Ambition

Ambition isn’t necessarily a bad thing…until you have too much of it, and I’m thinking I’m on that slippery slope! I have projects started everywhere, and I am bouncing from one to the other like mad! I still have the girls’ throw blankets on the knitting looms, a new sock on the sock loom, having “sort of” finished the infant sock I had on it initially (more on that later), hubby’s scarf on another loom, Moya still has a warp on her, Talyn still has a warp on, the infinity loom has another throw blanket on it, and I decided to attempt a hat on one of the circular looms yesterday. There is also still plenty of roving waiting to be spun on the Ashford spindle, and a good two pounds of Sibe fur waiting for a visit to Anansi. That may be a bit too much going on at once.

The sock I was attempting was primarily for practice, to make sure I could get the techniques right rather than actually making something someone would wear. After I did the heel, I knit a few more rows, then worked the toe immediately. So the techniques are done correctly, just not wearable, because I didn’t work the foot section at all. So the sock that is presently on the loom is the one I’m hoping will be part of an actual, wearable pair. We’ll see how that goes!

All of my knitting looms now sport a dot of nail polish on every other peg so I can keep track of whether I should be knitting or purling. I chose nail polish because I can remove it without much fuss, and as a woman, it was something I had on hand. Not that I’ve painted my nails in forever…

The hat is another practice item. My neighbor asked me about making her a knit beanie for winter sports, and I looked up at my circular knitting looms and thought, “Sure, I could do that!” Naturally, I’ve never done that, so I will see if I can manage a decent hat for Bryony and go from there. I’ve already made one mistake: I put it on my smallest circular loom, and I think I need to go another size larger. Fortunately, I haven’t gotten very far yet, so I should be okay pulling it off of one and starting over on another. I wasn’t accounting for the fact that while it is on the loom, the hat will be stretched out, and when it comes off, it’s going to snap back to where it should be, in which case, any hat made on the smallest isn’t going to fit any head but an infant’s. Wait a minute…my goddaughter is expecting a girl in April! Guess I’ll be leaving the hat on the smallest loom after all!

This new baby is going to give me all manner of excuses for weaving, crocheting, and knitting! Unfortunately, I will probably never get to see her in person, just in pictures, but that’s just something I will have to deal with. Neither of us at either end travels much outside of our own metropolitan areas, and we’re on opposite sides of the country. But that doesn’t mean I can’t spoil her from afar, which I fully intend to do. My goddaughter is a fantastic girl, always straight As in school, levelheaded, and absolutely beautiful inside and out. I don’t imagine her daughter will be any different, so spoiling her won’t be a hardship.

Of course, the baby isn’t the only one giving me reasons to play with string! Bryony’s security blankets are starting to fall apart from all the love they receive, which is why I’ve got one going for her, Aneira just likes having anything Mama makes, and I can’t make something for one without making something for the other.

Aneira just made her first potholder, all by herself!! I’m so proud of her. The only thing I had to do was cast off/finish the edges for her. She was quite perturbed at the fact that it got smaller as it came off the loom, but she has persevered and now would like me to buy her more loopers so she can make more squares, so that’s on next week’s to-do list. I’m hoping to get both her blanket and her sister’s ready by Christmas, so they can cuddle under them while watching tv on Christmas night, assuming they are calm enough to do so that night. Aneira’s is nearly done, but Bryony’s isn’t even close, and I’m thinking that the yarn I’m using, Lion Brand Homespun Purple Haze, may not hold up to her affection. So I may yet be taking it apart and trying again with a different type of yarn.

On top of the unfinished projects I have at home, I still have jewelry and stained glass projects to finish at school, and a three dimensional stained glass project to start, and only three weeks left of school, which means only three classes left. I’m told stained glass kaleidoscopes are fairly simple to make, I love kaleidoscopes, and they would certainly cover the 3D requirement of the final project, so I’m going to go look at some patterns now. Here’s hoping this works out!! Happy Thanksgiving to all!

