Tag Archive | makers making

Waving the white flag

Can I whine just a little bit? You can skip this post if you like, it’s fine.

We had the A/C repairman out this week. Again. We might have been their best customer this year: I believe we saw them four times between May and now. We have two units, so it was two visits per unit, but still, I find that excessive, don’t you? And thanks to one of those visits, we had to replace a heat pump with a furnace and do some other expensive crap. It was great. (Can you hear the sarcasm?)

It’s just been a stupid expensive year. We started off with some insulation to try to keep the winter temperature in the house above 62. My car needed body work, and then new brakes a couple of months later. The girl’s car needed some repair. We had our own A/C issues, plus a repair at our rental property. We had to redo two sets of wooden stairs outside once one rotted and broke, as well as redo the concrete work and build a new retaining wall. A dog got sick and along with vet bills, we added an expensive monthly medication to our vet expenses. We had to replace two tires on the husband’s car.

It just keeps coming and coming. We try to plan for projects that need to get done, but then something else falls apart and the other stuff never happens. I keep thinking things are looking up and we might get to turn this ship around, and then bam, something breaks and we have to pay for it. And this is all on top of all the senior year/off to college expenses.

I’m tired, friends. And just a little frazzled.

I know it will be okay, and we’ll muddle through just fine. I keep telling myself all the “cheer up” things I can think of, and in my head I know they’re true and sometimes they help. And yet, I worry, and it’s been hard at times to manage my depression/anxiety crap. It ebbs and flows, and I really do think I might be on the upswing, as long as I can keep the house from falling down around me!

Plus that’s what I have my knitting for, right? (Well, and meds too, thankfully.) My knitting has definitely been therapy for me the last several months and right now my Dotted Rays shawl is my favorite. It’s so soft and squishy and soothing, garter stitch over and over…

When it’s done, it’s going to be the coziest shawl ever, I do believe. Yarn is Zen Yarn Garden Serenity 20, which only seems appropriate. I need some zen in my life!

You know, every time I write posts like this, I worry that they’re too honest, that I’m sharing too much, and maybe I should just journal. But…whatever. It helps me to write them. And maybe it helps others to know they’re not alone, or to show those who haven’t experienced it that depression isn’t always a “cure it and it goes away” kind of thing.

All the socks

Aug26

I cast on a new sock yesterday, giving me a total of four sock projects. They’re all relatively plain socks in varying stages of completeness. Commitment issues maybe?

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Yarns: Knit Picks Stroll, Mountain Colors Twizzlefoot Sock, Ancient Arts Sock, Biscotte Yarns Bis-Sock.

I’m going to commit to the newest sock, which is that pretty blue/green second from the left. It’s a new yarn for me, Twizzlefoot Sock Yarn from Mountain Colors. It’s super squishy and fun, a slightly different texture than I’m used to. I’m not sure if these will be for me or the girl!

Along with those four sock WIPs, I have three other WIPs on my needles: two shawls and a lace cowl. I think that might be more than enough for me. Now I need to buckle down and start finishing some things!

Shawl progress

Aug20

I chose poorly. Not the yarn, not the pattern. Both are heavenly. But I’m trying to modify a 5-color shawl to 3 colors and it’s not going as well as I wanted. I’m talking about my Dotted Rays shawl with the gorgeous Zen Yarn Gardens Serenity 20.

Somehow I missed where the pattern suggested approximately 1400 yards for the Large size. I just saw the yardage for the Super Large and thought 1200 yards would be plenty for the Large. (Note to self: read patterns carefully!) So I knit with color A until I had about 40 grams left and did one wedge alternating colors A and B. I didn’t want too much of the cream at the expense of the green and purple, and since I was at wedge 10 of 15, I thought surely I’d have plenty of yarn. But those later wedges get BIG, guys. Long rows, even doing short rows. After one wedge of all green, I’m down to less than 40 grams, which makes me think there’s no way I can make it through the remaining four wedges with just a bit of green and one full skein of yarn left.

There are a lot of options. I could just end it when I run out of yarn, but I really really want the chevrons at the end. I could frog back to where I stopped alternating the cream and green, and add in the rest of the cream. But I’m not sure it’s worth having to frog and reknit. (It’s definitely not.) The best option in my mind is to add another color. Currently, it’s Speckle/Solid/Speckle, so I should be able to end with a coordinating solid purple and it will be perfect. I have a couple of choices in my stash (purple yarn? Of course I do!) but I’m going to wait until I get close to running out of the purple speckle to pick. It might depend on how much I need.

I don’t think I’m a “wing it” kind of knitter. I think I like having all the information to work with up front!

