Mid-February Smorgasbord

First, a shout out to my fellow bloggers who manage to post on a regular schedule, or even every day. I don't know how you do it, but I love reading your posts. Thanks to everyone who reads and comments on my posts as well! I do love this little blogging world we've all nested inside of.

Remember when this was a knitting blog? Hey look, I knit something!

The pattern is the Midnattsol Hat and I used Knitpicks Gloss which is merino wool and silk. I do love colorwork but the pattern had many rows that used three colors (it's usually just two) and it was difficult to manage the yarn. I kept having to stop and untangle the giant mess. The pattern ended up looking really nice but I probably won't knit it again. The soft and squishy hat went off to live with my cousin, who has been a grateful knitted hat recipient in the past (he even took one mountaineering in Argentina), and who is dealing with some pretty serious health issues right now. I also knit a hat for his wife, because in Chicago everyone needs multiple hats, but I didn't take a picture of that one. It was that hat you see everywhere, you know the one with the horizontal ridges alternated with 1x1 ribbing, and a faux fur pompom on top.

A word of warning about faux fur pompoms: one of my coworkers was out walking and a hawk dive-bombed her because it thought she had a dead rodent on her head.

A three year old became a four year old. Three definitely had its cute and fun moments, but four is when kids get easier. We are all breathing a sigh of relief around here. 

So I'm pretty much an idiot and I bought Mary one of those teeny tiny dollhouse kits for Christmas. It does look adorable, but it is ridiculously tiny. RIDICULOUSLY. You have to build everything almost completely, and an 8 year old approaches the project by just dumping every teeny tiny part into a (teeny tiny) pile, and half of it rolls off and disappears down the heating vent. Fair warning to anyone who falls for the cuteness of these kits. In case you don't believe me about the teeny tiny claim, here's a stick of deodorant for scale.

Jason and I escaped for one night to Annapolis. It was fairly cold and we didn't have much time, so we just walked through the city, which was not that big. It was worth it though, to have coffee, dinner, and breakfast while sitting down the whole time, never having to get up to bring anyone milk or tell anyone to just STOP IT. There are boats there. I am not sure what else one does in Annapolis, maybe drinks and eats crabs?

I also read a couple of good books. I loved Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce, which had been on my list for some time and I finally got around to requesting from the library. It's a book that sounds a little weird from the description, but ended up being an exciting, endearing story. A middle-aged woman and her mysterious younger sidekick go exploring New Caledonia in the 1950s in search of an elusive, undiscovered golden beetle. It was both funny and heartbreaking. I had never heard of New Caledonia before and I assumed it was made up, but nope, it's an actual place!

I followed that up with The Guide by Peter Heller. This book is set in Colorado, and the descriptions of the West really got me. We lived for awhile in that part of the country, and Heller manages to capture the beauty of the place. It ended up being a weird mashup of literary fiction, thriller, and dystopia that made for a quick read. Also there was an extra line between every paragraph which I couldn't really figure out. Was that just to make the book longer?

I am now about halfway through Matrix, which I was so excited to read because I love Lauren Groff. But... I don't know if I can do it. If you've read this book, you know what I mean. Where are the quotation marks? I'd debating if I should abandon it - the parts about 12th-century life are pretty interesting/horrifying, but I don't know if I can slog through more religious visions to get there.

We're now halfway through February, and daylight savings time starts in less than a month! The increased light has had a huge impact on improving my mood and energy, and I can't wait until spring.

Autumn and Creativity

Ah, fall, the season in which Instagrammers and bloggers everywhere relentlessly post photos of colorful leaves and steaming mugs of tea. There aren't any mug pics in this post, but I'll try to fulfill the regulated amount of leaf content. Also: knitting content for once! I have been thinking about what to do with all my sock yarn leftovers (the dilemma of any long-time knitter), and since I admittedly have a purple addiction, I pulled all my purples and arranged them in a gradient. I'm using the Boneyard Shawl pattern since it is simple, and knitted all my scraps in order until they are used up.

Although there hasn't been a frost yet, the garden is wrapping up. These were the last bunch of dahlias I picked before the buds stopped opening. I grew these from seed last year, and although I thought I had dug up all the tubers, these hid in the ground and bloomed better than ever this year. I'm going to attempt to lift and store them over the winter, although winters have been getting warmer here [climate change] so they might survive just fine in the ground.

