Finished: Mail-Order Gorilla

Here's another post for Finish it Up Friday over at crazy mom quilts with the actual details of the Mail-Order Gorilla quilt. (More about the process here.)

Size: 88" x 94" before washing
Design: basic patchwork, planned but random-looking color placement
Batting: Hobbs 100% cotton
Binding Kona Teal
Thread: C&C white poly for piecing, 100% cotton for quilting
Quilting: diagonal grid through all squares

It's all washed and on my bed, with the dog's blanket over the bottom half because she likes to scratch up her bedding. 

Next up is an orange tumbler quilt for my daughter's bed - cutting started this morning, although I haven't decided details of the final design yet. 

Thanks for visiting, and happy crafting!

Dudes.

It's finished. 

Designed in 2010, pieced in 2011, finished in 2014.  The top is a simple square patchwork with mostly stashed JoAnn prints, plus some quilt shop stuff, some fabric I dyed in a class, and white muslin.  Plus some home dec weight.  (Whoops!) 

Backing!

The backing is mostly Kona Natural, which had originally been intended for the plain squares on the front but didn't look good with a lot of the white-based fabrics.   I might have been able to squeak by just piecing two lengths of that together, but it would've been close.  So I pieced a bunch of prints from the top for the middle strip.  (Then realized I'd snuck in some of my favorite green fabric, which was actually nowhere to be found in the top.)

Binding!

Hand sewing the binding took FOREVER.  It's a part that I enjoy, but holy cow.  Bound in Kona Teal (I think, it's been awhile).  The teal also matches nothing in the top. 

Dramatic tree shadows!

I designed this top in Excel, deciding individually on the placement of each color.  I was working a nice but boring temp job as a receptionist and put colors in squares between phone calls. 

I'll wash it this afternoon and hope to sleep under it tonight.  I'm a bit worried about the hand-dyed fabrics bleeding, so there will probably be a box of color catchers in the wash as well.

And now, on to the next (much, much smaller) project!

On the home stretch...

Machine-finishing the binding would have been perfectly reasonable. 

But really, reasonableness isn't always the top criterion around here. 

The very longest pass

I've been continuing to grab moments here and there for quilting.  A few nights ago, I was quilting in the semi-dark in the hopes that the baby would fall asleep in the swing.  

It didn't work, but the backlighting from my machine was pretty. 

Last night, I finished the last rows of quilting I'd planned and rejoiced and admired.  Then I realized that these quilting lines are officially too far apart for the batting.  I decided to "think about" adding more - doubling the existing quilting, actually - by putting diagonal lines through the color blocks, too.  I knew I'd decide to do it, just needed some time to accept that I was only half-finished.

This morning, I did all of the lines in one direction.  I also ironed the yardage that will be binding and got to worrying about whether there will be enough of it.

Stuffing this sucker through the machine hasn't been as bad as I'd expected.  It's definitely difficult when I'm in the middle of the longest passes and a whole corner of the quilt is wedged in the throat, but there's still enough room to get my right hand under the bulk to hold onto the part being worked.  I go one square at a time and have gotten my machine going full speed for probably the first time ever.  Feels good.

Happy crafting!

I prefer "meticulous"

Today's morning naptime found me ironing the top of the gorilla quilt.  In little cracks here and there over the past few days, I managed to piece and press the back. 

I also used thread snips to clean up the block edges and a piece of masking tape to pull off any stray dog hair.   It was taking forever, so I flipped it over to check and see if stray threads were showing through the front.  They weren't.  Did I stop clipping?

 I did not. 

So the dining room is in a, shall we say, unreasonable state for a family of four plus dog.  There's batting on top of the back now, which is also taped down already.  But the batting is not flat, it needs to be smoothed out, which is proving difficult.  I may move it and cut down 3 sides instead of two - there's not enough extra along the edge for any size quilt I'll be making anytime soon anyway. 

For that exercise, I should find my Decent scissors (as opposed to the Good scissors and the Crappy scissors). 

Okay, turns out I'm liveblogging!  Or whatever it's called when you write updates but don't publish them all until the end.  Baby Overlord seemed sleepy and slept for a bit longer while I Tasmanian Deviled around the dining room. 

So, I got smarter and moved the whole piece of batting to the other side and cut along two sides as originally planned.  And then I got very smart and figured out which was the long edge of the top before laying it out wrong.  Folded it in half, put the center point at the center of the strip of color in the backing, and smoothed out the top from there. 

THERE ARE SAFETY PINS IN IT.  I'm not done basting, but it's started and I'm cautiously optimistic that I can get the basting done and the thing off the floor before family starts getting home. Bub's out again, so it's back to basting. 

Happy crafting!

Nap!! Ahhhh!

Here's how my design wall looked this morning.  Very sad.  I'm tempted to start a project I'll have no hope of finishing for four years, just to have something to look at. 