Back to real life

Aug17

Whew, it’s been a whirlwind this past week! I thought I’d have a post up a day or two ago, but there just hasn’t been the time or energy or brainpower. We had a wonderful trip. The girl is all settled in to her dorm room and is loving college life so far. We love her campus, the people seemed friendly and helpful, and we already know it’s a great program, so I’m feeling okay about leaving her there. It was sad that night when we left, but overall I’d say we’re handling it just fine. I don’t know, maybe it’ll get worse, but so far, I’m just happy she’s where she wants to be.

We saw lots of gorgeous mountains, hiked in the Flatirons and in Rocky Mountain National Park, and spent a lot of time wishing we could move to Colorado. (Someday!) We hit bookstores and record stores galore. I found a place called The Chocolate Lab that had boozy butterbeer. (Too much actual beer. Gave to the husband and ordered a Dark Chocolate Elixir with Godiva liqueur instead. YUM.)

And yes, yarn stores! I visited three, only three, but I did some significant damage. No, that sounds too negative: I found a LOT of marvelous yarn. Too much to share in this post, to be honest, so that will be my next post. For now, I’ll share the progress I made on my newest project. It’s called the Michigan Avenue Wrap and I’m using three colors of Brown Sheep Stratosphere, their new superwash DK. The colors are gorgeous together and it’s growing quickly. I’m looking forward to having it for the cold fall temperatures.

It’s a lovely, soothing mindless knit, which is really important right sometimes. But to be honest, I’m feeling less stressed now that we have the girl settled in at school. Yes, I miss her, but it’s not hanging over my head anymore, and we can all settle into the new routine.

Can’t wait to show you all my new yarns!!

Switching things up

Aug6

Do you like rearranging your furniture? Moving things around to make a room feel fresh and different? I do, and if I can add a new piece, all the better! Over the weekend, the boy decided he wanted the desk space a 6′ folding table provides, rather than the smaller library table he’s been using. I’ve been using a folding table for the same reason, but I love the look of the oak library table. Plus, it belonged to my dad, so there’s a lot of sentimental value too. It didn’t take long to switch out the old and bring in the new.

It was really hard to take a good photo, what with all the windows behind the desk. But I think you can get the gist. I’m quite pleased with it. It’s nice and sturdy, and doesn’t wobble when I write in my journal like the old table did. And it holds everything I need! The only drawback is that I lost my yarn winding space. But heck, I can do that downstairs, or get a small folding table for the other wall…hm, I like that idea a lot!

Wonder Woman Dishcloth

Aug5

It was the weirdest feeling: I had the time and inclination to knit, but I didn’t want to start another sock. I wasn’t in a shawl mood. I really wanted to make a hat but didn’t know who would want one, since I don’t really wear them much and the girl already has a ton. Maybe a cowl? But I already have so many. Nothing sounded good. I had all this yarn and nothing to make.

Thankfully, Ravelry came to the rescue. I browsed through my library until something jumped out at me: a Wonder Woman dishcloth! Fast, easy, and useful! And I even had red cotton in my stash already. It went so fast that I was able to get two made in one day, both out of one ball. I did modify the second one, though. It’s designed as a long rectangle, so for the second one I shaved off two stitches from either side. I like it, but I think I’d also like to try it with a couple of extra rows above and below the pattern. Still, they’re pretty wonderful!

And now today I feel like my palate has been cleansed and I can start fresh. I have the urge to cast on both a new sock and a new shawl! And maybe one more dishcloth.

ShaZAM! It’s done!

Aug4

Wow, that was like magic: this project flew off my needles! I cast on three projects last Sunday, and suddenly I’m back down to one (a sock). You needn’t be too impressed at the speed of this one, given that it was a one-skein cowl in worsted weight on size 8 needles, with a very simple lace pattern that was really barely lace. It was my comfort knitting last night. It’s not been the best week, or two weeks, or summer, to be honest, for a lot of reasons, but yesterday I was in a serious funk. I escaped for Mexican food and a margarita with the sister, which was a lovely treat that helped a lot, and when I got home I picked up the cowl and turned on an old episode of ER. I didn’t expect to finish, but suddenly I was at the end and binding off before the show even ended.

The pattern is sha-ZAM! on Ravelry. This was a fun knit. I love these one-skein cowls; they’re so easy and fun to wear. And it was a treat to get back to some squishy soft Malabrigo. Makes me look forward to fall, when I can actually wear things like this again. (NOT winter! Note the difference, please, Mother Nature!)

And now, with almost empty needles again, I am eager for my next shawl project, and it’s going to be amazing! I have 3 skeins of Zen Yarn Garden Serenity 20 Fingering in a gorgeous Vivid bundle that I’m itching to cast on. I mean, it’s a whopping 1200 yards of 70% superwash merino, 20% cashmere, with 10% nylon.

