I'm a Joiner

When it comes to knitting, I am such a joiner. Right now, I am participating in five -alongs of one type or another:

10 Shawls in 2010: A group trying to knit 10 shawls during the year. I have three completed (bending the rules a bit, I'll admit) and three on the needles, so I'm behind at the halfway point. But I'm almost done with grad school, so hopefully my record will improve.







Tour de Fleece: A Spin-along during the time frame of the Tour de France, which is July 3 to 25 this year. I've completed a skein of two-ply and have three singles ready for my first ever three-ply. I'm hoping to get a gradient spin in, but I suspect I won't have enough time to finish it by the deadline.



3-ply Challenge: The Snobby Spinners group on Ravelry is doing a three-ply challenge, and I'm spinning my first three ply (standard, not Navaho ply) for it. I have the singles ready and hope to ply tonight. This is part of Tour de Fleece too.

Sundara Summer Lace: The Sundara Yarn Love Group on Ravelry is have a lace knit-and-crochet-along. I started a new lace shawl, one of the 10 shawls in 2010, but I'm working more on other shawl projects right now.

Stashdown: Trying to knit up more of my stash than I am adding to it, with support from the The Yarn Snobs group on Ravelry. I joined this effort in April. On a yardage basis, I was just barely was successful in the second quarter of the year, but only because of several destashes. This quarter, I'm not doing great so far - I've fallen in love with hand-dyed fiber for spinning, and I think I'm about to rip out about 500 yards in a shawl in progress to redo the color striping.

And it's worth noting that my last post was about my efforts for the Ravelmpics/Knitting Olympics.

Above all, what I've really done is join Ravelry. And by doing so, I've found the online knitting presence I was looking for when I started this blog. I show my WIPs and FOs off there. I've made friends and found community - even some knitters I know in real life are on Rav too!

The timing of joining Rav coincided fairly closely with starting grad school, which meant my knitting blog suffered doubly. And now that I am almost done with grad school (I'm in my last quarter, yo), I've been thinking about how I want to spend my time, and the answer is definitely less time in front of a screen. So I am considering ending my knitting blog, as many others have done, either accidentally or on purpose. If there is any feedback, please do leave it, otherwise find me on Ravelry. And my free patterns are there too.

2008 in Review

1.Strawberry Hat, adult size, 2. Finished Kimono Shawl, 3. In the Breeze, 4. Tuscany Back, 5. Lace Leaf Back, 6. Sampler Baby Blanket, 7. Shetland Tied, 8. Draped, 9. Hat from Above, 10. Scrunchable Scarf, 11. A Happy Pair, 12. Pro Bono Handspun Hat, 13. Sidekick Again, 14. Pacific Waves, 15. Winding Road, 16. Shower Gift, 17. Juno Regina - one end down, 18. Finis!, 19. Koolhaas Again, 20. Alpaca Silk Cowl, 21. Stockinette Cowl, 22. Turn a Square Again, 23. Green & Grey Turn a Square, 24. Ribbing, 25. Scarf & Hat Set

It seems that the theme of my knitting year was lace and then some hats too. Looking back on my knitting goals for 2008, I'm happy to say that I have indeed knit lace triangles, designed and shared/published my first pattern, and did knit quite a bit from my stash.

My other big first of 2008 was learning to spin. Sadly, I haven't really maintained it since taking the classes. I borrowed a wheel from my knitting mentor, but I'm having trouble getting it to work, and with my second quarter of grad school just a few days away, it'll be three months before I have time to give it a try again.

