Couch Crafts

The goddess of needlework is not on my side today.

I finally finished knitting my Mariah today. All that’s left is seaming the hood, and sewing on the zipper…I think “Ooh, great! I’m finally going to finish this thing.”

…and then I promptly slice my finger open with a kitchen knife.  Le sigh.

But, I must say…it looks good!  I thought it was going to be too big, but it’s definitely not.  The hood itself doesn’t go very high…but who actually wears the hood on their hoodie anyway?  I’m excited to have it finished….eventually.

Incidentally, the sweet and sour chicken was also very good.

I haven’t written lately because I’ve been feeling uninspired…I put the hoodie away when I was halfway done with the hood…I don’t know why, so I’m picking it back up tonight.  Just when I was finding my inspiration again I was thwarted.

I was at my parents’ this weekend for my awesome mom’s graduation.  I was working on a crochet project last night when watching a movie with my parents. When I was done, I set it down on the coffee table in front of me.  At the end of the night, I moved it maybe 8 feet to the dining room table.  This morning, as I was packing my carry-on bag for the flight back home, my crochet hook was mysteriously missing!  My parents and I looked everywhere for it! I don’t know how it could have disappeared when it was hardly moved.

At the last minute, I had the genius idea that I’d thrown it in the junk drawer when I was putting the scissors away, but no such luck.  So not only could I not crochet on the plane today, I can’t do it at all because I don’t have any other hooks of that size, and everything is closed on Sunday.  Grrr….

Luckily I don’t need this finished until July.

I didn’t make this, but I have to share it anyway:

It’s a fuzzy pineapple!! Isn’t is cool? My friend Kat made it for me. She crocheted the black covering and cut and sewed the rest. I was quite happy to receive it. And to learn why Kat had called me the other night asking “What is your favorite fruit?” Best homemade button ever.

After buying 3 pairs of shoes the other day (my previous sandals were kind of grungy and not acceptable for officewear), I decided to get rid of some of my clothes. I have far too many. I filled a bag to be taken to goodwill and filled another with clothes I plan to strip down for their fabric. Lining bags and whatnot. I don’t know when I’m going to do all of this, but I really like the idea of reusing the old materials. I’ve been into the “green” movement for a while, but I’ve been getting into it more lately; thinking more about sustainable options where I wouldn’t necessarily have considered them earlier. And using old clothes for material seems like a good option to me, as many others have demonstrated.

Someday when I’m not in grad school…

Didn’t think I’d write again today, but I have to share this accomplishment.
I finally learned how to not twist my knit stitches!

I was taught to knit through the back of the loop, which I’ve known for a while was wrong (but fine in the round).  Depending on what I’m doing, I didn’t really mind the twisting, but for this hoodie I wanted no twisting because it looked messy.  Well, I started knitting in the front of the loop, and you know what I found? Every other row was twisted.  What the crap?

Making a long story short, I tried several different techniques and found that, not only was I knitting into the loop the wrong way, I was also wrapping the yarn wrong.   Go me.

According to some of the WordPress information, when you post an entry, you’re supposed to be able to add things like “Mood” or “Music”…and the only place I saw that was when I was editing the “About Me” page. Strike 2 for WordPress’s so-called “usability.”

Anyway, I recently posted my total yarn usage for the month of April in the Stash Knitdown group on Ravelry, so I thought I’d share

2 skeins of Noro for a bag: 220 yds
Some Patons for the straps: ~100 yds
2 skeins of CottonEase for the beginnings of a hoodie: 414 yds
TOTAL: 734 yds

The Noro and Patons are waiting to be felted sometime soon and then sewn together for what will most likely be a knitting bag. I thought that crocheting the bag would make it sturdy enough, but I think if anything with any weight is ever going to be put in there, it should probably be felted.

I’m growing frustrated with the hoodie because I accidentally messed up on one of the sleeves really early on (I started knitting at 12 rows when I should have started at 36 rows, so one sleeve was 24 rows shorter than the other) and didn’t notice until I was done, so I had to rip out the whole thing and start over again. And I’m frustrated with the rest because it’s just going to take a long time. That’s the problem with sweaters. They’re so big. The body’s about 3″ long right now. The pattern doesn’t call for any waist shaping, so I’m improvising by adding some in myself…who knows how it will turn out?

I’m also frustrated with WEBS. They messed up my order and sent me 6 skeins instead of 9. I called last Friday and they said they’d ship it that day…instead, they shipped it on Monday and I still don’t have it yet. Not that I’m crocheting it anytime soon, but they don’t know that! And my apartment is not the best for getting packages, (they once called me to say that I “still” had a package that I was never told about sitting in the office) so I wish they’d give me a tracking # or something. Hopefully it will get here today.

And hopefully I’ll find somewhere to put it… :-/

I must say that, as a graduate student studying usability, for a site that advertises that they specialize in usability, I have absolutely no idea how to use WordPress. I do not find this blog site easy at all, and I’ve been on many blog sites in the past.

Anyway, this it my forray into the world of craft blogging. I knit mostly, but I also crochet, and occasionally sew together strange monstrosities (sewing machines and I do not get along at all). And I even cook, though lately I’ve been too tired and poor to do much with that.

I’m too poor to do a lot of things, and I don’t apologize for that. I see a lot of people on Ravelry who let others make them feel inadequate for using OMG acrylic, or for shopping at craft stores, and it drives me crazy. You can make just as nice things out of acrylic, and if it works for them, then who cares what other people do?

Anyway, I guess as this is the obligatory intro post, I should provide the obligatory intro:

I was taught to knit by a friend–technically wrongly, but I make it work. When I started grad school, I had no friends, no thesis topic and hardly any work to do, so I started knitting more seriously, and there aren’t enough containers in my house to hold the yarn I’ve purchased since then. I spent a lot of time alone on the couch knitting, and now that my boyfriend has moved away, I’m back again! I adopted crocheting this past semester as part of a skill acquisition class. (For my other class, I conducted a study on Ravelry. How sweet was that?)

I’m currently in the process of trying to knit/crochet down my stash to some reasonable amount of yarn…but I just bought a bunch at the webs anniversary sale. Small setback. But I at least know what I’m going to do with all the yarn that I bought….or at least I thought I did. I bought some Cascade 220 superwash that looked olive on the site, a nice neutral. Five days later, I have three skeins of St. Patrick’s Day, Luck of the Irish, Erin go Bragh, Kelley green. Pretty color; not the neutral I was looking for.
…In the process of writing this post, WordPress has sent me an e-mail with all sorts of potentially helpful information. Methinks some user friendly salient links to said information on the site might be a tiny bit more efficient than an e-mail.