New house

     I've taken the plunge and am now self hosting my blog over here.  The idea behind the move is to give me more flexibility, control and organization.

     Most of the posts have already been moved to the new space and I will, eventually, delete everything here.

     Please, stop by my new address - there is a little housewarming gift waiting for you over there ;).

Hi there!

     I had great plans for this year, I was going to design more, knit more and over all, do more.  Yeah...and then life got in the way, not much designing or knitting was done and it's already October.  Oh, well...
     One thing that I've been planning/wishing to do this years is, at least, started though.  I enrolled into the Master Hand knitter Program and am slowly and obsessively going through it.  I've already noticed a change in the way I express myself when it comes to knitting.  Since this is a correspondence course, I have to improve my vocabulary to be able to properly explain what I do and how I do it.  I'm also doing some things differently than how I use to do them (like cast-on and bind-off) and doing some things I've never done before.  Some of it I'll add to my repertoire, others I won't, but it's good to know them even if I don't use them.

     After I got the course printed, I dove in and got completely immersed in it for a few weeks.  When I couldn't see any more improvements and had no more resources at hand to do more research, I stopped and began playing with the idea of arch shaped socks knit from the toes up.  I got one sock done and am now working on the second one - doing some adjustments and will try another type of heel (the first was a simple short row one).
     If I have the stamina, I'd like to offer this socks as a tutorial/KAL kind of thing, where people will be able to customize the socks to whatever yarn/needles/gauge/size they want.

     Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go try to write some of the report for the MHK.

What I'm doing

     Last weekend there were two art fairs going on in town - despite the fact that Kansas' governor apparently want to exterminate all kinds of arts from the state.  On Saturday we went to the Haskell Indian Art Market, were we met one of Joel's best friends. 
     On Sunday, we walked across the street for the Fall Arts and Crafts Festival, where I bought some yummy alpaca fiber.  The fiber felt so soft, I had to start spinning it right away.  The first skein is hanging in the shower stall as I write this.  I still have another 4oz of the most amazing brown fiber in a bag, awaiting to be spun.  I'm thinking of turning it into some sock yarn, but I'm not sure yet.

     I'll try my best to remember to ask Joel to put the latest socks I knit him on so I can take some pictures and also take some photos of the bag I made him.

     Things are still quiet on the knitting front, with very little to report.  So far none of the ideas I had screams "knit me now!", so I'm calling this a vacation.  I'll try to organize my stuff better and see where it takes me.

Random thoughts

     The other day I read about some controversy going on with licenses when using a certain craft tool.  It made little sense to me and I'll refrain from going into details as it isn't related to knitting, but it did remind me that I had never talked about what I allow (or don't) on my patterns.
     I do not allow distribution (and or reproduction) of any of my patterns.  I do allow people to sell items made from my patterns, though.
     Let me make this very clear: I make profit from selling the patterns - not the items.  I don't think you will be competing with me by selling the finished items, as we'll be catering to different audiences: I sell patterns to people who can (and want to) knit, you sell items to people who can't (or don't want to) knit. ;)
     I might, eventually, sell the samples done to advertise (and/or illustrate) a pattern, but by the time I do so, the pattern itself will be available already and other people might already be knitting or listing the finished items.  No big deal.
     Do I charge a special fee so you can sell the items made from my patterns?  No.  Your skills, your yarn, your time = your profit.  This also applies to my free patterns.  I believe in spreading prosperity:  the more money is flowing around, the more chances I'll make sales on patterns.
     You don't need to contact me asking for permission, but I'd love to get a line from you telling me how your shop is doing.
     One final note, if you want to put together a kit with one of my patterns and your yarns, you'll have to get my permission first and I will not allow you to do so using free patterns.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

     We're finally getting cooler days and I can no longer blame the weather on the lack of knitting.  In fact, I finished a felted messenger bag for Joel and a little rug with cables for the kitchen (pictures soon).  I've also started a pot holder which will have - gasp - color work and picked up the never ending shawl again.
     So, if I can't blame the temperatures anymore, why am I not talking much about knitting?  Ideas.  I've had a bunch of them - most not knitting related.  I need to do some organizing inside my head and around the house to be able to implement some of the ideas I had, but for now I just keep on talking about them...:P

Still blaming the weather

     For the lack of knitting content here and on Ravelry.  The ideas are slowly coming back and just yesterday I had an idea that almost got me to cast on for a new design.  Almost because it's a modular piece and to be quite frank, I don't care for modules that much as I lose interest after doing a few and the object itself never gets done.

