A Bouquet of Yarns

It's Valentine's Day tomorrow. No comment. Really, I'm not a bitter towards the day. It's just a day. It's an excuse to buy crappy toys and chocolate (seriously, who needs an excuse for chocolate?) and have sex. I've never dated anyone during Valentine's Day, so the appeal is lost on me. Tomorrow I'll be knitting, reading, and dancing around my apartment alone listening to sad country love songs. But I do that on any given day.

I'm reading a lot of young adult fiction instead of reading for my classes. I read Cinder by Melissa Meyer which is a retelling of Cinderella set in the future and our heroine is a cyborg. I didn't think I'd be into it, but now I can't wait for the next book. Next was Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story by Adam Rex. It started out okay, interesting and quirky, but then it didn't go anywhere. The plot didn't make sense and the ending was a cheap shot. I personally didn't care for it, but maybe someone else will. And I'm almost done with Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha VanLeer which I love. It's clever and it reminds me when I was convinced I was in love with Ponyboy from The Outsiders. YA fiction is so fun because it's quick (usually, not always) and the stories are something we can all relate to because we've all been through those teen years.

Back to knitting. I'm working on Megan's hat and I'm going to wait on her Christmas hat because it's annoying me. Maybe she'll get her Christmas gift by the end of March. If so, I'll be on track. I got the yarn for another Christmas/Birthday gift I've been thinking about. And I'm trying to NOT cast on a sock for myself and save my sock enthusiasm for Andrew. Hopefully I can sit down with the two of them (Andrew and Mary) and find patterns.

Here's another project I completed in the last few months:

Super (Yarn) Bowl

Wait, what? A post not two days later?! I'm spoiling you all. I was up late last night (so like any other night) crocheting. I've been trying to figure out a scarf pattern to match my hat without succumbing to those ridiculous diamonds. Because when I was working on my hat I had Megan by my side...to start the diamonds for me. I didn't have that last night. So I gave up on the scarf idea and went for a cowl. Ooo...cowls. Short, simple, sweet, efficient (couldn't think of another 's' adjective). So I made this lovely purple cowl with long double crochets. It was one of those repetitive stitches that I couldn't stop doing! I memorized the two row repeat. I crocheted until my wrist ached and stopped clicking (it usually clicks). During this surge of crocheting I was also watching Gilmore Girls. So, since I have all the time in the world because, you know, I don't have work or class or job applications to fuss over I've been having a Gilmore Girls marathon. It's a show of my adolescence and I never saw it start to finish. So I'm abusing my University library privileges (not really, but sometimes I feel guilty because Universal Borrowing was intended for scholastic endeavors) by ordering all of Gilmore Girls. I suppose I could blame UW-Whitewater since they have all. of. them. Anyway, it just fed into this spiral of crocheting and Gilmore Girls. At one point I thought, "Hey...I'll go to bed around midnight. Get some shut eye." Then Jess was sleeping in his car after Luke's sister came to town and Rory got a bad grade on a paper and Richard and Emily separated! (None of that was in one episode...more like five). I had to keep going. The skein got smaller...the episodes just kept going on and on...who was I to stop it? To make a long, somewhat pathetic story short I made a cowl. Last night.

Which leads me to a different problem. Tonight is Kayla's sort of Super Bowl Party (Go Ravens! I wonder how Edgar Allan Poe would feel about his masterpiece being turned into a mascot for a NFL team?). What makes it a sort of Super Bowl Party of is that the majority of the guests aren't that big into football. So it's a party to eat, drink, knit, and be merry while the Super Bowl plays in the background. (Okay, there will be some football fans there. Like 3 or 4. I'm going to visit with friends I haven't seen in a while and knit). Here's where it gets problematic. I don't have anything to work on! I know, I know...I have a huge list of stuff to start/work on. BUT! I don't have patterns picked out or the yarn purchased for most of those projects. The only thing on my needles is Megan's Christmas hat and I can't knit that with her right there. It wouldn't be polite. Though, one could argue it wasn't very polite to purchase the yarn with her either. Meh. Anyway. I do have the yarn for Jen's 70s sweater. But I'd rather work on something I won't have to pay much attention to. And since the 70s sweater is crochet and a sweater, my nose would be stuck in the pattern the whole time. Maybe another scarf? Just absently knitting? Or I could maybe work on Megan's lotus hat...since I've knit that before maybe it'll be a bit more mindless. I'll have to see about that. Another option is...socks. Socks are small and portable and I've been eyeing the sock yarn I bought not to long ago with the blues and greens and oranges and it'd be lovely made into a cabled pattern. But I'd be knitting it for me. And then I'd be breaking my New New Year's February resolution. Already. Oh the trials and tribulations.

New New Year's February Resolution

I’ve learned a valuable lesson regarding school and knitting: the two cannot possibly coexist. It's been over six months since I last updated my knitting blog. Before, it was work and class and driving to/from said work that kept me from posting. Now it's class and homework and driving to/from fieldwork and the utter lack of motivation and gumption to pick up a project. Don't get me wrong, I have knitted and crocheted at some point in these past six months. I made a few things for Christmas. I even used a glue gun to make a non-knitting but definitely pro-yarn wreath. But I have so much left to do and when I get home at the end of the day I look at my knitting basket and I can't pick anything up. Woe.

