Knitting, crocheting, quilting

Hopefully back to normal life. (And it wasn't Dave who helped me with the computer stuff...where did I get Dave? It was Phillip. I know that because Canon sent me one of those surveys and they name-checked him. And yes, even as much as I hate those and I hate the "grade inflation" aspect, I also know enough that giving Phillip 10/10 on everything might favorably affect his pay or continued employment, and he was really good, so...I did the silly survey and gave him 10/10 on everything)

But anyway.

I have decided to implement the "finish the stalled projects, or at least pick them back up in 2019" resolution

I have several bigger ones:

- Celestarium
- The owl sweater
- The quilt in the frame
- The hexagon top
- A smaller top I am machine sewing, but need to finish setting together
- The Color-Bar Blanket (crocheted).

In the interest of that, I pulled out the quilt-in-the-frame and did a couple hours of work on it this weekend, but yeah, hand-quilting takes a while. (Though of course I am already thinking of "What quilt will I hand-quilt next" and right now I'm leaning towards the one I am jokingly calling Crossfire (after the old political-discussion show where there was someone on the right and someone on the left and they kind of verbally fought it out. I guess I was more tolerant of that back in the 90s because I used to watch it occasionally; I think these days it would drive me to tears).

Yes, it's one that might lend itself well to machine-quilting but I'm also a little worried about all those bias edges and what the pulling of the longarm machine might do to it. And I can see a simple way to hand quilt it without having to mark the top heavily, and marking is kind of a  pain.

But it will be a while before the current one is done. (it's the one called "Knickerbocker Glory,", and yeah, I had that top done for a LONG time before I decided to quilt it)

I am also knitting a bit. Right now I'm working most on the two pairs of socks I *just* got started towards the end of break - I have most of the first sock from the Vintage Fairy Lights pattern done. It's a good pattern, at least thus far - very clear directions. I'm using a MadelineTosh yarn that is in one of the speckle colors - something like Cosmic, maybe, as the name?

The bobbles are not nearly as much of a pain to do as most bobbles are.

I also have a pair of Socks for the Deputy Headmistress but I have just finished the ribbing and haven't even started the knit-purl pattern. (I am using a sparkly pink yarn. Yes, as I said, I doubt McGonigall had a sparkly pink side, but I do, and I'm going to be the one wearing the socks)

I dunno. I feel inspired to knit socks again even though I look at my several storage-bags (I have a stack of three small zipper-storage bags to keep them in: it protects them in case I ever have another outbreak of carpet beetles, though it's been a while since I saw any of those) and I think "You have too many handknit socks, especially given that you wear dresses or skirts and tights nearly every day at work" but then again, a lot of it isn't so much the having, it's the making.

And I do periodically wear them.

I was delighted to find a missing member of a pair the other day: I had a pair of socks I knitted from a Felici colorway called "Sugared Violets" or some such, but I thought of them as my Twilight Sparkle socks because, well, they LOOK like her colors. And they were nice socks, too - as I remember I knit them on smaller needles so they were denser and more snug than some socks I made. And then I couldn't find one. And that was about the time I was having some rodent problems, and I thought "Oh no, did one of the mice get into my room and the sock was on the floor or something, and they dragged it off for a nest?" and I felt very sad looking at the mateless sock and I admit I was on the point of (gasp) throwing it away...but I didn't, and good thing I didn't, because Saturday evening, looking for one of my little thermal undervests to wear under my low-cut nightgown, there it was, tangled up in a pair of underpants. I can only presume I washed them at the same time (it was one of the pink pairs of underpants) and I didn't sort carefully (I often don't) and just shoved stuff in the drawer, but...

as I said on Twitter, reunited and it feels so good:

Really, what has re-inspired me to socks was that pair of garter-rib ones, where I just found a stitch pattern I liked that I thought would work with the yarn, and went with it. I should do more socks like that, where I take a 64-72 stitch standard sock and plug in a stitch pattern I like (I have many, many dictionaries of them) and just kind of figure it out as I go along (like: shifting the numbers in the instep so the pattern is "balanced"). Or digging out some of the sockyarn I've had for a long time, and just hunting through my different patterns on Ravelry or in my books to find one I like for the yarn.

And finally, crocheting: I am wearing genuine Old Crocheted Stuff today - I needed a shawl or something for a bit more warmth in my office and I pulled out an older one, a crocheted one from I THINK a free Lion Brand pattern years ago (may even have been one of those "on the ball band" patterns; back in the late 90s and early 00s, the different colors of Wool-Ease all had different patterns on the ball bands, and so you got a free pattern when you bought yarn - or more than one, if you bought multiple colors)

I remember working on it in the crummy little apartment I lived in when I first moved down here so it's got to be close to 20 years old now. I rarely wear it because it's a little more boho/hippie chic than my usual style (and it is a dark cranberry "tweed" yarn with little neps in it), but with the brown dress I am wearing today it seemed to work, so I pulled it out. And yeah, that is one of the nice things about making stuff and having a good memory: you remember where you were when you were working on a certain project, what was going on in your life. (I was so young and innocent then....)

And of course, the other nice thing about handmade stuff, if you do a good job and use good materials: it lasts forever. I have 20 year old sweaters I knit that I still wear, and socks close to that age. I have a few dresses I have sewn that are closing in on the 20 year mark, and one that might even be 25 years old. (Yes, you also have to not change size too drastically. If anything, I'm a bit smaller than I was 25 years ago)

But of course, because

I have to find new stuff I want to start. And yes, it's yet another toy, and yet another MLP toy at that:



Ocellus!.Yeah, I bought it.

Next time I'm headed out somewhere with a fair selection of the various acrylic yarns (so: next trip to JoAnn's, probably in a couple weeks), I think I'll pick up the yarns I need for her. (I don't have any of the colors listed, and acrylic yarn is cheap enough, and it's important to me to get the colors as show-accurate as I can).

(I kind of hold out hope that designer does more, and maybe make a Smoulder pattern; I'd really like to have a stuffed Smoulder. Well, I'd like to have a stuffed Yona and a Silverstream, too...but Smoulder could be fun, especially if she were sized to wear doll dresses - because remember her secret fondness for girly things...)









Though next up on my "get back to work on stalled things" may be the Color-Bar Blanket, starting with sorting out the pieces I DO have done, and maybe starting to attach some of them together (which is going to be a job in and of itself, unless I can figure out some way to single-crochet them together that looks good, or something)