PDXYarnHo Knits

I have a slight social phobia. By slight I mean I have an enormously hard time being around people. Especially people I know. That doesn’t make any sense, does it? I know. Strangers I can deal with because mostly I don’t have to make eye contact or talk to them. People I know.. well, that’s anyone reading this, I guess, I have a harder time with because I always feel that I’m somehow letting y’all down when I’m around, like I’m a big drag.

Not that my upbringing conditioned me at all! Geez.

Tonight, I’m too fat to leave the house. I saw myself in the mirror as I changed to leave for knit night, and got too depressed, so now I’m sitting on the floor typing. That’ll solve it. I think I got spoiled in my apartment having mirrors that only showed from the waist up, at least I couldn’t dwell on what I couldn’t see, right?

so that’s my general predicament. If I’m not actually feeling physically drained (which has been the case quite often recently), usually I still can’t bring myself to leave the house. It’s just so much fun, let me tell you. Tried a shrink, that didn’t help much. But I did stop having the gory accident visions.

So, I guess what I’m saying is I’m sorry I’m not at knit night tonight. Part of me really wants to be there, but a much larger part of me won’t let me go. It’s something I live with every damn day. I’ve got to tell you I would love to know what it’s like to be able to talk to people and relate in a normal healthy way. It was easier when I was closer to average size and working out all the time. Now… not so much. So here I sit. Thanks mom.

In other news, in case you were wondering, there is in fact a brain in my head, and eyeballs too. What there isn’t, though, is any abnormal swelling or deposits that would indicate that my vertigo symptoms are actually related to my inner ear (this is very good news). I haven’t gotten the ‘official’ report, because my ENT’s office scheduled me with the wrong doctor (seriously!) so I haven’t seen mine for the follow up. But I have looked at the MRI results, read the technician’s notes, and asked my chiropractor to ‘decode’ some of the things I didn’t understand. The worst of it looks to be (possibly, won’t know till I talk to the ENT) some scar tissue in my frontal lobe and some sinus buildup. All-in-all, not bad. MRIs are really odd. The machine sounds like mid-ship on a cruise vessel.

So far, of the three docs I’ve now seen about this, the idea that this is a mechanically triggered vertigo seems to be the closest to my symptoms. (the ENT suggested that I had Meniere’s, but there’s no way I could dance on one leg with my eyes closed if that were the case. The GP just wanted to give me drugs, no diagnosis needed.) The vertigo hasn’t totally gone away, naturally, but after my last few neck adjustments I can sleep flat for the first time in years. I look forward to the day when I can once again look up at the stars I know I can dance now, because I went dancing a couple of weekends ago. It was great!

I do miss my muscles. Since being on the weight restriction, my body has turned to a pile of goo. It’s terrible. I tried to pick up a 50lb sack of compost and I couldn’t lift it I had to have V-man pick it up. That does not help the ego. It does help my shoulder muscle, though, which is slowly knitting itself back together. See? i can talk about knitting on my blog! Ha! I also haven’t dislocated either of my shoulders now in several weeks – I really am making progress. You have to lose to gain sometimes, I guess. Maybe when I get back in the gym and stop eating so much I’ll lose the newly-converted-to-fat-muscle before I gain new muscle, and get to be a normal size. Yeah right.

I have been doing some fibery things, though I’ve been largely feeling uninspired by everything. I got a bag of scrap roving that a co-worker had bought from Sheep Shed: it’s a Brown Sheep roving, so it’s mohair and wool, but it’s unblended.

It spun up ok, but the yarn is not plied too well (thanks mostly to distraction) and the singles aren’t even. Because the fiber wasn’t blended, there were several areas where the mohair content was higher than the wool and vice versa; that changed the ease of spinning and other fun things. The brown fibers are all wool and the white is mohair. Weird. The mohair actually came off in clumps at some points, even after drafting!

So I’m going to go over to my co-worker’s house and try out her drum carder on the rest of it to see if I have better luck. It’s very soft, and I love the color, so I’m not entirely displeased with it I might just make a hat out of it.

Well, it’s shower time, and V-man just got home with a headache, so I guess I need to go play nurse!

Tags: Not Knitting, Spinning, social knitting by Kerin
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So here’s just a smattering of what I’ve been up to recently.

And boy, is there ever more than that… woo. I didn’t document a lot of what I’ve been up to these past few months! But there will be more. Oh, yes, there will be more.

Tags: General Knitting, Spinning, sewing, yarn by Kerin
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A little, at least!

We are all moved. Things aren’t totally perfect yet; we have a few boxes yet to unpack, and we haven’t painted any of the bathrooms yet. But overall, we’re in! A little sneak peak..

