My creative process has peculiar priorities.

I've been working on making a Cunning Hat in my spare time. I found this very Costumer-OCD analysis of the Hat. And lots of other resources, including this knitting pattern and this more-like-a-recipe one both of which I probably should have also used as additional references.

I decided to use several balls of Knitpicks Palette I had in the yarn hoard and multi-strand it. So far so good. I elected to MAKE a set of size 10.5 circulars because I hate waiting, I know how to make circs, and I despise the cables on all but a couple kinds of circs. My favorite cables are on my homemade needles, anyway. And, see? They're even pretty!

The awful reality of this is that I can't, cannot, just CAN NOT, seem to do anything the easy way. I apparently must HACK EVERYTHING, especially if it has an existing, perfectly good counterpart or decent, easy instructions.

After all that, I worked up one version of the hat, all except the pompon, found it too bright, tea-dyed it, found it lacking, and frogged it. No photos.

I had to small-batch overdye my yarn because it Wasn't Quite Right. *rolls eyes at self*

Got all he yarn dyed to my satisfaction, prepped it into groups of three strands, balled up each color set prestranded (Orange-ish, yellow-ish, rusty red-ish), and finally knitted it up, AGAIN. I even made the ridiculous pompon.


It looks pretty good. But, wait for it:

I didn't fit the thing to Chris's head when I was knitting, and discovered that it's too small. By about, perhaps five stitches in every direction. DER. No photos. He looked even more ridiculous in it than he was supposed to.

I get to start over.

Good thing it knits up fast. Sigh. And good thing it's easy to frog.

OH HAI YARN DIET and some actual knitting

I may not have been knitting much at all for months and months (it's been impossible around Mr GiantBaby), but I've continued to buy yarn, slowly, in little bits and bobs. This combination of factors is not good, and after the last infusion of stuff into my stash, I called Yarn Diet until I get some of my many wips and planned projects out of the way. To help with that, I picked up a set of nickel DPNs from Knitpicks during my last bout of frustration induced retail therapy. I thought, maybe, if I spoiled myself with some new tools, I might be more likely to use my ever-multiplying stash of materials.

In aid of this lofty goal, I picked some rescued yarn out of my stash and decided to make my mom's Christmas present, which would be a circular lace shawl. If it's on one needle, in a circle, it'll be harder for the little guy to rip it our of my hands. That's the theory anyway.

I decided to use the 1940's lace tablecloth pattern from knitting-and.com - so far I've gotten through row 57, in two or three after-the-kids-go-to-bed sessions. Including a night in which MrGB did no such thing, and I discovered that he is less interested in pretending to be a cat in relation to my yarn and more interested in trying to sit on my shoulder while turning my work lamp on and off. Different? yes. Better? Maybe.

I'll let you know if I develop any exciting injuries this time. In any case, I've come back to being able to knit and things are going well. I may even get to put up a FO post some time. Perhaps I'll knit a pig with wings or a flaming snowball to commemorate the occasion.

Mindless knitting: a 3x3 rib scarf recipe

I've noticed that my Not A Gryffindor Scarf on Ravelry is marked "pattern not yet published." There's a reason for that. It's not a very interesting pattern, more of a recipe, or a knitting meditation.

Use yarn appropriate to the needle size. Swatch if you are unsure.

Cast on a number of stitches evenly divisible by three. Ideally, the number is also divisible by two, because that means you just reverse the knitting and go. Unless you choose to do something exotic, like stripes, it's a pretty mindless knit.

Knit 3, purl 3, to end of row.
Turn.
Knit all knit stitches and purl all purl stitches, to end of row.
Turn.
Continue to desired length or end of yarn, whichever comes first.
Bind off.

Garnish however you like.

Serves 1.

The Not a Gryffindor Scarf notes are as follows:
*Knitpicks Pallette in Yellow and Red (discontinued colors - use Semolina and Pimento for close match)
*Size 4 needles

As above, except change color with russian join every seven rows.

Really, it's knitting related!

Today, I go in to the Naval Hospital to go through the monthly patient orientation for tubal ligation patients. As you can imagine, I'm thrilled I'm on the list. I've been wanting a tubal since the birth of my second child, most recently mentioned here as Giant Baby of yarn destroying (and knitting unraveling) fame. I love my kids, but I know when I'm outnumbered, and I swear that it's only a matter of time before you read about them duct taping me to the wall and running off in my car.

But - my need-to-fidget, ADD body is looking toward an hour or two of boring presentations and Q&A with, well, dread. How will I hold still? Will the medical staff get angry that I'm so fidgety? How many other women will be there (well, you know, men just don't have this procedure)?

So I'll be bringing my knitting/small fidgety projects bag, which is this old shoulder-tote bookbag I got at Bookpeople in Austin when I lived there. I actually have two, but one is beige instead of lavendar, and it's missing. I'll probably have Bobby and the Scarf (which is now over 2 feet long! I know I've mentioned somewhere that I'm positively the slowest knitter ever) stuffed in there, with those charts and some graph paper , and a pencil, and maybe some spare yarn and needles. That's a lot of stuff, and my small projects are all in these little repurposed vinyl bags (ugly, but practical).

