2009 Stashburning Post #30

Last week, I found an opportunity to give away some of my yarn to someone for charity blankets. I didn’t really think about what I was giving at the time, probably due to how crazy busy last week and you know, I was sick. Yesterday I decided to stash toss and see what was left. This may have been overdoing it, but I felt pretty good about knowing what’s where when I got done.

Let’s see, shall we?

Stash Yardage:
Miles in Stash Following Stash Toss: 16.88
Total Miles Used, all time: 4.999 (no change)
Miles Traded/Sold/Gifted: 9.44 (+3.13)
Miles in Stash Last Week: 13.68
Miles in Stash This Week: 11.35
Net Change from Last Week: +0.43 miles
Net Change from Stash Toss:-3.20 miles

Overall: Not too shabby for a bag of yarn cobbled together in five minutes, huh? 3 miles? I’m not completely sure that all of it was given away, some of it may have been given away earlier and not properly accounted for, and I did toss some stuff in the odds and ends bin (less than .2 of a skein, for instance) and call it gone. What’s left is stuff I definitely have plans for, too. Maybe nebulous plans, but plans all the same.

Hopefully there will be more posts this week. Blog posting is definitely something that is not tiring me out as I’m recuperating.

Recuperating…

In September I got bronchitis. This isn’t that unusual for me, used to happen every fall (although usually later than September). Hacked for over a week, went in, got drugs, went home. Never quite quit hacking, but the cough got better. Then I got another cold a couple of weeks ago that started in my head but ended up in my chest. For a number of reasons, I wasn’t giving myself permission to be sick until I ended up back at the doctor’s office after several co-workers including my boss mothered me out of the office Tuesday morning.

I am sick. I’ve been running myself into the ground. Admitting to myself I am sick has been hard, and I am realizing now that I’m just barely on the mend and it’s going to take me a while to come back. I keep trying to remind myself it took eight weeks to get this sick, but it’s hard to be patient. In the mean time there has been some activity of a yarny variety around here. More on that later. Now, a nap.

2009 Stashburning Post #29

In which I confess a few things here and there. I may have mentioned that my job went all nuts. In fact, I noted in the last stashburning post, right at the top, that very same thing. Nothing’s changed, everything’s crazy, but I am trying very, very hard to take back my time right now.

One positive side effect of being crazy busy like woah is that I haven’t had much (any) time to stalk my favorite yarn stores/yarnies and buy yarn. One negative effect is that I haven’t really knit as much as I would like, since I’ve spent most of my evenings trying to tread water with my job rather than knitting, but I have squeezed in some – as you’ve seen over the last few days.

At any rate, there has been some yarn coming into the house in the last six weeks or so. Not as much as my stress level would suggest though, so that has to be progress, right? At any rate, let’s get to the numbers.

Stash Yardage:
Miles in Stash Following Stash Toss: 16.88
Total Miles Used, all time: 4.999 (+0.098)
Miles Traded/Sold/Gifted: 6.31 (+0.22)
Miles in Stash Last Week: 13.25
Miles in Stash This Week: 13.68
Net Change from Last Week: +0.43 miles
Net Change from Stash Toss:-3.20 miles

Overall: Well, not really that bad, all things considered. The thing I alluded to a few days ago is that I went to the LYS to get yarn for my ghosts, and some to seam a blanket (more to come on that). A little extra sock yarn may have jumped in my basket via my Kid…

Socks for her are promised once my mom’s socks are done.

Then, in a moment of weakness in the local craft store while picking up some appliques for someone’s pants, some cotton may have leaped into my basket as well (I’ve been thinking I want some more hand-knit dishcloths because they’re awesome).

That (and the blanket seaming yarn below) is all of the yarn in.

The yarn for the ghosts is the additional “all used up” yarn.

The traded-sold-gifted yarn was this:

Which went to the lovely and awesome Ms. GingerKnitsUK as a prize/thank you/hosting Mr. Gingerbread gift. As much as I would have liked the opportunity to knit SeaCell, I wanted to send an awesome prize, and the color seemed appropriate for her. She’ll have to get back to me on what kind of socks it makes.

I’m not particularly pleased to be up almost half a mile, but I also have a lead on a potential opportunity to destash some more of the stuff in my stash I’m not particularly proud of. I’m not making any promises on more stashburning posts forthcoming, but I’m not ruling it out either. My rule of thumb will be “significant” changes, which definitely worked this time. I purchased yarn four weeks ago and have felt guilty about not posting it for two weeks now. It might take me some time to get there, but I will get there in the end.

Gift Knitting

I don’t think I’ll be getting as much gift knitting done as I had originally planned, but I’m ok with that. One thing I’ve wanted to do ever since I started knitting socks (almost a year ago) was to knit socks for my mom. She has big feet though (mine are big enough!) and that has always intimidated me.

