I'm a little late, but I finally posted my entry for Iron Craft Challenge 4. Challenge 4 was to make a coffee cozy, which is great as a knitter. My husband wanted to know why I wasn't posting one of the dozen or more coffee cozies I've made in the past two months, but the point of the challenge is to do something new. To stretch one's boundaries.
I love double knitting. I might not be the master artist of Alasdair or Elli Stubenrauch, but I have done double knitting before. I started a few years ago with the Hoover Blanket, which is one of the simplest examples of Double Knitting. I have also designed and knit (well started) a scarf and a coffee cozy with a random squiggle design I charted out.
One of the questions for double knitting is how to knit something that has a side. Alasdair has done a lot of excellent work doing two pattern double knitting, where the inside and outside patterns do not necessarily relate. This is excellent for those who want to double knit words. Almost all letters have a facing. Doing it backwards is still readable, but odd looking.
I wanted to try my own hand at reversible double knitting, but I didn't have time to hand draw my own image for a chart.
Instead, I found this chart for filet crochet and converted it to a reversible double knitting chart. I did that early Monday morning, not thinking over the weekend that my life would be a lot easier if I started more than 2 days before the challenge post date. I started knitting shortly afterwards.
Om is double knit in sock weight yarn, but my two sock weights were something (probably Baby Ull) that I hand dyed more than 2 years ago and left over MadTosh from the last sock I finished. My finished product would look better overall if the two fingering weights were a little closer to the same weight. The MadTosh was a much lighter yarn than the blue.
I loved this project, and I loved my final coffee cuff, but double knitting especially in fingering weight yarn is slow. I made the mistake of calculating how long it was taking me to do a round when I was in the bottom of the Om: 14 minutes a round. Even on a tiny project like this that equals a huge time investment!
Before I decided to go with the Om chart, I was trying to chart words by hand. I had my graph paper with the spaces for the phrase marked out and a colored pencil. I'm not sure how Alasdair does his charts, but this method was insane. I didn't have white out, but I was bemoaning my need for it on a pretty regular basis. Using a piece of shareware photo-editing software made all the difference in how much time this project took and my sanity level while doing so. Without it, I would not be showing a coffee cuff two days after the post date but a few weeks.
Coffee is one of my favorite drinks, so I am happy to celebrate it with a new coffee cuff!
Now I need to go back to my next project: finding a pattern that matches the sock yarn I bought last fall for stripy socks. Given the current weather, my desire for stripy socks is going to be sacrificed for mittens. To the fingering weight mittens!
Or something I could have blogged in December (unless I blogged it already, in which case, here it is again).
So, in 2009 in the late fall we had insulation installed. I had stayed home for part of a morning to have a thermal test done of the house, which showed that the only rooms with insulation were the living room and the kitchen. I tried not to shudder when I thought about the previous owners and their outrageously high heating bill (when the balanced bill pay says that it is over $200 a month that is some serious winter heating). The problem was that our siding meant they couldn't remove a single panel along the house and blow it in from the outside. Instead, they cut circles from the walls and went from the inside. Lots of holes.
Now most of 2010 passed with me pretending the holes didn't exist. While I didn't like them, the idea of taking my small amount of relaxation time and using it on repainting filled me with dread. But December came around and we were hosting a party, so it was a good time to get it done before we had guests again.
The guest room was the worst. That room had the wallpaper strip at the top of the ceiling. I had neither the inclination nor the ability to save it, so we spent about a week stripping it. In some areas we weren't careful enough, so we needed to spackle over areas that we had caused gouges in the wall. We also needed to re-spackle over the holes and then sand them flat after they dried. The guest room had both the spackle dust and strips of wallpaper all over the floor.
We only finished the downstairs in December. We have each room upstairs to do as well (excepting the bathroom, thank goodness!) and the stairs and hallway. At least one of those rooms has the wallpaper strip as well. To best remove the wallpaper strip, we used a large sponge and soaked it with this wallpaper remover and then dampened the strip. We then used these scrapers that look like scrapers for removing ice from your wind shield. I am pretty sure the same effect can be done with a machine that uses steam or simply hot water on the sponge. The trick is to be willing to take it slow and go back and moisten the area repeatedly. If you force it, then you are left with tiny pieces of wallpaper to try and sand down or scarring in the wall surface.