The mornings have been foggy lately which is setting the perfect fall mood. It allows me to take pictures like these, which give the impression that I live in an idyllic country wonderland, and not actually in a county of a million+ residents.

At the beginning of the month I took myself to the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts and saw an exhibit on the children's book illustrator Jan Brett. If you have access to a child, you've probably seen one of her books. They are rooted in folktales, and her art is incredibly detailed. It takes her a year to illustrate one picture book, and she does extensive research by traveling all over the world. It sounds like an enviable life!

Thanks to Anne at My Giant Strawberry I won free access to her Skillshare class Beyond Beginner: Tips and Tricks to Level Up Your Watercolors. This class is very well-done and I'm looking to putting all her ideas into practice. I am also taking a class by Alisa Burke, The Flower Journal. I am attempting to actually do all the lessons instead of just watching the videos, like I usually do. Even if a technique is not something I'd usually do, I'm hoping to surprise myself. The page below was done only using my fingers. I liked how it turned out, but boy was it a challenge for my mess-avoiding self.

Finally, I had something of an epiphany regarding making art. I love reading anything on creativity; if there is a book out there, I've read it or it's on my list. (Austin Kleon's are particularly digestible.) It is quite popular to talk about "enjoying the process", "play", and the fact that you shouldn't worry about results. Have fun! Ok, but I can have Type A tendencies. Having a desk full of messy sketchbook pages and scattered scraps of paper and art supplies drives me absolutely insane. While I do like working in sketchbooks and making looser art journal pages, having no real end product leaves me feeling like bothering to make art like that is pointless. (That's not true! It's just what my brain tells me.) 

Recently I had the thought: but what if I don't fight against it? I know that an end product is important to me, so why not work toward actual end products? Instead of focusing on finishing 100-page sketchbooks, why not make a book on a theme with a few pages and then rejoice when it's completed in a short amount of time? Instead of working in my watercolor sketchbook, is there anything wrong with working on sheets of paper and then framing or giving away the result? This is primarily why I have always been more of a crafter. When you knit a hat, well, at the end you have a hat. Or you have a quilt, or a table, or a sweater that can be used.

I'm almost 40; I don't know why it took so long to figure this out. 

Enjoy the fall, the crispy leaves, and your steaming mugs!

Everything Since April

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yikes, it's been 4 months! Summer started and is happening. I finished up my blue Cruiser mittens pretty quickly, the thick yarn and easy-to-remember pattern certainly helping. I knit a little hole into the palm of one so that I can turn the pages of my kindle when it gets cold out. I also finished up the quilt I started for Mary before she was born. The bright colors aren't really my style, but in the end I'm OK with it. The pattern was quite easy due to mostly strip piecing and bulk cutting. I can't remember where I got the pattern from, but it's somewhere on the internet so it shouldn't be too hard to find, right? What took forever was the quilting. I did free-motion quilting across the entire top and I pretty much hated it. I really underestimated the physicality needed to push and pull a full-size quilt under a machine. No wonder people pay other people to do this for them! I will definitely go that route for my next large quilt.

We went to Sheep & Wool and I bought NOTHING. True to my new year's resolution, I have bought no yarn this year and have knitted completely from stash. This actually worked out well because I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up which made me want to get rid of everything. I sent a large bag of craft supplies off to live with someone else, and I'm working on clearing the decks of my quilting WIPs so I can pare down my fabric collection even more. The fabric I was attracted to and was available decades ago (yes, it has been multiple decades since I started quilting) isn't my style anymore. I have one quilt ready for quilting, and another one about 1/2 pieced.

After 6 years of being away, we went back to New Mexico for a wedding in June. We mostly stayed around Santa Fe, eating chile-based foods and looking at Southwestern scenery. I wanted to go back to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, which was smaller than I had remembered, but is worth a visit. The plaza was cheesy as usual, although perfect if you're interested in a dreamcatcher or t-shirt with a howling wolf on it. We drove up into the mountains for a short hike, which was brutal at 10,000 feet; the views were amazing, however. Oddly, one highlight of the trip was the Jambo Cafe, an African restaurant. Highly recommended.

