Going for the GOLD!

...yarn, that is.

I’ve done all the heavy lifting for my Pagan sweater. Using Excel, I reduced the cells down to little squares and mapped out the entire yoke design. I’m going with Runes in a circle around the yoke and some decorative stitches around those. I’m aiming for tiny Thor’s hammers and little Goddess symbols, but am not entirely sure how well those are going to come out in “fair isle” type knitting. I’m probably going to do some swatches and experiment before I attempt anything on the actual sweater.

So, that brings me to my current dilemma—the colors for the yoke design. One would think it would be easy to find gold and silver toned (slightly metallic) yarns, to nicely offset the navy blue of the rest of the sweater. Well...one would be wrong. I had last week off, and I spend most of it combing our LYS, Michaels, Wal-Mart, JoAnn Fabrics, and AC Moore, frantically searching for the perfect shades of gold and silver (well, okay, this wasn’t such a hardship...it was yarn shopping, after all).

The good news: as you see from my picture, I finally managed to find the perfect shade of gold at AC Moore. The bad news: it’s only available as EMBROIDERY FLOSS!!! I stood in AC Moore for about 15 minutes staring at the display, trying to decide how many tiny floss skeins I’d have to buy to create my yoke pattern and exactly how many strands I’d need to combine to equal worsted weight yarn. I took a skein and walked up and down the aisles of the store, trying to find THAT exact color, only in actual yarn. No dice. Even Red Heart, that company that has perfected every known color under the sun, including neon traffic cone orange, didn’t have anything.

I bought the tiny skein and performed the same exercise at a ton of different stores, but no match.

Yesterday, I finally decided to just skip attempting to be Monet with the colors and just suck it up, buy some Lion Brand Glitterspun online, and get on with it...

Yeah, you guessed it—Glitterspun has been DISCONTINUED! I found a kind soul on Ravelry who can sell me two gold skeins, but now I’m going to have to find two silver skeins...

Must get on eBay...must not appear too desperate...

Too many pattern books, or…

…the Library of Congress and the Ancient Library of Alexandria—combined—have nothing on me.

A few nights ago, the kind fellow yarn enthusiasts at my SnB group turned me onto a new thing…the “Library” section on Ravelry. Okay, Ravelry has probably had this feature forever–I’m just slow and never noticed it before. They showed me just how easy it is to add in all your books, booklets, pamphlets, magazines, etc. From there, you can search if you’re looking for a particular pattern or type of pattern, without flipping through every book you have by hand (for some of us, this could take years).

Excited, yesterday I embarked on this new endeavor. I began adding books off the top of my head, as I could remember them. I was so excited to see each book pop up on my Ravelry Library page. Soon, it became painfully obvious to me that I was missing a few. After all, I have almost a whole bookcase filled with yarn-related literature…surely there were more books than what I had added so far…

Thank heavens for wireless laptops. I brought my computer into the bedroom and started painstakingly going through my books. I added each one, trying to determine which could be considered “booklets” and which could be considered “books.” Ravelry, for some reason, considers a lot of what I thought were booklets to be actual books. I tried to go through the magazines, but frankly, I need to do what they call in IT-land a “deep-dive” into those to figure out if I want to keep them all–I mean, really, am I ever going to make the baby jacket in Crochet World that calls for some odd, obscure yarn and looks sort of bulky and uncomfortable for the baby??? Even if your kid couldn’t sit up for himself yet, I guarantee he probably could, with no problem, wearing this jacket.

In total, I managed to rack up 75 books, 1 magazine (before I gave up), 17 booklets, and 3 pdf files on my Ravelry Library page. Sound like an impressive number? Sure…and it’s even more impressive (or frightening) if you consider that I only got as far as THE TOP TWO SHELVES of my bookcase! There are three more to go through, plus all the magazines. I also have reams of printed-out patterns that should be documented somewhere and scads of other pdfs.

Not sure, but I think I need some Advil…

Yarn Identity Crisis

Once again, the yarn is speaking to me...this happens often, usually when skeins of yarn have been sitting in my stash entirely too long. They get restless and demand satisfaction. Before you call the happy hatch, yes, I am aware that I probably need professional help...

