A Cacophony of Chaos

Well...I would say a lot of things have happened in this void, but in terms of yarn craft, I would be stretching the truth somewhat. I mean, sure, I got a couple of minor things done, mainly these bags here:

No pattern; made these up.

I got the second one done just in time to use it, so I guess that was good. As well, I did finally get and set up a new place to store my yarn stash:

But otherwise, I've been starting and working on a number of things that still ain't done, of course. Like the Xenia Shawl:

Ok, if I huff it I could probably get it done this weekend, which means most likely I'll be distracted by other shiny things to do and not touch it.  But I could. Maybe.

I also, thanks to one of my knitting group people, ended up starting a dish towel that, due to the fact that I'm using scrap cotton, thought I ran out of the blue color, then found another fourth of a skein of it, is coming out just a little funky:

Pattern is Triple L Tweed Dishcloth by Purl Soho, though I'm making it much longer and with different weight yarn.

My only excuse for this project is that I can work on it on the subway, unlike the shawl.  That's what I'm going with.  But having a subway project, of course, didn't stop me from swatching for a pair of socks with some really, really brightly offensive yarn (that I bought at WEBS, because one of the things I did in this void was go on the annal WEBS trip (I'm one of the drivers; I kind of have to).  It turns out that between having moved my yarn stash recently and bringing my sister along, I spent way less money than usual (I got my sister to spend more than me, he he he. But she doesn't have a stash, so that made it easy).  That didn't stop me from buying a number of skeins of yarn, of course):

This is not my type of yarn.  That's because it's for my other sister, as she likes the loud bright colors. I'm planning Hanukkah presents early this year.

Also, I started swatching and doing the spreadsheet formulas for another sweater design. Because it's about time I started attempting a design again; I have way too many of them in my head, with the yarn ready to go as well, and no other work done on them.  It doesn't help that I have a bit of a deadline to my free time (well, what little I have left after being in the middle of selling a house and going a little crazy at work).  I'm going for my master's starting this month, and will be in class four evenings a week, plus using my weekends to do school work. This should be fun.

 But maybe I can get that all but started (I still need to order the needles for it because I need a different length circular; unfortunately a thought that only occurred to me after I attempted to create a sheet for my size to start it). Oh, who am I kidding, I'll spend this weekend (of which I'm taking off two days so it's a four day weekend) mostly playing Skyrim or XCOM or maybe even Karmaflow, if I feel like frustrating myself.  Or actually cleaning the apartment. Or doing the thousand other things I should be doing that I didn't do yet because last week, I took a little vacation:

Went fishing one morning; caught nothing. Oh well. This is Lake George, if you want to know.

Of course, got very little knitting done there either.  There was too much to do, and any downtime we usually spent playing board and card games.  I did, however, start teaching my boyfriend to knit. He's now attempting a one colored version of the dishcloth I'm doing, because it's only knit and slip stitches, it's a little more complicated than garter stitch, and I haven't taught him the purl stitch yet:

He wants it a certain size, so I'm teaching him how to swatch at the moment.

We'll see how this goes.

The Other Important Thing To Check

I was naughty.  I didn't swatch properly for a pair of socks I started working on and it bit me in the ass.

Ok, so I'm usually naughty in this way.  Every so often I'll do a semi-proper swatch, and by a semi-proper swatch I mean I'll knit more than an inch long on a 3 to 4 inch piece before casting off. Very rarely, I'll have sufficient motivation or time to knit a proper swatch. This is usually when I'm designing, but I'll do it for other major projects where getting the size wrong is really going to ruin things.  More commonly, however, I knit a small 2" x 1" swatch, get an idea of gauge, wash it to make sure it doesn't disintegrate or grow too much, and start the project.

Of course, by half-assing it this way, you would think what bit me in the ass was the gauge.  Not so; actually the gauge is working out better than I thought it would. No, the problem was that the colors I chose for the project didn't work:

You see, in my love of dark colors, I was thinking these contrasted sufficiently enough to allow for some colorwork to be done. I explicitly bought the purple skein so that I had a color to contrast with the black.  I was so confident, I barely did any colorwork in my swatch:

Which is why I ignored the fact that you can barely see that I did any colorwork in the swatch, and went on my merry way of casting on.

By the time I finished the first colorwork segment, however, it became obvious.  You couldn't see the pattern at all.  If I was just making a striped sock, it would have worked ok enough, but that first colorwork section wasn't even the biggest and therefore I said screw it and ripped the sock back out to the toe section.  I then went statch diving and found this fingering weight yarn:

 I was hoping to use this for something like a Hitchhiker, but I was already committed to the sock pattern and this was the only yarn I found light enough to work with the black for the colorwork.  To be fair, it is coming out nicely (despite the fact that I had to pretty much write the heel directions myself since they didn't exist in the pattern):

Pattern is Vellamo by Taina Anttila

I guess the other lesson here is have a good stash.  Not that I need to tell most yarn-crafters that.