For the guest room we chose Champagne and Buff, two very neutral yet warm colors that went nicely with the bedspread on the daybed. Unfortunately the room's lighting was not stellar when we were painting (it is fine during the day, but after work with just the overhead light... not so good), so there are places I will want to do a second coat in the spring. The room's biggest drawback is also a strength. Only by putting your nose pretty close to the wall are the flaws noticeable. The light is really that bad.
I also want to go back and do the ceiling trim, but that requires possibly buying more paint. We were pretty low in the can when we called it a day.
This was also the room where we were sloppiest. There are still some paint drips that we were not able to remove from the floor. At some point we will either scrape them off or we will refinished the floor in the room and they will be gone. For now, they are a reminder that proper use of a drop cloth goes a long way.
But the best room was the dining room. In our condo I had painted the walls this color called Major Blue. It was a little on the dark side for a subgrade unit, but I loved the color and thus didn't care. When we were selling the place, the wall color because this strange sticking point. Apparently my color sense matches more guys than other women, because guys either liked the walls or were neutral. Most of the women viewing the condo didn't like the wall color.
I missed my blue walls, so we went and got another shade of blue (funnily, the next one up on the chip card) and a creamy yellow and painted the walls and trim with those two colors. My friends saved my sanity by coming at one time or another to help paint these rooms. While I could have done it without them, I could not have done it without becoming a grumpy puss and losing what little sanity I have.
I love these rooms. We haven't picked colors for the upstairs yet (well, our bedroom just needs a recoat of the colors we picked when we moved in), but the hallway and stairs have colors meant for geekdom.
My brain is doing its standard jukebox thing, where I take any song I've heard (mostly musicals) and subbing words in and out. Now it is: Wool, wool, wool, wool, fabulous wool! Sadly, I don't even remember the original song.
However none of that matters, because I have boot socks. I shoved them on sock blockers, because they are thick enough that you cannot really see the shape when they aren't on the blockers. They become kind of lumpy looking and weird.
Doesn't matter! Now I have the tiniest ball of the red left and at least half a skein of the white. While I would love to keep up the red and white theme as I stash bust myself some winter necessities, I am pretty sure I cannot do that without buying more yarn. Hrm. Or maybe everything will just be mismatched.
The next thing I should make are mittens or gloves. I've been using the "magic gloves" that you can buy at convenience stores. They are OK, but their one size fits all doesn't really work for my long fingers especially if I have any nail growth at all (I clipped them really short again yesterday, but it was really too late). When I slip on these gloves I can see where the yarn has already stretched too thin and is about to tear. I might get another week or two out of them without my fingers bursting out the ends, but there is a lot more winter to come.
I guess I should start off by saying that I'm not a girly girl. I don't wear a lot of makeup, and I almost never do my hair. Heck, given the winter weather I get to work and I wet it back down in the bathroom just to make the hat hair less hat like. I want to look glamorous or elegant or at least put together, but the effort involved seems almost superhuman. So, I settle for clean.
Of course, that doesn't mean I don't color my hair (or rather go to a stylist), occasionally get manicures or pedicures, or any number of other beauty treatments. It just means that these things are infrequent and in the case of my hair not nearly as frequent as they ought to be.
This 10 for Tuesday is health and beauty products, but because I'm really not competent at the beauty aspect my definition is going to be fairly broad.
1. L'Oreal 360 Deep Cleanser for Sensitive Skin. I have to say, I like the weird little rubbery (or plasticy) facial scrubber. It means I'm not constantly touching my face while I wash it. While it might not make my face any cleaner than soap and water or any other product I've tried, I feel like I am cleaner. Good enough for me.
2. Sweet Lemon Body Butter. Heck pretty much every lemon thing that the Body Shop carries. The only product that I use on a regular basis is the body butter, but I also have the lip balm and the hand soap. While I was there I could also have gotten shampoo and conditioner, but I figured that was a bit unnecessary.
3. Hair Goop. I have both a pomade and a spray wax from my hair salon that I use in better weather for about 2-3 weeks after my hair cut. That time frame is the sweet spot when I feel like my hair is both short enough and nice enough looking to bother to style. It's also the time I'm most likely to wear makeup (mostly eye makeup).
