overall a good day. I had some homework to do this weekend too, and while it only took a few hours all together I had the hardest time actually sitting down and focusing long enough to do it. 

I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that I'm just not knitting a whole lot right now. I try to knit during class, but otherwise I'm not really touching it. I'm wondering if part of it is because most of my WIPs right now are samples and I don't really feel like working after doing my day job and classes, or if I'm just more tired in general from adding school into my regular schedule. Also, it's a weird year, and we're all really tired. The good news is that my knitting is here when I want it.


Thursday, October 8, 2020

A Thursday Post

I don't usually post on Thursdays, but I really want to get back in the habit of posting twice a week, and tomorrow morning I'll be out bringing Lee Lee to the vet for her dental, so here we are. Her teeth really are in bad shape, and I think they'll be removing four or five of the eight or nine she has left (I think only her canines are safe, but we'll have to wait for the x-rays to be sure). 

Yesterday was ROUGH. I woke up several times during the night in pain and when I finally got up in the morning I was sore and achy all over. It took me a couple hours to remember that I'd gotten my flu shot on Tuesday, and that flu shots can cause some achiness for the next day or two. I brought my laptop out to my comfy chair to work, I loaded up on ibuprofen, and I took two epsom salt baths throughout the day and today I'm feeling much better. I've never reacted to a flu shot before, and while the aches yesterday sucked, they certainly sucked a lot less than the actual flu would. 

Knitting: today's photo is garter stitch, which I for some reason really disliked when I first started knitting but now it is one of my greatest loves. This is the start of what will eventually be one of the samples for a fingering-weight version of Easy A, which I am really looking forward to, but it's going to take months before they're finished and ready for publication. Right now, it's great class knitting, and I'll probably bring it to the vet tomorrow to work on while Lee Lee's under. 

Monday, October 5, 2020

Day 206

For the past several days I've had a string of stress dreams and nightmares, but last night I finally got a break, and I hope that whatever's going on in my brain at night is done with. It's not surprising: I'm closing in on seven months of being limited to my apartment, my mum's apartment, and weekly grocery shops. The only person I see a lot of is my mum, and while I love her to bits and am so glad I get her in my bubble, I'm missing a lot of the people that I usually see at least weekly.

I've broken my collection of candles back out and I'm really enjoying having one lit almost constantly. I cleared a little space on my desk so I can have one going while I work and attend class, and I put a couple candles in my bedroom as well. I've also been looking up new candles online (I have a particular weakness for ones incorporating tobacco scent) but I'm not buying any yet, because Lee Lee has a dental on Friday and I owe over a thousand dollars to my diabetic supply company, so we're not really buying anything that's not strictly necessary right now. 

Okay, the knitting—that's what you're all really here for, I know. This is a super soft, super cozy shawl sample I'm working up. It's about a quarter finished (it's gonna be BIG) and it's done with a strand of worsted weight held together with a laceweight mohair. I'm using Ecola Worsted and Pinnacle Lace from The Dye Project, so there's some silk in there too, making this just a joy to work up. I don't know when it will be finished or written up (I've given up on having knitting deadlines while I'm in school), but I'm hoping it's relatively soon. 

Friday, October 2, 2020

Numbers on a Friday

 1. The semester is starting to ramp up and this week I'm starting some of my bigger projects for this semester. I'm working really hard to stay ahead of my schedule so I don't end up completely buried and overwhelmed.

2. I've definitely noticed that I'm not knitting as much as I used to, which definitely makes sense, given all the school stuff I have going on. I try to knit during class, but I'm not knitting as much in the evenings and weekends because I can't really knit and do my homework at the same time. I am still knitting, though, and I'm hoping to get some projects finished up this semester.

3. Thank you all so much for the response to Rhys! We're having a tight couple of months right now—Lee Lee has a dental next week, and I have a fairly large diabetes supplies bill, so pattern sales are crucial right now, and the response to Rhys so far is really helping.

4. Speaking of Rhys, you can still get 20% off with code "Fall" on Ravelry and Payhip through tonight!

5. Take care of yourselves, kittens! Drink your water, wear your masks, and take some time off from screens!


Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Rhys

I love layering pieces, and Rhys is my idea of a perfect layering pullover. It’s loose, boxy silhouette is perfect with high waisted trousers or over dresses and skirts, and it also pairs well with leggings for a weekend afternoon on the couch.

Rhys features wide textured panels on the front and back and is knit flat. The front and back shoulders are seamed together before picking up for the sleeves, and the sweater is then finished with two long seams going up the sides and down the sleeves.

Rhys is now available in my Ravelry and Payhip stores, and is 20% off with code FALL through Friday, October 2nd. 



Friday, September 18, 2020

In Which I Make Good Choices

So. I have a lot of projects on the needles. It's always been a thing, since I started knitting: I cannot be a monogamous knitter. It's fine, I work on things as I want to, I usually have something I feel like knitting on the needles, and eventually everything either gets finished or sits around so long that my taste changes and I frog it. It's fine.

Anyway. I've mostly been focusing on a couple of shawl samples lately, and then on Tuesday I decided to cast on a big fingering weight sweater that is also a sample and also the pattern requires two samples, so it's actually gonna be a lot of knitting. And I thought, maybe I should, you know, finish the hat that I'm knitting, or the brioche shawl that I started back in July and never intended to be a longstanding WIP.