The (Late) Rhinebeck Debrief

I know it's already been a week since the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival.  I also know that I got home Tuesday morning instead of Monday afternoon, had to do all my chores for that weekend on Tuesday (including laundry), and felt crappy with allergies all week because that's just my luck.  I also had my usually weekly stuff and then I went and saw Epica play yesterday (which was awesome, but meant I didn't get home till 3 in the morning).

Anyway, I had a blast at Rhinebeck. I'll start from the beginning.

The Class
After crashing at one of my sister's apartments and going to a brewpub with a really good pumpkin beer on Friday, I drove up to Rhinebeck early Saturday morning so I could be at the fairgrounds in time for my class.  I, of course, misjudged traffic so my first plan of grabbing breakfast and dropping my stuff off at my other sister's apartment failed. I was lucky one of the food vendors was serving food before the fair technically opened and that the workshop area had free coffee. Of course I found this out during the class, so I spent the first part of the class in a pre-coffee daze.  It could have been worse.

I signed up for the Introduction to Sweater Design workshop by Donna Kay.  Before I took the class, I didn't know the instructor or what exactly we would cover.  The class ended up being more of a lecture, but it was funny and enjoyable.  We covered tips and things to keep in mind when designing...how to swatch to figure out if the yarn you have works with your idea, how to use different types of graph paper to make sure your calculations work and everything's proportional (this would have helped tremendously for the baby sweater.  Also, I never knew knitter's graph paper existed), touched upon originality and copyright in patterns, and other many random tips to keep in mind (like don't shove every idea you have into one sweater.   I kind of knew this, but I'm also guilty of doing it). Many of the things mentioned were also conveniently given on a handout, so I didn't have to remember everything (yay reference materials).   What we didn't get to was actually doing anything with the yarn and other materials we brought.  It was obviously meant to be a longer course, yet we only had four hours and the written material covered the whole time frame.

Overall, I think I was expecting more, but I'm not disappointed that I took this class. It was enjoyable, and it did give you a method of getting from idea to complete design, which was something I needed to hear, as I'm lacking a good method right now.

The Fair
Last year, I went on Sunday only.  Because of this, it was shocking to see how crowded this event got on Saturday.  When scoping out vendors the rest of the first day (first with some friends and later with my mother), it was hard to even stop and look at stuff.  I wasn't as shocked at the crowds as my mother, though, who had 1) never been and 2) was under the impression that the Sheep and Wool Festival was simply a local fair.  I informed her that it was a big event in the yarn crafting world and people come from all over...hell, that's how I learned about it.  My local sister simply said (after the fact):  'Duchess County doesn't do small events'.

*Side Note*
The New York State Sheep and Wool Festival and Breed Ewe Sale is the official name of this event:

Sorry for the slightly blurry picture; I took this through my windshield when stuck in traffic

I think most yarn crafter attendees know this, but for some reason in our world it's called Rhinebeck.  This works fine if the context it's used in is 'major yarn crafter events'.  Calling the event Rhinebeck to the locals, however,  gets you inquisitive or odd looks, as Rhinebeck is the town where the fairgrounds are located, and the town is a tourist trap in its own right (a nice one, but it is).  Also, the fairgrounds are known locally better as the site of the Duchess County Fair, which is (I think) the biggest county fair in New York.  Therefore, calling it Rhinebeck really doesn't make sense at all (though since it's in use and it's shorter by far than the proper name, I'll still use it.  In the right context of course).  Do I get my local cred back now?
*End Side Note*

I spent most of Saturday scoping out some vendors and got some yarn.  I also helped my mom pick out nice alpaca yarn to crochet a shawl.  We also checked out the sheep, for which I got lots of pictures of because I remembered to bring my camera:

After having dinner with the family and crashing at the local sister's apartment (who lives ten minutes away; I'm so lucky), I went back to the fair on Sunday with both my sisters.  We found the alpacas and llamas (which my mom and I missed), though my camera decided to die on me as soon as I tried taking pictures of them (and I had just replaced the batteries!  Stupid me must have used bad batteries).  I bought more yarn than I've ever bought at one time because it was my birthday, I had extra money, I have tons of projects I want to do, and 'oo, pretty sock yarn...I like knitting socks!'.  I'll put that in it's own section though.

