AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

Sprite art!

My husband is a king of myphotostitch.com. This is the third or fourth item that he has made in the past month or two for me to stitch. He pulls them together using sprite art.

This name badge is supposed to be the logo for the church we've been going to (UU, the church for atheists, agnostics, pantheists, monotheists and other forms of theists), but his version uses the apple from PacMan and the font from Final Fantasy (I think IV, but I don't remember).

It only took a couple of days to stitch, and the perforated paper was a breeze to work with. While it isn't my first finished item of 2014, because, well, gift crafting always takes longer to make it on the blog, it is nice to have a quickie project to share.

I hope my next cross-stitch finish is the bit of sprite art that he put together for a onesie for Q, though I do have other sprite art projects I'd like to do (a phone case and this huge project) it is the only one that needs to be done by a certain date. 

Of course, I think the onesie is 18 month size, so I do have a bit of flexibility in getting it done.

In knitting news, I am doing 14 in 2014. 14 pairs of socks that is. I'm hoping to finish a pair of socks that I started last year as my first pair by the end of the month, though at that rate I'm only going to get 12 done. Finishing anything though at this point is a major win!

Craft mathematics

I don't know about you, but I definitely have too many projects that I want to get done. Christmas is only a couple of short months away, but most of the projects I want to do aren't even gifts. They are projects that I either started shortly before starting maternity leave or they are projects from the way back machine.

My husband made a cross-stitch project for me using chocobo sprites. It's for an iPhone case, and I started it a month or so before going on leave. At the time I last worked on it, I had figured out that I would be able to finish it in a month if I did at least 45 stitches a day. Needless to say, I haven't worked on it since then. Definitely not 45 stitches a day.

I started Spectra, and would theoretically need about 20 more days if I got two repeats done each day. That's not happening either. Whoops!

And then there is this cross-stitch I started way before moving to Kentucky. It is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: To laugh often and much. I made the mistake of calculating how long it would take me to finish if I could complete 6 letters (or blocks, etc.) each day. The number of letters was pretty arbitrary, based on how many I actually got done today. As Q gets a little older, he is moving slightly away from needing a feeding every 1.5 hours, which allows me to get a few more things done. Of course, that includes some cleaning, making ice cream, and occasionally cooking dinner (thank goodness for the slow cooker).

The sad thing is even if I was making Christmas gifts, I would still be doing stupid math like that. Do you do that when you are working on projects (for deadline or not)?

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!

no knitting to see here

Look at the video (yes, blame my friends for this one). You are getting sleepy. You are getting weird.

Yeah, I am knitting, but I am only knitting over part of my commute every third day or so and at night while we are watching anime. It is taking me 15-20 minutes to do a row of the lace pattern, so I figure I will have something worth showing in about 2 weeks. More quickly if I decide that I no longer love the Dragon Quest IX and instead want nothing more to do than knit, knit, knit.

My lunch breaks are spent on cross-stitch and thinking about dessert and seeing if I can cause earworms, because I am evil. Cross-stitch takes longer than knitting, so there is really nothing to show there either!

*twitch* Just call me McTwitchy

Today's big ol' complaint: My leg has been twitching on and off for the last hour.  Such a darn distraction, though at least fairly benign.

I woke up fairly early this morning.  Ah, who am I kidding.  I woke up just before 3 a.m. and couldn't fall back asleep, so I was 'productive' and read more of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  I continued to be productive and instead of going to the gym this morning, I sat in the cafeteria and finished the book and finished my cross-stitch.  It needs some blocking just like a piece of knitting.

Better yet, I had a knitting project in my desk, so I was able to do some knitting over my lunch break (and while I made a mistake at the end, it is a relatively easy fix and I caught it before I had knit a second row).  That means I am back to working on Delphine, which I hope working on will call forth the rest of summer.  It's nice having a dedicated lunch project, so I will have to think of a different project to work on for my commute.  Probably finishing up one of the bazillion pairs of socks (4 is a bazillion, right?).

