A year with a Crafter

January is a month of making plans. It's the month that many of us make resolutions and try to start off with a clean slate. It's the month I make a yearly budget, and large goals for the year with measurable monthly steps. My goals are not always serious and one of them is to challenge myself creatively and what I really love is a monthly challenge list. 

This is my list for the year and I ask that if you read my blog that you join me in this challenge. Comment with  what you plan on doing for January and if you have a blog, post about it and add a link to the comments. I would love to see what you are up to!

January –  Procrastination – Finish a project you have been putting off finishing (a UFO or PHD) or make something you have been avoiding starting. 

February – New Skill - Try something new. It can be a new technique that you're interested in, or learning a completely new skill.

March – Useful – Make something that is useful. It can be something for around the house, a piece of clothing, a bag, ect.

April – Gender-Bender – Make an item for the opposite gender. Make something for someone else that does not identify as the same gender as you.

May – Consume – Make something that has a short lifespan. It can be food, face scrubby, ect.

June – Fiber - Fiber arts is such a broad term and this is the month to do anything that uses fiber. Paper making, knitting, crotchet, spinning, ect. 

July – Monochrome – Make anything in black, white, or any shade of grey in between.

August – Color – Make something colorful. Aim for 3 or more colors and make it a complete project. If you spin, spin some yarn and make the yarn into something. 

September – History – Make something with a historical link. It can be something from a historic pattern, a recipe for a historic source, or even a retro costume.

October – Heroes – We all have personal heros. It can be someone who inspires us in our creating, or a personal hero from history. Make something that is inspired by them or reminds you of them.

November – Red – Make something in any shade of red. 

December – You - Make something for yourself. This is the month we usually put ourselves last, but it's good to take time out for yourself. 

Woops

I was gone a little longer then expected. Work has been hectic and Ben is going through midterms, so things are crazy around here.

To bring you up to speed:

The Smokey Orchid yarn is taking a time out and is back in the stash.

It's about to rain for a couple weeks here so I've pulled my Uggs and winter coat back out (judge me all you want, but I don't care).

The high tea we at at Dori's Tea House was amazing. I bought the cookbook and made the egg salad because it was shockingly good at the tea house.


I'm currently knitting a scarf with some butter yellow lace weight yarn that uses the center panel of the Leaf and Nupp shawl.

I started by casting on 75 stitches, and knit this lace edging twice on size US3.

Your cast on will consist of the following:

2 extra stitches + 8 edge stitches + 14 stitches * 4 repeats + 7 edge stitches + 2 extra stitches

Keep in mind that you'll have 2 extra stitches on the edges of the lace edging, these I just knit. It makes the math easier then you start the center panel.

Once you knit 1 edge put it on a stitch holder, because you'll then knit the second edge, knit the center panel, and then using a kitchener stitch, attach the first edge you knit.

Also, I garter stitched the edges to match the nupp strips in the center, and added a fourth nupp to form a diamond rather then a V. You can do what you like.

After the edging just follow the directions for the center chart of the shawl.

I used one of my needles to help open up the pattern for a photo. Don't you just hate how lace just looks like a tangled mess before hard blocking? The yarn is Alpaca with a Twist, Fino (70/30 Alpaca/Silk) in colorway 5010. It's been sitting in my stash for a while, but I bought it at Green Planet Yarn.

Dear Smokey Orchid,

You and I were meant to be, that I'm sure of. I bought you while visiting relatives in Petaluma, and you were the only yarn I wanted at Knitterly. You were a little expensive, but I knew in my heart that your purples and browns where just what I wanted to warm my frozen little toes.

Recently you saw a harsh purge of the yarn stash. Three actually. I know you were worried when you saw the sweater yarn that matched you get tossed into the bag, but that was only because it was scratchy and the sweater knit from it was too small (though I got gauge and went up a size, it would have fit my 8 year old niece). You have been always saved due to your lovely colors, softness, and I knew you'd be perfect for socks.

You knew your number was called when I was halfway through my 2nd Santa Cruz socks, and though I can't find my ball winder, I hand balled you in the car, on the train, and cast you on as soon as my needles were free. That is where the trouble started.