So instead of doing any of that I pulled out a sweater I started in 2018 and then put in the closet after a week. I'd lost the printout of the pattern, the two inches of twisted ribbing that I had so far wasn't even on the correct needles anymore, and I hadn't noted what size I was knitting anywhere, because I hadn't anticipated losing the pattern (listen, sometimes I am very foolish about what I am and am not capable of keeping track of).  

And instead of working on anything that didn't require tracking down a needle and re-downloading a pattern and counting stitches to figure out what size I was knitting, I decided that the best use of my time was to do exactly those things, and now I'm four inches into a sweater that is neither a sample nor a quick project and I have so many WIPs piled around my home workstation and MY GODS won't any of these things knit themselves?

Monday, September 14, 2020

Two Hats

I hope you all had a good weekend! Saturday I had a belated birthday lunch with my mum and siblings, and it was great to hang out for a couple hours. I also got my first paper for grad school finished and turned in, and now I just have to wait and see how I did. I did manage to get my apartment picked up some, too, which feels great.

I finally blocked the first two hats from my current hat kick (I'm still working on my blue Pilstam, but I think that might be it for this current streak). The one on the left is a Cloudburst Hat (Rav link) by my friend Cory—I used a heavier yarn than called for, so I knit the smallest size and hoped for the best, and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.

The other hat is Beanie Lines (Rav link again), and I really let the yarn do all the work. I'm so pleased with it, and I have just enough yarn left over to squeeze out a quick pair of fingerless mitts. Now, I've been planning to knit myself some new fingerless mitts for...at least two years, probably, and I haven't done it yet. But the yarn is sitting on my desk so I don't forget about it (as opposed to the yarn for another pair of mitts that's been sitting on my bookshelf for over a year so I wouldn't forget about it...).


Friday, September 11, 2020

Numbers on a Friday

 1. Wednesday was my birthday!! I am now THIRTY, which is very exciting. (My BIRTHDAY SALE is still going on! You can use code HB30 on Ravelry and Payhip through September 15th to get 30% off all my patterns.)

2. I finished my sweater sample! I blocked it yesterday and it's still drying in my studio. I have the pattern maybe half written? I'm hoping to get it sent to my tech editor as soon as possible.

3. School is going well! I have my first paper due Sunday and a whole bunch of readings and summaries and analysis to do, but I really am enjoying it a lot.

4. It was cold this week! I always want it to be cold for my birthday but it almost never happens, so this was the greatest gift the universe could give me. It's sounding like we'll get back up into the 80s next week, though.

5. My apartment is lowkey a disaster because I haven't put away laundry in forever and I keep stacking empty boxes NEXT TO the trash instead of taking them out and really I ought to find like twenty minutes to deal with that because it's becoming A Problem.

6. Lee Lee had to start wearing her hoodies again this week, and also we got to make a nest on the bed with the fuzzy blanket, which she really loved.

Monday, September 7, 2020

Birthday Week!!

Hello friends! My birthday is Wednesday, and in true Kat fashion I will be celebrating all week (in fact, I started celebrating a week ago, and I'll probably keep celebrating through next week). What can I say? I love my birthday. Even the weather is turning out to help me celebrate—we may get some rain showers today and tomorrow, and it's not supposed to get above the low to mid 70s all week! 

I had a very good weekend—on Saturday I had to go into the library to do some book processing, and then Saturday afternoon my mum and I got pedicures and watched Miss Marple. Yesterday I took the whole day off: I slept in, I read in bed all day, I took a little nap, and I ate lots of junk food. I've got a bit of reading for school to do tonight for class this week, but it's well worth it to have an entire day with no obligations. 

The sweater sample is almost finished! I got the second sleeve finished on Saturday and started seaming it up. I do still have to knit the collar, but I'm very pleased with how it's coming out. I have yarn for a few more sweater samples lined up, and I'm torn between casting one on (well, swatching and grading and THEN casting on) or finishing up some WIPS. Right now I'm leaning towards the WIPs, just because a few have been hanging out for a while, but we'll see what happens!

**Remember that my BIRTHDAY SALE is still going on! You can use code HB30 on Ravelry and Payhip through September 15th to get 30% off all my patterns!**


Friday, September 4, 2020

Getting There

Grad school is not quite kicking my butt, but I'm definitely more tired than I used to be, and I'm keeping way closer track of my bedtime! I'm still working full time, and I'm in class 8 hours a week, and so far it's looking like I'm spending about 10 hours a week on readings and assignments. It definitely could be worse, but there's a specific type of thinking you do in academia and it's strange settling back into it. I'm adjusting, though.

I'm getting tons of knitting done during class, even if I haven't quite figured out when to get pattern writing done yet. This current sweater sample needs only half a sleeve and a neckband (and two seams, easy peasy). I'd love to get it written this weekend, but I know that's not going to happen—tomorrow morning I have to go into the library to do some book processing I can't do from home, and then in the afternoon I'm going to hang out with my mum and watch murder mysteries!

There were definitely some times as I was applying and registering for school that I thought it would have been easier if I'd just done it immediately after my undergrad, but part of being older and wiser means that I know to be gentle with myself as I adjust to the routine change and to not expect myself to have the same sort of "productivity" in my leisure time. And I know how important sleep is now, too (see previous comment about keeping track of my bedtime)!

I hope you're all doing well and being gentle with yourselves too, and that you have something fun planned for the weekend! 

**It is almost my BIRTHDAY, which means it is time for my BIRTHDAY SALE! You can use code HB30 on Ravelry and Payhip through September 15th to get 30% off all my patterns!**


Friday, August 28, 2020

The First Week

Week One of library school DOWN and I am TIRED. It's definitely just because this is a CHANGE and it is NEW and I do not cope well with change or new things. It'll get better. I have a stack of readings to do this weekend and I wanted to get a draft of my new sweater pattern finished and sent to my tech editor, but we'll see how the weekend goes.

