January, a mixed bag

A glance at my sidebar shows I've really fallen down. One little break from my goals (to make a symbiotic hat, no less) was the first step down a slippery slope. Ah, who knew such noble intentions were the forerunners to wanton abandon? Abandon my goals I definitely did as I dove headfirst into some serious startitis. However, I am finished or nearly finished with most of these new projects and feeling my way back to project goals.

A glance at my stash growth is eye-popping. Why yes, I've bought yarn for 72(!) more projects than I've finished since November 3. Yowser! And my goal was to knit as many as I bought -- zero stash growth. Last month I was in the high 20s, feeling like I could definitely get down to 0. Now I'm almost at my widget's 75 project limit! I couldn't imagine ever going that high, so I chose 75 as an arbitrary limit. Alas, my new goal is not to break the widget. Such is the life of a yarn addict dreamer. I really had made some progress in yarn purchase restraint, but some shopping therapy opened the floodgates.

Typical of exercise regimes and diets, a setback spells doom for me, because I let it. So, January was a month of self-indulgence (a little of it was very needed, but far less would have sufficed); February is time to refocus. In the next few days, I'll work up some new project goals. Time has changed them -- I have some deadlines coming up which necessitate fairly immediate action. An additional goal: if I stumble, get right back up; no wallowing on the floor in luscious new yarn the rest of the month.

On the bright side, while embracing startitis, I did knit. I am happy to report that I completed the January Knit a Mile challenge. For February, I challenge myself to knit another mile. Here's the January Knit a Mile breakdown:

• Rogue: 2 balls of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed, 208 yards
• Baby Surprise Jacket: 4 balls of some yucky novelty yarn, 511 yards
• Crazy Sweater (below): Cascade Bulky 109, 728 yards
• Steppe Sweater: Online Tondo, 372 yards
• Pam's Knitting Gloves: Reynolds Odyssey, 73 yards
  
• Magic 3 Yarn Scarf: Classic Elite Mirage, 84 yards

Total: 1976 yards. Yards in a mile: 1760. Rollover yards for February Knit a Mile: 216 :)

Completed today, a sweater for LB. Details on Ravelry.

loldog

Little things mean a lot

I received a card in the mail today, both unexpected and beautiful. It's from my knit pal Jabi in Kenya. The card was made by Albert Mutiganda, a refugee of the Rwandan Civil War who learned this banana fiber craft in a refugee camp in Tanzania.


Inside, Jabi included a lovely note and a bookmark she made. In my favorite color! The "fans" remind me of bushes. It is already in the Yarn Harlot book I'm currently reading.


Asante, Jabi, so much. Your thoughtfulness has really touched me.

I love receiving a little piece of far away. The world isn't so big, is it?

Sweaters' Inaction

No bonfire pics, but we do have a posed sweater photo. I think Dad's looks great (loosely comfy). Oh no! Mom's is too big. I'll get her to send it back. I think I'll rip back to the divide and cast on fewer stitches for the sides (and sleeves). I think the rest (raglan depth, V depth, sleeve length) is fine, though the front does need to be blocked a bit better to keep it straight
.
My SIL sent one of those JibJab "dancing heads" e-cards of a 20s flapper and zoot suit dude (heads courtesy this photo). If you knew my parents, you'd know how freaky this is.

Also, my parents actually have eyes. That sun is bright outside Seattle.

Oh yeah, the top button on my dad's sweater is too high--it pulls on him, too, even though the sweater fits. I was going to have my mom move it down ... until I realized the buttonhole would need to be moved, too. Oops. Lesson learned.

More goal thoughts

When I updated my goals a few days ago, I could have added two new blue (low priority) goals to my goals list, to take the places of projects I had finished. But I didn't, because I knew I'd never get to them in December.

I've rethought that. It seems that this system is working--I'm getting projects completed. I can't knit all the projects on the list in a month, but that's OK. The lower priority projects are a great way to get projects I've wanted to knit (or complete) for a long time on my radar.

I'm also going to use 5 projects per project priority instead of 4. This way I have more choices. More freedom about what to knit means I'll be more likely to stick with it.

For now, I'm making all the projects I'm adding blue. In January, I'll assess what I've done the remainder of December to assign the new projects a color/priority so that I have 5 of each priority.

New blue projects:

• Finish Mom's Equinox sweater
• Finish my Uber Ubernatural
• Muir
• Sweater for Jon
• Finish Ayany Hemlock Ring Blanket
• Spring Shawl Surprice
  

I know all this talk and more talk of goals and goal-helping widgets smacks of anal-retentiveness, which doesn't make sense since, to me, knitting is a fun hobby. I've had quite a laissez-faire attitude about it. But the whole uber-consumerism (aka mad stashing) thing with lack of results left me feeling pretty unfulfilled.

