Pins and Needles

Whose Hat is it?

In my quest to get rid of all these little yarn leftovers, I made this hat. The red yarn there is now all used up. Yippee. I didn't have anyone in mind when I made this hat, so it is a hat in search of a head. I guess when I find the right head for the hat, I will know. Several people have tried it on so far, but nobody has had a real click.

Using Up Some Sock Yarn

I made Vigo some socks with these two colors of sock yarn and I had a little of the brown, and almost a full skein of the green left over. I used the green yarn to knit my first pair of toe-up socks and a matching beer cozy (serious accessorizing!). I still have a little more of the brown left over. Enough for another beer cozy, I think. I can't wait to be rid of it! It feels good getting to the end of these small leftovers. I'm a little sick of beer cozies now and I'm going to make a few hats now.

My Instructable is up for a Prize

A couple years ago I wrote a nice Screenprinting Instructable. I'm very proud of it. It's had a couple hundered people comment on it and has sort of become a little community unto itself, with people asking questions and other people offering extra tips and advice. If you're an instructables member, log in and and vote for me. It's easy to do. I'm right there in the Most Viewed section of the contest page. If you're not a member of instructables, you should check it out. Erik used it for boat building a couple times, and there are just oodles of projects and ideas there.

Learning Toe-Up Socks

I first was inspired to knit toe-up socks by this Firestarter pattern, which I discovered through the Knitters Unscensored podcast.

I downloaded the free pattern, bought some fancy sock yarn, and took out my needles, but I had no idea how to start the pattern. I read it a few times, looked up short rows in my Knitters Handbook and decided to work a little more on the cardigan I've been knitting for Vigo for the past two years.

When packing up for our move to Berlin, I decided to pack away all my big projects and all my real stash and only keep out the "fond de stash," the bottom-of-the-barrel half-balls of leftover whatnot that it would be healthy to use up. Mostly I've been knitting beer cozies, but this weekend I decided to make a plan to tackle the toe-up sock.

Of course, I've been quietly forming this plan in my head since that day with the Firestarter, so I'd already done a little bit of research.

Step One: Start Simple
Using the magic cast-on (which is dead simple and works like a dream), knit one pair of Wendy's Fingering Weight, Toe-Up Socks with Gusset Heel. This is a recipe for the most basic toe-up sock

Step Two: Get Fancy
I have a pattern for lace toe-up baby socks to knit next. They're more complicated, but they're small, so I won't have to spend the rest of my summer knitting them

Step Three: Tackle the Firestarters

I started on step one this weekend and was surprised to discover that once I learned the magic cast on, the challenge really isn't that great. I was both relieved and disappointed about this, and I don't know why I was so surprised. It's always like that with knitting. Before you try a new technique, the new task always seems complicated. The way knitting patterns are written really doesn't help, either. But then once you just dig in and do it, it's always really easy. I had the same experience being intimidated by cables.

Onesies

I spent most of my weekend finishing up printing projects so I can pack all my supplies. Here's a series of onesies I made for Justine's new baby Sienna, and one for Derrick & Nina whose baby is expected any minute now.

Pattern For Hot Water Bottle Cozies

I wrote up the pattern for one of the hot water bottle cozies I made.

I even made a pdf...

Look in the extended entry for the pattern

Continue reading "Pattern For Hot Water Bottle Cozies"

Handknit Body Technology Interface

Little Red Sweater + Matching Socks

I finally finished the sweater I was making for Justine's baby. I just sewed the buttons on it last weekend, and made a pair of matching pointy-toe socks.

For Sensitive Skin

via facebook

Local Yarn Shop Map Facebook App

I turned the yarn shop map I use in my side bar into a Facebook app the other day and it's been approved for the directory, so if you are a knitter on Facebook, you should check out my new app and maybe install it.

Spamera

This is good inspiration.

Projects

I always have more projects going on or in my mind than I can reasonably finish. I used to feel awful about that and hate myself for not following through on all my ideas. I thought of myself as someone who never finished anything. Luckily, at some point, I realized that the finished thing is not always the point. In fact, most of the time the finished thing is just a by-product of the really interesting part of work, which is the getting from idea to object and all which that entails.