I was very excited to start the sleeves for my sweater sample earlier this week only to discover (AFTER sewing the shoulder seams) that the back was twelve rows too short. This is what I get for not checking my notes. So the sweater back is back on the needles and I've been spending quality time with my latest hat project (this is hat number three of the current streak, but I haven't blocked the other two yet). 

I'm knitting my own pattern, which I don't do too frequently, but I thought that this rich blue tweed yarn would look super charming as Pilstam, and so far it's proving me right. I'm taking my time with this hat after banging the first two out, because, 1. cables, and 2. this yarn rips if I manhandle it too much, which means I have to be careful with my tension. I'm usually a pretty rough and tight knitter, so it's weird being forced to slow down and be gentle with this project. 


Monday, August 24, 2020

School and Sweaters

It's my first day of Library School!

I'm very excited, if you haven't picked up on that already. I took the second half of last week off to give myself a bit of a break before classes started and to have time to do my orientation sessions, and I feel pretty ready. 

I spent the weekend mostly relaxing—it's been super hot here, and it'll stay super hot through this week at least, so I've not really been going outside at all. Instead, I finished the front and banged out most of the back of this sweater sample, and I'm feeling pretty good about getting the pattern to my tech editor by the end of the month.

I also made a batch of cookies with the intention of freezing most of them so I'd have them handy throughout the semester when I needed a little something sweet, but to absolutely no one's surprise I have already eaten most of them. Whoops, guess I'll have to make more soon.

We're getting a bunch of new covid cases in my state, so please remember that there is still a pandemic going on! Wear a mask! Keep your distance! I know, I'm tired of it too, but we need to do our best to protect each other.

Monday, August 17, 2020

The First Hat

 

Longtime readers of this blog may know that occasionally I'll go on a hat kick. I love knitting hats—they're small, portable, endlessly customizable, and generally quick to knit—and generally when I have the hankering, just one hat isn't going to cut it. So on Friday afternoon, when I felt the start of a hat kick stirring in my brain, I grabbed some skeins from the stash, wound them up, and sorted  through some patterns.

This one is Beanie Lines, by Danielle Lewis, knit in some gorgeous hand painted sock yarn that's been in my stash for years. I'm holding it double, and I love how the colors are working up—it reminds me of kelp, or a magical secret grotto. It's very nearly finished, and I've already started the second hat of this kick (I don't know how long it will go for, but I pulled out yarn for five hats total).

This week is my LAST WEEK before my classes start! I have grad school orientation on Wednesday afternoon, and library school orientation on Saturday. All my textbooks have arrived, I have shiny new notepads, and my wall calendar is hung up and ready for me to start filling in due dates. I'm starting to get a little nervous about how I'll balance everything, but I've been planning for months, so hopefully I'm as prepared as possible! 

Friday, August 14, 2020

Cuddle Blanket!

 

Gosh, do I even blog anymore? I spent most of last weekend napping and couldn't think of anything interesting to share on Monday, BUT! I have great news today! 

I have finished my Cuddle Blanket!!

I started this back in 2015, and I'd had the yarn for it for at least a year or two before that. My best friend used to work at Walmart and sent me a whole big box of clearanced yarn and it took a while to figure out what to do with it all. Eventually I stumbled across the Garter Squish pattern, and after pulling a couple more yarns from my stash to make up the difference, I knew that this was destined to be a friendship cuddle blanket. 

This has been sitting in my closet for years, and it was about a quarter knit when I pulled it out for Stash Dash. It took a bit longer to finish than I initially thought it would, but it was still a super quick finish.

I did skip the i-cord edges that the pattern called for—I did them for the first couple of inches, but I had a hard time maintaining tension on them, and then I dropped one of the stitches, so I gave up and just slipped the first stitch of every row for the rest of the blanket. It looks fine.

I'm so pleased with how big this came out. It's probably a generous twin-size, but because it's almost all acrylic and it's not knit at a super dense gauge, it stretches really well, making it perfect for cuddling. 

Also, Lee Lee really loves it. (Side note: today is her twelfth birthday! We are celebrating with lots of ear scritches and cookies, and this afternoon we're gonna go catch up on her shots!)

Ravelry Page: Garter Squish Cuddle Blanket

Pattern: Garter Squish by Stephen West (Ravelry)

Yarn: Assorted 


Friday, August 7, 2020

Numbers on a Friday

 1. What is this, twenty-one weeks since I started staying home? I think?

2. I have done virtually no knitting this week. I did maybe ten rows on a shawl sample and that's it. Hoping for a knitting marathon this weekend.

3. My textbooks have started arriving for fall semester! Classes start two weeks from Monday, and I'm excited and nervous. The books are looking good, though, and I think they'll all fit on the handy little shelf on my desk.

4. I got a wireless keyboard and mouse this week and it has been REVELATORY. My laptop is now stacked on a pile of books and my workspace is almost ergonomic. I have a yoga ball coming in the mail (hopefully today) to use as an alternative to my chair, and I think that will help a lot too.

5. I ordered the batting for a vintage quilt top I got several years ago, and I'm hoping to sandwich and pin it this weekend. I'd always planned on hand-quilting it, and I want to get it set up in my big needlework frame before school starts so I can use it as a study break.

6. I think that's all I have for now? Drink water. Wear your mask. Donate to bail funds/protest medics (yeah, protests are still going on). Call your representatives. Take five minutes to breathe. 

