Textileophile

 Finally got some good Finished Object shots of my Birkin sweater! <3

 First things first, I've finished my Birkinda sweater! Very Excite! Sorry, I don't have a picture of me *in* the finished sweater excepting a quick bathroom selfie.  Zac is working and the light is bad when he gets home.  So, floor FO is what you get.  It does fit though, and that's the important bit. It took me about a week longer than I expected it would to finish, and it has everything with the amazing news that I have. We're moving back to California this year!  And... well, it's a cross-country move in the middle of a pandemic, and not anything we originally planned when we moved out to New England 10 years ago.  So, there's a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety and knitting went a little sideways for a week. At this point, it's a waiting game.  There's hopefully good news coming this week that will enable us to move forward with all of our tentative plans, but until then, I am compiling lists of things I need to do, and slowly navigating them. A few d

 I was really hoping that next time I posted it would be another glorious post full of finishes.  But alas and alack.  As of Wednesday, I was about here on my raglan decreases: And I was looking at it last evening and knitting along when I got to thinking how very too long it was seeming.  I did do a lot of planning before venturing out on this third attempt at this sweater, taking into account row gauge and desired yoke depth.  I thought I was smart. Yeah, no.  My row gauge was about 2 stitches less than I expected.  And as a result, the yoke was indeed going to end up entirely too long. boy. So, today I will finish frogging (colorwork is very time consuming to frog) and get everything back on the needles.  I am not looking forward to having to do those initial rows of the yoke decreases again, but at the very least it will go faster to knit the thing. -- And I'd be a bit remiss if I didn't mention my new sock cast on for January! These are handspun socks!  I spun this yarn as

Something about bringing in the New Year this year made me want to take out the Old and bring on the New.  Or maybe it is just a continuation of that finishing kick I was on. Needless to say I got a few things done before the New Year.  Ok, I got 1 pair of man-socks done and 1 and 3/4 stranded socks done. Close enough!   These were a quick knit! I bound off the pair within 2 weeks of starting!  I don't have a lot to say about them except what I've already said: Self-striping felici yarn by knit picks, they are an 80 stitch vanilla sock with an eye of partridge heel.  They're a bit big for Zac which hopefully means they'll fit their owner, whom I need to send these to before his birthday. I finished about 3 days before the new year, and I looked through my WIPs pile, which are admittedly dwindling, and decided that if I put my mind to it, the stranded yellow and gray socks can manifest before the new year. This first one was done on the evening of the 30th.  I finished u

 Last I left you, I'd been Super excited about my new cross stitch project.  I'm still really enthused and have worked on it every day since then.  One of my friends said this looked a bit like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. It's not the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, and if you'd like to guess what it is, Rorschach cross-stitch is one of my favorite games ever. And speaking of Alice in Wonderland, I've still been working on my double knit scarf every day.  I got to a point where I realized I ought to check my gauge.  I mean, the scarf itself is not really that modifiable as far as length.  And as I suspected, my row gauge is pretty far off.  It's about 85% of it's intended length at this point.  In the end it'll be a good foot too short.  Which isn't great.  But, being the creative nerd that I am, I think I'm just going to add motifs from the book.  And here's the first planned addition:    I didn't want to give too muc

I am sure I have a very low bar set for miracles, but I checked the tracking on that cross-stitch fabric I ordered a few weeks ago today and it said it had been delivered!  It had been stuck in pre-shipment for days and as far as I knew never was received by the post office.  But lo and behold, my Aida was here in the mailbox in time for Christmas! And I proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon stitching.  Woohoo! It wasn't a Christmas gift or anything, I'm just supremely impatient! XD I'll keep you  apprised of the stitching process.  It's another long haul, but at least it's not linen. -- In other news, I've been gift knitting these days.  Oh, not for Christmas, the time for that is long past.  I have a sweater going for Zac that I started back in the summer.  I thought I'd get a handle on it and have it done for him this year. I daresay it's not going to happen.    On the other hand, that's 9 whole inches of the back of a sweater.  And most of

 I don't know about you, but sometimes my finishes snowball.  I'll finish one thing and before I know it in a week I have several!  It's exciting! It gives me permission to start something new, or more commonly to look at some of my more languishing projects and see about getting them there, too. Last time I talked about my spinning WIPs, and one caught my eye, the magenta targhee singles I was working on with several drop spindles.  After I posted I picked them back up and within two days I was finished!   I wound them off onto a niddy noddy and finished it like usual.  A quick soak and hanging.    It's in three (well, actually four, the large one has ends tied together) skeins because I spindled it in 4 parts.  Joining in the knitting will just be a matter of split splicing. I don't have accurate yardage info, it's probably a light fingering overall, but it really bloomed in the blocking and I don't trust the yardage I originally counted.  Spinners proble

 I remember vividly throughout my early knitting career saying I'll never do that: "I'll never knit socks," "I'll never be able to do X," "I'll never knit this pattern again" "I'll never spin"(...) And anyone who knows me knows that if I make one of those statements it's almost like an informal bet with myself.  And I don't usually intend to lose, but... Sometimes I think it has to do with timing and confidence more than desire.  Sometimes even saying the thing puts the challenge out there, and if you know me you know I love a good challenge. And this post is about spinning, so you can now surmise that at one point I said to myself, I'll never learn to spin. And here we are. (a random 100 gram skein of yarn I spun on my wheel out of palworth/silk) I am a spinner.  Through and through.  I learned by drop spindle in 2015, got my wheel the next year, and have been spinning ever since.  I love the meditative nature of