Anyhow, my mom has some circulation issues and her feet are often cold in the winter, so she’s a prime candidate for wool socks. I had half intended to make some for her last Christmas. (Please keep in mind that I finished my first ever pair of socks in SEPTEMBER last year. I’m nothing if not optimistic, I guess). I picked Thuja because it seemed like I could handle worsted-weight socks for my mom’s size 11 feet.

This has been a quick knit so far:

The only complaint I have is related to my own stupidity. I got as far as being all set to Kitchener the toe and then cut the wrong end of the yarn. I tried to pick back far enough to fix it, but I suck at picking back decreases. After thirty minutes of fighting with it, I put it on time out for about ten days and knit ghosts instead.

This week, I picked it up after all the ghost yarn was used up and it was swimming lesson knitting. Turns out, swimming lessons was almost long enough to finish the toe a second time. During the time the sock was on time out, I also decided I tend to not account for negative ease in sock feet, with the results that so far, all my socks are too big really, so I re-knit less of the foot before I started the toe. I think it will be fine. Now to just whack out the other sock before Christmas…

Ghosts!

Last year, in the week leading up to Halloween, I made some ghosts. In fact, they were felted the day after Halloween. This year they were sitting around looking decorative on my bookshelf in my living room. My MIL the preschool teacher fell in love when they came to visit a few weeks back.

They are actually the perfect finger puppet size, which I didn’t realize until I had a preschool teacher in my house. “Could you make me a set? I’d buy the yarn.” she asked. “Sure!” I said.

So I went to the yarn shop (it’s a really great one, Knitter’s Palette) (and there’s more about that trip I’ll have to tell you, but it’s another post) and I bought a single skein of Berroco Peruvia, which looked like the most feltable “white” worsted-weight yarn I could see in the store. And I started knitting Bitty Boos.

Now, with last year’s, I made the mistake of picking a “true” white (Cascade 220) and it didn’t felt as well as it should have. I was trying very hard this year not to make that mistake again. Oh well…

They’re still cute, right?

Since I didn’t really want this skein to count as stash, I cast on the first few immediately. Then I started wondering if I was reading the pattern correctly, so I tried a variant…

These are cute, but way too big for finger puppets. They look more like Pac Man ghosts to me.

And then I re-re-read the pattern and tried a couple of other things

The more I made, the more comfortable I was playing with it. The one on the left is about two fingers, and the one on the right is a taller, large headed version. It reminds me a little of some video game too. Zelda maybe?

In the end I went back to the original reading of the pattern and finished off a total of eight in the finger-puppet size – five went to my MIL, one to my daughter, one to a friend at work who has a three year old daughter, and I’m keeping the last one to add to the shelves. Who knows, I may make this a tradition!

Pattern: Bitty Boo by Misty Green (available as a Rav Download, mine was printed off of MagKnits last year before they closed up shop.)
Yarn: Berroco Peruvia, 100% Peruvian Highland Wool, 1 skein. Scraps of Cascade 220 in black for eyes.
Cast on: October 17, 2009
Last ghosts felted: October 31, 2009
Final thoughts: Excellent quick-rewards knitting. Great to give away to kids. Fun pattern to play with.

Catching up (ZOMBIES!)

I’ve been knitting quite a bit, really, considering all the stuff that’s going on around here, but I haven’t been able to talk about it. Too busy.

Today I finally took pictures of everything that was outstanding. There will be posts, my friends. This is the first of them.

The Zombie Socks are finished. In fact, I’ve worn them three times already.

Knit in Cygnus coloway from Knitivity.

If you look closely, you can see that I may have knit one additional repeat in the leg between the two socks. Maybe. I’ll never tell for sure.

Action shot at work on wearing #2

Cast on July 26
Bind off October 17

Actually a very fast knit but they kept getting put down for other things. Also, Knitivity’s sock yarn is so smooshy, and there’s a lot in a skein. I think I have about 1/3-1/4 of the skein left.

We got mail from France!

About a month or so ago, we had Kindergarten homework to do. We decorated a gingerbread man and sent him to a friend from another state or country. As kind of a thank you for the ace treats she sent, we picked Ms. GingerKnistUK as our recipient.

Since she is so awesomesocks, this has been great fun. Mr. Gingerbread was treated to a proper tour of London (and we got to see too)

On Friday, we got a surprise postcard from him.

Turns out now he’s also been to France. It was lovely of him to send us mail from France. Note, he wore an appropriate hat while he was in France. We’ve gotten out our maps and looked at where he was compared to where we are. Thank you so much for hosting him, Ms. GingerKnitsUK!

