Lace Cozy

As you may recall from this previous post, I have a bit of an odd winter-time accessory, a small collection of hot water bottles (if I'm running, I also have a large ice bag). The post highlighted not only my obsession with this delightful first aid standby, but also my desire for some hand knit cozies to make snuggling up with them even more enjoyable. The first of these I was able to work up from another's pattern in about a day, and I have since worked up one of my own design in the second yarn. 

Knit-A-Long Lessons

The Rose City Yarn Crawl is an annual event put on by Portland area locally owned yarn stores. This year, they have added a really fun feature, two mystery-a-longs: one knit and one crochet. The premise of this activity is that participants put their trust into the designer, and buy yarn, begin, and knit a pattern without ever seeing the final project...at least not until it comes off of their own needles.  With the website Ravelry available world-wide, these knit-a-longs are quite popular and talkative (which could result in seeing the final product before it actually comes off of your own needles). This knit-a-long being local, I decided to join up, buy some special limited edition yarn for the occasion, and join in on the fun!

Now this is my second knit-a-long, and with the last one (a bag) I was fully inspired by the colors around me in the springtime of Sonoma County. It became very close to a no brainer for me. The first lesson I have had this time around is to just trust my gut. I first saw the custom colors by thoroughly thwacked on Facebook. I was instantly drawn to a deep scarlet and a light honey color. Not typically colors for me. So I went into the store, and badgered the owner about what colors might look best (bless her heart, she told me "any of them would be amazing"). With that in mind, after moving all of the potential colors together for probably thirty minutes, I landed on the original colors. I was certainly overthinking the color choice. 

When the colors came in, I had the same color questions. Which color should be my main color and which should be my contrast color. In the end, with the first clue (just a portion of the written pattern) I wanted to knit with the scarlet more than with the honey, so that's what I started with. Again, overthinking the color selection. 

The other lessons that I have learned so far are directly related to designing and pattern writing. This pattern is excellently and very clearly written, with both charts and written instructions. As a very confident and experiential knitter, I have been surprised at the questions that have been brought up in the forums on Ravelry. It reminds me that everyone is on their our knitting journey with their own comfort level and willingness to make a mistake and start over. In fact, I look at the crochet threads and I know I would be begging anyone over there to hold my hand if I were trying to crochet that piece, because crochet instructions without pictures do not work very well with my thought process. Whose to say knitters don't have those same challenges?

Most interesting to me is seeing this pattern slowly evolve piece by piece. When I begin designing a piece of my own, I always try to get the entire piece thought out ahead of time. Now I'm sure the designer of this shawlette had the whole thing at least a bit thought out at the beginning, but it makes me wonder how far ahead designs need to be thought out. Could I start out with just the first thought, then move onto the others as they come (or more likely as I become bored with the first designing thought)?

I will be sure to post pictures of the final product once it is complete. I don't want to spoil anyone's surprise :)

Sunday Fun-day

Every year, about this time, my husband gets cabin fever. Yesterday he enjoyed Mt. Hood. Here are just a couple of his pictures from above the tree line.

Meanwhile, I stayed home and worked. In my pajamas I compiled photographs for my portfolio, wrote several blogposts, and got started on a new pattern. Amazing the difference in our Sundays and how much we both enjoyed the day.

As the week closes...

I've been attempting to document some of my productivity strategies this week only because they have felt so obvious this week. Unfortunately, I am still working toward yesterday's priorities. I got much of it done: submitted two final patterns and worked out a stripe sequence. Some of the non-design related ones got pushed aside (though its still a weekday, so I can finish those up later today).

Building Momentum

This morning I had an appointment that was abruptly pushed back to the afternoon. I am not a great afternoon person, so moving an appointment from 9:45 to 3:15 is a big deal for my psyche.

I will be completely upfront that I wasted at least an hour this morning being grumpy about this change. It just threw off my morning and my view of the whole day. So I sat on Facebook chat being grumpy with another pregnant friend (yes, I will be grumpy about it if you are also in the boat with me).

Manic Monday

While I know today is a national holiday, working from home means that there aren't any holidays (or weekends necessarily). Luckily, I am working from home on yarn design projects, so it all feels pretty weekendly.

Stripes, Stripes, Everywhere!

I enjoy the look of stripes. I recently saw a lace shawl pattern on Ravelry with some stripes in it. My first thought was, "that's just lovely". Then I thought about how annoying weaving in the ends can be, and with lace weight yarn I'm not sure I could handle it!

Unfortunately, my lovely afghan is made from five different colors. That translates to a lot of weaving in of ends. It took me 15 squares on this afghan to realize that I could greatly reduce the amount of weaving I needed to do before seaming if I simply took some time to catch the ends on the wrong side of my work! A silly thing not to have thought of before considering all the two-color-work knitting I have done. 

