August Focus

So glad it is not a sweltering summer where I live.  Getting stuff DONE as a result.  Witness:  two quick baby sweaters for a double family baby shower.  

I finished them the day before the shower.  This hardly ever happens.

Must dash, though.  Two graduation / off to college quilts to finish.  Eep!

Lost or Found

I used to lose a lot of things when I was a little girl.  I left stuff in buses, lost track of things, etc.  We knew the way to the local CTA lost and found.  

So I have tried as an adult to be pretty calm about losing stuff. I am not always successful.  Because I lose things amidst "stuff," I try to be better organized.  I try different strategies for routine.  I still lose stuff and I still fret.  Fretting has use - I do work on finding some of these lost things.  

Losing knitting?  I've lost three scarves in the past dozen years.  I've wished them well and have moved on.  I lost three knit socks in the laundry this winter. This is rough, particularly since the singletons don't make up a good fraternal pair amongst them.

I also seem to have lost time for knitting.  

Okay, that's false.  That's cousins to "Wow, you knit?  I wish I had time for that.". Better to say I lost my focus.  Or knitting mojo, as the cool kids put it.

But good news.  I've been working at getting rid of stuff.  I have used some of that knitting time for a nearly regular Sunday sewing routine this late winter. The knitting mojo is creeping back in, just as spring arrives.

This is ye olde honey cowl - using some 8 year old stash.  It will be a gift, so it will move out of here and open up one teeny tiny bit of space - a couple successes in one.

Working on things found.  Working too on letting go.

Beware Yesterday

Ides of March.  

Snow Again.

New Hat.

What's the Deal, February?

Yeah, so I was busy.  Blogging dwindles in knitting land.  Knitting grew sluggish in jpknitsland.

It's okay.  Holidays were lovely.  2013 went away.  January was FULL.  There was a one week roadtrip with mama driving the minibus.  We've had too much winter, all of us.  I had a three week cold, and I slept a lot for a change and tried to take care of myself.  I had a great class and we played hard.  Lots of smiles and laughs.

And.  Yet.

There was a little knitting.  Random Gift Knitting Just Because.

I did slip, of course, despite a very good start. Started in November, this was the ONLY holiday knitting I was really going to do.  Stash yarn, check.  Existing pattern info (Lace Rib Scarf stitch pattern from Mason Dixon blog), check.  Knitting done on December 24.  Found buttons to use from deep stash.  (I worked in a fabric store way back.)

Whoops.  Went from having three cards of buttons to two, which meant four buttons and not six.
Whoops.  Shopping for buttons, eventually.  Four deep stash buttons go back to the button boxes.
Whoops. Not done in December.  Button sewing today.

Gave, Giftee-smiling, Gone.

But how DID it get to be the end of the first week of February?!?

Journey

Road trip

Conference

Visits

Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and North, Virginia near the Cumberland Gap. A couple additional hurry-throughs.

A little knitting.
A little reading.
A little breathing.

Nice to do some things on the summer list as well as to follow a few impulses.

Impulsively threw some slipper knitting into the car.  Wasn't in the summer stash knitting list, but definite stash knitting all the same.  This was a full skein of Noro Kureyon from a years-forgotten impulse purchase.  Have to guess which second skein will yield a sisterly slipper mate.  Then on to more slippers for three sisters and their mama, my wise friend Liesl.

I have unpacked halfway, swept and mopped.  Need to get cranking and leave for the day, but I wanted the bathroom floor to dry.  Time to plan the rest of today's productive reentry into life and work and summer's end.

Hope your summer journeys are fruitful.

Steamy Summer O' Stash

Happy to have a good reason to make and take a quick baby quilt along for a visit to one of my knit camp friends.

Curiously non-babe colors in the juvenile print fabric my sister passed from her stash to mine.  The maroon print in the center sported some of the same colors as the animal filled backing.  Found some neglected 5x5 squares, the right amount of batting, and voila!  Two days, though rightly could have been a one day project.

Lunch with visiting and knitting leads to completion of October birthday gift.  

Am elbow deep in a couple quilt tops, 14 placemats, and a table runner.   Very steamy day, though.  May have to take some of the latter and go find a table in an air conditioned location for some basting time.

