Stash Sunday

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Rachel and I wander around a lot, and as part of that, we search out local yarn shops, or what knitters like to call LYS\’s. During Rachel\’s last trip here, we visited The Knitting Pot in Elmhurst, Illinois. Rachel fell in love with some lovely overdye purple yarn, but there was only one skein of it. It\’s been sitting on my idea board for the last two months while I try and figure out what to make with it.

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I like Cascade yarns. This is a nice, chunky yarn that\’s soft and has a nice hand. This colorway is interesting because it\’s so understated, all plums and grey. It\’s a lot darker than it seems in these pictures.

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Here\’s a shot of the back of the yarn band. The colorway on the left tells you what the manufacturer\’s color it is. The lot number on the right tells you which batch it was dyed with, so that if you\’re using more than one skein, you can make sure all the pieces are the same lot number.

Here\’s the tough part:

I don\’t know what to make with it.

So, here are my ideas:

A stuffed elephant/truffle. (A truffle is an imaginary creature that Rachel and I invented for our Persis series; it\’s a cross between a cocker spaniel and an aardvark.)
A lace table runner.
This is currently my favorite: an Amazeball. Here\’s my idea: make a large ball, stuffed and cushie. Send it to a friend when they\’ve done something amazing. They get to hang onto it, kind of like a trophy, until they feel like it\’s time to pass the award on to the next person. Ooh! As I\’m typing this, maybe include a pocket, and each person giving the award can write a note to put in the Amazeball to pass it along to the next person.
A set of tree ornaments.
Use it in a woven piece where I wind on a continuous warp, and use this as one of the weft pieces.

What about you, Dear Reader? What would you make with it?

January 10, 2016

Saturday Stashbusting

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I\’m working on busting my ginormous stash. In order to do that, I need to work on the projects I started.

The Stash List

Block the Jewel Scarf
My hat
The red cable bag
Line the Uglii Bag
Bind off the Uglii Afghan; decide if I’m adding to it
Buttons to the red blouse

This was originally a list of 5 things, but I realized I need to block the Jewel Scarf too, and that\’s something I can do on Sunday.

Oh, and here\’s Boria keeping the Uglii Afghan warm for me. I know, I featured him a couple days ago, but it makes me laugh so I figured I\’d share again.

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What about you, Dear Reader? What\’s in YOUR stash?

January 9, 2016

Thoughtful Thursday – 3D and Writing

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No epiphanies this week. Just a hat. I decided to try making one with lace, rather than straight ribbed stitches, and like how it\’s coming out so far.

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Boria and Kolya both keep sleeping on my Uglii Chair Afghan, which is annoying. Kolya wants to chew the ends of my knitting needles.

I think I\’ll make him into a hat.

January 7, 2016

Tuesday Tips – Sheet Protectors

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I know those really neat fabric roll-ups are a cool way to store needles and hooks. But until I can afford one, or make one for myself, what I\’ve been doing is using sheet protectors and a large binder. I organized the needles by size, and put the crochet hooks in the back one (which you could reverse, if your primary craft is crochet).

I keep my circulars in a zipper pouch organized by needle size; I splurged one year and got a set with detachable needles. I highly recommend this, if you can swing it, because it makes sorting out the circular needle mess so much easier. I really like KnitPicks needles for their smooth joins.

What about you, Dear Reader? Got any favorite storage tips?

January 5, 2016

Make Something Monday – The Jewel Scarf

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The Jewel Scarf is done. It\’s nice and soft. I\’m not sure what I\’m going to work on next; maybe a top-down sweater. For now, here are some more views:

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I like long scarves, but I think this will fit well on the person for whom I designed it.
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It actually drapes well, which is nice. I haven\’t blocked it yet; this is just off the needles. But I like the flow of the fabric even without blocking.

What about you, Dear Reader? What are you making?

January 4, 2016

Stash Sunday

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Now that I\’ve finished the Jewel Scarf, I\’m at a loss for what to make next. I want to do a top-down sweater, but I don\’t feel up to something new and complicated. I have a bunch of yarn left over from the Bryce Canyon Shawl, and I don\’t like the hat I made with the leftovers. I decided to take another shot and make another hat.