Monday, August 3, 2020

Day 143


I'm really enjoying my last weeks of freedom before school starts. This weekend I made bread, because my fridge is full of pickles from my mum's garden, which means melted cheese and pickle sandwiches as often as I can eat them. I'm also getting ruthless with my to-read pile, determining which books I'm not going to read and what's realistic for me to finish in the next three weeks.

I have a new sweater sample on the needles and I'm really loving it. This is actually the second inception of this sweater—I'd originally planned it to be a cardigan, but after finishing the upper back and doing lots of planning for the upper front shaping, I decided I'd rather have it as a boxy cropped pullover. It's working out really well, I'm really enjoying knitting it, and I'm really looking forward to wearing it. I'm hoping for an early fall release for the pattern, but school could throw that off. I'm trying to go with the flow.

This week I'm hoping to do some more baking and read one or two of the romance novels on my list. I'm also very close to being finished with my cuddle blanket, but I don't know if I'll manage to bang the rest of that out this week or not. I'm also slowly but surely adding all my patterns to my new Payhip shop—it's taken me a bit longer than I'd hoped, but I'm over halfway done, and I'll definitely be all set up over there before school starts.


Friday, July 24, 2020

Day 133


The cuddle blanket is now about twice as large as it was when I pulled it out of the yarn closet, and it currently reaches from the floor to my chin. I feel pretty good about what I think the finished size will be, and I have just a few skeins left. The only real trouble with this right now is that it takes a bit of effort to turn it at the end of each row, but I still manage a pretty good rhythm when I'm working on it. There's a heat advisory here from noon today all through tomorrow, so with any luck I'll be able to bang out a big chunk of this while hiding in the air conditioning.

I've been fighting some kind of stomach bug this week—I must have eaten something bad, but I can't figure out what it must have been. Or it's stress. My GI tract doesn't really handle stress well, and let me tell you, as someone with both a GI disease and an anxiety disorder, that's a lot of fun. I've been eating lots of applesauce and chicken noodles, and I think I'm back to normal, or just about.

This coming Monday marks four weeks before I start grad school, and I have a pile of library books I still want to finish, so hopefully I'll get at least one of those done this weekend. My mum's garden is being productive as well, and I have a shelf full of cucumbers in my fridge to turn into pickles, so I've got a pretty full weekend ahead of me.

Monday, July 20, 2020

2020 Quiet Queers Craft Along


Last week the Quiet Queers Craft Along started over on Instagram (#QuietQueersCraftAlong). Last year I was a participating designer, but I wasn't able to actually make anything for the Craft Along, and I wanted to change that this year. I dug around in my stash, scrolled through designer portfolios, and came up with four potential projects.

Ultimately I decided on the Thunderbolt Shawl by Xandy Peters. It's a great shawl, and I had these two skeins that I knew would be perfect together for it. These yarns have been in my stash for years, and it feels great to finally have the perfect pattern for them.

I did have to do the setup section twice, as I missed an increase the first time and didn't realize until several inches later, but I'm really enjoying it so far. It's definitely not a brainless knit, but as long as I pay attention to the pattern it's pretty easy.

This weekend was pretty quiet. I finished one of the books on my list to finish before school starts, and I knit a little bit. This is week nineteen of isolation/quarantine for me, and I kinda swing between "absolutely fine" and "general panic for the state of everything," which is where I feel a lot of us are at right now. 

Friday, July 17, 2020

On Yarns and Substitutions


I hear A LOT from people who love specific patterns but can't afford the suggested yarns. I get it! I started knitting when I was a broke college student, and even now I have very little discretionary money because I have crazy high medical costs. Yarn is expensive! Yarn is especially expensive once you start shopping for garment quantities, and even more so if you're plus-sized!

Some designers use affordable yarns, and some designers make multiple samples or try to recommend different yarns across a variety of price points. This is incredibly helpful and generous, but a lot of designers just don't have the time or capability to make multiple samples, and if we get yarn support for a pattern, oftentimes we simply can't recommend other yarns.

Yarn support exists to mutually benefit designers and dyers. Dyers provide yarn for a pattern sample, either for free or reduced cost, and in return the designers promote the yarn alongside their pattern. Ideally, people who like the pattern will then buy yarn from the dyer, and people who like the dyer's yarn will buy the pattern from the designer. In an industry with incredibly narrow profit margins, these relationships can really help give each small business a boost.

Sometimes yarn support is a casual agreement between two friends in the industry. Sometimes there is an actual, binding contract between both parties. Either way, a designer can't just take yarn support and then immediately start promoting another yarn—it's not ethical, and it hurts the dyer, who took a financial risk by providing the yarn support in the first place.

So say you've found a pattern that you absolutely HAVE to knit, but the suggested yarn is out of your budget. All is not lost! No matter what, you can ALWAYS substitute yarn, and it's not difficult to do! I personally have used the suggested yarn for a pattern only once or twice, and I can get pretty adventurous with my yarn substitutions, but here are some basics:
  • you want to be able to get gauge
  • you want to mimic the properties of the suggested yarn (CAVEAT: sometimes you might want to use a totally different fiber to get a whole new look, but this is beyond what I'm covering here)
You always have to swatch to be sure you're getting gauge, but you definitely want a yarn that is very close, if not identical, in weight to the suggested yarn. Now, words like "fingering," "DK," "worsted," and "super bulky" are close to meaningless. Sure, there are recommendations about what yarns fit in what category, but I've worked with plenty of yarns whose categorizations I firmly disagree with.