And then the baby fell asleep, and I swung into crazy, hopeful action.  As I'd mentioned, I have no handy UFOs that I could pull out and work on in a staid, leisurely way.  No pretty stack of blocks or thing all basted and ready to quilt.  No, I have the wall hanging needing about 30 hours of hand quilting and the quilt top that turned out bigger than my kitchen. 

It has FINALLY stopped going below zero at night, which means summer's coming, which means it's time for a lightweight bed quilt, which means: quilt top bigger than the kitchen, come on down!!

So the dining room got cleared out for a bit and I confronted the two lengths of Kona in Natural that are slated for the backing, couldn't find the pieces I'd cut for the pieced backing, got wise and scrapped that plan anyway, decided to piece the backing vertically instead, and got to trimming, ironing, and piecing. 

The dog helped immensely.  

And now my design wall is pretty again. 

Okay, so I cleared out the dining room so that I could lay out the quilt top and lay the backing pieces on top of it.  I needed to measure the top anyway, and don't trust my ability to work out the piecing in my head.  This helped me see that piecing vertically would work much better. 

I don't know how all these awesome quilters manage such big quilts.  Maybe it gets easier with practice?  Does anyone have tips for handling pieces of fabric over 44"?  Clearing out my dining room is about all I've got at the moment. 

Next steps will be ironing the colorful strip and then sewing the back together.  And then... basting.  And then... quilting.  Hoo boy. 

Happy crafting!

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

Another Friday Finish!  I won't be able to keep this up much longer, but it's been fun.

This is a strip quilt, done using Molli Sparkles's tutorial for string piecing without a foundation.  I varied the width of the strips to maximize scrappiness.  I wanted my finished squares to end at 5", which they almost did.  His tutorial yields 3.5" finished squares, so based on careful math, I determined I'd need my initial fabric strip to be... bigger. 

My math was totally correct, but then I did something wrong making the first cut of the second set of cuts (perpendicular to the first set) and was left with a couple pieces that were almost squares, but not. 

Scrappy back - this shot shows the quilting better than the ones of the front.

The back is something of a mess, but it's a thrifty mess.  I threw together a second set of strips, cut more squares that were fully squares, and finished the main part of the top.  Then it sat on my design wall for a while, until I made a decision about borders. 

My favorite block is the top left.

At first I was thinking about a checkerboard using the darker fabrics of the strips but decided that the center of the quilt was busy enough that the border needed more of a "Go home, quilt, you're drunk" vibe.  So the plain white-on-white is like a place for the eye to rest/a lamppost to lean against on the stagger home. 

Quilting detail

Having not thought at all about the quilting until it was basted, I decided to quilt a spiral out from the center of each square.  After burying the brillion ends of the ticker tape quilt, a few dozen no longer seems like a lot.  I used to go to great lengths to avoid stopping and starting in the middle - no longer!  Then I stitched some straight lines in the border.  As I turned onto the second side, I couldn't remember what part of the presser foot I was measuring against.  Guessed wrong, repeated the mistake on the other end of the quilt, and called it a design element. 

The binding is a 13-color floral print from JoAnn's that I've had for years.  It's used in the top, too, and I liked how it was dark enough to provide a nice frame for the quilt, but still variegated.  I sewed over half of it down in the car on a long trip to and from the vet yesterday.  Not sure me + sewing needle + moving car is the best combination, but it did help me finish in time for this post. 

If I ever make another quilt this way, I'll use thinner strips - the biggest finished at a bit over 2", and I like the effect more when they're under 2". 

Linking again to Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday. 

Happy crafting!

My Iron Goes Rogue

Like most people, I'd imagine, I'd been happily walking around and thinking of my iron as having two basic settings: "On" and "Off."  Well, just recently I noticed that my iron now has three basic settings: "Not Plugged In," "Plugged In," and "Steam." 

We should back up. 

First of all, my iron is not even really my iron.  It was given to my husband by his mother well before he took up with a quilter.  He didn't believe me that it had been his when we were discussing the iron/possible demon possession (more on that in a moment), but that's because he probably never used it anyway. 

This is a good, hardworking iron and has served me faithfully through such events as The Great Fall off the Table of 2004, and the Orooni Learns Not to Use Well Water in the Iron Mess of 2010. 

There's no way for me to tell the rest of this story without looking like a weirdo, but meh, I'm okay with that - will be a nice change of pace from looking like a bumbling idiot.  So, my Ticker Tape quilt came out of the wash looking a bit more rumpled than I would've liked, and I decided to try to straighten it out a bit before hanging it up.  (It came out this way because I washed and dried it in a lingerie bag that was a bit too small for it because I was worried about threads coming off of the tapes and destroying my new-ish and beloved washer and dryer.) 

I plugged the iron in, then put the quilt face-down on the ironing board.  (Here's the weird part.)  Then, for some reason, I put the iron down on the quilt and pressed a bit.  When I lifted the iron off, the quilt was warm.  This was curious, because I hadn't turned the iron on yet.  Naturally, what you do in this situation is immediately touch the iron to see if it's hot.  (Whoops, looks like we're back to looking like a bumbling idiot.) 