Of course, there have been baby pools and bowls of cheerios on the floor and naps and reading the same books over and over and over. As Mary would say, "It's allllll gooooooood."

Blues

Blues have been living on my needles lately. A friend recently had a baby girl, and being a pink-sparkle avoider like myself, I thought I would make her a baby sweater in non-traditional colors. The pattern is Baby Tea Leaves, and the yarn is Malabrigo Arroyo in Azules. I made a similar one for Mary, and I'm really in love with this pattern. The pattern is written so clearly and the result is super sweet for a baby girl. I made the 12 month size and it eats up 100% of one skein of yarn, which is exactly how I like it. I actually knit the body first, then divided the rest of the yarn by weight for the sleeves.

Also now finished are a pair of Cruiser Mittens in Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb Worsted. I knit a small buttonhole into the palm of one so that I could turn the page of my Kindle when it's freezing out. The convenience of being a knitter! Oh, and I did modify this pattern a bit by adding a thumb gusset. I really don't understand when mitten patterns are written with no gusset, because last time I checked the width of your palm across your thumb is bigger than the width of your palm above your thumb.

How quickly you forget the cold. It's hard to imagine needing to use these now that it's spring. Sheep and Wool is coming up soon! I'm hoping to take Mary this year and introduce her to all the sheep. It's funny how tastes change over the years, and this applies to yarn as well. This winter I realized how much warmer plain old 100% wool is. So, I'm hoping to find some non-superwash wool and/or fiber for socks and sweaters. Even though I've forgotten the cold, it doesn't mean it won't exist again.

Wool Socks for Winter

Last time I mentioned how I do not do well with long-term projects. I really want to knit complicated cabled sweaters and intricate lace shawls, but about 60% in I end up wanting to burn the thing. Of course when it's finished I'm glad I put in the time and immediately want to start the next big project.

Sometimes, though, I need to knit a pair of socks in 4 days. The way that happens is to find some bulky yarn and big needles (it also helps to have small feet) and cast on 32 stitches. 32!! (A regular sock has about 64 stitches in a round.) I just made up the pattern as I went along, because after knitting about 50 socks so far I could probably do it blindfolded. I used Istex Alafoss Lopi, which is from Iceland and as close to an actual sheep as you can get. The wool is pretty "rustic," as they say, so these are better if worn with other socks underneath. That's ok, because it's 62 degrees in my house and they match my House Hat and House Scarf and House Long Underwear. Is it 62 degrees in your house?

Currently Knitting

I've become a little too into certain Instagram feeds where new projects are posted every few days. Socks fly off the needles in four days, new shawls appear weekly, and a sweater magically knits itself every month. While incredibly inspiring, this is not how I roll. I tend to plod along on a few things over a course of a few months (or even years, in the case of blankets and quilts), which makes my updates all very similar. Hey guess what, this sweater looks exactly the same but is actually an inch longer!

What I'm currently plodding away on:

• A Red Rock Canyon shawl in two maybe-a-little-too-similar shades of Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere. The striping is subtle, but I suspect it will show up more when the shawl is finished. I'm probably more likely to wear a purple tonal shawl than a crazy striped one anyway. Oh, and this yarn is amazing. It's like petting a kitten's belly.
• Acer Cardigan in Cascade 220. I don't knit many sweaters, but somehow I ended up with two sweater quantities of yarn in olive green. The fronts and back are knitted in one piece, which is why it's so wide; don't worry, I'm not bringing 80s sweaters back.

I finished up a Sockhead Hat in some handspun merino which has finally found its calling. This is the third iteration of this yarn (previously a bias-knit cowl, and then a crocheted cowl), and it works! The merino is crazy soft and warm, although I'm still not nuts about the colors. Also, this is a "slouchy" hat. I'm not sure how trendy people manage to achieve the perfect slouchy hat, because mine always sticks up like a conehead.

Last but not least, I am so close to finishing The Afghan of Death. I started a crochet blanket in April 2011 (yes, almost 4 years ago), and all it needs are about 8 more seams and a border. Remind me about this if I ever mention wanting to crochet another blanket.