First FO of the New Year

All I had left to do on these socks was the toe of the second sock. Not a lot, not more than an hour or so of knitting. I can't knit much right now, but a round here and a round there, and before you know it, your socks are done.

This is the Alpaca Sox yarn. So soft, and the finished fabric has an almost velvety feel. We'll see how they wear and launder. I have a feeling the yarn might be tender.

I've sewn the shoulders together for my pink sweater, but I don't have the right circular needle for the neckband, so that's on hold until I can get to the knitting shop. That might be a while. Work is pretty demanding right now.

How to Not Knit

So far, in the quest to rest my index finger, I have:

1. Blocked the pink sweater. I did it in stages, and the final stage was the sleeves, which you can see here. They look like they're two different sizes, but that's because of the funny camera angle you get when you stand on tiptoe with your arms way overhead.
2. Wound off about eight skeins of yarn. I have to do that slowly, with long breaks between skeins, because the crank irritates my knuckle.
3. Put loose patterns into plastic sheet protectors in binders.
4. Spend eleven million hours browsing patterns on ravelry. I've been in the habit of storing patterns I like in my favorites folder. And then one day, my favorites folder was suddenly empty. I've spent some time trying to recreate it -- ha! as if that can ever happen -- and printing loose copies of freebie patterns I'd like to knit.
5. Found a sock pattern for some green Cascade Heritage sock yarn to match Catherine Parr. I wanted a diamond-like trellises that mimicked the Catherine Parr cable chart without actually being that chart. Because I'm sick of knitting that chart. The answer arrived in the form of Snicket socks, formerly of Magknits and currently a ravelry download.
6. Reorganized my knitting bookshelf. Knitting books are so oddly shaped. They never line up in a pleasing fashion.
7. Read my Harmony guides and other chart books for substitute cable patterns for my FLAK, which I expect to cast on in two weeks or so. I'm currently leaning towards a summer motif -- a trellis cable up the center, some vine and leaf cables on either side.
   
8. Stared dolefully at my knitting, wishing I could touch it.
9. I tried to make a pot of soup, but can't chop vegetables with a wonky index finger. Pizza!
10. Moved all the yarn for knits-in-progress out of the back room dresser where I so cleverly put it for safekeeping. Thank goodness I found it.
    

The swelling is going down, and the pain is fading. I knit a half a round of the gray socks last night, trying it out, but the knuckle started to twinge almost immediately. A couple more days rest should do it.

Also, movies are way more enjoyable when you can knit through them. I don't know how non-knitters can just sit there and stare at the screen. I kept wanting to make popcorn just so my hands would have something to do. But I watched Duchess, the Keira Knightley/Ralph Fiennes adaptation of the Amanda Foreman book. It was very good. I didn't expect to enjoy it because Keira Knightley annoys me, but she was restrained enough to be watchable. Shame it wasn't a faithful rendering of the historical character, who was far more interesting and quirky than the movie would have you believe.

And I watched Burn After Reading, which was about as good a Coen brothers movie as I've ever seen. Definitely worth renting.

Emergency! Help Needed!

I have a four-day weekend. My plan was to go to The Fold yesterday, go hang out with with friends this afternoon, and spend the rest of the time knitting and reading at home. (Yes, "days off" doesn't mean I stop reading submissions. I never stop reading submissions.)

I rented four movies to put the cherry on top of the weekend, and last night, as I was knitting a sock gusset and watching the first movie, I got a little twinge in the knuckle at the base of my right index finger. Within an hour, it had swelled to the size of a small plum.

Ice and aspercreme have helped the swelling go down a lot, but it still hurts. I can't knit! Why, why, why does this have to happen this weekend?

So tell me, before I tear out all my hair from frustration -- if you had blocked out some knitting time, and then couldn't knit, what would you do instead?

ETA: My house is already clean. And I don't want to work more than a token amount, maybe just 3 or 4 hours a day. I'm looking for fun stuff, preferably knitting related, that won't strain that knuckle. (cry)

Happy New Yarn!