I’m pretty sure this is going to be my first WestKnits project, but I’m debating between The Doodler and the Dotted Rays – Speckled Fade. Have you made either? Both? How do I choose??

Denim Sprinkles Shawl

Jul28

This is my last new cast-on after clearing off all my needles last weekend. The Ancient Arts T-shirt and Jeans yarn was still high on my list of “must knit” but I didn’t want it to be socks. Partly because white socks never seem like a good idea, and partly because I wanted it to become something more visible than socks. While going through my Ravelry queue, I found the pattern for the Sugar Sprinkles shawl, which I’ve been wanting to make for quite a while, and it checked off all my boxes: Long narrow shawl, variegated yarn, lace, right yarn weight and yardage. I bought it, downloaded it to my pattern app (I use Knit Companion) only to discover it was already in there! I think I must have downloaded it when she did a short free period, but I forgot about it. Oh well, the $4 is totally worth it.

This is a really fun knit! I love making eyelets, and the pattern switches back and forth often enough that I don’t get bored quickly. This was my progress on Monday night, and it’s been my evening knitting (when I’m not too tired to knit). This morning I took it outside again to get a progress photo.

It’s so fun! I think it’s going to be a great addition to my shawl wardrobe. But here’s the thing: it’s gotten long. Like really long. There are over 250 stitches on the needle, and when I tried to spread them out to show the size of the shawl, about 10 stitches jumped off one end! And you know yarnovers just love to spring free. ARGH. I managed to catch most of them, and I got it kind of fixed, but I’m pretty sure my stitch count is off now and I’ll have to do some fudging to get it back. Thankfully this is a forgiving pattern where being a stitch or two off doesn’t really hurt the look of it.

So now I have three projects on my needles, and that seems like a good number for me, at least for now. What’s a comfortable number of WIPs for you?

Sha-ZAM!

Jul26

With empty needles, I happily poked through my stash to see what I should knit next, and four pretty little skeins jumped out at me. The first was a skein of Malabrigo Rios, an aberration because I’ve been knitting so much with fingering weight yarn. I had an urge to make a cowl, one of my favorite things to knit. I love to knit on circular needles, I love the feel of merino wool in my hands, and I love to play with different patterns. And best of all, I love having so many cowls to wear when it’s cold.

This skein is the color Aniversario. I’ve bought this colorway before but it’s one where there’s huge variations in colors. I made a Hitchhiker Beyond in this color, but it has a lot of blue/indigo. This skein is mostly red. I chose a fun, free one-skein cowl pattern called Sha-ZAM! and it’s going very quickly.

I’d forgotten how much I love Malabrigo. It’s so soft, with that yummy squish factor. I definitely need to make my next sweater in Malabrigo!

Two weeks from today, we leave to take the girl to college in Colorado. (EEK!) I’m freaking out a little, but I’m also super excited for her. And I can’t wait to visit my mountains again. Anyway, before she leaves, I decided we needed some family time, so I declared today a Family Fun Day and we all took the day off work. We’ll visit the Jazz Museum, have some lunch, go to a fantastic big vintage record store, and who knows what else. Maybe a movie? I won’t get much knitting done, but that’s all right. Knitting can wait.

FO: Jungle Boogie Socks

Jul24

This is the final finished object from my busy weekend of knitting. Finishing the sweater and the Easy shawl felt so good that I wanted to wrap up the last project on my needles, the Jungle Boogie socks. I was just past the gusset decreases so it was easy stockinette in the round for a few inches. I watched some Fixer Upper and read some of An American Marriage (it’s super good so far) and grafted the toe late Sunday morning. Time to boogie!

Here’s the one tiny flaw in these socks: I can’t figure out how to photograph that bright, almost glow-in-the-dark green! I tried in different places, with different light, with different camera settings, and it just stumped me. Suffice it to say it’s really really bright, and these are amazing socks! I absolutely love the color combo. I’m especially proud because these are my first socks where the stripes match almost perfectly.

The yarn is Show Me Yarn Bootheel in color Jungle Boogie. Their yarn has quickly become my favorite sock yarn. The colors are vivid and fun, and the yarn is soft in my hand but still sturdy and firm, making socks that feel durable. It washes wonderfully and feels great on my feet. I’m sad that I only have one more skein in my stash. The contrast color is Amethyst Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Solids.

And with these socks done, my needles were EMPTY. That is a rare occurrence, and it felt so refreshing. But the best part about it was feeling free to cast on all the things!

Oh, and good news: my sweater has been washed and dried and it relaxed so beautifully! The yarn is much softer, and it has a lovely drape. The sleeves are way too long but I ended up with a sweater I can wear, so I call that a win.