...yet another knitting blog
I’m tired tonight, but I wanted to pop in quickly and show you what my blasted crocheted circle is growing up to be:
Hat in Progress
I’m so happy so far. I love the shape, and I love that I made it big enough and deep enough to go down over my ears. I’m working on the brim now, and hope to be done by the end of the week. I am determined that 2012 is going to be a good year for finished projects. And I’m almost there with 2012 No. 1!
See you soon.
crocheted circle in progress
Sadly, not long after this, I stopped crocheting in favor of knitting. I had hurt my hands badly with the twisting motion of crochet, and learned to knit instead. But for some reason, the desire to crochet has never left me. I’ve been trying multiple styles of “ergonomic” crochet hooks, and I’m finding that I can crochet, as long as I only do it in short bursts and take frequent breaks. So, yay for that!
The original hat starts with a circle. Easy enough, right? Apparently that part of crochet wasn’t coming back to me so easily. I don’t know how many times I started this project, over and over, but the counts were wrong. Now, they’re finally on track. So, I think I’m on my way!
The other thing about the original hat was that it was made from cheap acrylic yarn, held doubled, on a hook much smaller than usually required for that thickness of yarn. This is critical for the hat to keep it’s well-defined shape. So I’m using a worsted acrylic, double-stranded, on a size G hook. This hat will be able to stand up on its own.
So, what you’re seeing here is just a beginning. But, I think I’m on my way. Hopefully this won’t take long! I want to wear this hat THIS winter. Wish me luck!
knit hat in progress
With all of that, there has been only minimal knitting going on here. I’m going back and forth between several small projects at the moment, and having a really hard time staying focused on just one thing. I’m working on a hat. It looks a lot like a hat I made more than two years ago and gave to a friend. That hat would have been too small for me and I knew my friend would like it, so it seemed to make sense at the time. Problem was, I really loved that yarn colorway (Noro Kureyon, #188, if you’re curious), so earlier this year I bought 10 skeins. Now I have enough for a hat, a matching scarf, and mittens. The hat is just a basic top down bowler hat. I want to knit it deep enough to cover the tops of my ears, and then flare out a bit with a rolled brim. Hopefully it will be cute!
Of course, as I mentioned, I’ve been working on several small projects, which I will save for other blog posts, but that means a hat which should have taken me only a couple of weeks to complete has taken a couple of months instead. Hopefully by the time next winter comes, I’ll have a new hat, mitten and scarf set in my favorite colorway of Kureyon.
The thing I found most interesting about my blogging hiatus is how intertwined with my knitting it actually is. There were days when I thought I can’t knit, because I can’t access my blog to write about it. Then, other days it was the opposite. I can’t blog, because I haven’t knit much and so it would be a slow news day. Wow. It seems like if one went south, both did. And so now, I’m trying to get back on track. I hope someone’s still out there reading, and will let me know that I’m not just writing in a vacuum. Not that I shouldn’t be happy to just write for myself, but to me, I guess that’s the difference between a journal and a blog. I wouldn’t be publishing if I weren’t hoping that someone is reading!
Anyway, it’s good to be back. Now maybe I can get back to some mega-knitting adventures. Yippee!
Until next time…
I can’t believe that Blog Week Day 6 is here, and so it’s almost over! Today’s topic: revisit a past FO. (For the uninitiated, “FO” means “finished object.”) Since I have precious few of those, choosing a special one was relatively easy.
One of my earliest projects is, to this day, my most favorite. It is my first-ever felted hat.
Hat project before felting
Hat after felting
For Christmas that year in 2004, my co-worker gave me a large purple pin because, she said, it reminded her of my hat. She took the hat off my desk where I had it perched and put the pin on, on the spot. Because of this, each time I make these hats, and I have made several, I always adorn them with something. Usually it’s jewelry, but sometimes it’s a cabled hat band or something fun and funky. I’d love to make one with big, floppy flowers.
To this day, everywhere I go, I constantly get stopped on the street (literally!) so people can ask me where I got my hat. I beam with pride when I can say, “I made it myself!” This is the only knitted thing I’ve ever made that has gotten this reaction.
The hat, today
So there you have it, my favorite FO. I’m off to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this weekend, which is my favorite event of the year. Funny that tomorrow’s topic is about a favorite yarn. I’ll probably have lots of new stash to talk about!
Nobody likes a whiner. But, the truth is, I don’t really care right now. It’s my blog, and I’ll whine if I want to. You’d whine too, if you’d only left your house once in the last 13 days. I’ve been snowbound, and on kid duty, to two kids who won’t admit it, but who desperately want to go back to school. They’ll get their chance tomorrow. I’m working from home, so I won’t actually get out til Thursday. But, since I’d only be going to the office on Thursday, I’m not really complaining. I’m frankly not looking forward to the nasty commute on slushy, snow-narrowed roads. Today my husband spent a total of 3 1/2 hours in the car.
Our neighborhood itself has been cleared for a while, but we have no sidewalks here, and since the lawn still has more than two feet of snow on it, our mail carrier has been refusing to come. We get mail about once every three days. And I have a couple of packages that were due here a week ago from UPS that still haven’t found their way here. So, except for spending unreasonable amounts of time on sites like Facebook and Ravelry, I’ve been pretty much cut off from the world.
You know what really irks me? I actually wished for this. A week or so of unplanned downtime was what I needed, I said. And it was good, at first. I cooked like crazy for the first week or so. I even made Indian eggplant. I thought I might get caught up on sleep, but it turns out I’m a crappy sleeper, no matter what. Dr. Phil really got on my nerves, and I got pretty tired of seeing all the stars of Valentine’s Day making the rounds on every single talk show.
I will say that my daughter and I bonded over The Last Song
I suppose there is one good thing about being home a lot over the last week or so:
Long stoocking cap with stripes nearly done
Now the question is what to do next. Yes, I have lots of unfinished things. But, truth be told, not one of them is exciting me at the moment. I need something new. I opened a mitten kit from Knit Picks earlier this afternoon, as Kelley Petkun is hosting a KAL on mittens, but alas, I didn’t have the energy to start anything today. I do have a sock and a scarf on the needles, but neither of them are making me happy at the moment. I’m feeling the urge to make a sweater. Yes, I have one on the needles, but I haven’t been happy with it for a while and I am thinking I need to frog it and start over. My buttonholes are a mess and I don’t like it that it’s sloppy. Still, I need to think of something by the time I leave the house on Thursday, because the very idea of a potentially very long commute with no knitting is scary.
Back to that again. The long commute. You know, the last of the Big Snow fell here a week ago, and many of our roads are practically impassable because the snow piles are so big that it has been impossible to move enough snow off the roads far enough to make all lanes completely usable. So our already crowded roads are severely gridlocked and it is very unpleasant.
So yes, I wanted some extra time with the kids, and some extra sleep, and some time for knitting, and napping. But now, it’s been so long since I’ve been to work that I’ve frankly forgotten where I left off, and I dread the size of my e-mail inbox tomorrow. I was behind on stuff before, but now it’s much worse, I’m sure. So, I’ll be digging out… in more ways than one.
*Whine*
The end.
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