Starting a stash diet for the new year is an utter impossibility when you live two counties away from an amazing yarn shop, and that amazing yarn shop has its annual blowout sale on New Year's Day.

Today, three carloads of us wound our way up to The Fold, about a 75 minute drive in good traffic with good road conditions. It's worth it even when, like last year, a blizzard slows down the driving.

Last year, I gave myself a stash exception for this particular sale. 30% off all yarn, 40% off all books, and some super discount yarns marked as low as 75% off? I'd be a fool not to take advantage of a sale like that, right?

This year, though, I didn't give myself an exception. I could shop, but within the stash rules for the new year. I wanted to find something for St. Brigid -- see the khaki green yarn -- and I thought I might find a little something in the super discount bin. I didn't, but I fell in love with that chocolate brown undyed Shepherd's Own from Fibranatura, and picked up 3 skeins. Amazing stuff, soft and rich, and my only regret now is not buying more of it.

So I'm starting the new year with 1500 grams added to the plus column. But it could have been much worse, given all the yarns I fondled but left behind.

My stash goal for last year was simple. I wanted to knit as much yarn as I bought, an even grams in / grams out measure. Sock yarn was exempted, and if you leave sock yarn out of the tallies, I ended up knitting 83% of the yarn I took in. (9536 grams in, and 7910 grams out.) If you leave out the yarn I received as gifts, and factor in the pink sweater, which is off the needles but not quite a finished item yet (still needs seams and a neckband), then that number climbs closer to 95%. It's not perfect, but it's not bad, all things considered. Too bad the pink sweater isn't a finished object yet! Or that great yarn hog, Catherine Parr!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Change of Course

They say the devil lives in the details. Not that I would know anything about that....

On Friday, I realized I was within two rows of dividing the front of Catherine Parr for the neck shaping. As this is a crew neck, more or less, that means there's very little knitting left to do. I did some rough math and realized I could probably finish the sweater before the end of the year.

And then I also realized I would need a second ball of yarn to knit from, once the neckline is divided into two pieces.

This isn't the kind of detail that would normally pose a problem. Normally. I had wound off several skeins of the dark green Cascade 220 and put them in a sack in my knitting bag for just this moment. Er, better make that the previous moments when I finished skeins. All the pre-wound balls in my bag have been used.

Again, not normally a problem, right? Just haul out the swift and wind off another cake. So out comes the swift, out comes the winder, and both are clamped in place. Then I went to my storage closet to get a skein, and that was when it hit me.

I had no idea where the rest of the yarn might be.

You might remember that a couple of months back, I photographed and catalogued most of my yarn in preparation for moving it to a storage location. At that point, I tried to also reorganize it more neatly -- like yarns together, every bin filled, and so forth. Somewhere on that journey, I decided to remove the "knits in progress" yarns from their usual home in the stash closet and put them --

Somewhere else. Somewhere really clever. Somewhere, I'm sorry to admit, that I couldn't for the life of me remember.

While I tried to remember what my brainstroke had led me to do, I grabbed the pink sweater and cast on the sleeves.





















Because I'm not sure there's enough yarn for full sleeves, I decided to do a provisional cast on at the widest part of the sleeve, just below the sleeve cap shaping. You can see the gray waste yarn of the provisional cast on in the picture. Then I knit the sleeve cap in usual fashion (bottom up). Then I picked up the stitches at the provisional cast on, and will knit down until the sleeves are done or the yarn is gone, whichever comes first.

I've used this "middle out" sleeve construction technique in similar circumstances, and it's the best argument in favor of knitting the sleeves last. Do both sleeves at once, and you won't end up gimpy-armed if your yarn runs a bit short.

About the Sock Yarn

In one corner of a tightly packed closet, atop a narrow bookcase teeters a stack of storage boxes filled with enough yarn to make 63 pairs of socks.

63. I know. I counted.

And that doesn't include the several yarns in the fingering to DK range that could eventually be made into socks. That's just the stuff that was bought expressly to make socks.