What was that about summer of stash?  I'm determined to finish that table runner and the holiday placemats.  Stash, UFO, call them what you will, they shall be finished.  And leave.

Quilt one - some stash, along with a little new acquisition because all two of next year's grads listed turquoise in lists of favorite colors.  That was the picture from the prior post.  Did I mention that there are four high school grads next spring?  I am on a mission.

Quilt two surprised me today.  Those neglected 5x5 squares I hauled out of storage?  The remainder are now 4-patches.  Culling out some unwanted stash as I move along to put in large alternating shadow blocks.  It will go to church for the young people's quilt making project for charity.  Last summer I  stitched up several from the coordinator's prepped fabric bundles for volunteers.  This summer I am determined to donate some stash as well as sewing to the effort.  The kids start out the year tying some quilts. Later they move into the rest of the process and do some start to finish.  It seems to work well for them to get a start with some prepared tops.

It feels like Progress, though today seems slow moving.  I think I will take another shower and move on to some air conditioned productivity.  

A Fourth of July Morning

How nice it is to be sitting at my mother's kitchen table, looking at cookbooks, drinking iced coffee from a silly glass.  I've worked past the halfway point on my nephew's scarf replacement.  October birthday package nearly prepped!

Breakfast was lovely, too. Local berries.  Yum.  Definitely a cereal morning.

I'm going back to doing some garage scraping and priming.  Call me strange - and you'd not be the first - but this makes for a lovely 4th of July morning!

A Swatch Is A Swatch

There are excellent guidelines for swatching.

Sometimes I follow them:

Targeted 4", extra stitches at sides, knots in the cast-on tail to record needle size, wet blocked aggressively.  Still too small?   Project goes up a needle size.

Sometimes I don't:

What size needle?  One strand?  Alternating?  Two strands - marl the marled?  What about a 1x1 rib?  Nope, squares.  How big a square?  

Lots of decisions.  It's almost tougher to replace a list project made from stash with another dive into the stash.  But I will not buy yarn for this one.  And it should be quick knit, since a do-over has boredom knit into it before we start.

Worst swatch ever, but it was all the sampling I needed!  And this one will be ripped out.  I think I need the yardage.

Progress

A reminder to myself:  progress isn't only items crossed off a list.  It's a verb, too! Move from one to the next.  

Move forward.

I am making good progress (on the list) in progressing from spring into a summer.  It is June. I'm getting some summer conference and vacation plans organized.  I'm doing some of the work I want to do to make the autumn better.

Doing some catch-up cleaning and some deep cleaning.  Doing some catch-up sleeping and some extra napping.

I'm getting some good textile play in.

That personal sock club kit prep is going gangbusters.  Have yet to decide how I'm doing two scarves, but patterns are selected, prepped, swatched for the rest. I added one extra skein of sock yarn and bagged it up with a pattern.  Have a library book to fetch, a photo copy to make and I'm set.

The kits would be useless if there were no knitting.  And there is knitting.  Have resurrected activity on a scarf for my aunt AND whomped out clue one of a mystery shawl KAL.  I never do those.  (Not true.  I did one pair of socks, ending up about a year behind.). But look:  real progress.  Stash yarn and stash leftovers, to boot!

Sewing is on the move, too.  There's some patchwork underway.  (Story another day.). Monday I powered through the mending basket, which was stacked with an extra half basket of content.  I think there are only a half dozen items left.  Hemmed up a new vinyl tablecloth for a summer freshen-up.  The long-stashed fabric had patiently awaited its day in the light.  Progress.

I walked for an hour this morning.  Spinach, poached eggs, and tea were a good reward.

Moving forward.

Any Port in a Stash

Earlier this week I spent a half day tidying the stash.  It was sort of like tossing the stash (cue the citations of other people's terminology now passed into frequent and familiar use),  I tucked away the souvenir yarn from my January travels.  I tucked away the leftovers back into the bins where they belong.  I reorganized.  And, with a great deal of dismay, I entered a whole whack of new yarn and previously ignored deep stash (again, borrowed jargon) into Ravelry. 

Goodness Me.  I Have To Knit.

