Textileophile

 Hey there! Things have been busy around here.  Well, craft wise. I hinted at something major happening, and oh! but did it turn out much bigger than even I anticipated, but I'll get to that. First, the knitting! I managed to get myself down to two knitting WIPs in the last few weeks.  That is, I finished Hazel's sweater, finished some socks, and I also finished a few other things. First things first, Hazel's sweater.  Now, normally I don't have anything to say about an FO, but this time it went through some drama before it was finished. I had it all done a few days before, but the left button band was pulling badly.  I wet-blocked it and pulled the band, but it was being disagreeable.  So, I counted ridges. The band itself is 2x2 rib, so it's easy to quickly count pairs of stitches by counting the knitted ridges.  On the side that wasn't pulling, there were 23, so somewhere around 100 stitches.  On the other, there were only 17! I somehow missed picking up abou

 Hey there! I got a spare Q from the Q and A pile, and I thought I'd answer it today!  I do have quite a few crafty bits to get to, but first: Rachel asked, How do you choose what patterns you want to knit? That's an interesting question!  And relevant as I've just cast on for that sweater I was imaginary knitting last week. For that sweater, I went to ravelry and I put in my parameters in the search boxes.  (ravelry has its faults, but a very thorough database is not one of them).  I described a slightly cropped short sleeve tee, fingering weight and stripey.  I then searched the pattern pages till I found a few that caught my eye.  I brought up a few of them in new tabs.  Then I looked at each in turn, further narrowing my search and I was left with two options: Vasa is a boat neck slightly cropped striped tee with wide shoulders rather than sleeves.  It was pretty much exactly what I had in mind from last week. But I was concerned with the wide shoulders as sleeve caps. 

 hi there! I know you're expecting pokemon.  And there is some pokemon, but there's also other crafts I've been doing.  I know!  Crazy. Other crafts! I believe it was the Q&A that made me realize that Winter is Coming, and Hazel needs her sweater soon.  OK, so it doesn't get too terribly cold here in middling northern California.  It might get to freezing, but so far it's been in the high 40s and low 50s in the morning.  So, chilly if you're not used to it.  And the house can be quite chilly too.  I know I've been wearing my sweaters. Also, I ordered another spinning tool last week and it arrived and I wanted to do nothing but spin, but I really can't drop spindle all day.  It would be bad for my neck and my back. Needless to say, I dropped the cross stitch and picked up spinning and knitting. First things first, new spindle! It is from gnomespun yarn and fiber arts, and it is absolutely heavenly to spin with.  I'm usually the middle grade spinne