My Cup of Tea has lovely lacework down the front, and working on US1, with my normal number of casted on stitches, you pooled only on the lace panel. Now I knew this was a risk, but I kept knitting you for FOUR WHOLE INCHES. I knew that I wasn't giving up on you and ripped out all the work (sorry for swearing, it was due to anger at the printer that had decided to become a paper holder). I read up a little on how to prevent pooling, I grabbed US0 needles, though they're sharp and kind of hard on the hands when knitting sock yarn, but You Still Pooled.

You've got one more chance to straighten up tonight when I not only change the gauge, but also the number I cast on. Otherwise there is still plenty of room for you in the purge bag.

-KC

An Outing of Ladies

My family is full of artists. We have fiber artists, painters, gardeners, sculptors, designers, musicians, and wood workers. For this reason we visit museums a lot. Oddest thing is that we never  go together as a group, until now.

Early yesterday morning, my grandma, my mom, her best friend, and I all piled into a car and headed up to the Legion of Honor, and have lunch there.

We saw Raphael's "Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn"

But the real gem of the Legion right now is the Bonnard exhibit. It was amazing, breathtaking, and I went through it twice to just stare in wonder at his use of color and peaking into his world. I'm rather a fan of impressionistic work and the works that came out from 1880-1920 are my favorites. I bought several postcards to put around my desk at work.

That yellow wallpaper is a show stopper

I brought my current socks in progress to work on while walking around the museums. It's my own hand dyed yarn and I'm in love. The colors remind me of Bonnard's Southern Landscape with Two Children, 1918. All the yellows and blues remind me of the ocean. I named this colorway Santa Cruz when I dyed it, and it makes me want to hit the beaches.

What hat?

The hat is having issues and therefore is not complete. Actually the hat is in a little time out as I had plan on only using one ball of my Pioneer yarn that costs $26.00 for 50grams. It's pricey because it's grown by sheep here in California, milled in the US, and then dyed in small batches at the wonderful A Verb for Keeping Warm. I've knit an entire short sleeved fair isle sweater from it and adore this yarn for all it stands for (though I would love for it to be 3 ply instead of 2), and am using the leftover yarn to knit a matching hat. It has plowed through the first ball and while in the second ball my increasing and decreasing math left something to be desired.

I have been knitting these instead:

Currently on the heel flap of the
second sock

This is my take on the Dublin Bay Socks knit with Malabrigo, bought at Knitterly, in a colorway I cannot name because I lost the label a while ago when it was destined to become another pair of socks that went the way of frogging. I grabbed this yarn because it reminds me of rain and since it has been raining recently I thought is was appropriate. I'm a simple kind of gal.

This year I have a goal to knit myself 7 pairs of socks so that when Ben and I go to the cabin on the lake I will not freeze like I normally do. Wool socks are a must there as there are no carpets, and it's not heated unless someone is there, which is never during the winter. We love going in the winter as not many people are in town. We spent our anniversary there and went to the country club nearby for a great dinner. It really is the best way to vacation. I'd honestly live there year round if possible.

A Hat

I'm knitting a hat. I started on Tuesday night and was reading the poorly scanned pattern on my phone (computer was too far away and I was using my nook to watch Netflix).

The pattern is one that I found while looking for a hat to match the fair isle sweater I'd just completed. I wanted something that matched, had some leftover balls of Pioneer (which is a rather nice but expensive yarn), and decided that no pattern but this one would do.

The Katie Beret is a lovely fair isle pattern that reminds me of golfing in the 1920's. The colorful fair isle sweaters were made popular by then playboy Prince Edward VIII.

There were a few problems that I ran into however when I decided to knit the hat.

First was getting a hold of the pattern that was published in 2009. It's currently supposed to be available online, but the website had been redone and I hit a deadend there. Rather then give up on the hat I began to message people that had knit the pattern and asked them for a copy of it, explaining that the website no longer had it posted. More then a few got up in arms over copyright issues (and a couple of them also proved that they hadn't read my message fully when they told me to go find it on the website), but one blessed person understood the problem and got me the pattern within a couple days.

The lovely Althea from Australia copied and emailed me a scan of the page from her magazine. I was off to the races now right? Wrong.

The pattern is blurry and hard to read, also after knitting the ribbed band I found out that the hat is knit flat and then seamed up the back. Think about this.

Fair Isle
Hat
Seamed up the back

Who does this designer think she it? Who does fair isle flat? Why knit a tam flat? This is insane.

With all this running through my head I'm knitting it in the round and we'll see if I have a had come Monday.