Top-down hats are easier than they seem. The nice thing about making them is that you can try it on halfway through and make sure it works how you want it to:

Cast on 8 stitches; join to work in the round.
Increase in each stitch; 16 total.
Work 1 round even.
Increase 8 stitches in next round.
Work 1 round even.
Repeat last two rows until it\’s round enough to cover the crown of your head.
Work straight for as long as you want it, down to the ears or longer, if you want a foldable brim.
Then bind off and you\’re done.

I like Elizabeth Zimmerman\’s sewing needle bind off best, because it\’s a nice edge, and isn\’t tight or rigid.

Leave a long end of yarn and thread it in a blunt sewing needle.
Insert the needle into the next 2 stitches as if to purl and pull through, leaving the stitches on your knitting needle.
Insert the needle into the first stitch as if to knit and pull the stitch off the knitting needle.
Repeat these steps across the end of the row.

What about you, Dear Reader? What\’s in your stash?

January 3, 2016

Saturday Stashbusting

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It\’s 2016. A new year, right? I saw something on Facebook the other day that made me laugh. It was a meme about new years, where we focus on what we didn\’t accomplish in 2015, and wanted to do in 2014, etc. I do want to work on my stash busting, but I know better than to say \”I will bust all my stash this year.\” I did that once.

Once.

So this year, I\’ll focus on playing. The shot, above, is of my jewel scarf that I\’m making for Rachel. I\’d say it\’s about 60% done. Boria is sound asleep next to my spot on the couch, with the Ohio State afghan my mother crocheted.

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My craft shelves. I installed them this year and like them a lot better than what I was using. This has a whole bunch of projects to play with. My biggest challenge is to work on making sweaters.

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This holds a number of overflow supplies, including my ivory yarn that I want to use as my first top-down sweater practice yarn. I tried one with some colored yarn, (purple heather and pale pink), but it was too challenging to work with the color design and the new technique at the same time.

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This is my list of stash containers that live under my bed. I had an idea, at one point, to go through the list and make stuff one by one. That\’s where things imploded, because I got too overwhelmed by the project. Instead, this year, I\’m just going to focus on one thing at a time.

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This is my mess. I\’m working on reorganizing my filing system. This is actually more organized than it looks, because the piles are specific things, but they still don\’t belong on the table. I need to get them into the filing cabinets.

How come I can\’t use a magic wand like Hermione?

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A little more close-up of the scarf, where you can see the pattern of the yarn as it interacts with the lace stitches. I can\’t wait to finish it and see how it blocks out.

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This is my latch hook rug frame, with the start of the peacock/firebird rug on it. This is what I got away from this year, because I kept getting intimidated by how much I had left. This year, I want to try applying what I learned in NaNoWriMo – meaning, do thirty minutes at a shot, make small daily goals rather than big giant ones.

We\’ll see.

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And this is the cabinet I bought to organize our sewing supplies. Obviously, I haven\’t PUT the stuff in the cabinet yet, but hey. Once step at a time.

That\’s my motto for this year: one step at a time.

What about you, Dear Reader? What projects are on your list?

January 2, 2016

Friday Funnies – Happy New Year!

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January 1, 2016

Thoughtful Thursday – 3D and Writing

$\"20150913_0026\"$ Coyote poses in front of my mobile craft dalek, three drawers and a surface for dreams.

It\’s strange. As I look back on 2015, I wrote less fiction than I usually do, despite putting out several books and writing a short story for a podcast. I\’ve also knit a lot less than I\’m used to, though I\’ve finished more than I think I have when I take time to talley.

The nature of 3-D creation, things like making soap, knitting, and sewing, to name a few, is that they all operate in the real world, the three-dimensional space in which we physically live. To an anorexic, this physical space thing is puzzling. By and large, we live in our minds, and coming down out of the mind into realspace can be scary and unfamiliar.

Oddly enough, my three-dimensional experimentation this last month and a half has been at the gym, rather than my crafts. In going to the gym everyday except holidays, I\’ve learned a number of things. I already knew that \”showing up on the page\” is the way to accumulate words, it never occurred to me to apply it to the gym and getting fit. Now that I\’ve made the connection, it seems obvious – I mean, if \”showing up at the barre\” works for dancers, or \”showing up at easel\” for painters, why wouldn\’t it work for fitness? I\’ve been working to apply the same regularity that I have with morning pages to my gym-going. It\’s been working, if a lot less spectacularly than I thought it would have to be.