4. Diet and Exercise Assistant. I have just repurchased the app for my iPod, but I originally had it for my Treo about 2 million years ago. While I don't always consistently use it, I find it really handy to keeping a handle on how many sweets I normally eat. Just for the record: Monday was a complete bust in that regard and that was despite only eating a single cookie during the day.
5. My Nike+. I have both the sport band and the attachment for my old nano. Neither of them is getting a lot of use right now, because I am only going outside to run for the actual race in 2 weeks. Of course, if the weather keeps up the way it has been then I'm pretty sure that the Super Sunday will be the week after Superbowl Sunday.
6. Wii Fit. I like it and I hate it all at the same time. I'm in just good enough shape that I don't feel like I get an adequate workout, but at the same time I probably should be doing more strength and yoga exercises. For that I would like to not have Victor in the same room. Something about a 40 pound dog right at my head when I'm trying to do a V up doesn't sound like fun at all.
7. Yogilates. I really miss Tovah. She was an instructor at Fitcorp, but her class was both super early for my schedule (for when I start work, not when I get up) and super packed. She taught at the gym near work, but then she stopped teaching. I switched gyms to have better access to her two classes, and when she went a lot of the reason I liked going to the gym went with it. If she came back to my local gym, I would resign up.
8. Running (the treadmill). I'm not good at it. I'm inconsistent, and I have until March 7 to get my body comfortable at 11 to 13 miles. This past weekend was a bust in that regard. I was so cold even inside that I didn't want to get out of either my nice warm bed or my pile of blankets on the couch to run even though I knew I would be warmer in the process. Stupid body and stupid brain.
9. Heel. I have the peppermint foot cream via the Loopy Ewe. I don't use it often, but every once in a while I think my feet are too disgustingly rough to put in my pretty socks. Then I pull out the foot cream and use it for a day or two. It comes in a couple of other scents (including fragrance free) that I probably would like more than peppermint, so when the peppermint is finally gone I might have to look into the other ones.
10. Fruit. I pretty much like all fruit I've tasted, though durian tastes like burnt onions and garlic mixed with something else that is vaguely foul (yeah, I don't have the gene that lets durian taste like anything other than arse). While fruit mixed with fat and sugar is even better tasting, I love blueberries and pomegranate all on their lonesome. Yum.
I was walking Victor this morning, telling him that I would be happier in just over a month when it is theoretically warmer and less snowy. I continued (like he understood and enjoyed the conversation) to say that I would probably complain about something and that when I did to remind me that my toes weren't ice lumps under my boots, that my hands weren't cold in gloves and in the pockets of my puffy down-filled coat, that my head wasn't cold in both a hat and a hood, and that my legs weren't cold in long johns and pants. He ignored me and continued on the important business of finding pee and poo spots. Dogs.
So, Twist Collective is doing a Finish Fest (rav link), which I found out about on Twitter. This nicely dovetailed in my year of being Stephanie only with shorter hair and way less writing skill and humor. Last year Stephanie did a self-imposed sock club while I signed up for two separate yarn clubs, one that was all sock yarn (yeah Loopy Ewe) and another that was mixed (Smart Ass Knitters World Domination Club). I also later in the year signed up for the Dream in Color color of the month, which I can opt out of each month. Many of these yarns were sock yarns. Tons of sock yarns. Plus I had the sock yarn I was buying as a matter of course when I didn't have a color for a project in mind. Plus (yup, another one) I had socks I had started in previous years that were half done or less. Now I have a dresser drawer full of freezer bags of sock projects. One for each month of the year.
January was a gentle start with my Embossed Leaves. I started these in March 2010 shortly after the Red Line yarn crawl. I bought the yarn at Windsor Button: Madeline Tosh sock in Clematis. Now if one of my friends wasn't super sensitive to wool, this would be the perfect yarn for her. Black with hints of purple. It is a favorite of mine and is perfect with my work uniform (not an actual uniform, but with as much black as I wear it might as well be).
I took my time with these socks for a number of reasons. I knit them for myself on size 0 needles, the only way they would probably fit my feet. And I tried out the super tiny circular needles from Clover.
My mini review of the Clover mini circulars was that I hated them. I was pressing on the cable with my pinky finger, which was causing some uncomfortable rubbing. They might work fine for someone else (hey, if you want to try them, let me know and I will mail them out to you), but they were just not for me.