Windsor Button is open late on Thursdays, so I will go over there and get some Soak.  I would rather buy a small thing of Soak and wash some hand knits while I am blocking my cross-stitch, then go somewhere and buy Ivory Dish Detergent, which was my cross-stitch washing soap of choice (along with J&J baby shampoo).   It's been so long since I've washed and blocked a finished cross-stitch project that I'm not sure what the best method is.  The solution for this ignorance!

To the Internet! 

sometimes the internet is full of stupid

Let's take for example mbta.com.  This site has a nice little trip planning tool, and I was wondering if it would be reasonable to try and make it to an after work social knit.  It's been ages since I've been to a social knitting event at a shop (I didn't really knit at the guild meeting, though I certainly could have).

There is a yarn shop in Dedham that I haven't been too called Sheep Skate.  I know I can get down to Dedham on the Orange Line and that the nearest Orange Line stop for me is Downtown Crossing.  I plug Downtown Crossing Station as my starting destination and the shop address as the end.  Easy peasy.  I choose minimize walking (and believe me, it didn't make a difference, because I did it both ways) and I get this:

These instructions are at best kind of dumb.  They say Walk from DTX (where you started) to Park Street Station, take the Red Line one stop, transfer to the Orange Line, and then take a bus from the appropriate Orange Line stop.

I changed this around a couple of times, and the only thing it changes is whether they want me to walk to a different stop.  It's like Downtown Crossing is a null zone and you are just not allowed to start from there.

It's probably not necessary to say, but I don't tend to do things after work.  It's just so much easier to schedule something on the weekends even if I am usually chronically overscheduled.

I need to call around to a couple of LYS and see if any of them have the Classic Elite booklet 9092 for sale.  That has the Portland Tweed Vest that I would like to make.  It will only take me about one more week to finish the cross-stitch project now that I have the floss (which like all variegateds does not look that much like the last ones I bought), and then I will be able to do the finishing work on a baby set and start a new knit for the train.  I'd like it to be this one, because the vest will be perfect for a couple of the white button down shirts I have for work.

waiting for the post

I'm back to knitting again.  I was going to motor through the last bit of my cross-stitch project, which has been my only project for the last month when I realized I managed to lose a half skein of the Sampler Threads I was using.  It's what I get for putting my projects in grocery store bags.  They always split along the sides and then bam! I've lost a little something.

So, while the order is winging its way to me (or more accurately vrooming via the US Post), I figured it was OK to go back to knitting.  I started Delphine back in April, put it aside to work on the Icelandic Turtleneck (finished, but still unblogged), and continued to leave it aside while I crocheted potholders and worked on cross-stitch.  But Delphine is a summer knit, and I would like to wear it for the one or two more days of summer we're likely to get around here. 

I love this pattern and the yarn I'm using for it.  The Misti Alpaca Pima Silk is super soft in a beautiful red.  I'm leaving it as my lunch project, so if I get the skein of floss in the mail tonight I won't chuck it all to continue working with its softness. 

Of course, this wasn't the only project I could have worked on.  I also still have the baby set, which I need to mail by the end of the month (it's the finishing work that has me hesitating) and I found a lot of other cross-stitch projects I started ages and ages ago.  I will probably add one of those to the pile, because like knitting the cross-stitch doesn't get done without the application of hands and time.  I'd love to get some more of these beauties up on the walls.

boggled

I do have a potholder swap post coming.  Pictures are taken (though I won't use most of them), but I keep forgetting to write down the details!  Details!

Details like I just went to Ravelry to see if more people had made one of the tops that has been in my queue forever (for-ev-er), and I noticed that somehow I had gotten up to 52 queued items!  Dang!  I'm never going to get to some of these items no matter how gorgeous they are!  How realistic is it that I am going to knit a top queued in 2007?  Not great, and getting less great all the time.  But I just don't want to give up on these projects.

