Textileophile

It's been about two weeks since I last posted, and surprisingly a lot has happened craft-wise.  I didn't think that it would be the case, seeing as how I've spent the last four days only stitching for about an hour in the evening after spending the rest of my waking time playing Final Fantasy 9.  But, alas! I got a few tools in the mail, I finished a thing, started a thing, dabbled in a few things, and continued knitting on other thing. I suppose I should start with the finishing: I finished my shawl!  It is So Scrummy! (blogger says this is not a word, but I assure you, it is).  It's soft and warm and the colors are lovely.  I love the way the singles yarn looks in lace and garter.  It was exactly the project I needed to do in this exact time in my life.  I love when things like this work out.  The pattern was really simple, especially when I counted off my sets of rows.  It was also both charted and fully written out, which I appreciate....

 I finished my third pair of socks for the year! The lighting is a bit off, and they're a smidge stretched out cause I had just been wearing them in the evening after I finished them. Didn't you know the rule?  Once you finish a pair of socks, you're obligated to remove the pair you have on and wear the new ones.  Hey, I didn't make up the rules! I pretty much immediately casted on new socks.  Vanilla again.  The usual.   The color here is completely blown out, by the way.  The yarn is not that bright.  It's actually a subdued lavender and gray blue thing.  No electric blue to speak of.  The light was just a little too ambitious.  haha. I started these during a movie session the other night.  On my couch.  Because I have a couch again!  And table!  And beds!  It's very exciting to see your stuff again after so long without. The yarn for the socks is from Webs.  I bought it using a gift card from my brot...

 Hi there.  Still waiting on my chairs and assorted furniture here in California. Meanwhile I've been sock knitting. These are my typical 64 stitch vanilla sock with an eye of partridge heel using hedgehog fibers yarn in the ozone colorway. Say that five times fast. I really haven't been working on much else, but I had another reason to stop by and hang out for awhile.  I was asked to talk about how I got into all this crafting stuff.  Which is an interesting story (or not, depending on your perspective). It actually didn't start with knitting.  My first love was counted cross stitch.  I guess that happened when I was a child, my mom was an avid cross stitcher, I think she dabbled in crochet, too.  But I didn't really take to it that much.  In the spring of 2007 I moved in with Zac, my now husband (spoilers!). I was a student at the time and he lived about 6 hours north of where we met and where my dad lived at the time.  Zac had recently got...

So we made it to California!  to essentially an empty house, but we're here! Husband traveled in the beginning of February to set it up for us when we land (and you know, to start his new job!) so there are at least mattresses and a desk. (and this here laptop!)  Which was extremely helpful and nice. But alas and alack, my stuff is somewhere between New Hampshire and here and I have to be patient.  But I do have stuff to do meanwhile, to keep me relatively busy.  And I have some knitting. While on the planes and for the first few days here, I worked rather steadily on my MIL's socks, and last night I finished them! I have another pair started from before, but I don't have a picture.  I will have to rectify that soon. The shawl and the sweater WIPs are with me, but I haven't worked on either since the move. Here's an updated picture of the shawl though: Unfortunately that's all I have to share with you today.  I'm hoping my stuff arrives next week.  But...

The last week or so has been a whirlwind.  I've been packing a bit every day and finally the end is in sight.  There's quite a bit of spare time though, in the evenings.  So, there's been crafting time, indeed. I finished my hat from last time:   This is White Frost by Babette Ulmer. And then I worked quite monogamously on socks for my MIL: This is just the first one.  The second one has a cuff and about three rounds. And then a few days ago I picked up my cross stitching for the first time in awhile: I am very pleased with the progress on my new cross stitch lady.  I've been doing quite a bit of jumping around and changing colors frequently, but progress is being made. And finally yesterday I went down to my Local Yarn Store (LYS) for one last time and got one last local yarn souvenir.   So, maybe I went a little overboard.  But to be fair (to be fair, to be fair, to be fair), there isn't an LYS near where I'm moving.  Plus, I've been packin...

We're about to enter the thick of everything.  I have movers scheduled, flights booked and I am ready.  But I still have some down time.  Starting this process so early has ensured that.  Unfortunately, I've been so stressed, it's really hard to settle myself. I always have my sweater to work on, and I'm about 6 inches down the body.  I put that on hold for a few days to work on some mittens.  I had a pair of Chrysanthemum mittens that I made a few years ago.  The yarn was, I don't know, I think it was too soft.  Which sounds insane, but it was an odd quality.  And the mittens themselves, while beautiful, didn't really fit all that well.  So, when I was running short of dark gray yarn on the gold and gray socks I finished in January, I borrowed some from the mittens. But that meant I don't have those ill-fitting mittens anymore. A few weeks ago, I ordered some yarn to make more mittens.  I was going to do a different pattern, but th...

 Everyone I've been talking to has said I'm as busy as a bee. They certainly aren't wrong.  I finished the enormous task of painting the house (well, touching up where it needed it, I'm not insane!)  It was a lot of work though. I've finished getting rid of all the big things I can't do alone as well as several dozen bags of stuff I don't want to bring with us.  All I have left is to pack the rest of my stuff. busy bee, indeed. Well, this bee needs a break now and then! I've been working a lot on my Nightscape sweater.  The upper front and back pieces have been joined and it's a tube of knitting at the moment: This is actually a fairly color accurate representation. I'm working on this sweater in a helical fashion to minimize pooling. Pooling is a phenomenon where certain tones or colors end up collecting together in a part of the knitted fabric.  It can be a neat effect in socks, sometimes spiraling around the leg.  I don't worry about pooli...

 I am deep in the middle of getting my house ready for moving/selling so taking pictures of things is not a priority.  Cross-country moving will do a number on your priorities.  Now, I do have at least 6 weeks to go before big moving day, so I'm not rushing by any means, but things are off the walls, and things are piled around because the surface under them was taken to dump/ to the curb. Husband will begin his journey west in the next week, so I was in a major hurry to get things gone that I would have trouble dealing with alone. There is just very little opportunity for good picture taking.  And Zac and I have been so busy when he's off work that there is no time to take good pictures of finished things. But despite all this work I've been doing in the past two weeks, has the knitting slowed?  no, no it has not. So, in actual knitting content, I did indeed finish the Felix pullover! I've worn it a few times since I blocked it and the fit is exactly what I was...

Good News! Husband got the job he was hoping for and we're officially moving.  Which means everything is happening and it's happening pretty fast.  Well, it's hard to say it's happening fast because Zac will be leaving for California in a matter of weeks and he'll be alone for about a month to 6 weeks before the kids and I follow. So, I am not pressed to pack the whole house in time for him to go. But, I am making a huge effort to go through everything and get rid of stuff we don't need before he goes so he can help with the 'getting rid of' part.  Which turns out is quite a bit.  How on earth did we manage to collect 7 full-size suitcases?  Where did all these top sheets come from?  We don't even *use* top sheets.  Will I ever watch Toby's sonogram video.  No, no I will not.  He's right there and he's 9 and a half.  We certainly are not ones to keep so much stuff we can't park in the garage, and our attic doesn't have anything st...

 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...

 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 hands...

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. ...