Also, I finally squeezed the money out of my budget to buy a Monkey Bag, which I await with barely contained greed. Too bad I have to wait, but I can take consolation from the fact that it'll go with me on procedure day.

Yarn and the Psychology of Avoidance

I need a swift. My avoidance has reached epic, ridiculous levels. Let us start at the beginning, shall we?

I found this neat resource last night, which is theoretically not knitting related, but has charted patterns of medieval and renaissance decorative motifs. (no, keep reading, we'll get to the bit about the swift) In any case, the simpler 2 and 3 color patterns would be great for simple texture patterning, how complicated the method depending on your degree of commitment or boredom. I'm inspired by this page especially.

I want to put that twining leaf pattern around the hem of a tunic sweater or put the others in a sampler-like series of stripes on a nice long winter scarf. Or maybe even work one or more as a lace motif in some lovely long stockings...

Anyway, I found the perfect yarn in my stash for starting a nice scarf (not enough to make a sweater, and I want to spend some time charting for the lace stockings, really), but there's this catch. It's attractively skeined. I don't have a swift. I do have a very athletic and curious 14 month old. He's also tall, as in he's in the 98th percentile for height for his age.

He is irresistibly attracted to me when I am apparently tied up in yarn, and now he's so big, I can't hide from him on the couch anymore. It makes knitting hard, even when I'm dealing with neatly wound center-pull balls hidden inside a bag, set on the inaccessible table behind the couch. I've figured out how to knit with my arms over my head, but it seems to be leading to some kind of tendinitis ... and a lot of errors.

Okay, back to why I need a swift.

Before now, I've faked it using chairs or my knees or my husband. A swift seemed like a luxury item, an unnecessary but highly desirable convenience. Now - I find myself actively avoiding using perfectly lovely yarn simply because it's in a skein and I'd have to fight Giant Baby every step of the way to get it wound.

That's what I caught myself doing last night. I picked out a completely inappropriate yarn for my swatch because it was already wound into a ball. I even cast on for it, knit a few rows and started the pattern before I realized that I had made this avoidance so habitual that I didn't see my error before I wasted lots of precious knitting time.

Time to at least attempt to make a swift. I'm crafty, I have power tools, and I can certainly cut up a few sicks and dowels to make a decent homebuilt swift. I even have the DIY yardstick swift how-to from the Fall 2000 Spin-Off.

Of course, now I just have to find someone to watch Mr Giant Baby while I work on it.

I Can Has Ravelry!!!!

I got my invite ... yesterday? Perhaps it was Monday. It's all a blur.

OMGWTFBBQ. It's great, even with the bugs and incompleteness. I'm trying to figure out how to best help with the live beta development. It was so worth waiting 3 months for (I signed up in early May or late April, I'm not sure which.), and I love it. I have only entered a few stash yarns, a few of the most interesting WIPS and FO's, and spent most of my time just browsing around and using the features. Also, it complements my other fiber-focused online stuff, instead of replacing it.

I have to say that I love having what amounts to a customized newsfeed of my favorite bloggers and online fiber-freinds, the forums are fantastic (only what you actually scroll past gets marked read, wow!), and the patterns, and the yarn, and the...

(cut for interlude of unintelligible enthusiastic blithering)

Okay, if you have not yet signed up, go ahead and do it. It's great, and I can't wait to see it in a non-beta version.

Did I mention it's GREAT? Yeah, like the cereal. I could eat it up.

Making stuff and making myself do stuff

Well, I was carping about low traffic on one of my blogs (the art blog) over on Knittyboard, and I got some positive feedback and advice that had not occurred to me before, and I realized that I post things about crft elsewhere without updating here. SO I'm updating here. I'll try to keep to an "every Wednesday or more often" schedule.

Now to the making stuff part - actually unmaking stuff. I have these two sweaters that I got from the "unsellable to due to defects" box at our church rummage, and I've been frogging them. I have several balls of lovely laceweight soft tan yarn (hmm, a lace shawl for me?) and several balls of a rich, warm coffee brown almost sock weight.

Last night I skeined up two balls of the tan laceweight, and washed it in HOTHOT water (the damage was moth holes), and it's relaxed into a lovely smooth yarn with a little bit of spring in it. Once it dries, I'm balling it up to get started on that shawl for me.

No idea what I'll make with the coffee-color yarn, but the wee bit I test washed already has a nice soft hand.

What got me started on finally frogging and recycling the sweaters (I've had them for over a year now) was sucking it up and rescuing the formerly lovely skein of cobweb weight chocolate brown romney handspun singles (mine, too, which makes what follows so much worse) that my dog ate. I untangled it, wound it into three small balls (she CHEWED the skein, how could she? Well, she's a DOG, and I should have locked my stash in a safe), and took another small skein of cobweb weight singles (this was a lovely purple, which I'd dyed myself ages ago), balled it up, and plied them up together into a nice sock weight 3-ply.

Not enough for a sock, of course, because they were sample skeins I'd done, but enough for an earband or something like that. Maybe I can pair it with the coffee-colored recycled yarn for something bigger...