And yes, the iron was hot! 

Given that one of my cardinal quilting rules is to never, ever iron batting or finished quilts, I think I must have been seeing if a cold iron would flatten the quilt out.  Otherwise, I have no idea why I was ironing - pretending to iron? - the quilt. 

Anyway, I burned my finger a bit and concluded that my iron was now inhabited by a ghost.  Or perhaps it was defying laws of physics in new and interesting ways and could be studied for Science.  I discovered that it wasn't hot enough to steam, so I turned it to "Steam" and steamed the quilt into a bit flatter state. 

Then I unplugged it and gave it the side-eye for the rest of the day.  When Other (significant) came home, I told him about the iron being hot despite being off.  He asked if I thought it was possessed, and I told him that it had been unplugged for a while, and that he should touch it to see if it was hot/possessed.  He did, and sadly there will be no scientific leaps based on my iron for now.  It's just broken.  

Now, if you're worried about me burning my house down with a broken iron, I don't blame you.  That does seem like the sort of stupid thing an Iron-Toucher would do.  However, you will be relieved to know that I've never trusted this iron anyway and am in the habit of leaving it unplugged. 

Habit will save us all! 

Sunday Stash

Right now, the quilty blogosphere is reminding me of the knitty/yarny blogosphere before Ravelry came along.  I've loved exploring all these great blogs through various linky parties, so I'm making a tiny effort to participate.  Today I'm linking up to Molli Sparkles. 

That said, I probably won't do many Sunday Stashes because I don't buy new fabric all that much, and because I barely know what day of the week it is anymore. 

On to the fabric!

Above we have Little Flowers in Licorice (Ann Kelle) , Buttons in Purple (Jenean Morrison), and Geo in Natural (Dena Fishbein).   Surprise! - the buttons aren't really buttons. 

Honeycomb in Marmalade (Bonnie Christine), Scattered Violets in Orange (Mo Bedell), and Lace in Red (Doodlebug Designs).  Honeycomb was a pleasant surprise - I like it more in person than I did on the site. 

And finally, here's Trees in Green (Deena Rutter), Dancing in Waltz (Pat Bravo), and Posh in Bright (Pat Bravo).  These top two green fabrics are part of my ongoing green-related quest, but I won't go into that now.  I'll save it for sometime when I don't have new fabric and my quilting update reads like: "I got to work on my quilt while the baby slept!  I stared at my design wall, thought a bunch, wrote down some numbers on a piece of paper, then slapped some white borders on!" 

None of these new additions have specific plans attached.  Reading all these blogs and seeing all these beautiful quilts has got me thinking about my fabric stash - given that I tend to do patchworky smaller projects and go for long periods where I can't quilt, I rarely run out of stuff or use up a whole cut of fabric.  Buying new fabric thus represents quite a commitment.  This little shipment made me very happy.  Off to wash them now.

Happy crafting!

Ticker Tape Quilt

This quilt scratched an itch for me, as well as opening the quilting floodgates - there's a 16-block red and orange string quilt top on my design wall now, and I'm currently hashing over my options for borders for it. 

Here it is after thread burying and binding but before washing.  Fifty-eight or 59 squares, plus one time when I ran out of bobbin thread yielded about 230 little tails to bury.  When I chose a quick quilt, 230 tails were not part of my calculation.  I did consider washing the thing and then clipping the tails without burying them, but just couldn't do it. 

I enjoyed putting this together, because I've made few enough quilts that I remember what project(s) each of these has been used in, and it's fun to see them all being used together.  Some fabrics that didn't make it into the top were used in the pieced binding.  The color effect of the pieced binding is nice, but all the seams make it rather lumpy. 

Stats:

Title: "I Like THAT One!"
Batting: Hobbs Warm  & Natural
Backing: Jo-Ann green floral FQ bought for Daughter 2's quilt and rejected for being too lime
Thread: Connecting Thread Essential white
Finished Size: 16"x18.5"
Notes: First spray-basting used, first pieced binding


In the interest of getting this on the wall quickly, I sewed rings on the top two corners rather than make a hanging sleeve.  

Here it is in all its on-the-wall glory.  Felt really good to put up some color, and inspired me to get a couple more things on the wall. 

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for the first time!  

Happy crafting!

Adventures in Spray Basting

I'm on maternity leave right now, and was expecting to be completely sleep-deprived and generally barely-functional.  To my cautious delight, however, this baby is not opposed on principle to sleeping, and often does it voluntarily.

Knowing I'd have a tiny one, I sat out this round of Sock Madness and braced myself to go on another crafting hiatus.   It's a special kind of pain to spend all your time looking at quilting blogs and Ravelry while not being able to work on anything.  These are the periods during which my to do list explodes into hopeless territory. 

The fact that we've just moved into a new house, with acres of bare wall just asking to be covered in vibrant fabric isn't helping. 