 
Let's go over what I have done in the last six months to see if that helps. One big accomplishment: I finished those damn socks! That's right. I cast-off sock number one last semester sometime and in December I cast-off sock number two.  They're all wrapped up now. And have been sitting on my plastic bin dresser for the last two months. I made a hat for Megan which turned out really small so I gave to to Kayla and it sort of fits (it's the pattern, not their heads, that's the problem). Then I made Kayla a cowl for Christmas that was very Kayla-esque in color (one of our co-workers was jealous. I love a bit of knitting envy). For Mary I made these awesome colorwork mittens which I freaked out about because I never made colorwork mittens before but they were actually quite easy (except picking up stitches for the thumbs...that was terrifying).  I crocheted Andrew an awesome scarf with a simple but manly-elegant X pattern in brown and teal. I still have something I'm working on for Megan, but it's challengingly simple (or simply challenging?) and not turning out how I'd like. She picked out a pink yarn, but I don't think it's working for the pattern. I may revisit and change the color. Make her something else fabulous and pink. I made Erin a simple but lovely honeycomb scarf in a pink/white yarn. I love the honeycomb stitch...cabling and simple. And people look at it and go, "Oh my goodness! It must have taken you forever! It's so beautiful!" And I'm all..."Yea, but my knitting skills are just that awesome." Okay. I'm not that pompous about my abilities, but just go with it. Oh, and as I referred to earlier, I made Jen a yarnball wreath! It took a long time and a lot of styrofoam balls (I couldn't believe how expensive styrofoam was!) and a bit of trial and error with wires and glue guns but it's lovely. Last time I was at Jen's it was up on the wall and looked amazing!

It's been so blustery around Milwaukee that my earlobes and my nose have threatened to fall off. I don't know why my body is complaining...my outer wear in Northern Wisconsin consisted of a sweatshirt and a scarf. But since I misplaced all my knitted outerwear (or found some of my earliest knitting attempts at outerwear with unpleasent, scratchy redheart yarn) I have nothing that helps keep the cold at bay. I even had to break down and purchase...I'm sad to report...knitted mittens. I can't find my alpaca mittens. These store bought *scoff* mittens have ladders and don't fit right. And cost $12! I could have bought two skeins of yarn or one really nice skein and made my own damn mittens. But between my lack of ambition and the dropping temperatures I caved and bought a pair. Now I'm working on a scarf to match the hat I just crocheted with the much needed/appreciated assistance of Megan. So...crocheting. I know how to crochet. Apparently I crochet like a knitter (whatever that means). And the pattern I found was free (thanks Ravelry) but the diamond instructions were confusing. Cause, ya see...in Crochetland you build off what you crocheted the row before. So indead of just worrying about the row and the stitch you're working with, you single/double/half double/treble etc. into the single/double/half double/treble etc. stitch from the row before. Which makes things confusing to my knitter's brain. Thankfully I have a go-to crocheter to help me with such things. In college it was Courtney. In grad school it's Megan. I love my hookers (not that kind of hooker...).

I’m trying to get back to my knitting roots. To get back to that energy and excitement that comes from a new project! So I have a new New Year’s resolution: finish Christmas knitting by March and then start and/or finish all the gifts I’ve promised people by the end of 2013. That’s a hefty goal. And to make sure I don’t forget as much as I’m bound to…I’ll make a list:

Megan: palmless (fingerless?) gloves, lotus hat that was too small
Jen: crochet 70’s sweater, epic socks I promised three years ago
Dad: blaze orange fingerless gloves and gater
Memo: sharks and a new scarf (piano?) since she only has the one I made her several years ago
Andrew: socks
Mary: birthday capelet, knitted headband (turning out more challenging than I thought)
Scott: Civil War socks 

I'm probably forgetting something for someone. But it's a list in progress so I can add and adjust as need be. Once I finish all these gifts I'm hoping to dedicate 2014 to me. That may sound selfish but I haven't spent time on my knitting gifts to myself in a while (with the exception of a few necessary items like my outer wear or my sock motivation shawl). ...I don't remember if I talked about my motivation shawl. So last semester I was having trouble with my knitting ambition (what else is new?) so I decided to start this beautiful shawl I saw in Jane Austen Knits. It's incredibly daunting because you cast-on a bunch of stitches and work with insanely long circular needles. I knitted like two rows and I think my cast-on count was wrong or I accidentally missed an increase so the stitch count is off. Everytime I'd become frustrated with the socks I was working on I'd start my sock motivation shawl and suddenly - like magick - the socks wouldn't seem so bad. And poof! socks are done! (maybe not like "poof!" but poof-like).

That should do for now. I'll post pictures later tonight probably when I have time/find them. I'll also work on my excessive use of parenthesis.