Woo!

My office is pretty awesome. I managed to fit all of my yarn, beading stuff, metalsmithing stuff, sewing and fabric and com puter and office-y and all of my other craft stuff into this one little room. And there’s still more room in there! Wicked. The only thing that isn’t in there is my spinning wheel and fiber – that’s all in the living room, right when you walk in the front door.

I’m so flipping exhausted from the move. Sleeping will be pretty nice this weekend, if I manage to get some!

And I have been knitting! My as-of-this-moment-sleeveless sweater has just been dubbed Grape Squishy.

And a back detail, with the little extra lace at the back neck:

It’s done in Malabrigo worsted (squishy) in the Velvet Grapes color (grape). Hence the name, yadda yadda. Dollar-twenty-five please, thankyoucomeagain.

Obviously the body is done. I was going to do the button bands next, but I decided to hold off and just go for the sleeves next. So far they’re four inches of ribbing – not exactly thrilling blog fodder, so I haven’t photographed them yet. They’ll have the same simple lace pattern up the center. I found fabulous buttons for it while I was in Seattle – I can’t wait to wear it! Not to mention it’s taking so little yarn – the body there took about 2-2/3 balls of yarn, and I bought seven total. So I should have enough left over for a matching hat and gloves! It’s so exciting to be knitting again.

I went to the Knit and Crochet Show for work today. It was a lot smaller than I’d expected – but then the only knitting show I’ve been to has been stitches! It was fun, though, to see so much fiber. More fiber than yarn I think. I wasn’t going to buy anything (what with OFFF in two weeks), but I did plunk down a little dough for some lovely Crown Mountain rovings. But that’s all for now. I especially don’t need any more yarn. Seriously. But I actually have to get my spin on if I’m going to let myself buy more spinning fiber!

I think I figured out my spinning issue, possibly – my wheel and its bits are really too lightweight for what I’m trying to do with it. I’m going to try weighting my bobbins and possibly the wheel itself; I’m also planning on getting some plying bobbins to see if that fixes some of my stupid. But we’ll see. If all goes well, i’m going to truck my wheel a whole five houses down to visit Alison and see if she can get me going.

Well, now I must be off to bed. V-man and I bought a bunch of gardening tools tonight, and tomorrow we will wage war on the overgrown yard from hell!

All of this, of course, barring an arrival – my not really sis in law is in labor, and she’s expected to pop tomorrow! We’ll see how Rachel feels about her inevitable entrance into the world. But our cell phones are on, and no definite plans were made, so whenever she’s here we’ll be there! Total craziness.

Tags: General Knitting, Spinning, gardening, social knitting by Kerin
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Somehow I seem to have become rather adept at losing track of time. Really, I’ve just been up to my eyeballs in just about everything and haven’t had the time to knit, let alone upload pictures of everything.

I did manage to (rather quickly) knit up a test pair of slipper socks for the V-man. He wanted some slippers that were not ugly 80′s acrylic and five sizes too small (like the ones of mine he’s been wearing) and so he picked out some mis-dyed black wool in my stash. But before I went making a nice pair of slippers for him out of a nice yarn and then screwing up royally (as I do very well when I make things for him), i tried it out in some ugly 00′s acrylic that I had lying around. I happen to keep some old Wool-Ease around for charity knitting, and I had a skein and a half of chunky that I just had no idea what to do with. So, here’s the test pair:

they’re a little long, but otherwise seem to fit him fine. Next up, black wool I think that’s going to wait till it gets cooler again. Even these get too warm for him after a little while.

I’ve been working on some socks for me, too:

They’re the siblings to my autumn wheat socks. They’re actually quite a bit longer than that now – most of the way to the heel. I just haven’t taken a more recent picture!

I also *finally* got the Lisa Shrug turned in! It turned out ok, but naturally the final product didn’t shrink quite as much as the swatch – sigh. But, it fit me at first:

(39.5″) It shrunk down to the pattern-specified 32.5″.

But, the length is off. I told the gals that it probably just needed another vigorous run through the wash, and that’d do the trick. In any case, it’s done. Glad for that!

I’ve been so inundated with work that I haven’t done much else. Last week was the first week where I was able to catch my breath – the late-late projects were all done and sent off. With exception of two of them, everything is going smoothly with the test knitting, and we’ve already started to get the projects back. Pretty cool. Now I have one week until my next deadline – but luckily it floats around a little. That’s going to be a crunch too. I was very glad to have a day off yesterday. Amazingly enough, I didn’t work on work over the weekend.