I made 9 pairs of socks this year. So at my current rate of knitting, I have enough sock yarn to last me seven years.That's assuming I continue to knit socks at the same rate, which is by no measure a certain thing. I'm planning more sweater knitting, which means less sock knitting.

Three years ago, before I started hoarding sock yarn, these bins held the yarn for sweaters-in-progress. They held needles and notions. Now, to make room for the sock yarn, all those things have been crammed into nooks and crannies on bookcases, which are bowing under the weight of everything I ask them to hold.

2009 will be the year I stop collecting sock yarn as if it doesn't count towards the stash. I'm sure I'll still buy some here and there, and I've "budgeted" to allow myself to purchase new sock yarn after I've completed three pairs of socks. After. Not before. The storage closet has no more credit to extend.

Last year, I granted myself two exceptions in my personal rules. I said that sock yarn didn't count, as long as I paid cash for it from my weekly pocket money allowance. And I said that the rules didn't apply to Stitches and to The Fold's annual New Year's Day sale. This year, sock yarn counts, whether I pay from my weekly allowance or from gold that rains down from the skies.

Will there be an exception for Stitches? Still debating that one. I may leave it an open question until I see just how many pairs of socks I manage to knit between now and September. But my usual splurge mentality for the Stitches marketplace has started to come under heavy scrutiny, too. So we'll see, I guess.

Goals: Not Just for Soccer Anymore

I love goals. I love planning things -- setting the vision, crafting strategies, breaking a process into pieces. I love thinking about what's possible, the big dreams, and then trying to imagine ways to turn possibilities into facts.

Yeah, and I love New Year's resolutions. Let's face it. The new year is a great excuse for making goals, and not just for people like me with our daily, weekly, monthly and annual goal lists. January 1 is the one time of year when the whole world gets in on the game. Fun times.



That's a snapshot of a week in my planning book. I developed a numbering system for the things I want to accomplish every day, day after day, and use that as a shorthand in my book. Some of these numbered things may seem silly -- for example, one of my daily goals is to clean something in my house for 15 minutes. But I have to put that on the list because if I don't, I might not ever get up from my desk. I tend to get sort of stuck here. Wrapped up in my work. One of the challenges of working at home is balancing the whole life/work thing -- you never leave the office, you know. It's always here. My goals have to reflect the ways I struggle for balance.

And then there's my project wall.
























Each white card is a manuscript which I've acquired. Again, because I'm a bit of a freak, I've developed a notation system to help me track where each manuscript is in the development and production process. The best ones are upside down with an X through them, because those are the ones I'm done with. They're not out of production yet, so they can't come off the wall, but I can more or less ignore them.

The delightful Miss Seven loves my office -- what little girl wouldn't love a room filled with colored note cards and pencil sharpeners and scissors? Two of the notes on my project wall were placed there by her when she was playing office with me. One reads, "everyone loves you well ... and people also like you very much." The other reads, "Hi TT, I (heart) you and I know other people do to." I think those notes will probably stay on the project wall forever. Just cuz. Y'know.

So, now that you've had a glimpse into my ordinary world of lists and planners and notation systems, maybe my decision to make some knitting goals for 2009 will seem more understandable. I'm a driven person, and knitting is where I usually let all that drop. I just forget it all and make my stitches, one after the other in soothing rhythms, confident that eventually I'll wind up with a garment. No deadlines. No obligations. No plans or goals.

Yeah.

So that's how I came to have project bags hanging off every doorknob, and I'm up to my ears in stash. Because I didn't worry about when I would knit different things, or where I would put the yarn. I just figured I'd get to it eventually, right?

That's not a system that works particularly well for someone like me.

So I'm crafting knitting goals for 2009. I have a rough draft of them posted on the sidebar of my blog. Still pondering them, and some of those goals may change between now and January 1, but they're starting to take shape nicely. I'll be focusing more on garments and less on socks. Finishing what's already been started, knitting what's already been bought.

What about you? Any knitting resolutions for the new year?