The real trick to yarn weight is wpi, or wraps per inch. To calculate wpi, take the yarn and wrap it around a ruler until you have filled one inch with no gaps in the yarn. The number of times you wrapped the yarn around the ruler is the wpi.

"But what if I don't know the wpi of the suggested yarn??" Well, that's why I have another trick for yarn weight. It's not quite as precise as wpi, but it gets you pretty dang close: yardage per gram. I've seen "worsted-weight" yarns with anywhere from 180 to 260 yards per 100g, and there's no way they'd be appropriate substitutions for one another. But if the suggested yarn is 220yds/100g, there's a lot of yarns that offer the same yardage for that weight.

When I'm substituting, I usually allow a grace of 10-20yds per 100g (so, if a suggested yarn is 200yds/100g, I might still substitute one that's 215yds/100g)—that difference doesn't affect the wpi too much. Now, some fibers weigh more than others, which is why this method is less accurate than wpi, but it works a lot more than it doesn't.

You can also try holding two or three strands of a thinner yarn together to get a thicker yarn! I've successfully held two fingering-weight strands together as a substitute for worsted weight. Again, the trick here is to swatch. If you want to knit a DK or worsted-weight sweater, but the yarns in your budget don't have the colors you want in those weights, check out fingering or lace-weight yarns to see if you can double up strands to create a one-of-a-kind substitute!

Of course, you always have to swatch your substitution yarn to make sure that 1. you get gauge, and 2. you like the fabric you're getting at that gauge. I can knit a sport-weight yarn at a worsted-weight gauge, but the fabric is going to be pretty flimsy, which we probably don't want. I could also knit a bulky-weight at a worsted-weight gauge, but that fabric would be so stiff and dense it'd have almost no drape. So. Always swatch.

(This is a do as I say, not as I do. If you want to be like me and skip swatching sometimes, you must be prepared to rip out a lot. If ripping out all the time sounds like no fun, get used to swatching.)

The second factor to consider is the properties of the fibers in the yarn. Alpaca behaves very differently from cotton, but also merino wool behaves very differently from, say, Peruvian wool. Superwash wool often (but not always) behaves differently than non-superwash. Eventually, the more you play around with different yarns and fibers the better you'll be at determining what works where. I love substituting fibers, and I've knit several sweaters that called for a sturdy wool yarn out of majority alpaca blends instead to get very different garments.

When you want a close substitution, you want as close a match to the individual fiber blend as possible. For example, if a suggested yarn is a blend of 80/20 wool/nylon, I'm going to look for yarns with 15-25% nylon to be a close match. If a yarn is 50/50 wool/alpaca, I definitely want at least 30% alpaca in my substitution yarn.

Now, some blends are going to cost more, even from more affordable retailers. If you want a merino/cashmere/silk blend, it's going to cost more than a 100% merino yarn. If you have the money for it, by all means, buy the blend! Yarn is not only a source material for finished items, it is entertainment and leisure, and we're allowed to spend money on it! But if you don't have that much money in your budget, you can absolutely substitute a 100% merino yarn, or a 10/90 cashmere/merino and get gorgeous results. Again, always swatch to be sure you are getting gauge with your substituted blend.

Now an extra tip: if you have questions about substituting yarns, ask your local yarn store! It’s literally their job to know different yarns and to be able to help you find what you’re looking for. They know a lot about all kinds of yarns, and even if they don’t carry the suggested yarn they’ll know what properties to help you look for based on the weight and fiber content. They can also tell you how different fibers and blends will behave in case you’re looking to use a completely different yarn than the one recommended.

My own LYS is an hour away, so I know this isn’t a convenient option for many people, but most of the time you can reach out via email—especially if you already have a relationship with your LYS owner. LYS owners are experts on yarn, and they want your project to be a success, so definitely take advantage of them if you can!

I sincerely hope these tips help you feel more confident about substituting yarns—and remember! You can always substitute with something completely different, it just might yield a slightly different finished object. The real trick is to always swatch so you know how your substitution yarn behaves, and that will help you predict how your final result will turn out!

**I did not mention acrylic yarns because I personally don't have much experience with them, but there are fantastic acrylic options at numerous price points, and they can act as substitutions for many fibers and blends—be adventurous and remember to swatch!

Monday, July 13, 2020

New Pattern: Changing Lanes


Changing Lanes is perfect for all kinds of yarns—solids, tonals, speckles—so you can pull out any of your favorite skeins to knit it up. The shawl is fully reversible and features alternating sections of single and triple rib, making it an easy and portable knit perfect for carting around in your bag or working on during your latest Netflix binge.


I really struggled with naming this shawl, but fortunately Instagram came through! I asked my followers and got a bunch of good ideas, and Changing Lanes won out!


Changing Lanes is currently available on Ravelry and on LoveCrafts!


Friday, July 10, 2020

Day 119


Well, it's been a while! Friday I had the day off, so I slept in and just had a lazy day at home, and Monday I had to brave my way into the city for a doctor's appointment. Not much has happened since I last chatted with you—I've been pretty bored, honestly. Nothing on tv interests me, my books aren't really interesting me, and I haven't even really felt much like knitting. I'm pretty sure it's just a quarantine slump, but man I wish it'd wrap up soon so I stop feeling so bored all the time.