What I did do was work on PAX costuming! V-man and I drove all over the place getting bits and bobs and fabric for (mostly) his costumes. I started working on his Chaos Zealot costume (from the tabletop/soon-to-be MMO game Warhammer). There are a lot of liberties taken here because a) every picture we’ve seen to reference is different and b) he’s not going to shave his head/file his teeth pointy/develop glowing eyes any time soon. So, we sort of developed what would work for him.

(not sewn together yet!)

and this pile of faux bird bits will become his shoulder pieces:

It’s really coming together rather quickly. There’s still a lot of work to be done on it, but it feels good to have a head start!

And while he was doing his homework, I managed to set aside 45 minutes and I spun up 50g of pencil roving. It’s the first time I’ve sat at my spinning wheel in probably over a month. Yikes!

It’s about dang time!

Well, it’s a lovely day out. i really want to hit the gym but I don’t think I have enough energy. bah!

Tags: Costuming, Spinning, work by Kerin
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It’s such a pretty afternoon and I have V-man’s car at the moment. But am I out for a drive? No. I’m preparing to do my taxes. Woooooooo. Usually I do them mid-to-late February, but this year my job started that same time – and I just haven’t had a slow moment to sit down and think about it since. It sucks, I hate doing them this late, and they’ll be more complicated than ever this year, what with the business and all. I just hope my deductions can take care of the difference between my business debt and my inventory value. Actually, calculating that is the first thing I have to do. I’m so behind the 8-ball on this! Blargh. At least it’s all fairly small numbers. Hmm, I should go print out my bank statements. Hmm.

Anyway, I’ve hardly had time to think about anything this week. It’s been crazy. I’ve gotten a lot done at work, but I still feel caught in the never-ending game of catch-up. It stinks. But, now that other things are getting wrangled, hopefully it’ll feel easier. This week should be interesting, to say the least.

But I have been knitting! Well, at least a little. Most of it I can’t show yet, but I’m nearly done with my ‘Autumn Wheat’ socks:

I just have to figure out how to fill in the gaps in the ripples to try to keep them stretched out evenly, then throw a rolled hem on there. not bad.

I also finally wound the Pretty Lady from my bobbin into a skein – and the weeks on the bobbin totally de-kinked it. I still want to wash it to puff it up, but I think the twist is pretty set.

Besides that I have no personal fiber happiness to share. But this has been such a big week in so many ways… I wonder how I might have gotten this?

Tags: General Knitting, Spinning, work by Kerin
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Ugh. I have the plague.

Ok,  not the plague that’s going around (at least I’m pretty sure), but I am still sick. Yuck yuck. Luckily when I woke up today, besides having some wicked sinus issues, I was feeling ok. I actually managed to get a bunch of housework done, which pleases me immensely.

So, on my needles – well, not a whole lot. I’ve been doing so much at work, and it doesn’t seem like I’m making much headway, so I’ve had to take some work home with me. But, when your homework looks like this:

It’s not so bad. But I don’t have time at home to work on it, either. Yikes! I hope this week I won’t be as sick-headed and can really power through some of this. Land sakes. I can’t even begin to describe what’s on my plate already.

I had intended to take some model shots of the Boring Charcoal socks on the V-man’s feet, but he walked off with them. At least he likes ‘em! They look like they fit him just fine.

I did do some spinning and plying last weekend. It’s been sitting abandoned on its bobbin all week.

It’s the Pretty Lady roving. It’s not even remotely balanced, and so is quite kinky – hopefully I can fix that with some hot water! The color is coming out rather more muted than I expected, but I’ll wait till I knit it up before I really say anything there. There was another colorway of her roving that was very similar except that instead of violet it had meduim-dark purple – I might get that too and ply it together. I think my mom would like it either way, but I’d like to see some more dramatic color shifts.  But that’s just me

Oh, I did knit a second bear mitt this week. It’s bigger than the first one. Oops! But, I don’t think the bear is going to mind too much. I do hope I can make a few more – I really enjoy the speed and simplicity of them, not to mention the fact that I’m using up what’s left of my acrylic stash and it’s going to a good cause. That’s just good for all involved.

Well, not much else to report here! Hopefully I’ll be able to get through this week with better results than last week.

Tags: Spinning, work by Kerin
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But it feels like an eternity since I’ve posted!

The reason being: I’ve been so galldang busy the past several days. Last Thursday I spent pretty much all day dealing with unemployment stuff, but luckily I did get about four hours of knitting time in the transit there and back. While I was there, the ‘seminar’ thing was so painfully boring that I managed to get a new pattern sketched out:

I cast on on the way home. I intended for this to be the pattern for the cabled gloves I’m planning, but when I looked at it, it’s really well suited to a hat. So, perhaps I’ll work with it that way!

