AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

A big wide hello!

To everybody who is here from Honey Cowl-land (aka, Mason Dixcon Knitting) a big huge hello. I am not super humorous, but I have knitting and ice cream and cake, so feel free to stay a while and rummage through my stash sale (I'm adding more as soon as I get past my "must nap all the time" phase).

Here is the my Honey Cowl, gifted to a fabulous sister-in-law. And from the far back machine, I knit a One Skein Wonder out of Malabrigo, back when we were still in first awe over its soft scrumptiousness!

I want to talk about my current knitting, but despite the holidays being over I am still gift knitting. I don't know when it will stop! Thankfully, I will finish one of them tonight (hey, if my commute had been longer, then I would have finished it this morning) and get to go back to my stitching. Happy reading and thanks for visiting!

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after holiday reveals

It's a stash sale!

This is just the beginning. I have a ton more yarn where this came from. All of my yarn is stored in a craft room, where my cat, Saru-chan, and my dog, Victor, are not allowed. Definitely a smoking-free home, but obviously not 100% allergen free. Also, if you don't see anything you want, I will be adding to this listing over the course of next week or so.

SOLD Euroflax Sportweight Linen
Color: Eggplant
4 skeins

3 of the skeins are lot: 18.2424-13
1 skein of lot:18.2424-6

$60 for all of skeins. If you only want the 3 skeins of same dye lot, $45.

The two dye lots look the same to my eyes, but feel free to take that for what it is worth.

(more yarns below the cut)

Weeding more books

This week's 10 for Tuesday is things you always have in the car. We don't even have a car, so instead of either that or the stash sale (yarn has been piled on the daybed in the craft room but not photographed) we have the next installment of book culling theater.

This latest round is mostly non-fiction books, including some of my science textbooks. It doesn't include my CRC, because I'm such a geek that I still love that book. The remaining books are all being donated at the beginning of February, so you have about a week to take a look and let me know which ones you want.

And while you are doing that, I will be over here knitting my fingers off. Knit, knit, knit!

I fell down.

Yesterday, I had a yarn emergency, and despite my best intentions to not buy any new craft materials (except notions needed to finish projects) I had an accident at Gather Here's Pints & Purls and I bought 6 skeins of yarn.

Sadly, this isn't the end of the depravity. I have looked at what I bought them for, and I am pretty sure that I should have bought the 7th skein when I was there.

Pathetic.

So, does anyone know of a 12 step program for yarn addicts? The only way I can get better is by admitting I have a problem. Of course, first I should identify the problem. Is it just yarn or are all craft supplies like delicious, delicious crack to me? What is it that makes it so I cannot resist? Is it color, fiber, texture?

And what is worse is that this isn't even yarn to finish something like the 4+ sweaters I have on the needles that I intend to finish this year, for reals!

It isn't the gloves that I started on Christmas to use my new fancy dpns that I put aside when the weather got warm, rather than finishing them so I could use them today when it was below freezing.

It isn't even the pair of socks I was going to start from my stash to do for the Loopy Ewe quarterly challenge (a one skein project using cables).

Heck, this yarn isn't even in wool, my favorite fiber, so what fumes affected me to buy so much cotton? Isn't winter the wrong season to be knitting that fiber?

And lastly, this isn't me finishing a hat for charity, which would be a better use of my time and karma points. I hope I get better soon, because there is no point to a stash sale if I am just going to replace the yarn before I have gotten rid of any yarn!

other than knitting

I have a lot of goals for 2013. I want to knit multiple sweaters (there are babies to knit for, plus I, ahem, have outgrown a couple of my sweaters). I am moving, so I want to knit down my stash. I want to rediscover crafts I used to love, and do crafts that I bought the materials for and never got around to. I want to bake cakes and cookies and create delicious ice creams.

I want to make every moment I'm not at work.

Unfortunately, the moving thing puts a damper on some of those items. I have to spend some of my crafting hours being an adult. Cleaning mostly, but also weeding. I am going to Pints & Purls tonight and I have a small pile of roving in tow for one of the people who knits and spins. I hope it can find a loving home.

So, that said, I'm going to have a stash sale starting probably Monday (if I can be an adult long enough to take pictures of things). I have both sweaters lots of yarn as well as individual skeins of sock yarn. If anyone has a request (aka, a category of product that they would love to see - like are people interested in magazines), feel free to let me know. While I love my stash, I'm not super duper tied to nearly any of yarns and I have a wide range including some bulky weight and some scary fine laceweight.

Meanwhile, I am working on cross-stitch again. I stopped working on cross-stitch after we got Saru-chan. She snagged a piece I'd been working on for months, and while she was as rough on my knitting as she was on my stitching the repair time on the stitching was so much more that I balked. In the time since then, she has mellowed out a lot. She isn't allowed in my craft room, but when she gets in anyway, she doesn't do any scary rearranging of the stash.

Now that she isn't as interested in my crafting, I feel like I can go back to cross-stitch. This piece, a Mirabilia, is a gift from a friend, and I started it shortly after Christmas. I know cross-stitch is a slow process, but right now I'm enjoying the rhythm.