As for my plans to knit from stash, I have also stashed quite a bit this year (but I am knitting from it, see?):



1. Burnt Cranberry, 2. Three Skeins, 3. Delicious, 4. 10 Skeins, 5. Crown Mountain Sock Hop Handspun Yarn, 6. Indigo-Dyed Super Sock Yarn, 7. Stacked, 8. Silky Wool, 9. Stonechat, 10. Indiecita, 11. Silk Lace, 12. Midnight Meadows, 13. Three Skeins, 14. Fingering Silky Merino, 15. Squoosh Dewberry, 16. Nocturne, 17. Silk Lace, 18. MadTosh Sock, 19. Lichen, 20. Norway Spruce, 21. Faubourg, 22. Gothic Rose, 23. Siren Two Sock Yarn, 24. Malabrigo, 25. Paris Night

On the yarn front, I've continued in the Sundara Seasons Club and have added the Madelinetosh Magnolia Society Club. I really enjoy the hand-dyed yarns and the surprise of packages in the mail. I also bought a bunch of handspun to knit with, and am finally get some projects finished with it. I stashed a bunch of Malabrigo Silky when the factory had a fire this summer, which I have yet to knit with.

Knitting goals for 2009:

• Knit a sweater (baby sweaters would count, but I have one in mind for me)
• Get the wheel working and do some spinning
• Stranded knitting (perhaps from some of that indie-dyed sock yarn)
  
• Share/publish another pattern or two
• Mainly, find time to knit while tackling four quarters of graduate school

I'm also looking forward to a class with Elsebeth Lavold at Madrona Fiber Arts in February and Nancy Bush at the Nordic Knitting Festival in March.

What are your knitting plans/dreams for 2009?

2007 Knits

1. Kimono Shawl with Yarn Cake, 2. Halfway There, 3. Pyramid, 4. Baby Blocks, 5. Stitch-Sampler Baby Blocks Color Wheel (after blocking), 6. Mini Mitten Ornament Collection, 7. Mini Mitten Color Wheel, 8. Scarf Flower, 9. Noro Kochoran Neckwarming Scarf, 10. Blueberry Hat, 11. Foliage in Vaa, 12. Foliage in Marron Oscuro, 13. Chevron Scarf Detail, 14. Chevron Scarf Folded, 15. Strawberry Hat, 16. Knitted Utility Bags, 17. Colorful Bibs, 18. My First Hat, 19. Umbilical Cord Hat, 20. Adult Umbilical Cord Hat, 21. Knitted Teddy Bear, 22. Celtic Plait Scarf, 23. Celtic Plait Scarf, 24. Baby blanket, folded, 25. Leaf Vine Baby Blanket

It was fun putting that mosaic together and reminiscing on my knitting life in 2007. (Thanks to Lolly for this blogging idea!) My favorite project by far is the Kimono Shawl (now at 82% done, but such a big part of 2007 knitting that I had to include it). I'm also especially fond of the Leaf Vine Baby Blanket and the Mini Mittens, and really enjoyed knitting all those hats (especially the Foilage pattern).

February will mark two years since I took up the needles (if you don't count the scarves I never finished as a child). Firsts for me in 2007:
* hats
* knitting with DPNs
* stuffed objects
* lace
* stranded knitting

My knitting goals for 2008:
* lace triangles
* designing something that I want to share/publish (I have a project in mind for this, we'll see how it turns out)
* more knitting from the stash
* more stranded work

I'm not sure that I'm ready to commit to sweaters or socks, but we'll see. And won't it be the Knitting Olympics again this summer?

The Yarn Harlot Comes to Town

Yes, her visit was a week and a half ago. But my father was in town (and agreed to be dragged along - lucky for me, as he had his tourist camera on him, and I had forgotten mine at home) and so it's taken me a while to process my pictures and find the time to write even this short note.

I was afraid Third Place would run out of chairs, so we got there about half an hour early. (It didn't, but there were a few hundred people there to see her). It's a lovely venue which endeavors to be a community gathering spot - the bookstore is only part of it - so we had a bite to eat before the show started. My partner and father then wandered the bookstore while I sat down with my shawl and listened.

Man, the cameras went crazy when she did her standard shots of the crowd with the traveling sock. Of course, I was one of them:



Stephanie talked with us for a while, and was witty, funny, and enjoyable. She made me swell with knitterly pride. I'm not sure if it actually was a book reading - I've read the book and didn't recognize her piece as being from it - but her talk belongs in print, IMHO. Beyond the humor, one point that stayed with me, and impressed my father, was: 100 years ago, it was considered a waste of money to buy something that you could make. Now, it's considered a waste of time to make something you can buy. I'm quite pleased to be part of the movement that is taking back the value of making.