Friday… well, I don’t remember Friday. Honestly I don’t know why. OH! That’s because I got three hours of sleep the night before. But yeah, I just remember being tired.

Saturday, I had some running around to do. Part of that running around was to go to the grand opening of Yarnia! I’d promised myself that I wasn’t going to buy anything, but my mom had sent some money that day, so I decided to get a little taste test.

It’s four plies: one each of alpaca, mohair, lurex, and some random acrylic boucle. It’s not the most amazingly fab stuff ever, but it was $12 for almost half a pound. I knit up a swatch:

It’s very novelty-esque, but that’s ok. I just wanted enough to play with and maybe make a scarf. And that I shall.

So the way the yarn is ‘made’ there is, essentially, that it is rewound. Several cones of yarns (the plies) are simply run together into one cone. Not exactly what I expected: somehow I thought it was going to be raw fibers that were blended and spun for you. So, I’m not exactly disappointed, but I was just kind of taken aback by it. I think I was just thinking it was something different.

The yarns produced are much like standard industrial marled yarns – the sort of thing you’d see knit up into a sweater at Old Navy. Not bad stuff, but not necessarily intended for hand knitting. I think as time goes on and she gets more types of fiber and more exotics, i’ll get more excited about it. Right now there’s a lot of cotton and acrylic, neither of which I’m really interested in. In time, in time. I love the concept of her store, and I hope she does well.

On the way home from that, I stopped into the library to pick up some garment design books. Figure I needed to get some studying in before my interview! And as I was scanning the shelves for Zimmerman, what did my eye spy but this little gem?

I’ve been trying to get my hands on this book for years, and there it is, lounging on the shelf. It’s been consistently out forever it seems. I’m surprised it hadn’t been stolen. But, I’m so excited! I love this book, if for no other reason than it’s marvelously inspirational.

When I got home, I had a package waiting! After a long week, it was nice to find a pound of cjkopec roving at my door:

So pretty! And, appropriately called Pretty Lady. It’s destined to be a hat, scarf and gloves set for my mom. But, I already had some spinning in progress, and I had more pressing things to deal with, so I put it aside for the time being.

So, I set myself down for a weekend of preparing my portfolio and brushing up on interview skills. I ended up getting a little spinning done, too – but almost no knitting. I was really deep into those books.

Monday I borrowed the spaceship and headed up to Vancouver for my interview. I have to say it went really well. I won’t know the outcome till next week at the earliest, but I’ve got my fingers crossed. I would love that job. The position sounds right up my alley. Too bad it’s a 2.5 hour commute each way! Oh well, I can deal with that. If I had the job, I could buy a car and shave over three hours off that. But then I couldn’t knit on the commute. Ah, decisions decisions…

So, came home exhausted from the driving and the anxiety and so sat down at my wheel. Between Monday and Tuesday I spun this:

It’s BFL in ‘Victorian Christmas.’ I LOVE the color. I don’t think the photo does it justice. It’s about 290 yards of fingering weight.

[aside: my overhead lightbulb just BLEW UP. like *POP*. Thank goodness it's in a cover!]

I can’t wait for it to be something. I don’t know what though. And I think I may finally be getting the hang of plying – this yarn wasn’t horribly under- or over-spun. It’s a little kinky, but overall, not bad!

Tuesday I had my other interview. It went ok, but it’s not my dream job, that’s for sure. After that I was in the neighborhood of Twisted and stopped in for a bit. I ended up standing at the counter for an hour and a half, winding a nasty hank of chenille into a ball. And I got a sample to knit for them:

I haven’t worked with that yarn before, so this should be fun. After that, I rode all the way out to Washington Square for a meeting. Then dinner, then finally home. Man was I tired.

So this morning I get up exhausted, figuring I was going to go meet up with Sharon about some design stuff, but she had to take care of her sick daughter. Not having to leave was actually sort of a blessing, because I’ve been so dang busy that I’ve hardly had a moment to work on what she needs. I did make some good headway this morning though, and now that I don’t have immediate other needs, I can focus on that.

And I took a break to spin a little of the Pretty Lady:

It’s working up so wonderfully. I’m so excited! I think I’ll take it one project at a time – this will likely become the gloves. It’s really a dream to work with so far.