Crafty non-knitting

Part of the reason I haven’t had time to talk to you, outside of the workplace craziness that I can’t really tell you that much about, is that beyond having all this actual work to do, I agreed to make parts of a Hallowe’en costume for someone.

Oh yes. Because I am that crazy (apparently 50-60 hours of work per week isn’t enough).

We did well and started early with the crafting. The someone in question has been expressing a desire to be a fairy since mid-September. While perusing the shelves of our local library, that same someone found this book. Of the projects in the book for costumes, I agreed to do the floral head wreath and the wand. With costume plan in mind, we spent two hours on the afternoon of the first Saturday in October and came home with almost everything we needed. Silk flowers, floral wire, a “dress” part of the costume and wings.

I won’t tell you how many other trips to either the craft store there may have been to finish (it might have been three) nor how long the prototype of the floral head piece has been sitting on my dining room table (three weeks), but today I wrapped it all up.

Would you believe I’ve never done anything with silk flowers before? It’s true, not once. I also haven’t had the hot glue gun out since well before the someone’s birth (which would be five years now, for those keeping score). But I am in love with that little lo-temp hot glue gun because even though it hurt when I got glue on me, I am not at all burnt. For someone as prone to accidental burns as myself this is saying something.

Also I have to accuse the lady who wrote that book of making stuff up. One of the three additional trips to the craft store was to try and find “petal roping.” At both of the local craft stores I got looked at like I had teh crazy, followed by a quick, “I’ve never heard of such thing.” When I got home, I googled it – yeah, none of that is anything like what was clearly being used in the book. It’s ok, the head piece looks fine as it is I think.

I’ve got some other posts backlogged in my brain. I’m thinking you’ll be seeing a little more of me. The other thing I’m trying to do is steal back some of my time, because I have stuff to do that’s non-work, including two interesting projects I’d really like to get started on. More on that later? Hopefully so.

Outtake from the shoot:

Whenever I get the camera out the dog starts getting in the way because he always has to pose for a picture. Silly boy.

super short

I am really tired of working all the time. So tired. But there has been knitting, and if you are all lucky folks, soon there will be pictures, and stories too.

In the mean time, I am going to sleep. Hooray, sleep.

Random cat stories

I don’t actually have time to do this, but I feel a need to write… so I’m writing a bit this week to clear the brain backlog.

Random item #1 – Pee
We have a cat. She’s a nice cat, but one time when we were still getting used to each other, she peed on the carpet in my daughter’s room. I’ve tried and tried to get the smell out, but it seems every time the glass of water on the bedside table gets spilled – the floor reeks again.

We keep the kid’s door shut to keep the cat from peeing again, but that adds to the misery when the floor gets wet. Keeping in mind that the kid is only five, the floor gets doused about once a week. I finally asked for some advice from friends and they suggested a steam vac, so this weekend we borrowed one from my in-laws.

I’ve worked these things before, so I worked out a plan. First I wanted to try rinsing out all the various cleaners we’ve dumped on the carpet trying to get at the pee. Oh dear. After one night, even with three fans running and the furnace blower going, the room stank. The next morning my husband opened the window, even though it’s only 50°F around here. By the time I got home it was better, but still smelly.

Today we applied another enzymatic cleaner and then I ran the steam vac again. Long story short, it’s still kind of stinky but it might be an improvement. I’ll keep you posted, and I’m still looking for advice! If we can’t get it cleaned up we’ll probably rip out the carpet and put in some laminate flooring of some sort. I’m tired of the stench!

Random Item #2 – The Stray

I am one of those people who finds strays. I like animals, and I generally think the feeling is mutual for most of them. It started six or seven years back we picked up a pregnant cat at a gas station and turned it over to the Humane Society even though I argued with my husband about keeping it. At the time, I didn’t even consider that she might not be in good health – we didn’t have much in the way of other animals so it seemed a not unreasonable idea. In the end, his practicality won out over my heart. I don’t really regret it, having to deal with kittens is something I still wonder if I’m prepared for.

I didn’t pick up a stray or injured animal again for a couple of years, but I’m on a once a year streak right now. Four years ago I picked up another tagless cat not far from my house while on my way back from a trip to Target. Not much to speak of, a friendly raggedy tabby cat, but we had a dog already, so off he went to the humane society. Three years ago, it was an abandoned baby bunny with eyes not yet open driven in a small dark box up to the Wildlife Rescue Center. Last year I picked up a mostly blind, skinny arthritic poodle-y terrier, who was also turned over to the humane society. Sunday, driving back into my neighborhood it was a huge but oh-so-skinny tortoiseshell cat. Kind of skittish, seemed exhausted and disoriented. Took him up to the humane society. Now I have to disinfect my cat carrier so our cat doesn’t get sick.

I’m beginning to think they might start to suspect me of being some sort of horder or something. I swear it’s that they find me.