     To be honest, though, I'm not knitting or creating new designs because there is something else I have to do - review my earlier designs and probably re-write them.  Thing is, I don't want to.  So, I keep on going in a loop: I think about starting a new design and remind myself I need to do the revision stuff, so I feel guilty and don't start anything new.  Since I don't want to mess with the old designs and am feeling bad about starting a new one, I do nothing...sigh.

     I am actively knitting something - another messenger bag for Joel.  It will be the third one I knit him.  He seems to think that since the bags are big enough to carry a copy of Websters, it's a challenge - and he'll fit the thickest books he can find in them (plus all the gadgets he finds useful - and they're heavy!).  I can felt those bags until I run out of hot water, there is no way the straps will last more than one year, so I'm knitting him yet another one.
     This time I'm knitting a bag all in the round, with as few joining points as I can get away with and very large straps.  Let's see how long it lasts.

     Knitting this bag gave me the idea of writing a series of posts talking about felting and how to substitute yarns and still get a finished item the same size as the one on any given pattern - and maybe even re-publishing a pattern for a bag I made a long time ago.

     The ideas are coming back, the weather is going to cool down (although we still have at least one more day of 100F coming), but the mood isn't there - yet.  I'll probably end up getting a short "vacation" away from the internet - sometimes it does a lot of good.

Obsession

     I haven't worked on my designs and have been knitting very little.  The reason being, I'm obsessed with a quilt I'm doing.
     I've never done a quilt before and like some of the knowledge I have, it was purely theoretical until I started sewing this quilt.  Since I'm crazy and ambitious, this quilt has complex blocks, some of which are paper pieced.  I've learned a lot from it (and I've only done 3 blocks so far) and am hoping some of the techniques can be crossed over into knitting.
     The obsession was so bad, that the other night, I got out of bed to sketch a block that would go between the main blocks...sigh.  This is something I avoid like the plague, as that's the way to (complete) madness.

     There was a lot of things going on in my life since I released Dorothy and the combination of stress, figurative headaches and fatigue managed to shut the ideas on the design front.  The good news is that things are slowly going back to normal and the ideas are coming back.
     I need to finish writing down the pattern for Linda (and knit it again) and re-chart, write and re-knit Maria.  I also have an idea of making some of my already published designs into different shapes and release them as e-books.  Note to self: start writing down your new ideas already!
     I could have used the time when the ideas were quiet to re-knit the two shawls, but, in my defense, it was too hot to knit (and I'm working on the quilt!).  So, I'll have to wait until I run out of fabric - very likely since this will be a queen size quilt and I made many mistakes - to go back to knitting and designing.

     I've also done some dyeing - a new idea that had occurred to me that will yield a yarn with long color runs.  I've done one skein in shades of blue that needs to be steamed and have another one that still needs some more colors.  We'll see how they work out.
     It's odd, though.  One of the reasons for buying a house with a basement was so that I could have a smoke-free environment to do my dyeing.  Now that I have the free space, I don't use it.  Again, I have a good excuse: the basement is still cluttered with moving boxes and we don't have enough surfaces to work on down there.

     Well, now that I've laid out all the excuses, I'll go back to life - and the quilt.

So...

...we've been living in the new(old) house for more than a month now and what have I done, you ask?  Almost nothing - that is, other than being bothered by the heat.

     I've been spinning - occasionally, knit a pair of socks for Joel (Francie), picked up the shawl I started a long time ago (from Wrapped in Lace) and did a bunch of trips from the apartment to the house, bringing the rest of our things.

     Last weekend we finally got rid of the apartment for good and it feels so good, despite the fact that there are still a huge amount of boxes all through the house.