So, what the heck.  In one 30-second window, I brought out the scrap bin.  In another, got out and assessed my white fabrics.  In another, picked one and took it to the work table.  Piece by tiny little piece, I cobbled together the top of a ticker tape quilt, meant to hang between the kitchen and living room. 

Now, if you ever plan to make a ticker tape quilt, you should really plan to assemble the quilt pieces (background fabric, batting, backing) before determining the placement of all the little squares.  Really.  I didn't, which resulted in a stupid process of trying to move the top + tapes onto a spray-basted piece of batting, then lots of swearing and cursing of myself, then consulting my camera to realize I hadn't taken a picture of the completed layout, then more cursing. 

I could've waited to place everything until I had another pair of adult hands around to help, or I could've waited until I had spray basting to start putting the whole quilt together, but I've decided that if progress is going to be made, I must do what I can with what I have when I have it.  Lots of cursing it is, then. 

Also in the name of many tiny steps, I've picked my hand quilting project back up.  I don't have tons of quilting UFOs, and the two others that come to mind are gigantic projects, not fit for quick wall coverings.  This one is a Hawaiian quilt I started way back in 2004, or 2005, or thereabouts.  It was done in a weeklong workshop and had only the outline of the applique and the first echo completed.  I knew I was waaaaay out of practice with hand stitching, but if this thing is ever going to get done, I've got to keep moving forward, so I just accepted that there are going to be some visible learning curve stitches.  And there are.  But, the great thing about this type of quilt is that the effect of so much echo quilting is that you don't notice that the second ring looks like it was done by someone who hadn't hand quilted in seven years. 

There's a lot left to do here, but seeing progress really helps.  

Happy crafting!

87 Down

My sock-knitting juggernaut grinds towards 100 completed pairs - pair 87 is done and dusted, and will be making the journey to their new home just as soon as I can get to the post office.  (Merry Christmas, Lady!)

The disparity in color between the two socks is not a trick of the light, unfortunately.  The skein was distinctly darker at one end than the other.   I'm not happy about that.  The yarn and resulting socks are lusciously soft, though. 

Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere in Fierce Scarlet
Pattern: True Love
Modifications: knit cuff-down instead of toe-up, following the chart backwards

This was something of an experiment - I wasn't sure how going the other direction on the chart would turn out.  The pattern is distinct enough, but the cables don't look as smooth to me as they do on the original.  I suspect I should have flipped some stitch with one in the opposite direction, but for my life I can't grok exactly what that would be. 

Two other pairs are on the needles and over halfway done, so even though progress has slowed down a lot, it hasn't stopped. 

My did it!

And all I had to do was neglect more important responsibilities!   This was about half from stash and half new fabrics.  The border is Sandy Gervais Frolic.  Lots of the squares are Riley Blake, which I finally noticed I have a lot of. 

The backing fabric is called "Happy Hooters."  Really.  

I was pretty out of practice for the whole thing - the quilting lines aren't straight, I seem to have forgotten how to iron seams (at least without steam burning myself) and the outside border was kind of a disaster.  But the seams lined up pretty well.   

The outside border fabric was what I started with, and there was a period where I decided that this quilt top was the ugliest thing in the universe, but some daylight and some resignation that this is finished and ready to go later, I'm okay with it.  

I love hand-sewing binding down.  Wish I liked weaving ends in as much as I like finishing quilts.  Now all that's left to do is wash it - I tracked down some color catchers and will do a load of quilts later today. 

Bicameral Legislature, Indeed

So, I'm a billion months pregnant and we've just bought and moved into a new house.  The toddler is going strong, exerting her tiny little will on the world.  Nearly every organization we've dealt with has been unable to find its own ass with both hands, and the ones that aren't mostly useless have been thwarted by the other ones (e.g. propane company sending us a letter that gets returned to the sender because the post office is pretty sure our house doesn't exist despite numerous assurances to the contrary, as well as the profound physical evidence in the shape of a house at the coordinates at which the address would suggest). 

With the dryer people showing up unexpectedly on New Year's Day (happy New Year, indeed!), the logjam seems to be breaking up.  We can dry clothes using electricity for the first time in over a month.  Yesterday, we received mail.  Today, oh my stars and little garters, we may be able to access the internet and receive phone calls at home.  Yesterday was the first time that we haven't heard from various cable companies that they will not be able to come install the cable because of ice storms, aliens, mysterious internal problems that somehow result in a delay, holidays, etc.  (My favorite -really?- moment of all of this was when the cable company called our phone number to let us know that our phone number was disconnected and they weren't going to be able to re-use it.  We did not get that message until we called the cable company from the cell number that, oh, look, is also in their records.)  (Oh, wait, that's tied with a different cable company telling us that we just shouldn't have moved, given the problems it was creating with our account.) 

Given all of this, I'm sure you're wondering why I'm not working on a five-color sock in non-superwash wool right now.  That's what I was wondering, as I was sifting through a gigantic pile of boxes and came across the Apirka kit from Knit Picks that I'd bought on wicked sale and then forgotten about. 

