July WIP Wednesday

Tags

alpaca, clothing, crafts, studio, weather, yarn along

Thanks to those of you writing to wish me well – I’m much better now but have been taking it slow and easy for a while, and I suspect I’m going to need my second chiro visit on the 15th to unstuck my neck once more, but hope to manage until then. The cat luckily is back to his usual goofy, ever hungry self; my theory is that he swallowed a bee or something like that, because we could find no explanation of his sudden peevishness.

There has been some light reading, for instance:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The very last Discworld novel (#41): The Shepherd’s Crown

WIP Wednesday

Tags

alpaca, clothing, green, sweater, wool, yarn, yarn along

Some reading, some progress on my cardigan after yet another knitting break.

Unfortunately I went through these books much too fast and now I’m without fiction again.

What knitting?

Tags

clothing, crafts, garden, life, relax, seasons, summer, weather, WIP Wednesday, yarn, yarn along

I’d almost forgotten, that it’s a thing that I do. In all the weaving frenzy, wips have been sitting hidden and alone in various baskets, no longer interesting. Until I realised, that if we do get summer (which is not a given in years when I have new shorts and skirts) I can’t bring my looms outside. And it’s such a shame to sit inside when you have a garden, isn’t it?

It’s Wednesday again

Tags

clothing, country life, inner conviction, intention, sweater, WIP Wednesday, wool, yarn along

And I’ve been knitting again for some quiet, uneventful passtime. Also G is on holiday and watches a lot of tv in between all the house maintenance, so I needed something not requiring too much attention from me. I don’t enjoy just staring at the box, it feels like my evening is completely wasted, but I don’t want to lock myself in the bedroom with a book all the time.

So I started a simple box shaped wool sweater from yarn I “tripped over” at my LYS. She only had two skeins, so possibly I’ll need a solid colour for the sleeves, time will tell.

Knitting this winter

Tags

clothing, hats, stash busting, strik, sweater, weather, winter, WIP Wednesday, yarn along

Once again I’m going to contradict my own decisions, I guess it’s even becoming something of a rule. I said I’d knit small items rather than sweaters or begin to weave tapestries. Right. As it happens, all of a sudden I’ve become fat, no change in my diet and I’m moving more than last year, but still, here is the cold season and my closet is filled with sausage skins. So I have to do something about that, and I have yarn long ago dedicated to this anyway. It’s going to be much faster than losing the lard, even at my knitting rate, I’m not exactly from a family of fast metabolism.

Last year I began my reversible sweater, and made it all the way to starting the sleeves. But it was juuust an inch too tight all of a sudden, the neckline too, whereas the sleeves were too wide. The raglan method I’d invented worked in theory, it just didn’t look very good, and – the whole thing was a bit short too. So I decided to start over, change the design a bit accordingly and then it never happened. Well, now it has. I’m actually DONE! Sewing in the ends invisibly doesn’t count. I’m on it already. Needs a little wash to even out stitches too. And I suppose I need to get Mimi padded up to match my current proportions!

Next up are two hopefully quickies in the same yarn from Drops, two colourways. One I’m knitting with a strand of slate coloured alpaca, it was destined to become a Forest Nymph dress, but I can’t wrap my head around cables and shortrows at the same time just now, so it’ll be another raglan and then I’ll just keep going until I run out of yarn. The other one will be a sideways garter thing real simple on large needles because I only have 6 skeins. Just for an over the top of everything else in the cold, could become a vest actually, I’ll have to swatch. Possibly I could knit with a natural Mulberry 6/1 single that I have stashed somewhere? Any other ideas how to stretch the yarn?

The remainder of the blue yarn I thought of using for a two sided hat, with some of my handspun on the outside, the blue is absolutely non-itchy but of course not as warm as wool and I have very delicate ears, so it needs to be fairly windproof.

Further projects I probably shouldn’t even begin to think about, knowing my track record of sticking to plans. Feel free to hold me accountable for these however! 😉

And to make it a WIP Wednesday too, here’s some of my current reading material.

Vinterstrik

På trods af min erklæring om ikke at strikke trøjer mere, er der alligevel hele 3 på pindene til denne vinter. Jeg er simpelthen blevet så fed i løbet af året, at det meste af mit tøj sidder som pølseskind, selvom jeg bevæger mig mere end året forinden og spiser det samme!

Den blå omvendesweater jeg begyndte sidste år er sådan set nærmest færdig, den måtte strikkes om, da den også var blevet stram. Og så improviserer jeg lige et par hurtige med noget Drops jeg har liggende, den ene farve skulle egentlig have været denne model, men jeg kan ikke koncentrere mig om at lave vendestrik og kabler på samme tid, så nu bliver det bare en top-down raglan indtil der ikke er mere garn.

Og så må jeg hellere lade være med at lave flere planer, for jeg overholder dem jo alligevel ikke.