Also, I'm pretty sure I passed the Yarn Harlot in one of the vendor buildings, though she was going the opposite way and it was a little too crowded to do a good double take (or do that sneaky picture thing with my cell phone...I forget what it's called...Kinnering, maybe?).  That, and my sisters, not being in the yarn crafting world as I am, hadn't noticed and kept going, and I was trying to not lose them.  I tried slowing them down by telling them 'hey, I think we just passed someone famous in the knitting world', but they didn't care.  They were already putting up with my lingering at vendors to buy all the yarn, so I dropped it.

I also showed off my socks (which I wore on Sunday) to the vendor who's yarn I knit them from.  She liked them.

The Yarn
I'm surprised I fit all of this into my suitcase and a shopping bag:

The unfortunate consequence of this is I now have more stash than the Tupperware container can hold, even after taking out all the yarn associated with projects I'm working on.  I had to go buy another small container to shove under my futon to hold the rest of it, and a storage ottoman to hold my tools.

For one, I found a vendor selling that same damn wool I had the equal number of similar colors issue with...and it was half off.  Me, not wanting to deal with the whole two equal colors thing, bought four more skeins of black

I would have bought the charcoal color, but they didn't have it (because no one does, it seems).  Now, I'm not sure if I'm going to go with my original plan of knitting the basic sweater I have a pattern for, or still make up my own pattern.  I'll see.

I also bought enough yarn for two sweaters:

The gray skeins (its a cool smoky gray...picture doesn't do the color justice) are the first thing I acquired after the black wool. They will be a work cardigan (and unless I completely misjudged the yarn, they will be this cardigan).  The blue...well, I was looking for DK weight yarn but found this worsted weight in the perfect shade of blue, while their DK weight was slightly lighter.  So I said 'screw it, I have worsted weight sweater patterns', and bought it.  That blue wool is one of the softest I've ever felt (the woman standing behind me in line thought so too, and asked me if I was just going to curl up with it because she was tempted to do that).  It will be a nice sweater, though I have yet to decide exactly what pattern.

I also bought tons of sock yarn, because all I needed was more sock yarn:

I tried to not buy it all in blue and blue-black shades.  There's one thing I do (and it's at its worst at Rhinebeck) is that the yarn I'll be drawn to at first will inevitably be royal blue or blue dark variegated yarn  (It's worse if its cashmere.  I don't know how I know it's cashmere until I read the label, but I will inevitably find the cashmere yarn first.  Then I find the price and run away).  So I bought gray and dark purple as well.

The light blue one is alpaca and silk sock yarn, and you can guess by the last paragraph that it's not for me.  I'm not giving up on the hat pattern, but I decided that it'd be better if I set my sights a little lower and make my mom socks for Hanukkah instead.  The funny thing about this is that when I showed her all the sock yarn, she first went to the gray ones (which are rather soft wool; they're my favorite by feel) and cooed over that one.  The surprising thing to me is that she did it because she liked the color.  But it was all good when I pointed out that the light blue was alpaca.  She conceded that she would love alpaca socks, though she would only wear them in the house (we'll see how long that lasts.  She wears the $130 sweater I made her to shovel snow.  I bet you she'll wear them to shovel snow in as well). I'll have to remember to buy that gray sock yarn for her next year for real socks, though.

On the other hand, one of my sisters convince my other sister and me to try drop spindling:

That started when we found cheap small balls of angora roving.  The 'other sister' is a bunny lover, so we were scoping out angora vendors to see angora rabbits.  One of these vendors didn't have rabbits, but they had royal blue angora roving for $6.00.  What did I say about me and the jewel tone blues?  Once I pointed it out as 'pretty, but I can't spin so screw it' the conversation went from bunnies to 'you should try to drop spindle, I can teach you!  It's easy!'

Yeah, two things about that.  One, it's not that easy.  Two, my sister was talking herself up, and when she said she could drop spindle, it meant she owned one and had spun some 'yarn'. I tried after we left the fair with a little bit of the roving and I got nothing but messed up roving. Oye. I'm still going to try to learn, but I need to set some time aside and research it.  I know it can be done; someone in my knitting group had caved to the drop spindles everywhere at Rhinebeck herself, and had already learned enough in the three days between these two events to make nicer thread than my sister had.

Conclusion
All in all, it was fun, and I would do it all again. Hopefully I'll have most of this yarn compiled into projects by then!

It's a good excuse to see the beauty of a Hudson Valley fall anyway.  It's amazing how much you miss in the city.

This is in Ulster County, not Duchess, but the same lovely tree colors

Internal Rules and Current Projects

I know I wrote last time that my next post would be on something different.  That was last week.  I'll get there at some point, I promise.