I finished the first sock with the needles and then swapped to dpns for the second sock. The second sock flew by. It was the first item in my rotation and I spent 7 hours powering through the second sock (I don't actually remember how far I was on the second sock when I started the rotation, so your mileage probably will vary).
I'm feeling pretty good about the rotation by the way. I started off the new year with a pile of WIPs most of which are old enough to be called UFOs instead and have finished two items (5 skeins of yarn) and have only bought 2 skeins of yarn. For me, this is stellar!
Tuesday's snow quickly became this icy slushy rain that continued into Wednesday with additional rain and snow. Puddles covered most of my area along Furnace Brook Parkway. Not a surprise at all, because the last snow storm dumped enough snow that most of the verges and almost all of the drainage grates are still covered by the stuff. There is almost no place for the water to go. On my way home, I minced my way over the icy patches and stomped through slushy puddles like a five year old, reveling in my water resistant boots.
Yesterday's weather did not make for a picture perfect day. But Monday? Martin Luther King Jr. Day is supposed to be about service and thinking about race relations in our country and what we can do as individuals. Sadly, it is not something I normally think about. Instead, I used the day as an honest to goodness date (a cheap one too) with my husband.
We had a Groupon for Mantra, so we decided to make a day of it. There were errands (I picked up a battery for my Pokewalker, an ink cartridge for our printer, and a sweater comb to remove the pills from my Ravenclaw scarf), but the bulk of the time we spent in two places: Mantra and the New England Aquarium.
At Mantra, I had a vegetarian tasting menu, which included two vegetarian entrees, poori, rice pallau, samosa, salad and mulligatawny soup. Yum!
My new iPod has a surprisingly good camera, so I snapped a couple of blurry (but less blurry than with our normal camera) shots. The close up of the poori was too funny not to share.
I have made most of the Indian seen here or reasonable equivalents over the past few years, but my poori have always been pretty sad. I think there is either a flaw in my kneading/shaping technique or my frying technique, because usually they don't puff up like this. Horrible for me, but completely delicious. I have leftovers during the week and a desire to perfect a mulligatawny soup for when I am home.
One of the saddest things about moving away from Somerville was the lack of Indian in the Braintree Quincy area. I know of one restaurant on the Southeast Expressway that isn't too hard to get to, but we don't go often and delivery to our area is not really available without spending an arm and a leg on fees, so I enjoy Indian when I get it or break down and make my own. Maybe it is time to make my own again. It reheats so well for lunches too.
Dessert was a khulfi that I shared with my husband. I feel like something was a little off, because I said khulfi and could have sworn that I got vanilla ice cream instead. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I am going to shove khulfi into my ice cream project this year.
My one complaint about Mantra was that the service seemed unreasonably slow. There were maybe 10 people there, most of whom were eating off of the buffet (which we couldn't do on the Groupon). It took us about 1.5 hours for our meal, which less of a problem for me because my meal included appetizer and soup and more of a problem for my husband who started off hungry and was waiting most of that time.
At the aquarium, we warmed up (saying it was brisk is like saying that it is a 180 degrees, but it is a dry heat) and wondered around, visiting some of my favorite exhibits. We were there in time for one of the penguin feedings and it was super cute watching the penguins line up for their bit of fish. Some of the penguins were so energetic that if I didn't know better I would think that they were five year olds on pixie sticks. They were swimming around super fast and leaping out of the water like tiny feathery dolphins.
We were also there in time for the feeding at the top of the Giant Ocean tank. The talk there is really not geared to anyone who pays a modicum of attention, because the talk goes like this: Over in that corner is Myrtle, the green sea turtle, who gets jealous if we feed the other fish and not her. She eats lettuce, broccoli and brussel sprouts. The other fish and turtles eat fish, shrimp which are in blocks, and squid. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Any questions? What do the sting rays eat? What do the other turtles eat? What do the sharks eat? What do the fish eat?
It is easily the same question being asked 10 or 15 times. Now granted most of the people asking were young children, so I am willing to cut them some slack, but some of them were adults my age who either didn't pay attention during the talk or just forget what she said five minutes before.