Oh, haha.  I kid.  Now is not the time to cast on a ridiculously complicated and impractical project, with months' worth of pent-up nesting to do, a late Christmas present (the ONLY knit Christmas present) on the needles and begging for attention, and a house that looks like someone pulled the roof off of it, backed a dump truck up, and poured out everything we own. 

No, now is the time to make a baby quilt for Baby 2.  CLEARLY. 

I got some fabric months ago for this quilt, when I had the insane idea that it would be good to throw the toddler in the car, drive two hours to a quilt store, and make a fabric decision in the 2 minute and 30 second window I had before the toddler started acting like a rabid monkey who wanted to leave the fabric store.  It dawned on me slowly that I didn't have to do exactly the same thing as for the first baby quilt - charm pack, two borders, flannel back - and that freed me up to rethink the whole project and then conclude that this quilt needs 42 5" squares, two borders, and owls on the back.  (Owls.  Instead of flannel.  Groundbreaking.) 

In 5th grade, we had a school project for which we were supposed to imagine up the best system of government.  Surprise of surprises, most groups' Ideal Governments consisted of three branches that looked strangely familiar.  Electoral College, anyone?  I actually think that maybe some groups branched out and went with the straight popular vote, although we wouldn't probably have understood the nuances of state size at that point.  At any rate, I'm reminded of my feeling, after finishing the project, that it had been kind of silly and we hadn't been all that creative, and there were probably other directions that nobody had explored. 

But look how pretty! 

There's this greenish-blue fabric that I love, and that I've been trying to sneak into projects for a long time, and I thought this was my chance to actually use it.  Alas, no.  It's too green for the blue and too blue for the green.  Someday, greenish-blue fabric. 

We did get the internet back, and so instead of actually sewing this top together, I knit and looked at the internet.  Tonight I will try to sew; found the thread I had in mind and was pretty sure I really owned, and my sewing machine is going strong despite taking a fall (and serving as a cushion for other boxes) during the move - it was packed in its original box with original form-fitting styrofoam, thank goodness. 

It may have been rather foolish to get back into quilting, because now all I can think about is possible patterns to use and quilts to make and bare spots to fill up in our new house, at a time when my free time is about to be severely limited again.  But, you simply can't make a quilt for one baby and not the next.  If nothing else, preventing future guilt trips is great motivation to get off the internet and quilt, already. 

A Sock Retrospective

Don't you love it when someone asks you to talk about something you've thought about for a while, and that you're very interested in, and you could talk about at length?  Me too.  So today, I'm asking myself all those questions I want to answer about the socks I've made.  I'm asking you, too - please feel free to take the questions and answer them in your own blog post.  (And then leave a comment that you've done so, because I just assume that nobody reads my blog and therefore will not be looking for other sock knitters' self-interviews.)   I'd like to hear what other sock knitters have to say about their experiences.  Most information that's shared about our projects happens as we're making and finishing them, and I'd like to talk and hear more about what happens once they're in use. 

1. Which pair, of all that you have made, are your favorite? 

Ouch, I'm starting with a hard one.  I don't know!  I'll come back to this one. 

2.  Which pair do you reach for first out of the wash, and why?

To my surprise, this pair is my Trekking Monkeys.  The colors are pretty mild and go with just about anything, they fit well, they're tall, they're usually first in line. 

3.  Which pair challenged you the most in the knitting? 

I have two answers for this, because I've gained a lot of knitterly skills over the course of my sock knitting life.  The first is Pomatomus.  Stuff you read about being in "the zone" or "flow" or optimal consciousness - that totally happened when I was knitting Pomatomus.  I was knitting something harder than I'd ever knit before, and I was sitting in a Borders cafe doing the first few repeats of the cuff, and the next time I looked up, three hours had passed.  And I was like whoa. 

The second one was knit much later, and it's the Squirrel Crack is Knit Crack Acorn Socks.  In this sock, you make seven out of one or something.  I don't really remember, I just remember calculating the number of acorns left in the sock and steeling myself and taking deep breaths.  If I ever run into Anne Hanson in the grocery store, I will look at her sideways, because that woman is crazy.  In a good way.  I think.  

4.  Which pair is the most disastrous/disappointing, but that you nonetheless finished, perhaps against your better judgment?

I don't know what happened with these, but my Watermelon Tourmaline Railroad Rib socks are a mess.  They're too loose, and the foot is slightly too short, and they pooled differently, and ugh.  Pretty much the last pair I reach for of the ones still in circulation. 

5.  Which socks fit the best? 

A calculated question - would this pair not be the favorite, or the one you reach for first?  Not for me.  To my surprise, my Mad Color Weave fit the best out of all of my socks.  And I do sometimes wear them first, if they match-ish the clothes I'm wearing that day.  I didn't particularly enjoy knitting these, but they're in my queue again because I love wearing them. 