For now, however, I'll cover something that's currently on my mind, and in the meantime cover what I'm working on now (as well as a couple of past projects).  Therefore, I present the first set of my Internal Rules for Knitting.  These are some rules that help keep my knitting under control, which means they're broken half the time.  Anyway:

1) I will only buy yarn if I have a project in mind for it  After all, this is what I ended up with the first time I didn't do this:

Yeah, that's a current picture of some ugly Lion Brand Swede sitting in my stash

I told myself after that little incident that I would never buy yarn on a whim again.  I would wait until I had picked it for a specific project.  Especially if it was on sale or cost a pretty penny. This would keep my yarn spending under control, and make sure I use what I buy.

However, it also seems that it's quite valid to make an exception when I feel bad about returning yarn to my LYS because I was allergic to it and bought the substitute yarn online.  That's how I ended up with two skeins of this:

The yarn is Madelinetosh's Tosh Light in their Baltic colorway, which I am rather attracted to.  That shawl is the first skein, and came out of the fact that I bought this yarn on a whim.  This, of course, leaves the second skein just sitting there, because while I enjoyed the challenge of learning how to knit lace, I'm not touching it again any time soon. It's this pattern, no modifications. My notes on it here.

It also seems that I'll make an exception I find out some distance relative is having a kid, and I have lofty goals and loads of motivation that I'll make dozens of baby things.  That's how I ended up with all of this:

At least I got a project done for said baby, though it only took one skein of that grey yarn in the back (Bernat's Softee Baby in Gray Marl by the way, though if you can't stand acrylic, don't get it.  It works up like acrylic, though it softens up in the wash)  That sweater is a modified version of this pattern. For notes, go here.

2) I will not spend more on yarn for a project than it would cost me to buy the finished product retail.  This will make my knitting practical, and save me money.  Well, sometimes.  It turns out that an alpaca sweater can retail for $130-140 dollars, which of course is only a little higher than I spent on making this:

However, spending a year and making several projects while twisting your knit stitches is priceless. But that's another post.  This is a modified version of this pattern.  My notes here.

It was also a gift to my mom, so I really didn't care about that one so much.  Given that she's spent more than that making a crochet bedspread that I grew to not like pretty quickly, among other things.  However, it also seems that the rule goes out the window if I like the colorway, which is how I ended up with this:

Project notes are here

This is my current bus project.  The pattern is the Milk Maiden Pullover from Brave New Knits, and it's one of the only reasons I bought the book.  The yarn is Madelintosh's Tosh Sport in their (new?) colorway Fathom. I officially love this colorway. Look at it, my favorite color combination, just slightly variegated enough to be interesting. It's perfect for this pattern too. I had to get it. I don't care if I can get a sweater for $40 bucks and this cost me almost $70, it's worth it. And I'll break rule number 1 if a Madelinetosh Sock onesie pops up in this colorway. Or this colorway gets discontinued. Love, love, love.

And yes, I've modified it, since I modify almost everything.  Why I tend to modify everything is another post, though. Back to the rules.

3) I will use up most of my stash before buying more yarn. Yeah, never managed to follow this one:

Most of my stash. It's a combination of whim yarn and extra skeins from other projects. It lives under my bed and out of my mind for the most part.

The only thing that makes me feel better about that is that it seems that most people I read about online have much larger stashes.  Hey, mine (barely) fits in a Tupperware container. Then again, they seem to have much nicer yarn in their stashes too. Yay?

And now for a rule I'm actually not currently breaking:

4) I should only have one bus project and one at-home project at a time.

First, I'll define what I mean by 'bus project' and 'at-home project'. Bus projects are, obviously, projects that I can do mostly on on the bus. This means that they get worked up faster, but they tend to be simpler. Though 'simpler' is a bit relative, as I have no problem including some sweaters in this pile, as you can see from my bus project above. If it fits in my briefcase and doesn't require either being chained to the pattern or a chart or a lot of color-work, I can usually do it on the bus. Lots of stockinette or very repetitive patterns are a plus here, though I have done drop stitch lace, finishing off projects, and cables on the bus successfully. On the other hand, at home projects are usually things I want to make, but are way too big and/or complicated to work on on the bus. This officially started when I made that lace shawl above, as I realized that in order to make a lace shawl, I was going to need to be chained to the pattern and be able to finish a row in a sitting. I can't do this on the bus without really annoying my fellow passengers. I decided to spare them.

I'm now working on this:

My project notes are here

This is the pattern St. Ciaran from the new and expanded version of Aran Knitting. I'm not really mortifying it (gasp!), though I'm using Berroco's Comfort Worsted to make it instead of a wool-based yarn. This is because I'm making it for my brother, who's still a kid and still trashes things. Therefore, it had to be 1)washable and 2)not too expensive to make. I picked the pattern out, though he approved it. I like torturing myself, though I'm not finding it too hard at this point, just tedious. I should be working on it right now.

I'll go do that.