I suppose that\’s the lesson, in many ways: reality is a lot less spectacular than the echo chambers of social media and drama would have us believe. The echo chamber wants us to be up in arms, heartbeats pounding, as we worry about the next crisis in some other place over which we have no control and no actual connection. We need to remember that we are physical bodies, not just mental, and that as such we have our own realities. The echo chamber is not reality. On a good day, it\’s a reflection of reality; most of the time, it\’s simply a tool of drama llamas.

So, while my thoughtful Thursday is less about crafts and writing, it\’s still about three-dimensional space and writing. They relate to each other more profoundly than we realize.

What about you, Dear Reader? How do you experience your three-dimensional space today?

December 31, 2015

Work In Progress Wednesday

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I\’ve been coloring a lot this week. I find it relaxing. These are more from the Dover Stained Glass Coloring Books that I talked about earlier in the week. I love the one on the right page, top left, with the two men. Who knew the Celts were into m/m romance? ~grin~

What are you working on, Dear Reader?

December 30, 2015

Tuesday Tips – How To Avoid Smudges When Coloring

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As much as I like the color of water color pens, they are still wet when you\’re using them. They don\’t dry quickly and this can lead to smudges – from ink that gets on your hands while you\’re coloring, or from ink that gets on whatever surface you\’re coloring on.

Here\’s what I\’ve learned works for me: I use a clean sheet of paper when I\’m coloring. If I leave the pattern in the coloring book, then I use two sheets, one on each side of the design. If I remove the pattern piece from the book, then I use one sheet under my coloring, then I rest my hand on the other one so that I don\’t accidentally transfer color with the heel of my hand.

The only thing you want to be careful of, is if you have a particularly wet pen, you don\’t want it to transfer from your blotter sheet to the design.

What about you, Dear Reader? What tips for coloring do you like to use?

December 29, 2015

Make Something Monday – Coloring

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Okay, ever since I started knitting, I\’ve discovered that I\’m hip. Not because I\’m, like, hip, or something; but because, apparently, what I\’m into is the new black. My theory is, it\’s all us X-Geners putting our collective spending power together and making stuff popular because we want to buy it. Take coloring books, for instance. I\’ve adored coloring books for years. My two favorites are the Dover line of Stained Glass Coloring Books and mandala coloring books. The latter were hard to find up until this holiday season when, apparently, booksellers started listening to me and my X-Gener pals and poof – lots of options.

Just in time for me to be on a budget, of course. 🙂

But I figured I\’d share some of what I\’ve been up to, particularly because it dovetails nicely with the whole yoga-meditate-getinthemoment-beinthebody vibe that I\’ve got going lately.

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This one is held up against my monitor so you can see it by the glow of the light. That\’s why I like these, because they are translucent. One project I\’d like to do at some point is make a Japanese-style paper lantern using these colored designs.

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Here\’s the back of the book so you can read a little more about it. (If you click on the image, it will jump you to the Amazon page if you\’re interested in shopping.)

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I figured a discussion of pens is warranted, especially since there\’s such an interest in adult coloring books now. I\’m a pen snob. This will not surprise any of you who have been reading me a while, but I say it because I\’m extraordinarily picky about what pens I like to use. Pentel pens are, by far, my favorite for luminosity and lasting power of the pens themselves. I know there are more expensive and higher quality pens (I made the mistake of telling a graphic artist friend of my love affair with Pentel and got an ear-full). But here\’s why I like these: I\’ve owned this specific set for OVER 20 years. No, that\’s not a typo. The red\’s a little dry now, and so is one of the greys, but by and large it\’s still working for what I need it to do – color coloring books so I can relax. I don\’t use them for serious Art with a capital A. (Well, that\’s not true – I have used them for that; my point is, I\’m not saying these are the best pens out there, just that they\’re my favorite).

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Here\’s the inside of the set; I like this wallet type. I saw online that there\’s a version in a rectangular case, but this one allows me to put them in the order I want them in and they stay organized. They do sell smaller sets, if you don\’t want to fork over the money for all 36; I used a smaller set for years too. They really seem to last. I\’ve put a hyperlink to Amazon in the image so if you click on it, it\’ll jump you to the shopping page.

Tell me, Dear Reader, what are your favorite coloring books and tools? Pens? Pencils? I\’d love to know.

(I think I\’ve fixed the comment problems, but holler if not; email is a.catherine.noon AT gmail.)

December 28, 2015

Category: The Studio