We left the giant ocean tank and went to my favorites! The cuttlefish. Cuttlefish don't have a huge life expectancy, but it was still a surprise when we got there and saw baby cuttlefish (or at the very least very small newer cuttlefish). I love cuttlefish so much that I have Hero System character (my villain in an upcoming game) based on a combination of cuttlefish (in general) and Pfeffer's Flamboyant Cuttlefish. We weren't the only ones crushing on the cuttlefish. There was a zoologist there making her friend wait while she squee'd over the tank full of cuttlefish.
I took about 100 photos at the aquarium and the rest of the day and at least 3 or 4 videos of the cuttlefish (this one was short, apparently I did not upload my 48 seconds of cuttlefish swimming). I butted against the limit on my Flickr account, so now I get to decide if I want to pay for a pro account so I can share my cuttle-love and my random photos.
On the way home I was in a completely silly mood and chortling about the idea of knitting a balaclava for a cuttlefish. It's not quite as far fetched as it seems, because I have a plush cuttlefish from one of my first trips to the aquarium more than 9 years ago. Still silly and seems as much fun today as it did then. Probably a sign of madness, but if so, it is at least a happy way to be mad.
Friday I punted my normal activities (sorry gaming group) in order to attend Ignite Boston. A few hours, about 17 different talks and a feeling of connectedness with my local craft community that I don't normally have in my day to day solitary crafting life. I went because I know Georgy who spoke about DIY Marketing for DIY People, but I knew way more speakers than I was expecting to know.
While waiting for the event to start, I was talking with a woman named Diane who is active in the science education for girls and way too many other charity things for me to think about. One of the things we talked about were programs for lower income families and educational programs for children in all socio-economic backgrounds.
Then we talked about Lego League. The group she does stuff with is 9-14 and is as far as I know school based, but there is also a Jr. Lego League, which is for children from 6-9. This sounds perfect for so many of my friends, and I could have spoken with her about this program alone for the entire time I was there.
Then the programs started.
Ignite is a story-telling format. Presenters have 5 minutes to tell a story about their topic, building enough of a connection with people in the audience in order to have meaningful dialog in the break between the first and second sessions and afterwards in a less formal environment.
I took notes especially for things that I found useful in a cross-crafting context.
Amanda Grondin spoke about her sculptural art, which were these fantastical creatures blended from mythology and animals. She works in polymer clay on armatures, and incorporates organic elements into her designs. She talked about layering, building up her pieces as sections of muscle on bone, which contributes to realism. There are a lot of different crafts that can take this approach, from the hooker (crochet, dudes!) who embellishes a bag with a layer of vine work followed by a layer of flowers and grapes, to a toy designer who builds upon basic shapes to make an object recognizable as a distinct creature while being uniquely theirs.
Georgy spoke about marketing and crafting as an act of making connections. Her focus included truisms that are surprisingly easy to forget: be attentive and responsive, take time, be consistent, add value and be relevant. She showed some of the different tools you can use to put yourself out there and be less like a person speaking in a void and be more of a community presence. One of the things she mentioned that I find hard to do is to show the behind the scenes. You know those crafters: the ones you have progress pictures of their knitting, or they have a picture by picture expose of how to know when you have whipped your cream to stiff peaks. They are some of the most useful bloggers out there in the craft world, because they help the rest of us help ourselves. Me? I'm much more likely to show a fate accompli.
Schneider Mike of Belching Monkey talked about beer. Many a crafter I know loves their beer, so I enjoyed his presentation. He was witty and at times completely hilarious. Afterwards, he gave me, a non-beer drinker, a gateway beer to try given my love of the girly drinks. So, maybe someday I will find a place with Anderson Valley Boont Amber on the menu. Till then, I will keep it in mind and remember that Michelob and Miller Light are not beer. They are water with piss and vinegar. Maybe I'll even be more willing to try my friend's home brews.
Ann Weaver talked about self publishing, which is how she published her most recent collection of patterns. It was definitely a reminder for me, because while I have a lot of dreams I'm not terribly far on most of them. There are some things that only real effort will make happen, and those are the kinds of dreams I have. The problem with things like my sad Etsy store and self published books is that a lot more falls onto the creator. It is one thing to make a cute sweater or create a flavor of cupcakes and another thing to go out to the world and say, Hey, look at this cool thing I made! You want one too, right? Self promotion (despite having a blog) is not my strong suit. Also: lulu.com.