The other day I pulled out my cuddle blanket, which I haven't worked on in ages—probably not since I was still living with my mum. It's been a pretty low-priority project for me, but I want the space that it's taking up in my yarn closet and it'll also count a lot towards my Stash Dash goal. It's a bit unwieldy to work on, as it's so big now, and the needles are much larger than what I usually use, so I can't really work on it for more than 30-60 minutes at a time, but it'll be great to have it finished, especially once summer's over and cuddle weather starts setting in.

I'm not really planning too much for this weekend. I have some admin work to catch up on, but I'm also hoping to take some time to just consciously be lazy in an attempt to kick this boredom streak. 

Monday, June 29, 2020

Day 108


First, just a quick announcement: if you are unable to access Ravelry and want to buy my patterns, they are all available on LoveCrafts. I love the community on Ravelry, and I sincerely hope that Ravelry fixes their accessibility issues soon so that everyone can keep participating.

This weekend was kind of a wash. I feel like that's happening a lot lately, but there's A Lot going on in the world right now, and I think that if I'm able to keep functioning at the level I am during the week then it's probably fair to take two days to eat chips and read romance novels and watch reality television.

I didn't get as much work done on my Sazerac as I'd hoped, and I'm just over halfway through one repeat on the front right now. I'd hoped to get a full repeat done, but c'est la vie. I'm still completely charmed by these cables, and this yarn feels like kittens, and I can't wait for it to get cold again. (It's supposed to get up close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit today and I am Done With It.)


Friday, June 26, 2020

Day 105


I'm low-key freaking out about the fact that I thought it'd be a good idea to sign up for the 10k-meter finish line for Stash Dash, how are all of you?

I do this thing where I make decisions without really thinking too much about them and then I spend way more time overthinking them and convincing myself I've made a mistake. Was signing up for the 10k a mistake? I joined Stash Dash late, just two weeks ago, and looking at what I'd already finished since May 22 I saw I was at 2000m already, so the 10k sounded reasonable. Now I'm sitting with two finished sleeves and an entire sweater body to go and realizing that it'll only bring me up to ~4500m once it's finished, and who knows how much time will be left in Stash Dash at that point??

Realistically, there's almost two months left. I'll probably be okay. And if I'm not, it's okay. It's a game, and no one is going to be hurt if I don't hit 10k. I know this.

But also there's a lot going on that's outside of my control and I'm a LITTLE BIT of a control freak (and by a little bit I mean A LOT) and this is something I have some control over and it makes sense that I'm clinging to it and putting pressure on myself to be in total control of this one thing. But also, there's a lot going on that's really stressful right now and I probably don't need to be putting this much extra pressure on myself.

Brains are weird.

Anyway, I finished two sleeves last night, I knit the first row of the front bottom ribbing, and I'm about a third of the way to a finished sweater, so overall I'm doing pretty good. I still have no reason to be working on a cashmere-blend sweater when it is NINETY DEGREES OUT beyond "it's for Stash Dash," but I am a free knitter and I answer to no one. 

Monday, June 22, 2020

Day 101


Thank you everyone, for your kind words and your support as I prepare to start grad school! It really means a lot that I have such a wonderful, supportive community here.

This weekend was pretty busy for me, but it was all good stuff! I did some planning for my design work and finished my ribbed shawl sample, and then I spent several hours yesterday watching reality tv and working on my Sazerac. This is the third time I've tried knitting this yarn, and I think this is the winning pattern. This is definitely not the time of year to be thinking about a wool/cashmere cabled pullover, but I decided to jump in and do Stash Dash this year, and I already had half the sleeves done on this. I'm knitting the sleeves two-at-a-time, which means when they're finished I'll already be a third of the way through the sweater, and sleeve island will be behind me.

I have another sweater I'm working on intermittently—it's a design sample that's been on hold for a while now while I figured out some motif placement on the fronts, but I'm ready to start work on it again. I'm hoping to have it finished and the pattern written before my fall classes start, but we'll see how it goes. I'm pretty confident that the biggest stumbling block is now behind me, but you can never know for sure until it's finished! 

Friday, June 19, 2020

Something New

Hi Kittens. I've been wanting to share this with you for a while now, and I'm so excited.

In two months I'll be starting grad school for my Master's in Library and Information Science!

I've been wanting to get my master's since I was still in undergrad, but I haven't been able to make it happen until now. I'll still be working full-time at the library, and I'll be taking online classes. So. I'm going to be very, very busy.

I'm not planning on stopping blogging or designing. They're both very important to me. Obviously, I'll have less knitting time, and I may not get new patterns finished with the frequency I have the past few years, but I have some great projects in my design notebook that I'm really looking forward to working on.

This is a really big step for me, and a big change, and while I am nervous about it, I'm mostly very excited. I've been working on the application/decision/enrollment process since December, and it feels so weird to know I only have a couple months left before classes actually start.

It's definitely going to be a big adjustment—my boss is very supportive of me, and is happy to flex my work schedule around my classes, but also we're still in the middle of a pandemic, and while I'm working from home now, none of us really know for how long that's going to be an option. 2020 doesn't really feel like the most auspicious year to start grad school, but I've been waiting to get on this train for so long that I'm not going to jump off now! 

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

New Pattern: Rockport Tank


Some of my favorite days growing up were visits to port towns along the New England coast. I spent several happy weekends at my friend’s home in Rockport. In the off season we’d watch the boats, dive into the frigid ocean, play on the docks, help the neighbors dig for clams—everything we couldn’t do in my own small town further inland.


In summer there was more fun to be had—tourist watching, wandering through shops, playing on the beach, cooking out, and eating our weight in ice cream and salt water taffy. The Rockport Tank is perfect for those kinds of summertime adventures.