     This absurd heat has pretty much paralyzed me, but despite of it we were able to get rid of  a lot of things that were...clogging our lives: old, falling apart, hand-me-downs, things that didn't work properly, gifts we never liked or used...It inspired me to do a little Feng Shui on some personal relations too.  All of it well over due.

     Today I managed to wash and block a doilie I did a few years ago and was waiting to be washed for a long, long time.  After I had it all pinned down I found two holes in it.  Oh, well...Guess I'll have to knit it again ;)  In case you're curious, this is it.

     One unexpected bonus with this house is the amount of animals that show up on our yards.  This one comes on weekends to enjoy the echinacea:

Not much knitting

    Two weeks ago today I packed up the cats and a few needed items and moved from the apartment to the house.  Life has been chaotic ever since and my head followed suit.
     There are so many things we need to do, so many things I want to do, that I find myself frozen, going into auto-mode, doing only the necessary to live (cooking, cleaning, doing laundry - exciting, ain't it?).

     My knitting took a back seat as I sat around, looking at the trims we need to paint, the floor that needs to be cleared of paint and dry wall stains, the garden that needs tending to.  It was a big surprise for me to go to bed last night and be assaulted by a new idea.  I have a commission to finish, some yarn I spun which I want to make socks from, the cotton Dorothy to knit and two designs to write down, yet, the new idea haunted, nah, nursed me to sleep last night.
     It was really odd, since usually new ideas pester me, keep me up.  I guess I longed for something new so bad, that a new idea was comforting to me.  I slept very well.

     I was without an internet connection (and TV) for a week, so, to keep me busy, I spun - a lot.  I spun a blue lace weight yarn that was sitting in the bin for almost 6 months, spun a purple roving that was in the same bin for more than a year (also lace weight) and almost a pound of brown fiber from The Sheep Shed, bought maybe two years ago.  The latter became a bunch of sock yarn.
     Isn't it funny how some fibers want to become this or the other?  The purple fiber, for example: when I picked it up last week, I was wondering why I hadn't spun it before.  As I put it through the wheel, the answer became clear - it wanted to become lace yarn, but I didn't have the skills before to spin as fine as the fiber wanted...
     The brown fiber?  It was meant to be sock yarn.  After I spun the fiber, I remembered that I had done it before and all the yarn produced with this fiber was sock yarn :P

     No pics today, sorry.  I want to finish this commission already so I can focus on other projects ( I see a lot of woodwork in my future).

Oh...shoot!

     The stitch pattern for Dorothy has an interesting (and sometimes annoying) feature.  The stitch pattern I used is mostly patterned on the right side, but every 12 rows there are decreases on the wrong side.   This feature makes for a slow going, as it's hard to get the rhythm of the pattern.  I found myself forgetting about those purled decreases more often than not.

     Here's a solution I came up with to avoid tinking back every time I forgot the darn decreases.  You're happily knitting along, beginning to think you're memorizing the pattern, get to the next right side row aaaaaaaaaaaand...the stitch count is off.  You count, recount, freak out (you know the drill), think about PMing me, posting it to the group and then you check the charts and realize you forgot the decreases on the previous row.  Shoot!

    The mistake can be seen inside the red circles on the image above.  What to do?  The first reaction is to tink back, redo the last wrong side row (paying attention this time) and move on.  That is all fine and dandy when you're on the first or second repeat, but what happens when you're already 10 repeats into the pattern and you had to tink back 6 of those???  It happened to me and I got tired of tinking so I came up with a patch.

Random news

     Blogger had a major hiccup on Friday the 13th.  Many people (temporarily) lost posts.  I don't think I've lost any, but did lose comments.  If you don't see your comment here, it's because it got lost during whatever happened to blogger - I didn't delete it.