I have a couple promised/requested scarves (for mother) and a scarf in progress (for an aunt) that were already slated to take up some stash yarn.   

My nephew lost a scarf I made him and sheepishly asked if I'd make him another.  Just like its predecessor, a stash sock yarn scarf, this one will come out of the sock yarn bins.  Yes, bins.  Not huge, but  surely plural.  And suddenly I'm onto another copycat imitation inspired bit of flattery.

It is a slightly stormy evening.  I have an errand to tackle, but while waiting for the weather to pass, I organized a Summer of Sock Club Kits From Stash:

Nephew scarf 

Mitts for cantata alto (RAK)

Red self-striping socks

Green self-striping faux-isle socks

A Mystery Shawl KAL

Trekking handpaint socks

A neglected pair of barely-started Skew Socks

That could do it for a start.  Need to do a bit of swatching and decide needles and patterns on a couple of them.  The result? I have an organized cache of portable projects for the summer.

I need some structured play time, otherwise I don't do it.

I promise, I am walking when it isn't so stormy.

Dead Fish Hats, Unite!

Voila.

Mostly used a skein of Malabrigo for each.  Tried to up other yarn on hand for details.    

Almost Done!

Fish in need of eyes.

I'll finish them just in time for the fishing opener. I hope the little guys enjoy them.



And if the big folks are bemused, there are still leftovers.

I Foresee...

Summer Sock knitting lies before me.

This one is a toughie.

That's the back of the heel this time. It too has had five winters of real wear.

That has to be good, right?


PS. Thanks, Fujiyamamama. I was still getting comments on them now and again. May think about that pattern again - Potomatomus.

PSS. There was a hole in the other sock, sole of the heel there. Clearly I wore that pair OUT.

Look! Spring!

The hat has to be completely dry so I can mail it.

But look! Done!

PS. Thanks, Fujiyamamama, for the encouragement. I fixed that dropped stitch in the hat. Seems I only dropped half of it.... but it surely was the active half!

Sprung in Hopes of Spring

Not bad for a five-winters old sock!

I wore out the soles of both heels at once.

The color has really been going.

I am ready to toss them.

Done. Oops. Not Done.

I was done with the hat.
I washed it, to test my theory that a wash would add more slouch.
It was good I washed it.
Yes, it relaxed.

Yes, that safety pin is holding a brioche stitch that I seemed to have dropped. I managed to knit something else above it to keep the pattern up.

Washing an unknown dropped stitch caused a tittle laddering. Whee.

I have to figure out how to fix it without undoing the whole hat. I am too sick this weekend to figure it out.

Stash Happens

Looking for yarn for a gift, I stumbled - if you can call looking at the highest box on the back corner of the upper shelf a stumble - upon these skeins of Bernat. They were a good sale, appropriate for the gift they were going to make at the time. Time passed. Oops.


This is how it goes. Stash happens. And I'm pretty thankful for it, what with this having been a lousy weekend, full of temperatures and coughing and tea and only enough concentration to work in a big square of knitting.

Did I Mention?

Done.

Lost and Found

Sadly, I must report that I have lost one glove.

Happily, I can proclaim that I am knitting a quick pair of gloves from stash.

Miraculously, somehow I didn't obsess over selections of yarn or pattern.

Admittedly, I confess I should have been doing other work.

Candidly, I deserve that much time. And also there may be some other quick selfish knitting from stash on the near horizon. It's cold out there!

Meanwhile, From Main Street USA, Sock Progress

In another cafe, but this time in Galesburg Illinois. I had to be out of town last night, so I am having a La De Dah day on my way home today. I am so close to finishing these socks!

A little coffee, a little housemade meatloaf panini for which the tobasco waits, marble table tops and woven backed rattan cafe chairs all tell a delightfully jumbled tale of place.

I am having a really good small town mainstreet day trip. Bought seam rippers (to do list) at a small sewing center. Grocery shopped for a bit of local bakery bread and good cheese at the adjacent market.

I will even have a few minutes to knit on sock cuffs before my sunny February-cold afternoon drive. I should even be able to swing home, feed the cat, and get back to work for the evening event and cleanup.