The [dirty little?] truth is that it actually takes this much organization to get my natural entropic tendencies productivity to a level I feel good about. So far, it's helping my knitting life, not sucking the fun out of it as I think it may sound. Here's to what works.

Sweater update

My parents' sweaters fit and they like them very much. Yay! Yesterday it was almost too warm to even try them on, but it was colder today so they wore them during some last minute shopping with good fit/use/warmth results.

They are also wearing them (under windbreakers) to the Christmas Eve levee bonfires on the Mighty Mississip'. I have requested pics!

I hate chess

Though I did play a pretty mean game of Connect Four.

So I prefer not to tax my brain cells too much to write down thinking a few moves out, with the moves in this case being revised December knitting goals.

Status of red goals:

• complete sweater for Mom for Christmas (2 days)
• make sweater for Dad for Christmas (7 days)
• finalize (and make available) widgets for SKD (2 days)
• Mystery Shawl 6 KAL (8 days)

Formerly green goals become red:

• catch up on Mystic Waters KAL clues (10 days)
• complete mock-up for secret project i (2 days)
• swatch Spring Shawl Surprice on smaller needles (half day)

Status of remaining green goal:

• come up with stitch pattern for secret project ii (2 days)

Formerly blue goals become green:

• bigger wrist warmers for a LoveBoy who's grown a lot (1 day)
• finish scarf for J (2 days)
• scarf for ?? (2 days)

Status of remaining blue goal:

• finish Leafy Scarf for me (2 days)

New blue goal:

• make a hat for Macuwita sni (Lakota for "I am not cold.")

Old Guy sweater on a not old guy

Dad's sweater is winging its way to Southern climes. Although it's too small for the hubinator, he gamely modeled it.
I put the top button just below the last V-neck increase. It pulls on Jon because the sweater is too small, but it doesn't pull on me (I have about the same chest measurement as my incredible shrinking dad--think Bilbo at Rivendell). But maybe I should have put the button a stitch or two lower?

Hamming it up as an Oxford English professor sans pipe.
I think the electric shark t-shirt kind of spoils the effect.

Unlike NOS, this is actually Jon's tummy. Complete with armpit head.

This sweater turned out pretty much exactly as I envisioned (my interpretation of what Dad wants). I need to work on finishing details (the buttonholes looked rather crap, and weaving in all those cotton ends wasn't exactly invisible), but I'm pleased with it. I think my dad will like it. I was extremely surprised he asked for a sweater at all.

Jon likes it so much, I have to get some more All Seasons Cotton. :)

Dad's sweater - update

This is coming along nicely. I finished the body using 8 balls, so I won't need all 16. W00t! Then I did the button band and I'm about to start the sleeves. I won't bore you with a boring photo of a boring sweater. But I am happy I can put this in the mail in a few days.

And the race is on

Can I finish Dad's sweater before Christmas? 3 skeins of Rowan All Seasons Cotton down, 13 to go.


Pattern is Barbara Walker's classic raglan cardigan. I'm winging the size and design details (such as they are--boring simple). 2 skeins a day...

Stash Management: a 4-pronged approach

I'm doing a new thing in my sidebar: Stash Management.

I love my stash. I love my stash so much that I'd like to knit it instead of merely accumulating more. Some goals and tools will make this possible.

It's a 4-pronged approach:

1. Aim for zero stash growth. On an arbitrary day in November, I said this is how big my stash is. Yarn purchased since then represents growth. Projects completed since then represent stash shrinkage. It's like a number line, see? I want to stay right smack dab in the middle of the number line.
   
2. Stash Knit Down 2008. Because I have purchased a lot of yarn since Zero Stash Day (mostly lovely, lovely Habu), I have a lot to knit to get back to zero. Many people participating in SKD 2008 have cataloged their entire stash. I don't want to quantify; I know roughly what I have (in my head), but not how much. I simply don't want to take the time to catalog. That's good knittin' time! But I do need a stash knit down goal: to knit my stash back to zero, and then some. I pulled the number 50 out of the air. 50 projects sounds good to me. That's 4+ a month. About 1 a week. I can do that. And I'm even starting now, which gives me an edge. Projects can be large or small, and completing a long languishing UFO counts, which gives me lots of ways to be successful.
   
3. Days since I bought yarn. I'm not on a yarn diet, so I will buy some yarn from time to time. But every day I don't buy yarn means my stash isn't growing. That's kind of a necessity to eventually get back to zero. So I'm going to celebrate no-buy days by shouting them out. (If you want to use this widget, go here)
   
4. Days since I completed a project. This is rather a no-brainer, but my stash won't get smaller if I don't Finish Objects. A small number here will be inspiring and a large number will remind me to get crackin'.

