Cabin Fever

That's what we have. It's been a nearly constant torrential downpour over the last two days, and looks like it will stay that way through the rest of the week. Starbuck is living up to his name, proving to be a real explorer-adventurer, except where thunder is concerned. He's not allowed out of the apartment anyway, but I am similarly reluctant to venture outside in this mess. He is dealing with it by periodically tearing around the living room. I find it infinitely preferable to stay at home and work on these:



Another fabulous lined mitten pattern from Hello Yarn, these are coming out fabulously. This picture is a few days old, I'm currently just past the thumb gusset on the first shell. Every time I do a colorwork project I am reminded that although the knitting goes more slowly with small needles and two colors of yarn, the emerging pattern keeps me going. I cannot express my glee as the first little row of acorns emerged on the palm! Deep down, I know that I really ought to get back to my shawl, but I'm not good enough yet with the beads for it to be as much fun as the squirrels.

With the new family member present, I'm trying to introduce the fibery activities slowly. Most of my knitting over the past two weeks has been done at the kitchen table or while he's napping to avoid temptation. Last week, I wound some yarn I spun over the holidays off the bobbins and gave it a good washing:



Two colors of polwarth from the Verb fiber club, one in "Equinox Flower" and the other undyed silver. I want to use the yarn to make the Beaumont tam at the bottom of this post, but the yarn plumped up a TON after washing and I'm doubting I'll have enough yardage. My natural spinning still produces more of a DK/sportweight yarn, so if I want to make fingering or lighter I really need to pay more attention.

With the bobbins all empty, my eyes turned to the rather ponderous fiber stash. I haven't been blogging all my fiber club as it comes in, but there are a few color combos I can hardly wait to get on the wheel. Then I remembered a paper grocery bag full of combed polwarth locks from the Verb holiday party in various lovely natural shades of white, brown, silver, and dark grayish-brown. Here they are pre-combing; I was a little too scatterbrained to actually take photos of the combed polwarth nests before spinning them.



So, yesterday I put on a movie and sat down to use the spinning wheel for the first time since we brought the kitten home. Turns out I didn't need to be nervous about how he would react to the wheel. This was my view for most of the afternoon:



Delightful.

Introducing...

Our very own member of the itty bitty kitty committee:



In true nerd fashion, we have named him Starbuck T. Khan. I do realize that we are mixing sci-fi references, but the best part about the name Starbuck is that, to quote the significant other, "it works for a boy OR a girl." I felt that Tiberius was too formal for a first name, so it gets relegated to its traditional location as the middle initial.

It's going to be a challenge to kitten-proof the entire apartment, but we've done the kitchen, bathroom, and part of the hallway so far and that's been working well. Getting the stash in a safe place before giving him full run of the place is definitely a priority (not to mention getting all the tasty computer cables safely stowed away). Here he is during a calmer moment, which so far have only come after dinner or a few hours of play/exploring time.

Year in Review

Thanks to the data-gathering power of Ravelry, the overpowering urge to reflect as the calendar turns over, and the unclouded nature of hindsight, I am better able this year than any other to ruminate on the previous year. Some thoughts, a bit scattered:

1. Knitting

I started and finished 37 projects in 2009, and worked on but did not finish the ever-present blanket. That comes out to an average of one project every 10 days! Granted, one of those projects was a holdover from 2008 (the blasted gloves), and another one I started in 2009 but had no hope of finishing (the wedding shawl). 21 of those projects were made with handspun yarn, and 7 were made with yarn that I also purchased in 2009. I think I was much more productive this year. Sadly, there was a distinct dearth of socks (only 2 pairs, compared with 6 in 2008).

1a. Gift Knitting

In 2008, I knit 2 gifts for Christmas. This year, I knit 17. This is astonishing to me, and I even knew I was knitting a lot of gifts. Some took longer than others. Some projects became obvious as soon as I saw the fiber or yarn, and for others I agonized over finding a good match of pattern to color, weight, and texture. I began the first gift of 2009 on March 22nd, and finished the last one on December 30th. Here's some of the gift FOs:

Mom's Fingerless Gloves


Dad's Lab Mousie and Petri Dish with growth




Mom-in-Law's Hat


Aunt-in-Law's Cowl


Brother's Hat


There was lots more gift knitting, but this was the home stretch, made from the yarn I grouped together in this post. Knitting all those gifts was very rewarding to my self-esteem and checkbook, but I don't know that I could have done it without the large amounts of free time I had this fall.