Getting back to the clamoring yarn in question...This particular yarn has been sitting in a plastic bag in our spare room, waiting to be worked. It started out life last Christmas as a Herrschners kit, specifically the Bright Squares Blanket from the Patons Home Front booklet. However, I’ve been dawdling for months on this project, due to it not being exactly what I had in mind when I put it on my wish list last year. Specifically, it is really sort of a knockoff of the Babette Blanket by Kathy Merrick. I don’t know...there’s nothing wrong with the Babette Blanket, but somehow the yarn just doesn’t seem to be satisfied with its predetermined fate. Also, I feel funny about crocheting a knockoff, and I’m really surprised Kathy Merrick hasn’t sued Patons by now.

So, for months, the yarn has sat in the spare room, playing with all the possibilities. It has thought of perhaps a knitted afghan instead, but dismissed this, on the basis that I’ve done too many knitted things lately – it’s time to employ the sister craft crochet. It has pondered a hexagon granny afghan, but I really hate sewing hexagon shapes together (actually, I can’t stand sewing, period, but that’s another story). It has considered a striped crocheted sweater; but really, I’ve done more than my share of sweaters.

Lately, the yarn has hit upon another possibility – namely the Granny Stripe afghan, by Lucy of Attic24 (here is the pattern on her blog: http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/2010/05/granny-striping.html). It strikes a nice balance – an interesting pattern that is easy to do. It could probably work as a great take-along project (until, like any afghan, it starts taking up its own zip code).

The sick, pathetic thing is that I’m actually feeling GUILTY about even THINKING of using the yarn for something other than its original purpose. I’m not sure what my problem is. I think I’m afraid that the minute I start a different project other than the Bright Squares Blanket the Herrschners police are going to break down the door and haul me off. I’m also afraid that I’m going to be kept out of Yarn Heaven for transgressions against the expressed order of things, and instead be relegated to Yarn Hell, where you can see the yarn, smell the yarn, but can’t touch the yarn...NOOOOO!

I know, shut up and crochet already...

Utter Chaos...

Holy Cow! Working on the Hooded Duck Blanket, sewing the pieces together. The bill took forever to get even onto the hood. I need to figure out how the %$@# I'm going to get the hood lined up with the blanket, I have no damned black buttons for the eyes, so I may take the cheap route and do I-cord buttons, as I really don't want to go out in the middle of a possible HURRICANE to get buttons, and I have no idea how to do the I-cord edging, as I've forgotten all my lessons from the Jacqueline Fee The Sweater Workshop book, and in the words of my favorite coworker: "OH, MY FRICKIN' GOD!!!"

Breathe...Breathe...Breathe...

All Sewn Up

I’m nearing the end of the Hooded Duck baby blanket and once again, it is time to whine about finishing issues…

I hate sewing. I absolutely hate it. Years ago, my mother taught me how to sew, and in the beginning, I actually liked hand-sewing. I made a few small items and all was well. THEN…my mother picked up a second-hand sewing machine for me, thinking it would make it easier for me to make more items, as I had expressed an interest in learning how to make my own clothes. This was a mistake. I could not get the hang of pushing the pedal with my foot and guiding the item through that nasty, NASTY pulsating needle. My bobbins kept getting messed up, as did my other thread. My seams kept coming out crooked; ironically, when I hand-sewed my seams were straighter. I began to develop a colorful vocabulary of four-letter words that wildly gushed forth every time I got within 10 feet of the machine.

Then there was the ugly story making the rounds of the family about how my sister-in-law Joyce had gotten her finger caught in her sewing machine. The needle had somehow punctured her finger right through and she couldn’t get it out! My brother Tony had to rush her to the emergency room WITH THE SEWING MACHINE.

My mother finally took away my machine. I think it had less to do with Joyce almost losing her right finger and more to do with me continuously using the language of a prison inmate…

Anyway, ever since then, I’ve been put off sewing, period. When I learned how to knit and crochet I was mortified to find out that I’d have to sew pieces together. I’m really not sure how I thought they were going to be joined otherwise. I think, unconsciously, I was hoping that little elves would tiptoe into the house in the middle of the night and complete all my garments for me, so that I wouldn’t have to be bothered with such pesky details.