Sarah Kuhn and the Parts and Crafts Collective talked about two sides of the same equation. Sarah focused on how people learn through doing, thinking through using their hands, and interaction with the environment creating power and knowledge. The owners (for lack of a better word) of the Parts and Crafts Collective spoke about empowering children to do things that they don't normally have access to, like using a drill or a soldering iron. They spoke about community supported education. They send out boxes each month that have materials for a project and some small amount of guidance. The goal is to move away from the abstract knowledge learned in schools to the concrete knowledge learned from doing. They both sounded cool, but the takeaway quote for me was from Sarah in asking her students: Did you learn more? Answer: We learned we can do things.
Lis Pardi's talk was also about learning and about fear. Do not fear to try something. With a lack of fear, you can do anything you set your mind to including furniture repair and washing machine installation. Things that we normally leave to experts. Her tips included think cheap (aka, don't try your new trick on that expensive couch. Try it on something found on the curb or freecycle), use simple tools, and get some knowledge (read, ask an expert, etc.). I have a door in the basement that was from freecycle or one of our friends cleaning out a basement that I want to make into a table. My card table is fine, but not stellar for crafting and computer work. So, if this new table project comes out OK-ish, then I won't have lost anything but some time and I might have learned something new!
While there were more talks, the last one I truly connected to was Katie Helke at Knit for Boston. Her simple talk reminded me that I love to knit just for knitting's sake. There is no better way to just get my knit on than by making things like scarves for charity. Given that my feet are freezing inside my house (we keep the temperature lower when we aren't here during the week and boy, can my feet tell the difference) but at least I have a house and extra socks, it is time to consider making things for charity again and to think local. While I love knitting for Dulaan when I was doing it, there are plenty of people who have been poorly affected by the economy of the past couple of years who would be just as appreciative of a simple scarf that doesn't look like it has already been through the ringer or a hat that actually covers the ears.
It was a good event, and they are thinking of doing another one. Maybe next time I will speak. I know I can fill 5 minutes with talking about ice cream, and in June or August people might even want to hear about it!
I am playing with my new toy, an iPod touch. I really wanted an iPad but it was exclusively for the pooh shiny factor if you get what I mean. But 2 million years ago when I had one of my first treos, I had this diet and exercise program from Keyoe. I used this program to lose about 40 to 50 pounds over about a year. Over the summer I gained about 20 pounds back. Completely unacceptable! Unfortunately my Treo and the new Mac OS don't talk to each other, but the app is available on the touch, iPhone, and iPad. Cost wise the choice was clear.
While I enjoy a new tech toy, my nano will keep me company on my runs.
Now to finish set up and do my treadmill training run. Exercises for what ails me.
Our old home is full of drafts, made 100 times better through the power of insulation that we had added last fall. Even with insulation, doors and windows are areas that are just inherently drafty.
(I don't want to think about the number of times I just tried to write daft or dafty... I think my fingers are trying to tell me something).
For the second Iron Crafters challenge, we were to make a draft blocker. There were a number of suggestions, but my primary craft is knitting and my sewing machine and a table are still upstairs and covered with too much stuff to use. Another project for another day.
Instead I had an idea. I have toe socks. I used to wear them in preference to other socks, but the toes much like gloves for the hands don't leave my feet warmer and they are harder to wear in both my running shoes and my boots. I guess I could bring them to work and wear them in my wider clog-like shoes, but I just fell out of love with most of them. Here one of my pairs gains second life!
First I took my toe socks and found the longest and cleanest pair. Then I lay them end to end to see how much of the window edge they covered.
I stuffed them from my enormous bag of polyfil, being careful to fully stuff the toes. Much like a stuffed animal, it is fairly easy to stuff and distressingly easy to stuff all lumpy. After I had stuffed each side to my satisfaction and rolled it around a bit to remove some of the lumpiness I crocheted with white crochet cotton a single crochet edging on the first sock. I then single crocheted into the second sock and crocheted the two sides together.
While I don't think this took very long and the playfulness of it makes me laugh, my crochet skills are low enough that it would have been faster to find some fabric scraps in my stash, clean off the table and reset up my sewing machine and make a standard draft blocker.
Time entailed? about 1.5 hours including the time I spent eating dinner in the middle.
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