6.  Which pattern could you make again and again and again and again?  Other than plain stockinette. 

Love RPM, am loving a second iteration of Crusoe.  Vroom vroom, honk honk, outta my way, speed knitter coming through!!

7.  Which pattern left you slinking away in utter defeat, glaring warily over your shoulder? 

Hourglass.  Someday, your time will come, Hourglass.  Just not today.  Or tomorrow.  Stop looking at me. 

8.  Any sock tragedies? 

Silkie Socks That Rock.  Felty felty.  They are now air cozies hiding in my bottom drawer.  Sadface. 

9.  Do you have any crazy sock-related celebrations looming? 

I'm so glad you asked!  (Interviewing yourself is underrated!)  I am eagerly stitching toward my Sock Centennial, or Socktennial (OF COURSE).  I.e., my 100th pair finished.  It will probably take another year or so, but when I finish my 100th pair, something good will happen.  Haven't decided what.  Am open to suggestions.  Upon further thinking about it just now, I think it should involve socks and cake. 

10.  Alright, enough stalling: which is your favorite?

Okay, I thought of the answer as I was answering all the other stuff: my very first pair.  Self-striping Schokenmeir Normatta Regatta Whatever, in Railroad Rib.  The color changed just as I turned the heel, on both socks, and I was so stinkin proud to finish them and wear them.  And then once I wore them, I was shocked that they were comfortable and warm, which meant that I was hooked. 

That's it!  Feel free to ask yourself any relevant questions that I left out.  There are no Sock Knitting Self-Interviewing Police. 

Bag of cement!!

That's a German swear that in English is not really so scandalous.  Rav taught it to me.  (We're working on curbing language that could get us unhappy phonecalls from teachers in the near future.) 

Why am I reduced to shouting nonsense on what was supposed to be My Glorious Day Off of Peace and Productivity?  Well, Dear Sweet Baby Destructor is safely tucked away at daycare, I have two long blocks of time to myself, and I immediately settled in to work on the second sock of a pair that has been an agonizing struggle since its beginning.  I resigned myself to finishing the socks and put my head down and have used almost every second of evenings, after Destructor is asleep and we're watching DVR'ed episodes of the Nerd Show,* to work on them.  Today was going to be wonderful, because I was finally going to stick a fork in them, and then present them, finished and whole, to my mom, who will be here at the end of the week.  I grudgingly realized that there was one more pattern repeat to go until the toe, and then finished it.  Chariots of Fire swelled in the background as I prepared to start the toe and free myself from these blessed hellbeasts.  Cleverly saving myself the pain of realizing after finishing the toe that I'd left out a repeat, I held the second sock up to the finished one and realized that lo, I was missing a repeat. 

In the %^#*4@(!&8^$#(*%#@!$T%^7 bag of cement cuff. 

BAG OF CEMENT. 


*The Big Bang Theory.  We don't call anything by its proper name in this house. 

Time has passed!

And so the time that I remember that I have a blog has come again.  I finished my Citron:

I did also block it, but didn't get a picture of that.  Just imagine it a bit bigger and flatter, you'll have the idea.   I used KnitPicks Chroma in fingering weight, Midwinter colorway, and, as a single, it was very much like the Malabrigo laceweight the pattern calls for.  People complain that the Mal felts if you even think about it too hard, but I've had good luck with it and really like it. 

Sockyarn Blankie continues to grow, with over 100 squares.  Triumphantly, I found the yarn I'd been looking for when I remembered starting a square with it and sticking it into a purse I'd since stopped using.  

Christmas happened, and my net loss of sockyarn stash was gloriously wiped out in one crazy swoop.  (Thanks, Mom!) I didn't get a group shot of everything, but here's a group shot of a future chevron crochet blanket for Baby to basically match her Bliss quilt: 

Here are some Christmas socks for Mom - Embossed Stitch from More Sensational Knitted Socks in Knit Picks Stroll, Barn Red, which I got on sale because the color's discontinued. 

And here are some others, Crusoe in Claudia's Handpaint fingering, colorway Spring Break.  The toes are Smooshy, so that I'd be sure to have enough of the Spring Break for a blankie square.  Baby's sleeping through the night-ish, so all cylinders are back to firing-ish.  

Well, the baby is punching me in the face, which must mean it's time to sign off.  Happy knitting!

The Psychology of the Sockyarn Blankie

I've got a pile of projects on the needles - a stocking for baby, a lace pattern blanket for baby in a linen-cotton blend, a Citron Shawl for my supervisor (who, when unbeknownst to her I am staring down about 8 more rows of 500+ sts ruffled edge, remarks to someone how jealous she is of my handknit armwarmers - arg), a separate pile of Christmas knitting, etc. - and all I can think about at this moment is my Sockyarn Blankie. The blankie I started years ago and have been chipping away at here and there for what seems like eons. The blankie I resolved to make out of approximately 847 separate squares and then magic together somehow when the time came, in the oh-so-far distant future. 