This is why I love knitting in the round—less sewing.

So, this brings us to the baby blanket…I’m almost done knitting the little duck bill. After that, I have to sew on some buttons for eyes, sew on the bill, and sew the hood to the blanket, before I begin the I-cord edging. I’m just dreading the whole thing. I keep putting it off by working on my brillo pad socks instead. I also have an Owls sweater that needs to have buttons sewn on. I’ve had ALL SUMMER to do that, but did I? Nooooo…I’m probably going to put that off until the morning I decide to wear the sweater this winter.

&^%*#@...

What does this yarn want to be???

I’m in the middle of knitting some bed socks, and I’m facing a crisis…

I bought this beautifully colored yarn at the CT Sheep, Wool and Fiber Festival for the expressed purpose of making socks. The picture (the two skeins at the bottom) really doesn’t do the beautiful colors justice. I really wanted to get enough yarn to make a sweater, but the vendor only had two skeins. I knew the yarn was going to be a bit too thick for conventional socks, so I settled on the idea of some bed/house socks, knit on #3 needles.

I cast on with great excitement, but now my excitement has been replaced with a gnawing, combined sense of dread and panic.

The yarn is WAY too rough for socks. It’s way too rough, in fact, for ANYTHING you’d want to put anywhere near your skin! If I were knitting brillo pads, it would be ideal, but somehow I don’t see creating utilitarian kitchen scrubbies with $$$ wool.

I posted to that wise and trusted Oracle, better known as Ravelry, and have gotten various responses about washing the article after the fact in shampoo and putting conditioner and vinegar in the rinse water, which sounds like a good suggestion. However, I’m panicking, thinking to myself, “What if it DOESN’T WORK???” What if I end up with nasty, scratchy socks that, far from providing warm tootsies on a cold winter’s night, cause the recipient to spend half the night frantically scratching themselves?

I keep thinking perhaps I should just create something else with the yarn, but what? It’s too thin for a hat, and again, it’s too scratchy for mittens, gloves, or a scarf.

My best course of action may be to just carry on, knitting away, hoping that I can remedy the situation after the fact, as all those kind people on Ravelry are insisting I can. It may be just a matter of having faith…

Afghans for Afghans Vest Finished!

I'm happy to report that I'm FINALLY finished with the tiny vest for Afghans for Afghans!



I used the Baby/Toddler Vest pattern by Plymouth Yarn Company and Cascade 220 Tweed yarn. My sticking point was sewing on the buttons. In a later post, I'll elaborate on just how much I hate to sew--especially buttons onto a vest or cardigan, seeing as I always obsess over making sure they are sewn on evenly and right where the corresponding buttonholes are on the other side.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the organization, Afghans for Afghans is humanitarian project that sends hand-knit and crocheted vests, sweaters, socks, hats, mittens, and blankets to the people of Afghanistan to help them survive the winter months. I am, of course, paraphrasing from their website, which is at:

http://www.afghansforafghans.org/

You can go to the site to review all the criteria for sending an item. The most important thing is that it be a natural fiber like wool or alpaca--something that will keep people warm--they don't want acrylic. I've made socks and sweaters for them in the past. You can send items right to the address on the website. It's usually best to find out specifically what they need. This summer, their campaign was for socks. At other times, they are looking for children's clothing. A while back, they were looking for women's shawls, and they had to be certain dimensions, so that the women could wrap them as head coverings. It's always important to read the guidelines carefully to make sure you understand exactly what they are looking for--there are certain restrictions when it comes to clothing for Muslims.

Right now, our LYS, Creative Fibers in Windsor, CT (http://www.creativefibersonline.com/), is collecting children's vests to send to Afghans for Afghans. The store's deadline is September 12, 2010. They have the Baby/Toddler Vest pattern by Plymouth Yarn Company available, which last I checked was free ($1 donation suggested to help with their shipping costs). Their number is 860-687-9931 if you want more information.

Whether you are for or against our involvement in Afghanistan, I think we can all agree that innocent people are suffering and need our assistance--especially the children. I find that, all too often, I get so caught up in my everyday life and drama that I forget about others who need help. This is one small way for me to give back...