Why am I doing this? Productivity in my personal life has been, is, and possibly always will be the bane of my existence. I like to enjoy myself, take it easy, hell, even self-indulge. Without goals, I have nary a prayer of increasing my knitting output. I want the pleasure of knitting and the satisfaction of accomplishment.

Mom's top-down v-neck raglan

Lighting is poor on these gray days:

Pattern: Knitting Pure & Simple Neckdown V-Neck Shaped Cardigan
Yarn:

• Schaefer Sandra (cotton/rayon)
• Billie Holiday colorway
• Most of 5 skeins to make 53" sweater

Needles: US 8, US 6 for bottom border
Mods:

• Shorter sleeves
• no side shaping
• 1.25" seed stitch border
• worked sleeve seed stitch border on larger needles, instead of smaller ones like body's border
  
• worked at different gauge

Would do differently: Make it longer (and smaller)


I love the feel of the yarn, so soft and snuggly. I really like the look of the reverse stockinette side, so I may make mine with that side public. I grossly miscalculated how much yarn I'd need, so I have enough to make one for myself. :)

Widgets out the wazoo

I have certainly been into widgets lately. I am really proud of myself--I don't know how to write JavaScript, but I made a "days since" widget. I'm using it to show how long it's been since I bought yarn and how long it's been since I completed a project. I am banking on both of these bits of info to help me complete more projects from stash.

There's not a whole lot of reason for me to be proud of these widgets since I pretty much lifted them wholesale from a webdev site, but I did modify the formula a little and frankensteined some of J's code elsewhere to get it to display in an aesthetically pleasing way. The script itself merely calculates the number of days since a given date. I superimposed that number onto a background image.

Feel free to use the images and/or widget at will. Modifying font, size, placement, color, etc. is easy.
(If you use the buttons, please upload them to your own space.)

This JavaScript widget is so simple that it doesn't require a separate file. Simply paste the following code into your blog template, changing the date to reflect when you last purchased yarn, completed a project, etc. In this example, I completed a project on November 20, 2007. (JavaScript numbers the months 0-11 instead of 1-12.)

<img src="[URL to uploaded button]">
 <script type="text/javascript">
  var dateFO = new Date(2007, 10, 20); //Month is 0-11 in JavaScript
  today = new Date();
  var one_day = 1000*60*60*24;
  document.write("<div style=\"margin: -22px 0px 0px 50px; font-size: 16pt; font-family: Times; color: #001a00;\">" + Math.ceil((today.getTime() - dateFO.getTime() - (one_day)) / (one_day)) + "</div>");
 </script>

If you'd like the "days since" number to appear in a different place, change the numbers after "margin." I've used a whopping -22px top margin to get the number superimposed over the button.

You can also use the widget to figure out how many days until some event. Perhaps you're on a yarn diet and are going to reward yourself with a purchase on a certain date. You can count down the days! In that case, you'd use this code, and you'd want your background image to say something like "Days until I buy yarn:". In this example, I'm saying I can buy yarn on March 1, 2008.

<img src="[URL to uploaded button]">
 <script type="text/javascript">
  var dateFO = new Date(2008, 2, 1); //Month is 0-11 in JavaScript
  today = new Date();
  var one_day = 1000*60*60*24;
  document.write("<div style=\"margin: -22px 0px 0px 50px; font-size: 16pt; font-family: Times; color: #001a00;\">" +
Math.abs(Math.ceil((today.getTime() - dateFO.getTime() - (one_day)) / (one_day))) + "</div>");
 </script>

Enjoy!

Mystery Shawl 6, clue 1, "Snowflakes"

I like it.

The gray sheet was a poor background choice. I'll do better next time. Also, the pic is HUGE to have any hope of showing the snowflakes at all. The close-up is better (and smaller).

The fabric is pretty tightly knit (I mean that the result looks tight for lace, not that it's hard to knit), but the swatch opened up during blocking, so the shawl should, too. I used a Russian join, but I'm not sure it's best. It seems bulky. But I'm not sure what would be better.

Handknit Holidays sighting in the wild

NOS just sent me some pics of his Halloween costume (better late than never.) He went as a drunken mall Santa.












Cheap shades, red sweat pants, ratty white t-shirt with grape juice (wine) stain, black belt, and his gift for being able to push his really not fat stomach out an incredible amount. I think the camera angle is helping, too.

He also wore this hat to his Christmas party. They're supposed to wear a hideous holiday sweater, but since he has none, he wore a strange holiday outfit -- Hawaiian shirt with Santa hat. I quote:

I decided to make my own awful christmas ensemble. hawaiian tourist + dressed up (tie!) + santa hat = train wreck.

Documented proof of their poor attempt to wrap their dubbed Festivus pole with beads to make it more festive. I am not sure how a cement block with a pole stuck in it constitutes a Festivus Pole, but anyway. Check out the other dude's sweater.