Og så vil jeg strikke en dobbelthat af noget hjemmespundet udenpå og rester af det blå trøjegarn indeni, så mine sarte inderører er beskyttet og min sarte hud ikke bliver kradset af ulden.

Hodgepodge

Tags

blogging, clothing, sweater, yarn along

How the view from my office window distracts me from matters at hand.

What, no plant dyeing post this Monday? Well, yes, I do have a couple in my drafts, but they are rather dull and not very urgent, so I thought I’d find a time where I push the lot out at once “final natural dyeing week at the colour cottage 2013”, like. I do have a few more dye jobs waiting too, but as I’d mentioned, I needed a break, because I feel no urgency whatsoever.

No worries, in fact my entire first page of wordpress posts list are drafts! Surely I can find something else to talk about, right? Except they all pretty much require me to do things that I can show and tell. The knitting, the coughcough tapestries, the WIP paintings, the daily(?) postcards etc. etc. Lots of sketching/designing going on behind the curtains though.

Yarn sketch showing how I do not intend to spin this fiber. 2×2 cable.

What happens to leaves encased in acrylic painting medium?

There is in fact some knitting. I’m almost, well sort of, back to the same place where I frogged my blue reversible sweater, now in a longer, slightly wider version with I hope a better looking raglan. And I’ve decided to first knit a hat in some old leftover yarns from my stash (needs busting anyway) before I commit some of my handspun, as I’ve never knit a hat before, so sizewise it’s a bit of a mystery. There’s something to be said for small items like this, though. You get it over and done with pretty quick compared to sweaters. Unfortunately I go through a lot of the latter and don’t really use accessories much. I may reconsider of course: The hat looks tiny on the needles. If I end up having to knit it three times, not much time is saved. Or I suppose it could become a Thing-finder pouch, to have something to show for it.

I “accidentally” ordered some more random library books instead of reading the ones on my shelf/ordering from my study list. I did have an ambition to order only one or two at a time, to take my time reading them and perhaps remember more of what they say. Problem is, sometimes they take almost a year, at other times I get 10 in a week. So I need to finish these and then try to be more systematic with my reading, so it doesn’t take away my crafting time because I have a deadline. Twice I can renew – sometimes. And only if nobody else is in line, so I sometimes have just 30 days for a whole pile. Fine for novels, I can do one per day, but the others I need to put down regularly.

Then I thought I did have some really exciting news to share with you, but right now I’m almost afraid to jinx and postpone it even more if I say it out loud. An exercise in patience for sure. Going on three weeks now… And I’m not even superstitious! I need to learn to not agonize over other people’s tardiness and supposed intentions. Do you master calm in the face of “bad” excuses? I seem to be getting better at seeing the logical side of it and not just fret, you could say I stand aside and watch myself do it for a bit. 😉 So while it still distracts me I seem to be getting over it faster, even when things happen in droves, as they are prone to do.

I really should be making apple sauce before we have another frost.

Blandet landhandel

Denne mandag er der ingen plantefarveindlæg, dvs. jeg har et par stykker, men de er kedelige, så jeg regner med at udgive dem i en bunke. “Sidste farverunde i 2013-uge”. Jeg har nogen flere ting jeg vil farve med, men jeg trænger stadig til en pause kan jeg mærke.

Heldigvis har jeg jo masser af blog-kladder, en hel side fuld. Nå, ikke, de handler allesammen om noget der ikke er færdigt til at vise frem. Der sker en masse forsøg og skitser bag kulisserne, men mere om det senere. Lidt spinding, lidt collage og maling og forskelligt andet.

Strikket lidt har jeg også, så jeg kan blive færdig med min ret/vrang omvendetrøje som blev en anelse for smal og kort men for stor i ærmegabene. Nu næsten tilbage hvor jeg var nået til sidste år, og forhåbentlig også en lidt pænere raglankant, jeg fik eksperimenteret lidt for meget sidst. Det virkede i teorien som jeg ønskede, det var bare ikke særlig kønt! Og så forsøger jeg mig med en demo-hue i restegarn – er lidt spændt på den, for den ser godt nok bette ud på rundpinden. Måske det i virkeligheden er en tingfinderpung?

Jeg er “kommet til” at bestille flere tilfældige biblioteksbøger, så nu har jeg igen travlt med at læse faglitteratur på deadline, det holder virkelig ikke. Jeg må prøve at holde fokus og ikke bestille så meget og kun fra min officielle liste, så jeg bedre kan fordybe mig. Romaner sluger jeg hurtigt, men fakta kræver at man lægger det fra sig og fordøjer i ny og næ.

Og ellers har jeg gået et par uger og ventet på at fortælle en spændende nyhed, men den lader vente på sig. Selvom jeg er blevet bedre til at træde et skridt til siden, så lader jeg mig stadig gå lidt på når ting går i hårknude uden min indflydelse og jeg er i tvivl om den anden parts intentioner. Er du god til at sige pyt og fordrive tiden med noget andet imens?