 

The future is now! Well, I want the future to be now. It's not, really. Of course it's not, did you see the list I just made of stuff with actual deadlines? Also, I will need to obtain about half a pound of black sockyarn, possibly more, although half a pound seems like a good start. I've got my eye on some, but haven't made my move yet. I've got a good quorum of sockyarn squares - last count was about 90, which doesn't seem like a lot compared to others' 800-square blankies, but a) my squares are a bit bigger than these, I think, and b) I'm not going for a twin size, I'm going for a throw that I can fit under if I tuck myself into the most compact fetal position I can muster. Right now the squares are laid out and are about fetal position size, and that will grow a bit when the black edging/connecting/crochetmagic happens.

So, I got out the squares and used my now-pretty-much-unused office to lay them out beautifully on the floor and assess where we are, and then I got out a bunch more sockyarn ends that I can use to create more squares. And it turns out that recently I have violated my long-held rule of making absolutely sure that I would have enough yarn left over for at least one blankie square before finishing a pair of socks. Twice. No, three times. This means that, horrors, I'm going to have two different sockyarns in a single blankie square. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Also, I can't find the rest of a ball I used to make my mom a pair of socks about two years ago, which is driving me crazy.

I blame all this on the addition to my life - no, the swallowing of my life - by the babychild. It was miraculous enough to be finishing a pair of socks that something had to give, and sockyarn blankie considerations are what fell by the wayside. We've gotten through the period during which the babychild had to be held - by me and only me - every waking second. This is a huge victory and allows for more knitting than the furtive middle-of-the-night, in-the-dark Citron sessions that were happening a few months ago. There was a very small window between the Holding All the Time period and the Eager Drooling Living-Room-Destroying Chaos Vortex Baby Godzilla phase, which I hear doesn't end until they're about 18. Or 4, maybe someone told me 4. Let's go with 4.

So now I can knit three stitches after removing the remote from the babychild's mouth, then another four as she goes for the bookshelf, then a few more after removing a paperback from her surprisingly-coordinated hands. There's actually a lag between when she obtains something that shouldn't go in her mouth and when she decides to put it into her mouth, so that buys me a few stitches. If I play my dinner card right, I can let her throw stuff out of the high chair for several minutes and knit in between bites. Some ground prep, like filling the coffee table with objects that are both throwable and put-in-mouth-able, buys me at least 60 seconds, although I still have to be vigilant for flying debris and accidental faceplanting.

 

 

So there is more knitting happening, but it is much more harrowing and exciting. Amidst all of this, I'm standing there thinking, Yes. Now is the time to finish SockYarn Blankie and revel in its sentimental glory. Which, if you've been following at home, you can clearly see is completely unrealistic.

Also completely unrealistic: the idea that the blankie can be finished now - today! - and also include ALL of my sockyarn, even the stuff I haven't made into socks yet. Because that yarn is part of my yarn story, perhaps even more dwelled-upon than the sockyarn I've already used to make socks out of. How many ideas have I had for what to make my STR Falcon's Eye into? A skrillion. I can't have a sockyarn blankie without the Falcon's Eye! And yes, I believe I did just type the words "my yarn story." I haven't slept for 8 hours straight for over a year, people*. It's a miracle I'm still using punctuation.

 

ANYWAY, here's another weird thing that's happening. You know how people (nutritionists, doctor people, commercials for speed, whathaveyou) use that barrel and hose metaphor to illustrate the set point for your level of body fat to explain why diets don't work? I've never quite understood exactly how that barrel and hose worked, but I do now realize that there's totally a similar set point for sockyarn stash. Because I've done serious feats of stash strength by using up three skeins of sockyarn that have been available to be knit up for literally like 5 years, and now all I can think about is needing to replace it. There are over 20 other skeins to make into socks, and my finished socks to stash ratio has still been dropping given the lovely willingness of my mother to give me piles of sockyarn as gifts, and not having the Brick and Turquoise in my stash anymore has me feeling like I missed a meal. Noooo, self! Drill that hole lower in the barrel, or whatever metaphorical thing that would make sense in this analogy!

 

Clearly the answer is that I need to knit up 20 pairs of socks and then finish the sockyarn blankie. And the stocking, the primo heirloom lace blanket, the smashing Christmas gifts, and the Supervisor Citron. Perhaps a padded room for Baby Godzilla is in order, although after ten minutes she'd probably just eat her way through the door.

 

 

*Literally. This is real, I'm being real about this. No period of sleep lasting at least 8 hours for OVER A YEAR. Fear my giddy, non-sensical logic! Fear it!

Thaw My Stash

I've mentioned before how half the fun of knitting is thinking about and planning which yarns to pair with which patterns, and this is especially true of sock yarn because you don't really have to worry about yardage.  But  I've been acquiring yarn at a faster rate than I can knit it, and it's gotten to the point where I think "but if I knit that, I won't have it in my stash anymore!"  And that's crazy.  So, we're not stopping with the Fleece Artist Melon from 2007, and if I'm to come anywhere close to success with the 26 Pair Plunge, more stash is going to need to move on into the next phase of existence, i.e. sockdom.