Another idea that helps me cope with dead projects is that in some way, I haven't got 10 projects, or 20, or whatever. Really I only have one project, which is to make things, and all of these other subtasks are just part of that big project, which has no end and can't be finished. If I get half way through a project and then lose interest, that project can be considered finished. Whatever I've learned in getting that far is part of the bigger task.

Losing interest in a project is a good sign that it's not an interesting thing to be doing and deserves to be ditched.

Sometimes a project will stay on my imaginary to-do list for years before I do anything about it. For example, this year I learned how to make a kaleidoscope, something I had been thinking about for a long, long time. I just took a pinhole camera workshop. I've been thinking about pinhole photography and even researching it for at least two or three years.

Here is my current list of projects. It'll be interesting in six months to see which, if any, have been done.

* Convert my Brownie into a pinhole camera
* Build a stereoscopic pinhole camera that can use 120 film
* Make + send out kaleidoscope-making kits (let me know if you want one)
* Learn how to knit toe-up socks (+ firestarters)
* Fix and funkify my noise-cancelling headphones
* Illustrate Stooger (friend's children's book)
* Make a lego movie with Vigo
* Build a robot
* Set up a website for Vigo to help him keep in touch with his friends
* Help improve the Rolling Family website
* Improve this blog (own domain, make it look better, structure it better to share with Justine and maybe other people)
* Finish the two sweaters I've started knitting
* Finish sewing together the shirts I printed and cut two years ago

I know there are other projects out there I'm forgetting, which is a good sign that they aren't going to happen in the next six months. I'm teaching a screenprinting workshop at the end of April at Willoughby & Baltic. That's a project in itself.

It would be nice to have an art vacation. Maybe a month in a studio space with somebody bringing you food a couple times a day. Someplace with a view. Someplace where you cook dinner at night over an open fire on the beach.

Local Yarn Shops

Finding a perfect yarn shop is like finding a perfect lover. It's almost impossible, but even getting pretty close is damn exciting. In my neighborhood I am blessed with two yarn shops, but both of them are disappointing.

One of them is a perfectly good yarn shop, but just not on the same wavelength as I am. We're mildly incompatible, but since she's the best I've got, I do buy things there. She's into bamboo needles, I like addi turbos. She's into certain colors, I'm into others. She's deeply into spinning and I really am not interested.

The other place is really not a very good yarn shop at all. They have some cheap yarn that is only fit for felting and they have very pricey Debbi Bliss yarn and nothing in between. They're an all-around crafts store and not just a local yarn shop and I have nothing but contempt for crafts like scrapbooking and rubber stamping. I sort of hate to even be in the same room with rubber stamping supplies.

All of this is actually good for me. I have enough yarn in my stash to keep me knitting for many, many months and as I'm planning a cross-Atlantic move this summer, I shouldn't be buying any yarn, period. So it's good having these two options, where most of the time I walk in, look around, and walk out frustrated.

The best yarn shop I have been to so far in my knitting career is Knit Knot in Portland, OR. They have a big shop and a very wide range of yarn and equipment. They have a little section of tiny skeins of crazy yarns made out of things like paper. Fortunately or unfortunately, they don't seem to have an online store.

I'm excited to discover what Berlin will have to offer. A lot of the yarn and knitting equipment I buy is made in Germany, so I'm hoping for some good shops.

I Finally Got my Invitation to Ravelry

I finally got my invitation to Ravelry. I'm pretty excited about it, but I won't have time to really get into it for probably another two weeks. I did put up one project. If you're reading this and you are on Ravelry, leave me a comment to tell me who you are so I can look you up.

Tracy_the_astonishing was too long for Ravelry, so I'm Trixolina instead.

Hyperbolic Crochet

I look at the People's Hyperbolic Gallery (link in the side bar of The Institute for Figuring) and I think to myself, "Now here's something I could probably become completely obsessed with."

I plan not to even read the how-to at all. I love that they found a practical project for this clearly useless (and I mean that in the absolute best way possible) art. Crocheting a coral reef.

There are lots of cool pictures on Flickr. I particularly like Knot by Gran'ma's stuff, hyperbolic and otherwise.