So, oy! I’ve really neglected my knitting over the last few days. I did get to the heels of the boring charcoal socks, though:

These things just stretch out forever. i decided to do heel flaps, so I’m working on the gussets right now. I think the extra fabric will be good since the yarn is pretty stiff, but I’ll be darned if it isn’t extending the time I have to deal with these things…

So that’s what I’ve got. I’m exhausted. I’m trying to decide if I want to go hang with the PDXknitbloggers tonight, but I am so darned tired. I think it might be in my best interests to lay low and get caught up on all of my projects, and then just hit the sack a little early tonight. Besides, I think there’s going to be a knitblogger field trip this weekend, so I’ll still get to see some of them.

man, I want a nap…. and coffee cake… and… *zzzzzzzzzzz*

Tags: General Knitting, Spinning, general by Kerin
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Ok, first – the yarn crawl!

I met up with the Portland gals at Union Station and had a great time talking stitches with them for a short while before the Seattle group showed up. What a fun bunch! I met Charisa, who I’d been chatting with on Ravelry for a while. She’d done a really cool version of my Transitions Gloves. Unfortunately, me being my unphotogenic self, I’ve got my mouth open in all the pics! I’ll spare you that.

So cool to meet everyone, it was kind of overwhelming! Since I knew the area really well, and my yarn budget was rather dismal, I decided to play tour guide, and helped the Seattle folks get around. It was fun, I traveled with different folks between all the shops – it was really great to chat with all of them. I did buy a little at Dublin Bay, where I’d not been before:

The fiber will need to be saved until I know a little more about preparing wool (woo! two pounds of it, though), and the laceweight shetland and fingering alpaca will be for the glove patterns i’m writing.

After that we wandered on to Knit Knot, which was so small and crowded I ended up hanging out outside with some of the other Portland ladies. We can always go back

Then we moseyed on to Knit Purl. I was a bit hesitant to go in, for reasons I don’t care to mention here, but all was well, and I even ended up with a request for a new pattern.

I’m working on it… can’t post too many pictures until it’s published, which kinda sucks. I’ve got one fun swatch done, and I’m going to be doing another, to get it just right.

Anyhoo, after that I broke off from the group and went over to Powell’s for a cup of coffee and a break. I headed home only to find that I was taking the same train home as the Portland gals! How random and cool. Hopefully I’ll be joining them at the Wednesday knit night this week, too!

****

So, I finally have Amanda’s gloves done:

I think they look great, i just hope they fit her! They don’t fit me, for sure – my hands are much bigger, but I could squeeze one on for the photo.

The V-man’s gloves….. another story entirely. I’d finished three fingers, and had him try them on – they were far too short! rar, I’d already woven in the ends on those. So, I’ll have to probably cut the tops off and keep going from there. Bummer! I put it on the back burner for now, but I’ll get back to it once I’ve got the new pattern off to Shibui.

His socks are coming along ok, though:

Boring, but good.

****

So on Sunday we decided to head over to Ikea, since the whole two-people, one-chair living room situation was a pain. He bought himself a new chair, and I got some new shelves!

I know it’s a bad idea to be spending this kind of money when I’m unemployed, but I really need the organization. Writing so many patterns at once, and having far more yarn and supplies than the poor bookshelf can handle is too much. So I bit the bullet and just got it. Don’t get me wrong, though, I do really like it. I’m just now even further into debt than I’d like to be!

That same day I also finished what I’d been spinning:

The colors are so pretty, but my spinning sucks, so it’s all unevenly plied and stuff. the singles were the most even, by far, in terms of thickness and twist. So, that’s good, but I still suck! I can’t quite get the plying thing down yet, I guess. I’m working on it.

****

SO, yesterday was Twisted’s inventory party! A bunch of us were invited to come and help them do their inventory, and I jumped at the chance. Got there at noon, and started counting! It was a lot of fun, and we got lots of snacks and refreshments during the day. I also found out that Hot Lips Pizza makes vegan pizza, much to my delight Since I’m not actually vegan, we had them put pepperoni on it, lol. Way better than a regular cheeseless pizza! It was really, really yummy.

Anyway.

The process was fun and quick, and we got goody bags! We were each allowed to choose one bag of freebies to take home. I got this:

That’ll be a pair for me, and a pair for V-man. Woo!

They also are now carrying Blue Moon STR, and since we were there before it officially went up for sale in the store, we got first dibs. I got some Puck’s Mischief and Covelite, two of my faves, and some awesome neon goodness from stitchjones:

So awesome. I can’t wait to use them! But I’ll have to wait, considering I have about a gazillion other things to knit right now.

Speaking of that, I’ve made no progress on the afghan. Oh well. I will at some point! Right now my hands hurt from crouching and crawling around on the floor all day yesterday, so holding the blanket actually hurts. I’ll stick to smaller things for a time.

Well, it’s an absolutely gorgeous day out. I’m going to go and play.

Tags: General Knitting, Spinning, social knitting by Kerin
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