Of course, that might also be because the alternative is a sweater with unending raglan increases. Though I want that done too. So, has anyone finished that cloning machine. I obviously need 10 extra hours a day to get everything done!

home sick

I'm home sick. I'd say this means I'm virtuously not getting my coworkers sick, but I did go to work Monday through Thursday, so it is more like I finally completed enough work to not feel guilty about staying home.

Of course, I feel guilty being home and doing nothing too. So, I am becoming queen of the 15 minute bursts of energy.

I brought the laundry downstairs and put a load in the washer (under 4 minutes), and then sat and coughed without guilt for a while. I can nap virtuously when the wash is in the dryer, because that takes forever. Barring the joys of being sick, I've also been thinking about my crafting ideas for 2013. Suffice to say that I didn't really complete any of my goals for 2012, though I did make two sweaters (and a baby sweater), 3 pairs of socks (one never made it into Ravelry), cowls and shawls. Nothing super old was finished, though I did go back to work on a few of the items.

This year we're moving (not terribly soon either), so I am stash diving instead of shopping, and eventually stash selling instead of packing and moving. I'm looking at my stash with an eye to projects I'll use, that use up either lots of yarn (like the 4 skeins of bulky yarn I bought for Shalom) or the sock yarn that is very flexible and portable, or the huge project I thought up shortly after the Beekeeper's Quilt started making the rounds (oh hexipuffs, you will be so handy when I've packed everything else).

So, the main thing is what to do with the yarn I've been buying in sweater lots. Somewhere along the way, I started buying yarn in sweater-sized lots instead of my individual skein syndrome. It's great, because it has a lot of flexibility, but now I feel like I should make 2013 the year of 12 sweaters (or better yet, a baker's dozen). What are your favorite sweater patterns? I'm partial to cardigans myself, and my queue is full of them.

Oh, and that stash busting sale? Expect it in February, because I will be cleaning everything in the world by that time even if I am sick again or not. And the washer is done, so it is time to move the laundry and take a nap!

The last Christmas reveal

I've definitely been drawing this out. Between being sick (yeah, cold!) and trying to get back into more regular blogging things just didn't really happen in any regularity. Well, other than sneezing my brains out. That is happening pretty frequently and even with regularity.

The last thing I made was sewing, a pattern from Zooguu.

I'd say guess which Zooguu I made, but this really does give it away.

I used fabric from my stash to make this. A really pretty pink Japanese fabric, which unfortunately frays like a mofo, and one of the first fabrics I bought Gather Here nearly two years ago. This is the first pattern in forever where I haven't used a class to get through the process of making the item. I'm just not that confident a seamstress. Over the course of about a week I made this toy, and while it was a little lopsided (silly fins) it was still really cute.

The basic pattern is really easy to follow. You need black felt, embroidery floss/yarn or safety eyes, and fabric. The pattern suggests a body color, a second color for the underbody and then a 3rd color for the tail. Later on the pattern suggests that you might want to make the undersides of the flippers and tail in the underbody color, but as written the underbody fabric is only used once.

I instead did the undersides of the flippers, tail, the underbody and the horn in Kokka fabric.

The horn has two sets of instructions: spiral and nonspiral. I used silver embroidery floss to create the spiral, because I wanted the sparkliest, pinkest narwhal.

The pattern is very well written. Rather than cut into my instructions, I took my Pattern Ease and traced my pieces. It is a bit longer to make with this step, but the pieces can be more readily reused to make another one.

And I enjoyed making this one, so there will probably be another one.

For anyone who is new(ish) to sewing, here is the one thing I would suggest that I wish I had done. Actually measure to place the flippers. Where everything went a little bit wonky was sewing on the underbody. My flippers ended up a bit canted, which gives the narwhal more of a gamine look. It isn't bad. It's just not as professional as I would have liked.

Because my husband is awesome, there are a lot more pictures. But there is one picture I need to leave you with.

[10 Tuesday] Goals for 2013

I am not really one to do resolutions. I certainly don't keep them when I do make them. I think I exercised every day last year until I got sick in April, and then I fell apart and was very haphazard about exercise for the rest of the year is just a recent example.

I don't have many goals for this year. Well, I can come up with 10, but some of them are awfully generic.

1. Write every day. I picked up one of those sentence a day journals that lets you write a little snippet for 5 years. It's pretty cool so far, but I'm sure that things will go pear shaped eventually. Thankfully with this, if you miss a day in a year you can just keep going. No big deal.

2. Blog more often. Somewhere along the way twitter stole my urge to blog. Between Twitter and Instagram, I did the little snippets. Facebook was for reading what my friends were doing, but most of what I posted there were links. I'd like to say that means write more substantive content, but we all know that isn't going to happen. At least not this year. I'm OK with that as long as I get more in the practice of writing.

3. Be more open to new things. This year already promises to have lots of new things coming up. Some of these things involve acting like an adult and calling contractors and getting things repaired. It's not exactly very fun, but it needs to happen. Yup. Being an adult.