I tried to take some pictures while she was talking, but the lighting was poor. Here's the best I managed:


Pretty awful, huh?

With family in tow and a big crowd, I didn't stay for the book signing. But I did hover around the stacks to get a better picture of her in person:


I love that she's wearing Birkenstocks, because I was wearing my own pair that night.

Shawl update: I took Stephanie's message to represent for knitters to heart (although frankly would have done this whether or not I had made it to see her) and took my shawl to a two-day training I attended for work last week. I completed almost a full repeat and a half in two days and the training was much more enjoyable. And I've churned out another repeat since then! I've now finished 11 repeats, which is 45% done! With autumn upon us in earnest, I am eager to be able to wear the shawl soon.

Book Review

Another book review I originally wrote in December. (Re-reading the quotes I pulled out shows me that I've always loved the concept of the potential of yarn.)

Knitting Rules
by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Subtitled The Yarn Harlot Unravels the Mysteries of Swatching, Stashing, Ribbing & Rolling to Free Your Inner Knitter

Another humorous book on knitting by the Yarn Harlot. This one is more of a how-to, with chapters on yarn, tools, gauge, hats, socks, scarves and shawls, and sweaters, and instructions on how to knit simple hats, socks, scarves, and shawls. (Simple like: Cast on however many stitches you want, knit until the piece is square, cast off. (I can't believe I just typed that.) pg 182).

I also like it when she got all poetical about yarn - even though I've managed to remain the type of knitter who only buys yarn with projects in mind:

The reason we fill our houses with it, visit it in yarn shops, speaking of it in glowing terms, and hoard it with a passion is that it is pure potential. Every ball or skein of yarn holds something inside it, and the great mystery of what that might be can be almost spiritual. These six balls of wool could be a shawl my mum puts around her shoulders when she's cold, or maybe it's a blanket a friend warps her baby in. Maybe that baby takes a shine to it and it becomes his beloved companion blankie, comforting him for years and years. Maybe it's a sweater that my daughter is wearing the day she gets her first kiss, and from then on my yarn is part of her memory of that day. Maybe, just maybe, those six balls are a scarf and hat that get tucked away for years and long after I'm gone someone pulls them out and says, "Remember how Granny was with all the wool? Remember how she knit all the time?" fingering the soft wool and pondering who I was and what I did while I was here.

It's a mystery, each ball of yarn ... and I don't know what each one is going to be or what life it will take when I finally set needles to it. But each one will be something I made with my own two hands. This yarn, then - my whole big sweeping stash - is the stuff of dreams (pg 51).

Knitting Rules was an enjoyable read, and made me feel like I should attempt a sweater. Or a pair of socks. Um, someday.

What's in a Name?

I really wanted the name "Still Life with Yarn" because yarn/knitting photography will be a major focus of this blog, but it was already taken. Dang! Back to the drawing board ... it took me another two weeks to find another name that I liked. The Yarn Harlot mentions that yarn (or, if I recall correctly, one's stash) is full of potential in her latest book, Casts Off. I read that and thought, Yes.

The potential of yarn - that is what my blog is about. The beauty of each ball, skein, or hank. The fibers that make it up. The colors. The project. The stitches. The selection of knit and purl. The pattern. It has the potential to become something great, or good, or infuriating - but fun, always fun.

Right now in my knitting life, I'm not a fast knitter. I have time management issues (i.e., too much that I want to do with my time), a life outside of knitting (seriously!), and tendinitis in my right arm and shoulder. I hope my photography will make up for slow project progress in term of blog interest.

Also right now in my knitting life (about 14 months since I picked up my first skein and pair of circulars) I am especially fond of cables, especially intricate Celtic ones, a la Alice Starmore and Elsebeth Lavold's Viking Patterns for Knitting. I am also consumed with a desire to learn openwork or lace. I dream of a lace shawl, or five.

Thanks for joining me on the journey.