Sock Knitters Anonymous has "Knit All in Red" as its challenge for this month's Sockdown, and I just happen to have a beautiful skein of Brick in BMFA lightweight that's been chilling in the stash for at least 5 years.  So now is the time.

Now is also the time for Christmas knitting, especially given the fact that I really have lamentably little time to knit these days.  Oof, I miss it.  There are extravagant plans in the works for Christmas, and there's more time to think about knitting than to actually knit.  In desperation, I've considered pulling out the sock on the commute to work, but don't worry, I didn't.  (The drive is so short it wouldn't be worth it.)

Here are two strikingly similar tales:

One: I worked my fingers off last night finishing the Menehune Cobblestone Slogs I'd started in black yarn for Other back in May.  It was August, the month of finishing SIPs for SKA.  I finished weaving the last ends in at 11:53pm on the last day of August and pulled out the laptop to post a finished pic in triumph.  And of course the internet wasn't working.  I restarted the computer, troubleshot, cursed August, and generally anguished, the clock struck midnight, and I went to bed having failed.  Got up this morning, noticed that the wireless button on the keyboard was orange when it's usually white, pushed it, and viola: internet.  Steempy, you idiot! I said to myself.

Two: I chose to compete in the Ravellenic Games with this WIP from a zillion years ago (well, 2008.)  I finished the knitting, wove the strands, finished more knitting, wove in a billion ends, wet-blocked it, then a) didn't post it for a prize, and b) realized that this is so scratchy that I won't ever be able to wear it around my neck, which is unfortunate given that it's a scarf.  And that for the amount of work in it, I could've made an afghan instead. 

The yarn is part alpaca, which I don't really get along with, even supposed baby alpaca.  Perhaps that's the part that makes it seem scratchy to me?  Perhaps this would feel like the pelts of baby bunnies to a normal person?  I don't know.  I may bathe it with some conditioner (which has tamed even Jamieson's Sheltand Spindrift, which I thought was impossible) and put it up for sale. 

Finally, in a story not thematically tied to the first two through incompetent boobery, I have finished another reeeeeaaally old Work In Progress:

and the dog says thank you very much.  The squares are from our old clothes, the back is part of an old sheet that one of the dogs put a big hole in many years ago, and the batting is the nice puffy, lofty stuff I use for dog blankets these days.  (Our dogs are old.)  Much of my free crafting time the last couple of weekends has gone towards repairing the other dog blankets I've made because they've taken a beating recently.  Luckily, I love how patches look.  And I hope that many years from now, the quilts I've made that actually follow the conventions of good quilting are the ones that survive, because I was seriously just making up techniques and going with "I Have 10 Minutes to Fix This" Chic for some of this stuff. 

Now to finish the laundry before Baby wakes back up.  Yay for naps! 

Baby + Blanket

She likes it!  Of course, it helps that she's at an age that she likes just about anything that she can cram in her mouth and has not yet discovered that she can express color preferences, so I figure I'll enjoy this while I can.  This quilt is cheery and a nice size, and it doesn't match the beautiful nursery my family help me put together the least bit, not even with the biggest stretch of imagination. 

Okay, let's see, what else.  I finished socks!   Here they are! 

They are lovely, they fit, and I'm sure they'll be nice and snuggly warm when the time comes for them.  (I WIN, SOCKS, HAHAHAHAHAHA.) 

And then, oh, ha, this is funny.  You know how I have pretty much no time, what with the job and the baby and meeting the basic necessities of living what's considered a civilized life these days?  Well, I thought that this would be the opportune time to commit myself to the 26 Pair Plunge.  This is as opposed to the 52 Pair Plunge (a pair of socks a week for a year).  See?  Sane!  In comparison. 

It started 7/1/12, so I'm actually kind of on-track-ish, having just finished my third pair of socks.  Observe:

These are Hedgerow Socks, which have been in my queue since 2007.  They are made with yarn that's been in my stash on Ravelry since August, 2007 and thus likely even longer than that, considering that that's the month I joined Rav. (It's Fleece Artist in Sea Wool, colorway Melon, although it's the lightest Melon I've ever seen - others look much darker.) 

Game plan for the remaining 23 pairs involves more pretty simple rib patterns, ancient stash yarn, and then, if necessary, finishing pairs-in-progress that have been abandoned for various reasons, and then, if true desperation sets in, baby socks. 

And one more thing.  I spent my glorious Birthday Me-Time making a little tag blankie for the babe: 

I threw everything I had at this thing, and it turned out pretty well.  (That's faux-Minky, terrycloth, some batik, yarn, and several different kinds of ribbon and blanket edging.)   It's backed with a blue plaid from a pair of pajama pants I had and loved in high school (packrat stash for the win!).  If I ever get to see my sewing machine again, I might make a couple more to put in my Etsy shop. 

Okay, baby's hungry, I'm out!