The Rockport Tank is worked in one piece from the bottom up. The bottom edge features a twisted rib and lace detail, and the tank is worked in the round to the underarms. The upper front and back are finished flat, then topped off with i-cord straps.


Lace is both charted and written out.

Sizes: 32 (36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 68)in/81.5 (91.5, 101.5, 112, 122, 132, 142, 152.5, 162.5, 172.5)cm at bust, to be worn with 0-2in/0-5cm positive ease

Yarn: 630 (710, 790, 870, 945, 1025, 1185, 1260, 1340)yds/576 (650, 722, 795, 864, 937, 1010, 1084, 1152, 1225)m sport-weight yarn (Suggested: LoftyFiber Euroflax Sport Weight, 100g/270yds, “Navy”)


Sample is shown in size 48in/122cm on model who is 5’4” tall and has a 46in/117cm bust

Pattern is now available on Ravelry, and is 20% off with code SALTWATER through Saturday, June 20th! 


Monday, June 15, 2020

Day Ninety-Four


Y'all, I've been hit hard by the organizing bug. Over the weekend I went through my fabric stash and reorganized everything—I got rid of some stuff I didn't like and I pulled out three projects worth of fabric to have at the ready when I feel like sitting on my kitchen floor and tracing patterns.

I also went through my bookshelves and pulled a lot of stuff to sell to the used bookstore in the city. Like. A lot. (Don't worry, my shelves are still pretty dang full.)

I love my stuff, and I love having lots of stuff around me, but every so often I feel the need to just blaze through and get rid of some of it. Shed the old, prepare for the new. Remove the things that aren't really serving me anymore and making space for things that I will want and love.

Because I was so busy organizing this weekend, I didn't get much knitting done—maybe four to eight rows on my ribbed shawl. That's fine; I usually get plenty of knitting done during the week. I do tend to like to get a bunch of cooking and/or baking done during the weekend, but that didn't happen either. Again, that's fine. I have butter softening and ready on my counter whenever I find a chance to throw a cake together (or cookie bars; man have I been craving cookie bars).

As always, keep washing your hands and wearing a mask. Covid numbers are not going down, and we need to protect each other. If you're protesting, thank you. Stay hydrated and keep your emergency contacts updated. If you're not protesting, keep donating to bail funds and medics and keep calling your officials and representatives. Take care of yourselves, kittens. I love you all. 

Friday, June 12, 2020

13 Weeks

It's hard to believe I've been home for thirteen weeks. I'm doing weekly grocery shops, and I've gone to a few small local businesses, but cases are starting to ramp up and we're entering our first peak here, so I'm back down to weekly grocery shops only. I haven't seen new projections, but ones from April showed us hitting our peak around the end of June. I'll be working from home for sure for another eight weeks, and then we'll see.

If you're protesting, keep up the good work. Thank you so much for what you're doing. If you're not protesting, please keep supporting protesters—donate to bail funds and protest medics and keep calling your local representatives and officials. Black lives matter, and we need to end police brutality, over-policing, and mass incarceration.

On to the knitting: my tank top sample is done and the pattern is with my tech editor. I'm hoping to get photos taken either today or over the weekend, and I'm really pleased with how it came out. My current projects are two shawl samples, including this ribbed shawl I started a while back. I'm past the halfway point on it now, and I'm really pleased with how it's knitting up. It's definitely not a summery shawl, but as much as summer takes up a lot of my mental space (I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it here, but I have summertime seasonal affective disorder, which lowkey sucks) the reality is winter here lasts six months, easily, so it will be nice to have this waiting in a few months when temperatures start to dip again.


Monday, June 8, 2020

Numbers on Day Eighty-Seven

1. I spent pretty much all weekend working on the pattern for my new tank only to realize that I'd buggered up the entire upper body and also made a glaring error. I swore a lot, I cried a bit, and I think I got all the math fixed. I'm in the process of ripping back to before the underarm bindoff now, send coffee.

2. My county has more than doubled it's covid cases since last Thursday. We'd been pretty untouched for a long time, and we hadn't had any new cases in two weeks when a bunch more started being recorded on Friday. We went from fifteen cases to thirty-two in just three days, and we have cases tied to at least three local businesses. We've known from projections that South Dakota wouldn't hit its first covid peak until mid to late June, and it's really weird watching it finally happen.

3. If you're protesting, thank you. Please remember to take care of yourself. If you're not protesting, check in with protesters, donate to a bail fund or protest medics, check in to see what support your local protesters need, and keep contacting your local and state officials.

4. It was stupid hot here yesterday and it's going to be stupid hot again today. I hates it. Tonight we're supposed to get some thunderstorms and tomorrow and the rest of the week will be cooler. I can't wait.

I think that's it for today. Stay hydrated, kittens. I love you all.

Friday, June 5, 2020

Day Eighty-Four


Most of this week was a loss. I'd been feeling a depressive episode coming on for a couple weeks, and I finally tipped over sometime on Monday. Fortunately I was pretty well prepared, and I started feeling better yesterday afternoon. I'm sure there might be some dips over the next few days, but I'm cautiously optimistic that I'm coming out of it. 

I haven't really shared my tank sample since I cast it on, and it's almost finished! There's a few rows of the upper back left and then straps, and I'm hoping to finish writing the pattern this weekend. I'm not sure yet which project will take this one's place—it's been my main project since I finished the unicorn sweater, and I don't really know if I have another "almost-mindless" project to take it's place. I'm sure I'll figure it out, though.