Mitered Afghan continues

On the first square that I knit so many months ago, I blindly followed the pattern. I have not knit mitered squares before, I wanted to see how it would turn out. 

Warm and Sunny

Today was warm and sunny for most of the day here in Portland. That loosely translates to a day where people work very little and soak up the rays (you can imagine how productive we are in the summertime). Needless to say, I enjoyed the sunshine, walked all over downtown doing some light errands, before returning home for some afternoon snoozing with the cat (he snoozed, I read). Now that some clouds have rolled in and the sun has gone down, I am ready to settle in for some light knitting (and perhaps a cup of tea).

Since finishing my last outstanding knit sample last week, all of my knitting can be considered light. I have a stockinette sweater for my husband (that won't be interesting until I sew in the zipper) and a pair of socks for him that I essentially ignore because the US 0s make them go so slowly. I have four pairs of socks for me that require attention (3 need holes darned, one needs the cuff to be re-bound off) and an afghan.

I began this afghan probably 18 months ago in colors to go with the large purple couch that dominates our living room. Once I had nine squares done, I sewed those together and draped it on the couch. Its a lovely addition of texture (being mitered garter stitch squares) and color (I matched the purple color on only a very small bit, so the rest is a mix of black, grays, and white).

Eventually, I completed 3 more squares and joined them to the blanket. I can fit under it for a nap if I am curled up, or it works nicely as a "lap-ghan". However, I bought enough yarn to make this a large-sized blanket...so waste not, want not. (Plus I'd really like to open up some of the room in the bin that holds my stash yarn.)

I took a block with me out into the world on my errand-running day last week, and since then  have completely 3 more blocks (almost). That gives me enough that once I sew them together my blanket will be 4 squares by 4 squares. Plus, the amount of time it took me gives me hope that the next two chains of 4 and 5 squares won't take me forever. Once the piece is 5 by 5, I will decide if I want it even larger, but I doubt I will have enough yarn to do that. Instead I may make a couple of pillow coverings.

The Hottie Cover

After that gorgeous sunshine last week that allowed me to so easily take gorgeous yarn pictures, I of course had my yarn ready to knit with. Since first finding the Winterberry pattern on Ravelry, I could not fully get it out of my mind. That is one of the drawbacks to knitting, if something is stuck in my mind the only effective way to get it out of my head is to just buckle down and knit it. Not a huge deal with a one skein project like this, but imagine the trouble I am in when its a sweater on my mind!

It even goes well with my current bedding!

I love the texture of the babbles when my cold toes are looking for something warm to snuggle up with.

I have been using since every night since I bound off. You can start to see the fuzzes developing on the edges (this is totally normal and easy to remedy with an electric shaver). 

Nobody can argue that this isn't a massive improvement on my cover-less hottie!

Tools of the Trade

I love knowing the mundane details of how things come together. With that in mind, here are the steps I take and the tools I use to get started knitting on projects.

Here is what I use to wind yarn from a skein into a ball (some people call the tidy balls made with this style of ball winder a cake). The lavender on the left is my ball winder, and the orange clothes hangers with various abandoned kitchen gadgets make up my swift. 

The skein of yarn is unwound and laid on the swift to be held in place (look closely and you will see a binder clip on each clothes hanger, this keeps the yarn in place). 

The skeins are tied together to keep things in order. Now that the swift is in place to hold the yarn in order, you just cut these (this skein had only two, but sometimes there are more). 

Here is the ball winder up close. Once the yarn is in place, you need one of these (or you can wind by hand, but I prefer this little guy's quick neat cakes). 

Pick one end of the yarn (does not matter at all which one you choose) and string it through the metal arm and through the notches on the top of the cylinder. Most of the time this is enough to hold it in place, but with slippery yarns sometimes more care is needed to get things started. 

Now you can see my real secret, I hold the ball winder with my feet. I do this because I like to have both my hands free. If I held it in my left hand, cranked the handle with my right hand, then I would have to put things down if the yarn needs any help. Many ball winders can be attached to a table, but that also has never really worked with any of my tables. 

Here is what the cake will look like with all the yarn wound onto the ball winder. I love seeing the color variations in this way. 

The side view really shows you how nicely shaped the cakes that this machine produce. This cake is much less likely to roll away from you while you are working. All that is left to do is just lift the cake off of the cylinder, grab some needles, and begin your next project. 

Hottie Covers

One of my favorite discoveries in Walgreens has to be the hot water bottle (and the cold water bottle as a close second). I have weak abs, and when I run this tends to manifest itself in some mild back pain. I think this is when I first discovered the hot water bottle. They are not very attractive, being made out of some kind of rubbery plastic, but they certainly get the job done.