     I've started spinning again :D.  I had some red/black singles on my wheel for so long it was getting dusty.  The other day I was directed to a spinning discussion and the need to spin hit me.  I went back to the wheel (poor thing has been giving me sad looks for so long...feeling abandoned), finished spinning the fiber, plied it and started to spin the batt of fibery goodness I had in a bag since last year.
     There is someone who is very dear to me who is going to get the yarn I'm spinning right now.  I put together all kinds of soft, shiny, beautiful fibers I had into a gorgeous blue batt: mohair,silk,merino and some angelina for bling.  It's a pleasure to spin.

     It's been a cold, wet week around here.  I need to go grocery shopping, but don't want to leave the house.  I want to sit by the wheel and spin some more.  I also want to knit on the shawl I found the other day on Ravelry:  My heaven.  Am I crazy to also want to spin some yarn for a new Dorothy I'll be knitting on the KAL?  Oh, yeah!  I also want to paint at least the front porch floor this weekend.

Stash

     When I started knitting again I went a bit completely crazy with yarn purchases.  You see, I love color and organization, so walking into a yarn store with all that cuddly goodness displayed all nice and neat into a rainbow is really, really hard to resist.
     I'd go into a yarn shop looking for one thing and came out carrying a huge (half my height huge) bag full of skeins.  Every.  Single.  Week.

Dorothy KAL

     We'll start a KAL for Dorothy in a few days, as an incentive I'm giving a 20% discount on the price of the pattern for those who join.
     You'll need to have a Ravelry account, so you can get the coupon code.  Here is the link to the post.

     Come join us!  It will be fun.

P.S.: Joining Ravelry is free, fast and fun.

Drained

     I was reading a discussion the other day that didn't please me, but I stuck to it, as some of the insights being shared there could be useful for improving my skills when writing a pattern.
     Somewhere along the many pages of the thread there was this one post that literally drained all my energy.  There it was, full of ugliness, the one aspect of human nature I abhor the most: envy.  There was also a lot of sense of entitlement, but I'm getting used to that.
     That one post accused people with more skills than themselves (the poster) to be selfish and to purposely keep knitters with less experience in the dark by not sharing what they know.

     In my perfect world there would be a way for people to just tap into my brain and use the knowledge that is there.  Thing is, it can't be done.  I want to share the (little) knowledge I gathered throughout the years, but lack the skills and the vocabulary.
     Knitting, for me, is mostly a visual thing.  Sometimes I know how to do whatever it is that is a doubt to some, but lack the words to explain it.  It's very frustrating.

     When I read that post, I felt sad and drained - as in tired, not willing to do anything.  My ideas are still in my head, but right now I don't feel like picking up needles and yarn to work on them.  I'll get over it, though, and once more shy away from those types of discussions for a while.  Like I said at the beginning of this post, those kinds of threads can be useful, but there is so much I can take before speak my mind.

     On the topic of speaking my mind, I don't worry about people not perceiving me as "nice" and thus not buying my patterns.  I burnt that bridge a long time ago ;).

So...

     since the increases for the toes on the socks I'm doing on straight needles worked so well, I began thinking that it might be possible to knit a circular shawl too.  Granted, it won't be elaborate as far as stitch patterns go, but it is entirely possible it can be done.

     I'll keep you posted if I decided to try. (Evil grin) Ah...the possibilities...

Where am I?

Here I am!

     I really suck at the marketing...  Around the time I opened my Etsy shop, I also created similar ones on ArtFire and Zibbet.  I never did anything on the two last ones, as I was mostly selling OOAK hand spun yarns and rovings and didn't really have enough items in stock to spread them over three shops.
     When I ran out of smoke-free spaces, I just put my Etsy on vacation and moved on.

     I was posting my patterns on Ravelry only, because my target audience is there (or so I told myself), but it's becoming clear to me that there are still many, many people who, for one reason or another, don't go to Ravelry.  Earlier today, I decided to make my patterns also available through Zibbet.
     For now, I'm calling it an experiment, I don't expect a huge increase in sales, but hopefully it will give me a good idea on how and where should I pursue sales in the future.

It works!

     I finished the second sock yesterday and I'm happy to say that not only my idea works, the sock fits!    I immediately started the second one, as there are a few things I want to change, like how the increases are done.  I'm also hoping that once I wash the socks that awful ladder will go away.