If you're protesting, mask up and drink lots of water. If you're not protesting, check in with protesters, donate to a bail fund and/or protest medics, and contact your representatives. Love you all. 

Monday, June 1, 2020

Day Eighty

Thanks for all the love for my unicorn sweater! I'm really, really in love with it, and I'm so glad that it's bringing a smile to you all as well. This weekend was pretty quiet for me: a few naps, lots of reading, and some podcasts and knitting. 

Please, if you haven't yet, donate to your city's bail fund, or one of the organizations I've listed below, or another organization in your community helping protesters and defending Black lives and working to end police brutality:
Saturday night my two best friends from college and I had a virtual Christmas Party. We've been rewatching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries together over the phone, and earlier last week we finished season two. We'd hoped to get through the Christmas in July episode that night, but decided we were too tired, and I threw out the idea of a party. We each had hot chocolate and some decorations, and I even found a box of candy canes I'd hidden in the back of my cupboard in December, and it really was the thing to lift our spirits for a few hours.

Last week I also got photos of my My Little Secret Crop! I knit this a bit longer than the pattern called for, and I'm very happy with it. It's too hot to wear wool now, even as a crop top, but I'm definitely looking forward to wearing it more this fall! 


Ravelry Page: My Little Secret Crop
Pattern: My Little Secret Crop by Jessie Maed Designs
Yarn: Knit Picks Hawthorne Sport Multi, "Happy Valley"

Friday, May 29, 2020

UNICORN SWEATER!

HI FRIENDS, I FINISHED MY UNICORN SWEATER!


This is easily one of my favorite things I've ever made. I love it. It came out exactly how I hoped it would, the colors are perfect, I can't get over it. I love it.

I started knitting this in October 2018, but I first had the idea some time before that. I was a supporter of the Great Northern Kickstarter, and when the Lonely Souls pattern was released I soon realized that it had a lot of potential. The pattern is great as written, but for my own tastes I decided to change all the moss stitch to 1x1 ribbing, and I eliminated the clever little overlaps at the hem and sleeve cuffs.


I added a bit of length to the body (I'm not sure how much, I kind of just eyeballed it) and I added two inches to the sleeves. I love shortened sleeves, but I prefer them to hit below my elbow. I also knew I wanted to eliminate the keyhole back—it's super cute, and I love the way Teresa designed it, but having just a small spot on my back where I can feel the breeze drives me crazy. I waffled a bit on how I wanted to do the yoke—I initially thought of knitting the yoke in the round and doing the unicorns in duplicate stitch afterwards, but at the last minute I decided to knit the yoke flat as written and use intarsia. I decided that duplicate stitch would feel too thick in those spots, and I was worried at this gauge (it's not super loose, but it's definitely not dense) that the speckled yoke might show through the duplicate stitch.


Obviously, I changed the horse chart from the pattern to a unicorn. That was pretty easy, and I typed up my new chart in excel and printed it out alongside the pattern instructions. I mirrored the instructions for the second unicorn, and I also changed the placement, moving each chart ten stitches towards the center, so the unicorns would be more on my chest than hiding in my armpit. I don't think I would have changed their placement if my bust was significantly smaller, but knowing how far out my bosom protrudes, there was a real chance that you'd only be able to see the unicorns from the side if I'd left it as written!


I closed up the back of the yoke with mattress stitch before knitting the neckline ribbing. I did shorten the yoke a bit—as written, there should have been another inch or two and a fourth row of decreases, but at some point my stitch count became very off (????), and I was running out of the speckled yarn, so I tried on the sweater, decided exactly how many decreases I wanted before the neckline (not as many as written, because of the stitch count problem), and did the ribbing. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to a deeper yoke (I love a deep, roomy yoke!), but I'm really happy with how the yoke came out. It fits well, and the silhouette works perfectly with my plan for the sweater.


As far as my name for the project on Ravelry, well, the sweater has unicorns, and they're not lonely souls, because they're right there with their friend. I know, I'm adorable.

Ravelry Page: Not-So-Lonely Unicorns
Pattern: Lonely Souls by Teresa Gregorio
Yarn: Knit Picks Hawthorne Fingering, "Turkish Delight" and "Andromeda Speckle"


Friday, May 22, 2020

Day Seventy


I can't believe it's been ten weeks! The pandemic has really changed a lot very quickly, and it's hard to comprehend that I've been isolating in my apartment for so long.

Anyway. Let's talk knitting! I finished the sleeves for my unicorn sweater and got them attached to the body, and I'm currently ten rows into the 26-row intarsia chart. I very rarely knit yoke sweaters from the bottom-up, and that first inch after attaching the sleeves is so hard! I'd love to get the intarsia finished this weekend so I can zip through the yoke decreases and get started on finishing, but it took over five hours to knit the first twelve rounds of the yoke (two rounds in the MC followed by ten rows of intarsia), so we'll see how I do.

I went back and forth up until about three minutes before I started the yoke about whether I wanted to knit the yoke flat and do the colorwork in intarsia, as written, or if I wanted to knit it in the round and duplicate stitch my unicorns on later. Obviously, I decided to go with intarsia, and now I have a confusing, tangled mess to deal with. It'll all be worth it, though.

I'll go more into details about mods when the sweater is finished, but it's pretty heavily modified, just for my own preferences. It's made following some parts of the pattern challenging, as I have to remember what I've changed and how it affects the instructions, but that's all my own fault for making half-assed notes on the pattern (and using water-soluble ink and then spilling beverages on it, so quite a few of my notes are now just a blob...).

As always, I love you. You are each very special to me, and the world is better for you being in it.