2. Spinning

I dug through my stash on Ravelry and last year's blog posts, and compiled a list of all the skeins I spun this year. While doing this, I realized that I really ought to label or tag my spinning stash with the date I spun it. It'll be helpful the next time I get bitten by the contemplative bug, and will also serve as a good way to guilt myself into knitting handspun that has been marinating in the stash for a very long time.

I spun 46 individual skeins of yarn, for a whopping total of about 10,900 yards. For those of you keeping track, that's a little over 6 miles (almost 10km!) of yarn spun. The big-ticket items were easily my gray fleece yarn and two laceweight projects, each with over 1,000 yards. This, again, is shocking to me. I attribute very little of my productivity to myself, but entirely to my lovely spinning wheel and the fabulous colors that arrive at my door each month from Kristine and Adrian.

3. Designing

This year I officially entered the world of knitting design (by the way, you still have a few days left to nab the Snow Chains Mittens for free!). I've said all I need to say on the designing process for now, but I'm excited for the coming year. Creativity on this level doesn't come to me often, but I'm glad it did this time.

4. Stashing

Ravelry data-mining gives me 55 new stash entries for 2009, 2 of which got gifted, 11 of which got used up in projects, and 38 of which are handspun. That includes the new fleece. Again, I see the effects of two fiber clubs here (which account for 24 of those new stash entries), along with a significant amount of knitting from older stash.

In review, I would say that the economy's pressure is obvious in my activity this past year. I am spinning more, stashing less, and knitting more from my stash. I've been incredibly lucky that I can get a lot of crafting activity through spinning. I can easily imagine that if I weren't spinning, I'd have actually made a serious dent in my stash this year by knitting with that free time instead. I would say that my proudest moment from 2009 was finishing my handwashed, handcarded, handspun, and handknit Halcyon sweater. That was an epic goal, but broadened my skills immeasurably. I can't wait to see what happens in 2010. Maybe I'll finally finish the mitered squares!

Teasers

So I finished round one of the gift knitting.



Stitches have been cast off, ends woven in, finished pieces blocked (mostly).



Round one includes everything being given on or before the 25th, while round two includes gifts that are not being given until after the 30th. So I still have a week to finish a few more small items.



I don't have teaser photos of everything, since a few items got wrapped before I remembered to take a picture. This year I took the Handmade Challenge, and although I do not expect all my friends and family to make or buy handmade gifts for me, I did manage to make all the gifts I gave this year with one exception. The exception is still getting something handmade, just not by me. In all honesty, going completely handmade this year is the only way I have been able to afford to get a gift for everyone on my list unless I decided to shop at the dollar store.

I wanted to say thank you to everyone for the kind comments on my mitten pattern and for all the favoriting going on at Ravelry. It's nice to have a gentle entry into the world of designing, and just reminds me what a fabulous community I have found in knitters and crafters.

Another money-saving measure I put into use this year was driving home for the holidays instead of flying, which has disadvantages and advantages. In exchange for a longer time commitment you don't have to worry about bringing knitting needles through security or overpacking the yarn. After dinner tonight with my family, as a little reward to myself for finishing all the gifts, I'm going to astound them all with the spinning wheel.

Um... okay, that was fast!

I wasn't expecting to be able to put this out here today, hence the cryptic ending to this morning's post. All the information I read told me that the process would take about a week. But instead, it took a few hours.

Drum roll please....
Snow Chains Mittens
I've officially added the Snow Chains Mittens to Ravelry. This represents a bit of a turning point for me as a knitter. It's the first design I truly feel able to call my own, and the first time I wrote knitting directions and explicitly asked others to critique them. I never used to think of myself as a particularly creative person, so this is a change for me. The whole process has been a huge learning experience. Apparently, I have pretty darn loose tension compared to the average knitter out there. Knitting while developing a design is worlds apart from knitting from someone else's pattern. Trying to decide whether and what to charge for my design was another struggle for me. On the one hand, I want everyone to be able to knit these mittens. On the other hand, I feel the design involved a significant effort on my part, and I believe I deserve compensation for that effort. So here's the compromise:

As my Christmas gift to all of you who read my humble little blog, I'm making the pattern available for free for the next three weeks, until January 6th. After that, I'll be offering the PDF file for sale on Ravelry. This post will still keep the link to the pattern, but if you're clicking that link after 01/06/10, it will take you to the pattern page in Ravelry instead of the pattern download. I'm also going to start a section in the sidebar for my designs. The pattern name link will take you to the pattern source, and the little project counter will take you to the pattern's Ravelry pattern page.

I hope you enjoy these mittens, and share your project with us here or on Ravelry.