Once I was no longer nursing an injury, I took a great deal of pleasure filling up this little guy ever night to put in the blankets at the foot of my bed. The beauty of the hot water bottle compared to an electric blanket is that the water eventually cools off. I have found myself in this last week or so really enjoying finding the cold bottle with my toes as morning grew closer. 

The problem with the hot water bottle is not so much the looks (have any of you seen my hot water bottle?) but that rubber plastic. It never feels nice on my toes...or my back....or snuggled in my arms on its trip from the bathroom to my bed. It is after all just a bit of plastic. 

Luckily, I'm a knitter! Even more luckily for my knitter-self, I have two water bottles. That means I can make two covers. So with this knowledge at hand, I explored Ravelry for some inspiration and came up with two very different covers. The first I will likely knit from the pattern, because the cables, bobbles, and traveling stitches along with the long ribbing at the top of the cover just screams winter comfort to me. The second pattern is no longer available, so I plan to play around with some yarn and stitch patterns to see what I can come up with. The general idea of the second cover is to use a cabled lace pattern, I think this would work nicely when I want a little more intense of a heat and also when I'd like to use the bottle cold. 

So with some general yardage in mind, I headed down the hill to my favorite yarn store, Pearl Fiber Arts. Now Portland has a ton of different yarn stores, and each one has a slightly different piece of the fiber pie as part of their stock. What I love about what Cindy stocks is it is kind of like an etsy shop, but I get to touch everything and hold colors up to one another. Plus, all of those pretty hand dyed yarns are local. Plus, I always go in knowing what I am looking for, but its so much fun to be able to get help from Cindy. Even though I go in by myself, it feels like shopping with a friend. Okay, I promise she didn't pay me to say any of this. I do save up my projects in my head that need a special yarn for trips to Pearl Fiber Arts. 

Back to the hot water bottle covers.

I came home with a lovely worsted weight hand-dyed green yarn, called Kale, for my cabled cover. This is the one I will be making from a pattern (though I am a tad worried about the hand-dyed color way obscuring the cabling).

I also came home with (and then frantically checked that I had bought enough) of a beautiful gray fingering weight yarn (called Rainstorm) that I hope to play with and make into a lovely cover. I am also realizing how much these two yarns remind me of winter in Portland. 

Of course I left with a few other things, including an order placed for yarn to participate in the Rose City Yarn Crawl Mystery Knit Along, a blue green and purple skein of sock yarn with silver sparkles, and a small Lo Lo Barn in the Winter Bliss scent. 

Three Book Diet

I listen to a lot of podcasts. I find it to be a really satisfying addition to my knitting. It provides my verbal brain with a lot of interesting ideas to ponder and explore. In fact, I am always on the lookout for a new podcast, so if you have any favorites send them my way. 

One of my favorite podcasts, Beyond the To Do List, examines the personal productivity of a variety of individuals through an interview style. Now, to be completely honest, I differ with the host on some of my ideas of what pathway of conversation is most interesting (he works in social media, whereas I have my settings on Facebook completely private) but overall I enjoy listening. And re-listening. And I have jotted down so many notes while listening that I do not know where half of them are (I'm changing that with almost an entire tab in my planner dedicated to this sort of thing). 

During episode #12 with Chris Brogan (I still do not know who many of the interviewees are, but I love hearing from so many different voices) the idea of a "3 book diet" was brought up. The idea being that one can read and read and read books (sounds like me) but not truly engage with the material in a meaningful way. So to attempt at countering that trend, the project encourages choosing only three books to read and implement into your life throughout a full year. This would reduce the urge to buy that new book that came out with the magic cure for whatever ails ones, and in theory discourage re-reading favorite novels. 

Now with our family growing in March, I thought that three would be a little ambitious, and could also reduce the amount of really helpful reading I could be doing in that arena. I decided to pick only two books to work through this year (in addition to other books that I feel could help with our growing family, and re-reading some of my favorite novels). 

The first of these books is Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. I read this book about a year ago, and then six months ago found a used copy and bought it for Paul. I appreciate the practicality of the approach mixed with a sound psychological basis for improving workflow, productivity, and allowing for greater creativity. Paul is slowly finishing up with his reading of it, and then I will have our paper copy all to myself to explore and experiment with. 

The second book that I will be implementing this year is The Artists Way. This was required reading in my freshman seminar class during my first semester of university. I then promptly sold it for a meager amount of money that I probably spent on more books that continued in this cycle familiar to so many college students. The premise of this book is unlocking your creativity through some intentional practices geared toward using that creativity to allow for it to flow even more. The only component of it that I can recall from ten years ago was writing "morning pages" which was three pages of whatever came to your mind first thing in the morning. Now I did find this to be a refreshing practice, but never used it consistently. I would use it when I was feeling ruffled, confused, annoyed, or any other negative feeling; and typically it would help to relieve those feelings. I can only wait to see how implementing this book will go this spring. 

What books would make your list for the year?