Of course, these days I'm not knitting at all.  Instead I'm doing cross-stitch.  The piece I'm working on for the new house has been my only project since June 4th (Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals), and while there are a few days here and there where I didn't do any stitching the effort has been pretty consistent.  I'm on the backstitch, so the end is in sight!  Then I will wash and block it and decide if it is going to get the bell pull treatment or framing.  After that it will probably be back to all knitting all the time, but it has been wonderful to get back to one of my original crafting roots.

still painting

Last night I started masking the walls and painting trim, and I will definitely need to do a second coat around the windows.  The rest of the trim looks surprisingly good, but I was nearing the end of my patience by the time I got to the windows and they are not as nice looking as I would like.  Per normal, I had a case of duh! after I was more than halfway through, and so I've been painting the hardware (the stuff for the curtain rods), because I wasn't smart enough to remove it first.  Around 5:30, I think I will try and do a second coat on the windows, so I am not painting tonight.  I have definitely reached the point in the project when I just want to be done (and technically I have other painting to do once the windows are done, but I'm OK with waiting on painting the shelves).

Our house is coming together nicely.  Last night, my hubby did a bang up job on the dining room area, so we even sat down and ate dinner on place mats.  Virtually unheard of.  We still have a couple of big things to bring to the curb for trash pickup, and then I will feel like our house is ready for guests.  Thank goodness!

.... it is raining right now.  My little mini garden will soak it right up, so I am happy that it is happening.  I still wish that the rain would stop in time for me to walk to the subway station. 

I will admit that I haven't done any knitting in the last week.  I've been doing cross-stitch instead, because in the process of unpacking I found all of the materials I needed for a project for the house.  If I am dedicated then it should only take me about 3 weeks to make, because it is pretty small.  I'm not normally that dedicated to my craft projects (pretty obvious looking at the detritus of half completed stuff in the craft room), so I'm trying my best to make this a 1 month project instead of a 4 year project.

[Editing to add]  I went upstairs this morning after posting to do the second coat of trim paint around the window and saw four little white spots on the windowsill just the right size to be little kitty paw prints.  Poor kitty!  I'm sure she jumped up on the sill and went, "Ewww, this is all sticky and damp." Being a bad blogger, I did not get the camera and take a photo before painting over the spot.  I wonder if I will find more footprints when I get home tonight.

unpacking woes

I was going to write more about the crochet potholder swap, but I was brilliant and left the camera brain on my desk.  I can't exactly extract pictures from across the miles.  My mind powers are not sufficiently advanced yet.  So, instead, I'll whine a bit about unpacking.  That was the 2 minute warning.

I decided not to go over to my friends tonight to spend a bit more time unpacking (and collecting more black puddings in KoL, because I am truly pathetic).  The house is really quiet with just the cat and I, and the television is blissfully off for the moment. 

Unpacking is one of those thankless exercises.  Even with dedication, it creates at least initially as much mess as it ends, and you spend that first month or so wondering where all of the stuff you so carefully unpacked is.  Not exactly conducive to getting it all done, but we're having guests over much sooner than is truly reasonable.  It is the proverbial kick in the pants that will help us get it done. 

It's not all horrible whining garbage.  Today I lifted the top off of my attractive, but still made of pressboard, filing cabinet and removed the lock mechanism (we had managed to break the key off in the lock).  I then managed to move it across the floor without scratching the pretty hardwood floors and get it into the closet.  It was supposed to be the vehicle for my unpacking, but I have absolutely no idea if I have file folders anymore.  The filing cabinet is supposed to hold my vast quantity of cross-stitch materials, which are currently sitting both on top of the filing cabinet and in a number of boxes in what will eventually be the guest/everything random room. 

Unpacking the craft stuff is an adventure.  It's like going through the strata of my life.  Before I picked up knitting, I was doing a lot of cross-stitch, mostly a combination of Mirabilia patterns and sampler/sampler look alikes.  I didn't completely stop doing cross-stitch after knitting, but I haven't really finished any cross-stitch since I started knitting either (more than 5 years ago).  The last straw for me was our kitty.  Saru-chan is an equal opportunity destroyer of craft stuff, and while it makes me cranky that she will snag and attack yarn that took 20 hours of work, I got pretty green when she managed to do the same thing with a piece of cross-stitch that wasn't done yet at more than 50 hours.

All of this is a weird way of saying that I haven't done that much knitting or crochet since I've divebombed into the twilight zone of unpacking, but I have done more cross-stitch in the last 3 days than I have in possibly the last year.  Go me.