Tuesday, April 18, 2017

xD

so I just cast on November's socks and gave serious consideration to starting the August project too.

*shrug* apparently I'm not even the boss of me.

Monday, April 17, 2017

What should I knit next?

I finished a large epic shawl. I even won at yarn chicken with it, although there are a few rows of hasty extra decreases.

It is stockinette. it curls. I am going to block it, and then I am going to come to terms with it continuing to curl, because I'm not ripping back 1000 yards of fingering to do the whole thing in garter stitch.

I am moving along on my grellow sock.

so the question, then, is what to knit next? I feel like my 2017plan is not nearly as clear as my 2016plan was. which, I mean... it isn't. so perhaps I shall clarify it, then.

My 2016plan involved using up specific yarns to make socks and other particular patterns, but especially hinged around starting a pair of socks every month. Aside from the two or three months where I made shawls instead, it was a really great plan

My 2017plan is just a list of yarns I wanted to use, or use up, or get to. Unfortunately it was really freaking long:

1) Madelinetosh Twist Light in nassau
2) Swannanoa Sock in slate 2
3) Afton Mountain Sock in slate 4
4) Ella Rae lace merino fingering in chartreuse
5) Hedgehog Fibers sock in hurricane
6) Deb Norville Serenity Sock in aquamarine
7) Opal Vincent Van Gogh in starry night
8) Rowan Felted Tweed DK in brown, green, and purple
9) Plucky Knitter Trusty in lonely heart
10) Regia Design Line Jazz in 6453 and 4ply Galaxy in 1556
11) Handspun #7: Purple Calvados
12) Handspun #39: Cheerful Play
13) Pagewood Farm sock yarn in prism and meadow
14) Koigu sock in blue jean
15) Claudia Hand Painted Fingering in thistle
16) Three Irish Girls Adorn sock in fresh earth
17) Knit Picks Imagination in treasure
18) Karabella Softig in gold and lavender
19) Lily Sugar and Cream in speckled cream
20) Malabrigo Sock in blue-purple
21) Shibui Knits Staccato in red and gold
22) Colinette Jitterbug in oyster blush
23) Three Waters Farm Sock in foliage
24) Frolicking Feet sock in canary yellow
25) Puff the Magic Rabbit sock in gray
26) String Theory Colorworks sport in Galactic Ghoul and Sock in latarious projecte heavy bombardment
27) Sweet Georgia gradient set in gray
28) Suzi sock yarn in red

I mean.. what the hell was I thinking? I could barely finish 12 skeins of yarn last year for the plan (ok I just went and counted and I finished maybe 22 skeins all told, not counting the plan). What made me think that a total of 34 skeins (some of the entry up there has more than 1 skein, cuz colors, and typing) would be a good year 2017 plan?

so. I need something a bit more concrete. Concrete plans worked really nicely last year. let's try them again.

Things I want to knit in 2017:

1) January: **done** Hedgehog Fibers sock yarn into some sort of shawl
2) February: **done** Yellow Geilsk into some sort of shawl (but I recently found a third skein. wTF?)
3) March: **done** Nassau + gradient kit into shawl
4) April: *started* Swannanoa, Afton Mountain, and Ella Rae into a shawl
5) May: Opal in Starry Night into socks
6) June: Koigu blue jeans into mitts
7) July: handspun (either #7 or #49) into a shawl
8) August: Sugar and Cream OR softig into cute washcloths
9) September: string theory sport into socks
10) October: string theory sock into socks
11) November: Regia Design Line into socks (for mom)
12) December: Suzi sock yarn into shawl (sunwalker)

There. that's a thing every month that I should at the least start, and a good mix of socks and shawls. If I get extra time around there I can also start:
Rowan Felted Tweed DK mitts
Pagewood Farm Meadow hat (and maybe mitts? printer mishap?)
Plucky mitts
Deb Norville socks for twin
Knit Picks Imagination into CAT

and of course come october I'll be knitting more bats and pumpkins and eyeballs for the garland I'm making.

...and I'll be spinning all along as well. whew. I need more time to craft.

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Weekly checking in

Except I'm not much good at checking in every week.

Science is happening, slowly and steadily. I hit one of my mileposts last night so that was exciting; now I just need to take the Number I made and turn it into a bunch of other things

Knitting is going nicely. It's been very knitty around here for the past two weeks. I cast on the quaker lines/celadon shawl mashup and I'm plowing through it, am already in the decreasing section. The stockinette curls, but since neither pattern calls for stockinette and that was all my choice, it's my own fault. I don't mind it too much. I am getting the littlest bit bored with the purl back rows, but now it's decreased enough that it's not that big of a deal any more, so I will survive it. I also finished my first yellow-and-gray striped sock and am an inch or two into the second one. The second one is always tricky, because I never write anything down so I am trying to "match" the sock to the first one. So far it's going well but I have to stop and check every few rounds, which annoys me and slows progress. I didn't cast on my Myliu Lino yet (I need to wash and block my swatch because cotton stretches a lot), but I did do some work on my mom's poncho. I am abandoning it again--I need to do some thinking about yarn and size and frankly I think it's too wide which is going to make it very difficult to make it long enough with only 1000 yards of worsted. so I might have to rip out both of the things I started as fronts, which is just annoying because this is the second full-rip out I'll need to do. And I went ahead and cast on my Ashburn out of the yarn I'd prepared and selected for it. We're staring with light blue, then chartreuse, then the darker blue. I only did an inch or two of work on it but it was delightfully garter stitch. Maybe this will be my travel knitting for May. I also found a pair of mitts I'd started out of my precious skein of Claudia Fingering in the most violet-violetty color ever, and I went ahead and cast on the second one from the inside of the cake because it's only a 50g ball and the color is un-replicable. so I'll get a pair of something out of it, even if they're mere wristwarmers.

I also had some quality stash time this morning, where I got to dig through everything and take a look at it (at least, the indeterminate stash. the sweater bin I didn't touch). My sock yarn feels like a hoard, to me--none of the skeins are calling me to knit them, I just feel so happy to have them. Once I get the yellow-and-gray socks done I'll have to maybe do some random selecting just to get something else on the needles. And I realized I have a lot of worsted/dk yarn that isn't getting the least amount of attention right now. Here in Casa DrAstroknot it's sock yarn 24/7. I probably need to go ahead and make some DK weight plans because I've got a lot of it still. It'd be nice to do a hat, maybe.

Spinning is mostly at a standstill, but I did pull a braid of merino-silk from stash and do a little bit of it onto two bobbins. I'll ply them up, and then chain ply the leftovers, and we'll see what I like better, 2 or 3 ply.