9 days?!?

How in the world did it get to be that close so quickly? Thankfully, I am very nearly finished with the pre-Christmas gifts (just one more to go). That one needs to be finished before the 22nd, when I will be in close proximity to its recipient, but I also have an 8-hour car drive that I'm hoping will be enough time to power through the end of the project. I admit, I am not knitting as fast as I could be. My new toy is a bit distracting.



These are NOT helping me finish my gift knitting on time. But they do produce my favorite form of fiber: hand-combed top. Unlike hand cards, which give you light, fluffy packages of wool with the individual fibers going in random directions, combs give you light, fluffy packages of wool with the individual fibers all aligned in one direction. They also get out all the little short fibers and neps that would give you lumpily-spun yarn and pill in your knitted object. Cards give you fiber that's awesomely prepared for woolen spinning, while combs give you fiber that's awesomely prepared for worsted spinning



I won't be giving up my handcards any time soon, but the combs are easily my favorite. My default spinning method is worsted or semi-worsted, so a combed prep is ideal.



Here you can see one comb loaded with washed polwarth locks, while I pull combed locks off the other comb. That process looks kinda like this:



The tool between me and the comb is a diz, which is basically a curved piece of wood with holes in it. There are three different size holes, so you can have different thicknesses of top. You pull the fiber through the hole to get the fiber in top form, which is wound into little nests. I spent two lovely afternoons combing this week, one doing the polwarth locks from Verb and the other using the dark grey locks left over from my first fleece. I now have a brown paper grocery bag filled with happy little clouds of white, silver, dark grey, and chocolate brown. They're calling to me, waiting for me to finish the gift knitting.

On top of all this I'm also getting ready for another big announcement, hopefully before the holiday but definitely not until after final exams are over. Stay tuned!

Joy to the world, all the boys and girls!

It feels like everything is coming together, now that we're in the thick of the holiday season. For starters, it got crazzzzy cold here over the past few days, so I've been actually wearing hats. Hats, people! But I'm kinda glad that it's cold, because I love getting use out of my knits and this feels like it really belongs:



I am so ridiculously excited to have a Christmas tree, words cannot do my feelings justice. The significant other and I sometimes still feel stuck in college-student mode, and having a real honest-to-goodness tree makes me feel like we're really celebrating the holidays together, instead of just waiting until we go home to our parents' places. We bought some ornaments to get a little variety (it started out with a very large proportion of owls and squirrels), and went to the hardware store to get a little string of battery-powered lights. When we got home, we realized we'd neglected to buy batteries, so the tree is dark for now. I didn't want to buy tinsel or a garland, so I made a long crochet chain out of some red chenille yarn from deep within the stash. That's the only non-gift knitting I've done since Thanksgiving, and although I've since finished two items, I've added a few more small ones to my list as well. It'll be okay, though, as those don't need to be delivered until about a week after the 25th.



In other holiday news, this weekend I managed to spend a few hours in Berkeley at the Verb Workshop's holiday bash and 1-year-brick-and-mortar anniversary event. People were shopping, sitting, talking, knitting, spinning, drinking spiced cider, and eating cupcakes. My kind of day.



They've just opened a new classroom space across the way from their shop, which was filled with some other fantastic bay area fiber vendors. Krista of Pigeonroof Studios had a table full of lovely, saturated colors:



Faerie Mountain Fibers had a huge collection of spinning batts, and even made a few to order!





I could not resist these wooden cross-stitch ornament kits from Girl on the Rocks, so I got one along with an awesome owl-shaped needle gauge and some gift tags.



Along with these goodies, I brought my Snow Chains mittens for Kristine to see in the flesh. I got to see a few of the other entries, which were all pretty amazing. Kristine gave me my prize package for winning the design-your-own mitten category. I confess I've been biting my nails wondering what our prizes would be, but this went beyond my wildest expectations. It starts off with this awesome canvas project bag, printed with peacocks derived from the Verb logo, and inside it had 3 (THREE!) sets of Darn Pretty Needles from DyakCraft (formerly Grafton Fibers) in US sizes 1, 2, and 4, and a bunch of coupons. I used two of them immediately; one for a free skein of Creating sock yarn (in Magic Bean), and one for 20% off anything in the store.



So, I was pretty stunned when I saw all this. But once my brain had time to catch up with me, I knew there was really only one way I was going to use that 20% off coupon. I'll give you all two hints, in picture format:



and in case that was too obscure...



And now, I'm off to enjoy the holidays a bit more and play with my new toy.