As you can see on the second photo, I made some mistake when doing the heels and there are bumps there...  I'll try to come up with something else for the short rows.  For now, I'm just happy the idea does work in real life :D

Idea

     and an old one at that.   Once this is done people will look at it and go meh...  The wow factor on this one will (with luck) come while knitting.
     I had another blog which I started somewhere in 2006, mainly as a notebook where I could keep links that I found interesting at hand.  Then I began knitting again, mostly because Joel complained that his place was drafty and his feet were cold.  I was all over the internet, finding patterns for socks, but there were a few problems.  At that point in time I had no access to dpn's, let alone circulars, so I had to find patterns for socks knit on straights, which was all I had.
     After knitting a bunch of socks following patterns I had found, I began to add my own personal touches and eventually came up with a recipe of my own.  I posted on that blog and began to get comments from people with the same problem I had (no access to proper needles for socks).  That was when the idea began to brew in my head - socks knit on straights that didn't need sewing.
     Don't get me wrong, I know how to graft and do it quite well, but I still don't like it.  I'm lazy and the idea of binding off and being done with an item is quite appealing to me.

     So, for 5 years, the idea rolled around in my head.  I know tube socks can be done in straights, no big deal.  But I wanted something with heels.  It took me this long to be confident enough in my own skill to come to the point where I think I can actually do it.

     There is no real reason for me to do socks that way, other than to prove to myself I can do them.  I now have access to decent needles, as most of the people who wrote me back then probably also do.  Why do them, then?  Because this idea has been in my head for so long - and it takes space.  Maybe because I'm feeling the urge to knit something other than a shawl.  Perhaps because my feet are always cold.  But mostly, because I can.
     It will take me longer to knit a pair of socks this way, but it might be the only way I get to knit myself a pair of socks, as I'll be solving a problem and that, on itself is reason enough to keep me going.

     It won't be a flashy FO, but it will give me pleasure, so I'll do it.

How to block Dorothy

     Dorothy might be a bit of a problem when it comes to blocking, so I decided to write a tutorial showing the most important steps.  This is a very image heavy post, so I decided to go with smaller pics here.  The photos are all linked to my Flickr, so if you need to see more details, just click on them.

   


     First of all, we need a flat, "pin-able" surface, a bunch of pins and a spray bottle.  Since I knit from a cone, I soaked the shawl in very hot water with some shampoo in it (to take the sizing off the yarn) over night.  I then put Dorothy through the spin cycle of my washer to take the excess water out and placed it over my surface in the approximate shape it would have after blocked:

WIPs

I have two new designs on the needles right now - a triangular shawl from the neck down and a circular one. I also have one finished new idea that needs to be written down. All three of them use the same design element, used in different ways and I'm having a lot of fun creating them.
I needed to stop working on those new designs because I got another commission to knit a sample :). I can't go into details, but it's a cute, fast knit and I'm almost done.

The biggest WIP at the moment is the house. Joel finished all the kitchen cabinets and I painted almost all of them (which gave me white hairs - from the paint). The construction crew is fantastic and are working very fast. We can walk in the kitchen and bathroom area without fears of falling through the floor and when we left on Monday, the electrician was installing lights in the basement.
When we were discussing lights and outlets position in the basement I got the funniest looks from the crew. I kept on telling them I needed this or that because I'll be dyeing in there. Every time I said that, they would look away from me and change subjects really fast :P.

Dorothy is done!

    I just released the pattern for Dorothy a few minutes ago :D.

     Whenever I publish a new design I get all worried that I'm going to do something wrong.  My heart starts beating fast and it takes me a few hours to wind down afterward.  I always feel like I'm going to push the wrong button and delete the entire Ravelry.
     After that comes the doubt about the file: did I upload the right one?  Does it have mistakes?  What if people start buying it and then demand their money back???
     I know it's silly and if something goes wrong I can fix it - eventually, but every single time I add a new pattern and then upload the file I have the same doubts and fears.  The craziest part?  I think I'm enjoying it.  But you knew I was crazy already, right?