Kitty

I finally got a chance to give my secret project that I alluded to a while ago to its recipient. It's from Beth Doherty's Hep Cat pattern and I made it for my mom, to look like her old kitty that she had from before I was born until I was in high school. I made a few changes to the pattern that I mentioned on my Ravelry page, but overall I found the pattern really easy to work with and the product is great. My idea is to make one of each of my family cats, but it might take me a while... we'll see.

Another thing to check off the list

Back to real life this week. I've been making small steps towards getting the apartment ready to move and finishing up at my job. This weekend, moving preparations have been more fun, including lunch with my old roommate and using up my gift card at Fibre Space, one of my local yarn stores.

Fibre Space is a great place to get Neighborhood Fiber Co. yarns so I went there with that in mind, because I thought it would make a nice souvenir of my time here. I arrived just as they were putting away 400 pounds of NFC, including some new colors! So I loitered around the store waiting until they were done, keeping my eye on a pretty gray that turned out to be a new colorway:

NFC Studio Sock in Charles Circle

The plan is to use this for Villeray, but I bought two skeins, so I could probably make a shawl out of it instead. So hard to decide these things.

Home again

Last week I was away, visiting San Francisco and the Bay Area, eating the most delicious food ever and spending too much money and generally having a good time. My hobby of the week was picture-taking (along with most other tourists) so I didn't get much of anything done on any other projects. There was a moment, sitting in the Milwaukee airport waiting for my connecting flight to San Francisco, that I wished I was the kind of person who always had a sock they were knitting in their travel bag. I had an amigurumi to work on, but they are pretty much the worst travel project, with the possible exception of one-piece afghans. But from the moment I landed in San Francisco, I was too busy running around or planning my next day to even think about making things. (And when I was just plopped on the couch, I was more interested in indulging in the joys of cable tv - we don't get any tv service in real life.)


I didn't totally abandon my regular priorities, though: I did spend a morning making a pilgrimage first to Dynamo Donuts, where I had a beautiful lemon-thyme donut, and then to ImagiKnit. So much yarn! I think it's the most I've ever seen in one store so far. I asked for a good souvenir yarn and was directed to their Malabrigo test superfine merino, which apparently only they carry. Yep, that's a good souvenir. Incidentally, it was very hard picking just one yarn store to visit since the Bay Area seems to be full of them. It seems like a good place to be a crafty person.

Now I'm back, sort of, because after today I will be in finishing-my-job, packing-the-apartment mode, in order to move out at the end of May. What a month.

The Malabrigo Superfine Merino I picked up at ImagiKnit.

Lists, lists, lists

Still working on that Rick Rack scarf, still too scared of DPNs to start the mitts I have queued. I did try casting on, but I was worried I was going to snap the needles with my extraordinarily tight stitching. Then I had a knitting crisis (filling my weekly quota) and decided I needed to go back several levels and deal with my tension. This article on Knitty was pretty helpful. I don't know whether I was actually pulling the yarn tight after every stitch or not, but I definitely tend to wrap the working yarn pretty tightly around several fingers. So I loosened up, and suddenly the scarf I'm working on felt a lot less tortured, and I worked on it through a whole two-hour movie without feeling like I was developing arthritis. Loosening up: it's good for you.

Also started this little cute dragon. I haven't gotten far yet, but it's turning out much smaller than I imagined - which is good. I like small things.

My main project, though, has been crafting epic to-do lists for our upcoming move. I have so many things to do and so many lists to consult that I think I need a list of lists, to make sure I don't forget anything. I am looking forward to a quiet summer and hoping my sanity rejoins me at that point.

Leave me alone, my garden needs tending.

In the meantime, I've gotten back into playing Glitch. It's a browser-based MMO, although that's just a very basic definition. I started playing in the fall and went away after a month or so. Now I'm back, because the best remedy for having way to many lists and to-dos is to play a game that consists mostly of giving me quests and tasks to do. Seriously, it's a nice to ignore all the stuff I have to think about and feel like I'm actually getting stuff done, even if that stuff is just petting trees and nibbling pigs and donating things to giants (it's an odd game).

And when that doesn't do it for me, I hop into Skyrim and bash heads with my warhammer.

Stress

After knitting and crocheting like mad for the first few months of the year, I seem to have hit a slump. The only project I've got going is the Rick Rack scarf I mentioned a couple weeks ago. Next on my queue are the Easy Handspun Mitts and I've got everything I need to get started, except the knowledge of how to knit on DPNs. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it, but I haven't had a moment lately where I felt like I had the time and mental energy to cast on something I wasn't sure how to do. Planning for a move is not the right time for learning new knitting techniques. My crochet queue is less intimidating, but mostly features amigurumi with tons of little pieces to sew together. Wahh.

I've been keeping busy, though, investigating yarn stores and knitting/crochet groups in my future home, as well as bookmarking a few places I might check out when I spend some time in the San Francisco area next month. Plus, I have a gift certificate at my LYS to spend before I move away, so there are fun possibilities there too. Lots and lots of planning these days, and very little doing.

Alpacas!

We spent the weekend in Warrenton, Virginia for a wedding. During the day, we did some sightseeing in the area, including Old Town Warrenton (where I discovered The Red Thread and poked around squeezing yarn) and an alpaca farm a few miles outside town:

The place is called Alpaca Full Moon Farm, and is run by a husband and wife who were both very friendly and welcoming. We got a tour of the farm and learned lots of alpaca facts, and got to hang out in their pen and feed them some treats:

I'm kicking myself for not buying any of the yarn they sell in their shop. It was beautiful, and it was labeled with the names of the alpacas who had contributed to it. But, of course, alpaca yarn is a little pricey and without a specific project I could use it in, I felt like I should hold off. Oh well.

This part of Virginia is best known for wineries and horses, but I highly recommend the alpacas, especially for a yarn enthusiast!

Odds and ends

A few things I've finished up recently:

My Diamond Ridges hat, using some Miss Babs Northumbria DK that I bought at fibre space using some of the gift card I got as a Christmas present. I love the color of this yarn, which I wasn't able to perfectly capture in any of my pictures. This is a pattern I've had in my queue for years, and I've always been daunted by the comments about how difficult it is, but I had no problems with it at all. I think the Phannie hat was good practice for front-post-only crochet, and the pictures included with the Diamond Ridges pattern cleared up any doubts I might have had that I was interpreting the instructions correctly. Definitely would recommend this pattern for any intermediate crocheter.

Next:

My crocheted grocery tote, from a Purl Soho pattern. The pattern calls for linen, which mine most certainly is not - I was trying to use up some of a skein of cheap craft store-brand baby sport yarn. As I said before, making something almost entirely out of chains is not really the most thrilling project ever, but I actually really like how it turned out. Making these out of linen yarn like the pattern suggests might be a nice gift alternative for people I've already dumped scarves and amigurumi on.

I also started something new:

Another pattern from Purl, this time the Rick Rack scarf. I haven't worked on a knitting project since I finished my Eternity scarf last month, and after a few itchy days of no project at all once the grocery tote was done, I tried casting on for a new scarf, but... I don't know, it wasn't my day. I spent most of an evening trying to get the Frostlight scarf to behave for me, then I tried the Rick Rack scarf and that didn't go any better, so then I started questioning whether I had ever actually learned how to knit and even if I had, why anyone would ever want to do something so annoying. Then I wisely went to bed, and a few days later, with the aid of this video, the rick rack rib made a lot more sense to me. It feels good to have a simple, relatively long-term project to work on while watching tv again.

Oh, and happy Easter!: