Happy New Year!

I recently scanned back over my old blog posts a couple days ago as part of my ongoing self assessment prior to End-2011. Every year brings on a new me and 2012 will be a new Rabbit, a version 49.0, as it were.

I got used to change in the 2000 decade--changing first jobs, then careers, then locations--a new relationship, new friends, new experiences. Then things settled down. In some ways the more static life I was experiencing was a welcome relief, but in other ways, things got, well, BORING. Time advanced quickly in the face of less stress. There were a few sticky moments here and there, but mostly things were calm and good.

Then came 2011. I lost my long time birdie companion Gabriel the cockatiel after 26-1/2 years in February. My mom diagnosed with, struggled through treatment for and ultimately died in August of cancer, ending years of poor health. The stress from my mom's illness and death has taxed my hubby and I considerably and we will both be glad when things settle. My job has been stressful as well, with our facility undergoing various inspections and accreditation visits. These check are typical, I know and will increase with the changes in healthcare policy, but like cleaning out a garage after ages of using it, the first reorganization can be overwhelming. The rest of the year has been various little stresses that seem magnified by time proximity to bigger issues.

My relief has been my knitting, I will admit, which has really take off this year. I took a series of workshops in May with Cat Bordhi (squeeee!) which were eye opening and wonderful. Even after years of knitting, I learned a LOT. I have mostly knit smaller projects this year, but I have also learned or revisited techniques, played with new yarns and learned to stretch myself.

Most importantly for me, Laura and Harry of Northcoast Knittery have really turned themselves into the knitting Dynamic Duo. There is ALWAYS something going on at the shop and the events there have become a big hub for my social life. I have a group of friends, many of whom I also now connect with via Facebook when not at the store. I have always had friends, but after several years here behind the Redwood Curtain, I really feel like I belong. 2012 promises to be more of the same--lots to do, fiberwise.

So enough waxing maudlin and time to get pragmatic. In looking over my blog, I found an old 2008 post of those projects I was ABSOLUTELY going to get done that year. Frankly, I finished none of them. I won't even list them in this post. Not worth it. I know what they are. They still need to get done, but what I really want is to reconnect with the JOY of my knitting craft.

I started a shawl a few weeks ago. It was a new pattern I got from NCK, done by their resident designer. I have knitted on of her projects before, and her designs are very interesting. I am not sure yet if anyone else has knit it, so there are no errata yet. I was dutifully trying to muddle through as it was a somewhat challenging knit and just yesterday had an epiphany. 36 rows in, I ripped it all out. Frogged. Rip it, rip it, rip it. Why? Because I was NOT HAVING FUN.

Sometimes things do get tedious, such as my green cocoon, started way back in June and mentioned a couple times in this blog. Like a class paper with a due date, I have plugged along and now, I am almost done. Yes, really. I can smell the end and it will be done in time to submit to the shop. I am quite relieved, actually. I will finish something on time that I promised I would do.

The rest of my knitting is in constant flux. I recently posted on Facebook that "I have more UFO's than Area 51". It's sadly true. Some require playdates like the three bags I have the knitting done for, but need to add linings and embellishments. Some require reworking like the miserable Zarah. I now have a homemade body form of me to use. I have even looked at Zarah on it and know that I have to rip and extensively reknit the upper torso. This endeavor will also require a playdate (or more). I have another sweater that I want to redesign the sleeves and I need to finish the torso on the bodyform before I can start those sleeves--playdate. I need to do gauge swatches for new projects. finish others. I need to set up a queue of smaller things for my knitting bag; I currently have not lunchtime projects set up. In my defense in this arena, I have done all that I had set up--at least six scarves, 2 shawlettes, 2 cowls and a pair of gloves as portable projects that are all done. I am even wearing most of them. I also did a quick lace shawl at home this year. Other items I have worked on but they are part of the UFO's or have turned into "ugh" projects. Or I am just stuck. Or worse, bored with them. (can you say "Jiada"? I did actually work on that this year as well.)

So some things are good, others, stalled. I do hope to keep my focus and hit some UFO's. I really want to and I have my Ravelry project list to remind me. The are, however, other things in my queue that also clamor to be knit up. So it goes. None of this even covers my dyeing (lots to do there, too.) or the brand new spinning wheel I got recently. (Just look at the basket of roving--how cool would that look spun up??) What I really hope for is some creative satisfaction next year, projects I like and wear, that others like and wear , that I am proud of, and most of all, that I enjoyed making.

Blessings to all for prosperity in 2012 Happy New Year!!

The End of the Year

The end of a year tends to trigger lots of emotion. It causes us to ponder what happened in the preceding 12 months. Often, we come smack up against occurrences that were fraught with anxiety. Sometime we even take stock of past glories. Many people tend to look forward as is the coming year means a giant do-over, a karmic get-out-of-jail free card, a fresh start.

I have tended to be this sort of person, and the new year has usually meant more to me than the inconvenience of remembering to put the proper date on bills and correspondence. I also admit that the onset of middle age has triggered the tendency to feel like time is rocketing by faster and faster. This year has been no exception.

As you grow older, you tend to accumulate things. Sometimes these things are material items, sometimes they are experiences, memories and wisdom. Sometimes these things are scars. The milestones change as one ages. As a child, years are marked by education, advancing through school grades, getting taller and/or bigger, growing more independent and capable. This trend continues through young adulthood: old enough to drive, old enough to vote, old enough to have sex, old enough to drink. The milestones are big, too. Graduating from school, starting to work, leaving home, getting married, having babies, getting divorced, changing careers. The material goods and memories expand: buying a car, a house, a pricey vacation, raising a family.

I have experienced a chunk of the things above. Not all, but a goodly chunk. I am not fond of some of the changes I am going through as I experience middle age: new aches and pains, less stamina and the feeling that windows in my life are starting to close as age negates opportunities. Still, I take stock of what I HAVE done both in the previous 12 months and in my life in general and I have done OK. I have a career, friends and have, in my smallish and local way, seen some nifty chunks of the world. I have seen things. I do watch out for fun, new experiences. I am not a wealthy person, but I have made decent use of my time.

One of my sadnesses of this year was the death of my mother. This is a milestone we don't tend to talk about above the tone of a whisper in this society. It's a big loss for me, although it was not unexpected. Still, Mom hadsome near misses mortality-wise and I did hope she might dodge the 2011 bullet. No such luck. I miss you Mom. I really do.

This has finally really lit a fire of "this can and will be me at some point" in my psyche. My Little Blog that Nobody Reads has chronicled mostly my knitting journey, but also has included some of my local adventures. I haven't posted so much of late for various reasons, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy.

I have finally reverse engineered a sweater I knit in the mid '90's and startedwriting up the pattern. I am very proud of this project in that it has been something I have MEANT to do for ages and never seemed to get around to doing. I have other knitting designs on the slate, but this was a colossal UFO, in that I made the sweater and never wrote it it. I can take the "incomplete" off my karmic transcript.

My project page on Ravelry has been the same way. I have more UFO's than Area 51 and it has become rather embarrassing. I am also finding that the process of digging through partly done knitwear is tedious. So too is the guilt of not finishing a handful of items promised to friends and family. The completion of my Green Thing referred to in the previous paragraph will be a huge relief. There are things I want to knit, but the pleasure is sapped by the anxiety of things I HAVE to do superseding things I WANT to do.

I have decided this year not to make a list of resolutions. Too much guilt when and if they go undone. I want to try and not feel over committed, but to take things a layer at a time, and FINISH things. I want to simplify and to reconnect with the pleasure of the process. For so many activities, if the process is not fun, then the finished project loses luster and becomes a burden--sometimes an incomplete burden--that contributes to clutter, frustration and irritation.

I watched my ailing mother struggle with being bored and overwhelmed at the end of her life. She did have some pleasure with a few friends at the end, but mostly she was ill and lonely. I know my end will come in time, but I want to face the second half of my life with aplomb and even enthusiasm. My knitting is my passion. I have learned a lot in the last few years about knitting, adding to my knowledge base in leaps and bounds. It feels good that I will soon add "designer" to my fiber resume. I can do this and I will do it. Happy New Year to all and sundry and onward 2012!

Tying Up Loose Ends

I have a couple of decorative urn baskets that sit next to my usual place on the couch. They contain yarn I want to keep on the surface of my stash and projects that are mostly done. I have had a tendency of late to ignore the contents.

I had a spare moment this morning before darling P woke up so I sat with my coffee and my crochet hook and wove in the ends of my orange Citron shawl I finished casting off the night before. I have received a lot of ribbing lately from my knitmates of the weekly sip and knit I attend.

"You never seem to FINISH anything. We see you working on stuff but we never see you WEAR it."

That is rather a fair cop, although this Summer was rather too warm for even scarves this year. Still, Sweater Weather is now truly here and all those scarves and cowls and shawls I made this year have simply languished with ends unwoven and unblocked. I therefore spent the last hour and a half weaving in the ends of no less that 6 projects. Yikes! Some of them I can throw on now, but most I would still like to wash and block them. At least now I CAN.

I am, by nature, a procrastinator. This trait is demonstrated by the Green Thing, as it has come to be know. This is a project for the upcoming Northcoast Knittery book that the shop has put it's regulars to working on. I have gone to an every-other-week meeting to discuss, advise and get inspired for months now. My design has pootled along at a dribbly pace, and again, I have taken some gentle knitmate razzing. "What is this you are doing? Why aren't you working on the Green Thing?" OK. I need to make progress. I have, but my progress comes in chunks and then I set it all down and work on other stuff.

Admittedly, I do need to have little things in my knit bag that goes to work with me--things I don't have to think about, just knit on. That is a legitimate reason to have other things on the needles. Still, I have not spent much time knitting at home these recent evenings and I need to. Less Facebook, more knitting.

Still, the more I looked at my Ravelry project list with the items stacking up at 95% complete the more I was feeling bogged down. Hence this morning's Flurry of Finishing. It's raining now, so I really need a break of dry weather to block, but there should be a window tomorrow and I can block things a few at a time until they are done. Then I can wear them!

On that note, I need to work on the Green Thing.

vs.









equals

I have a metaphorical coronary.

Cappuccino is totally unhurt and unfazed.

Guerilla Harvest

Autumn is here. The rain has already started for the season, early enough that long-time Northcoasters are saying: "Rain sure is EARLY this year."

I have two apple trees in my backyard. They are old trees, and I have no idea what varieties they are--some Gravenstein-y looking types. The tend to ripen sequentially (which is good when processing fruit tree produce, believe me!). The first is ripe. Not a huge harvest because my pole pruner broke last Winter halfway through Winter tree topping. The places I pruned produced some nice sized fruit. The upper unpruned areas have small apples, but they are way too high for me to get. I might catch some droppage. Note to self--GET A NEW POLE PRUNER...

I have just gone out and scooped up the reachable apples before the next rain comes. The way the clouds rolled in this morning, that will be soon. Ugh. Guess I need to make some pies for freezing tonight and tomorrow...

I really had incentive this year to get the fruit off the tree. We had a party in our backyard recently. Not one we arranged and not one we wanted. I am talking a Procyon lotor party. That would be "common raccoon" to us normal folks. And that gathering wasn't just some casual get-together; it was a full-on frat party. My neighbor next door said they had him up all all night while the stomped around on his roof. I heard nothing, myself, but I noticed the next morning that the cat food was gone, the water was all full of mushy kibble and that the open back had been gotten into. "Strange", I thought. "The girls don't eat like that! And that was a new bag. Why is so much gone?" Well, a check in the back corner of the yard showed me. I found a pile of poop. It looked like dog poop at first and I thought "How the HELL did a dog get into our yard?!" The I noticed what looked like blackberries in the poop. The I found another pile. And another. and another. And another. I stopped counting at nine piles of feces, went inside and googled "racoon scat". I got a barrage of images that looked suspiciously like the piles in my backyard.

Groovy.

My cats are getting up there--15 years old and are quite cream-puffy to begin with. No tough tabbies here! I also didn't want my expensive designer cat food becoming the neighborhood smorgasbord. (I use Wysong feline vitality, primarily because it is well rated, the girls like it and even more important, Cappuccino doesn't barf when she eats it. Nothing like groggily stepping barefoot in a pile of cold cat puke early in the morning!)











Jekyll and Hyde: That cute face is not so cute when challenged!

The best way, I think to roll up the welcome mat in my yard is to remove the food sources. I do have a compost bin along the back fence, and I need to dump some grass on top of the contents--a task I will do in a bit. I don't want to trap the animals at this point. A lot of county animal control agencies will take the beasties and euthanize them. I also don't want to handle them myself. Adult racoons can be BIG and are quite adept at defending themselves.
For now, we will try that, along with pruning out the foliage so they have less cover. Nothing like pest control incentive!

UPDATE: I just chatted with my neighbor and his duck Guiseppe had a near miss. My neighbor went mano a mano with Rocky Raccoon, armed with a beer bottle. The duck is OK, but the raccoon was not only unfazed, but unafraid. The pack later lined up on his fence and peered at him through his bedroom window. This is getting a little too Stephen King, here!

Merrily We Knit-a Long...

After a long blog dry spell, at last a post. I have not posted much due to a dead camera. I never much care for all text blog posts. Still, this can be done with swiped images.

I have a couple of firsts-- two-fer, in fact. I am FINALLY doing my first Knit-a-Long and Mystery shawl. The shawl is Koi Rama by Kitman Figueroa. Kitman Figeroa is a knitting designer, primarily of shawls, and I have admired her work for quite while now. I have meant to make one of her designs for at least a year and a half, but have been distracted. My Ravelry queue has several of her designs and I even have yarn in my stash.
The picture from the Ravelry design page is this of a carp and a butterfly and is supposed to represent the spirit of the piece. There are no other indicators of what the finished shawl will look like. She gave no clues or swatches, but I have little doubt, based on her other work, that the end result will be pleasing. Kitman also has asked participants to use this image and not post progress pics until the shawl is finished. This project is, indeed, to be a mystery shawl. She announced her KAL a couple weeks ago, and the price to join was discounted for early birds, and being and eternal bargain-hunter, I bit. I am a sucker for a sale and honestly I have wanted to participate in a KAL. Ihave had several false starts, but I have already prepped everything and will cast on after I post this on my blog.

I was fairly certain that I had to have something in my stash that I could use for this and I was right. I bought a skein of Sanguine Gryphon Sappho I laceweight in a colorway called "All Can Be Endured". It was an impulse purchase and I am pleased that I found something I can use it for. I have had a naughty tendency to buy yarn in appealing hand-dyed yarns without having a project lately; this tendency is a really bad habit to fall into, given the current indie dyer choices out there. The skein has 850 yards, so I have a generous amount based on the yarn requirements, although the pattern does suggest that extra yardage might be needed for loose gauge knitters. That would be me.
The colors are all greens and teals with a hint of gold. The knitted swatch is more representative of what my skein looks like. I was wooed by the skein image when I bought the yarn, think the goldy-orange would be more prominent. I must cop to being a tad disappointed when the yarn arrived because my skein had no real orange. It was more gold than orange and the gold was very subtle. For this project, though, I think the colors will work well. It looks like a pond under trees with flashes of gold sunlight and golden koi carp moving in the shadows.

There are optional beads and I chose #8 seed beads in golden topaz to match the color of the yarn. The beads are transparent so the greenish yarn shows through. The beads are strung on, rather than slipped on while knitting via crochet hook while knitting. The shawl doesn't call for a lot of beads. The first clue came Friday and only calls for 204 beads, so they will give a quiet flash rather than drive the piece.

Well, I am excited to start and this shawl will not knit itself. Hopefully, I will have a camera by the time I am done and I will post finished pics. Knit on, baby!

Startitis

I thought this would be an easy project, a no-brainer, a piece of cake. I was wrong.

I am working on reverse engineering a sweater I made in the early to mid '90's out of a mohair muff of Patons Knit n' Save. Knit n' Save was literally a giant single skein of yarn about the size of a watermelon of the uiquitous late '80's-early '90's fluffy mohair that was prevalent in most design books. I found it at a yarn store in Calistoga, CA. Each ball purported to have enough yardage to make a whole sweater, and it was cheap--good since I was fairly poor in those days. No Rowan yarn for me, then! I bought two big muffs of the stuff, each in an ombred colors, one in blues and greens, the other in reds and fushia pinks.

I used the blue green yarn to make a the ball-band pattern that claimed to take one skein and the result was a huge floppy, fluffy mock neck pullover with a giant center cable. I still have it, but it is prohibitively warm and scratchy, so that sweater languishes even still, destined to be frogged and repurposed.

The second skein I wanted to do something more special. I loved the colors and how they faded into one another immensely. I wanted to make a sweater, but the more I looked, the more I didn't want to cut the yarn. In those days there was no Ravelry. In fact, for my purposes, there was even no internet. I had already gotten a decent pattern library by this time, but there was nothing in my books that suited my purpose, so I did something bold: I made my own design.

I had the idea that I would use the whole ball of yarn. I didn't like the looser weave of the first sweater I had made--done on large needles, perhaps a size 9 or 10. I wanted a denser fabric. So I boldly cast on, deciding to knit cuff to cuff and seamless and off I went. I fit the sweater to myself as I went and tweaked the shaping as the knitting progressed. I remember frogging and reknitting parts, but mostly it went smoothly. The result was a cuff to cuff sweater somewhere between a bolero and a shrug. I had some bblack mohair yarn in my stash, so I co-opted an 8-row welt stitch I had used in another same-era sweater and put a binding around the neck/fronts/waist opening and also around each cuff. I was out of the original red yarn, but I had some other red mohair from the same sweater as the black, so I added some rows of red and another welt. I also added the same red/black welt along the neck back and sides. Lastly, I put two sewn in black snaps at the waist to close, double breasted style. The result was this:

I was quite pleased with how this turned out. The fabric is nice and dense. It is a warm sweater, but not heavy or oversized. It is easy to wear and I have worn it over dresses and jeans. And it was MY design. I foolishly didn't make ANY notes of what I did or how I did it. I had always meant to and meant also to draft it into a pattern that I could redo. As the years progressed and I saw other designers drawing up their patterns the desire to write mine up grew, even as my memory of what I did dimmed.

I have never liked to write much, even though I have done a lot of writing due to the Literature half of my college major. (Biology being the other half.) I have been told that I write well by people who read my stuff, though don't hold your breath for the Great American Novel. It'll never happen. I have though about writing knitting patterns or even pattern books for years. I have had design ideas that lack of time or laziness has caused me to not follow through on. In the long run, I have really found it easier to just truck along using someone else's designs ,even if I do tend to tweak those patterns to suit my own tastes in one form or another.

Still, there was always this sweater--my cocoon sweater--that was a completed project, that I really liked and that I had made up on my own. Now I have a motivation. My favorite shop here in town--Northcoast Knittery-- has set its regulars a challenge: they want us to submit designs for a self-published book. My jaw hit the floor when they made the announcement and I was BEYOND excited. I could do this! I--little old me--could become a published knitwear designer! Wow! It was obvious to me where to start--my cocoon. The only sticking point was I needed to choose a yarn that the store sells and that was still available for purchase--nothing discontinued. I picked my yarn, proposed my design which the others in our every-other-Tuesday designer group meetings said looked great and...nothing. I simply have not been able to get started. Yeesh.

Just as it was in college, I am dawdling. I cannot begin to tell you all how many papers I sat on and wrote, with great anxiety, at the last minute. It was AWFUL. I was always stressed. In going back to school a few years back, I tried harder not to procrastinate like I used to and I was moderately successful. Still, I find with no deadlines, I just can't self motivate to work. And here I am: procrastinating, this time by blogging. Or maybe not.

I ran a marathon in 1998. When I started training, I told EVERYONE I knew I was doing that. In the end, that served as a motivator of sorts because I was CONSTANTLY asked how my training was going and I was damned well not going to give up and admit that I couldn't do the race. I am on the hook the same way now--and I have homework. I have yarn and it has been wound up into center pull cakes. My old sweater is by my side and my laptop ready for notes. I can do this...watch me go!