4. Oh, I guess being an adult could be on the list. But it's not really a goal. It's just that the consequences of not being an adult are nastier than the temporary pain of making lots of phone calls. Yeah. I apparently am pretty good at making calls to complete strangers, but that doesn't mean I like it.

5. Get healthier. I'm not sickly, though you couldn't tell that right now with my current cold. I had one last year that knocked me out for almost 2 weeks. I'd like to nip all of that in the bud, which means getting more sleep, doing a bit more walking, and stressing out less. All good things. Especially sleep.

6. Take my multivitamin every day. Nuff said. I know, it could go into get healthier, but I say no.

7. Learn something new. This one is easy. I got into Squam for what might end up being my last year (I hope not, but subsequent years will be more expensive to attend), and I am taking a card weaving class. I'm super excited! Card weaving is one of those things I've read about online and thought, I want to try that and been unwilling to try from tutorials.

8. Read more Japanese. This one is probably easy too. My husband got me a Japanese game for the DS and I did a little playing last night. I haven't braved story mode yet, but I spent quite a bit of time on Sunday reading the Japanese manual. I'm woefully out of practice.

9. Keep the house clean. Right now that is an uphill battle, but we started culling a ton of stuff and already brought multiple bags of stuff to Goodwill. We have another cull scheduled for the beginning of February that we haven't really gotten into yet. I'm also going to do a stash sale.

10. Don't buy stuff. This is less about saving money, because I expect I will buy juice (like I did today) and snacks. It's more about working from my stash and not buying something just because I can. This also means eating more leftovers, using up some of the more eclectic flours (or mixing them up into a proper gluten free flour mix and then using them up), and then not replacing everything.

more holiday reveals

Yup. I made socks.

It shouldn't be a surprise, but it took me forever to knit these. They aren't hard, but I put them aside and when I started working on them again I couldn't find the second skein, so I had to buy another one.

The yarn: Shibui Sock in Roppongi

Basic socks, no pattern, twisted stitch cuffs. I have a tendency to pull out and start basic socks like these when I need something to do with my hands. It keeps me out of trouble, like eating all of the chocolate in the house!

I actually have sock blockers and as much as I sometimes feel silly using them, they are great for photographs. They make it much easier to see the patterning on a sock even though in this case it is just the pretty patterns of the pooling. I have a new pair for myself in Jitterbug in progress, but they only come out when I need a small project that doesn't involve needing to refer to a pattern. Though in that case, I have Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's book in the bag with its instructions for generic socks.

These were for my mom, and I made something for her dog. Of course, whether he'll like it now that the temperatures are dipping well below freezing I have no idea.

Yup. Untouched (and uncropped, because I am lazy) photo of Pito's dog sweater.

A year or two ago, I picked up a knitting book/kit. You know, the random books at the store that come with a yoga mat or knitting needles or stones for hot stone massages or whatever the flavor of the month is? Well, this one had straight knitting needles with little dogs on the tops. I think they were 8s, but because I rarely knit with such a big needle (that's what she said, I know) I've never used the book. This sweater is inspired by one in the book, but I used ribbing and nixed the crochet and did some decoration on the back.

Theoretically my mom is going to bribe Pito into wearing it long enough for pictures. It would be good to know if it fits well, because I've never made something like this before.

I only have one project left to reveal, but that will have to wait.

At it again

I signed up for Iron Craft again this year, and like many facets of my life for 2013 I decided that I had only one goal: work from stash.

I should have picked a second goal: don't procrastinate. Ah well,  too late now.

So, I had this beautiful project idea that involved felt and snowflakes and beads, and well, I'm here to say that it didn't work. It wasn't hideous, but it wasn't great either. In my attempt to make it better, I made it worse. The attempt is in the trash, and that is aOK. So, my backup project was born.

I made canes out of Fimo.

I bought this Fimo when I was going to make something for one of the Iron Craft challenges last year. My packages sat unopened and sad on the shelf. I figured canes aren't that hard.

Well, I was wrong and a little bit right.

Making canes isn't hard. Conditioning the clay isn't too bad, especially if you like rolling snakes. Of course, everything is probably easier with proper tools, which I didn't have.

On the other hand making good canes is pretty difficult. These are subpar canes, but they are sparkly and I can probably fix some of their flaws with some sandpaper and maybe some additional beads around the beads. I didn't pierce them all, because I wanted to try doing some of them with a drill. Later. Because today I'm just glad that I'm only 24 hours late to posting my subpar canes.

Yup, that's my new cover band: Subpar Canes. It is for a group that sings the golden oldies.

I did use two different colors in my canes. The main color is a silver, which I proceeded to need Lava soap to get off of my hands (well, technically I used the steel wool, but the lava soap is upstairs and would have worked too). The secondary color is a Glow in the Dark accent color. I needed to use way more of it to get the effect I wanted.

That's OK. I was wearing glow in the dark nail polish at the time, so there has been some glow in my life.

See. There is a hint of glow. I promise!