 

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Here’s your sign

Bill Engvall is a great comedian. He seems like everyone’s best drinking buddy, has enough charm for any lady, but isn’t so gorgeous he seems unapproachable. He also has a fantastic routine based upon things that should be obvious, but somehow aren’t. Like the guy who goes home with bandages on his hand, and the neighbor says “You hurt your hand?” Okay, is there another reason someone would be wearing bandages? Bill Engvall would have a sarcastic response explaining that no, he just felt like bandaging his hand today. Thus the “here’s your sign” title.

I’m an avid reader. Anyone who knows me knows that. With a librarian for a mom, that was inevitable. One theme that I have seen recur in books is the knowledge of how to do something disappearing, because the folks who had the knowledge didn’t pass it on, for whatever reason. In some cases, the knowledge was considered so commonplace that it wasn’t necessary to pass it down. But, of course, something would happen, usually a plague or some other disaster, people would die, and the knowledge would be lost.

One of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books summed it up nicely: Write it down. If you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen.

I say all of this because I decided to bring out my Serenity infinity knitting loom the other day and give it a try, and realize that I didn’t know how to do single knit on a loom. More to the point, I wasn’t sure how to go about the back and forth process of single knit. On needles, when you knit, all of your stitches move from one needle to the other, so when you’re done with a row, all of your stitches are on one needle. You switch needles, and start another row. With crochet, you turn the object you’re crocheting and continue. With a knitting loom, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if you worked the last stitch only every other row or not. So I went looking for the answers online.

It took me until nearly four in the morning to find, finally, an answer that was clear enough to understand, and it was a YouTube video from Purling Sprite that did it. Sometimes I have trouble with written directions, and this was one of those times. A lot of those written instructions were simply too convoluted for me to follow, or the accompanying pictures were black and white and too grainy to see, and many of them would leave out things that would seem to be obvious to someone with more experience, where a beginner would follow the directions to the letter and then be left wondering why his/her creation didn’t look like the one in the directions.

This type of thing happens everywhere, not just crafts. My grandmother made fabulous codfish fritters when we were little that even fish-hating heathens such as my brother and I would plow through them. Delicious and perfect. Mom’s didn’t taste the same. But Grandma’s senility ended all chance of getting the recipe from her, and mom had to find her own recipe. Mom was a great cook, but none of us ever learned to like her codfish fritters as much as Grandma’s. They weren’t bad, they just weren’t hers.

I’m a huge advocate of books. They may not always be perfect, like many of the instruction sets I found, but imperfect is better than none. So much knowledge has already disappeared from the world already, because no one thought that future generations might not know how to access it. So: write it down!!!

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Rough days

This past week has been one of those weeks that are as hectic as they are horrendous. Not all of it has been bad, but the parts that were, were really bad!

Over the weekend, Bryony got sick. Nothing to go running to the doctor for, but something made that little tummy very unhappy, and she threw up all over her father and his recliner, which, of course, necessitated a bath for each of them, as toddlers almost never give you any warning of impending doom, while I made an attempt at steam cleaning the recliner.

Now, I’ve mentioned that I worked as a vet tech for several years, and one of the things that occurs fairly often is that this happens with animals coming into the clinic, especially during parvovirus season. Never once have I had a problem cleaning messes in the clinic, but at home?! At home, I am useless once that particular issue makes an appearance in any of my dogs or kids. It’s different when it’s your own. Translation: it’s very difficult for me not to do the same thing! So I tried, but ended up having to leave that clean-up to hubby. Yeah, I know: I’m a wimp.

Bryony, of course, was perfectly fine ten minutes later. We, however, were completely traumatized.

In addition to the sick child scenario, there was the regular monthly grocery run, which means that I hit several stores in one day to get everything I wanted. Then there were the numerous phone calls back to my high school to request my transcript be sent to the school here. Mind you, I graduated high school in June,1986! No, I still haven’t reached the individual I’m supposed to talk to, and yes, you do have to provide a high school transcript, even after all these years. My personal opinion is that if I possess X amount of college credit to transfer over, well, then I obviously got a secondary education!  But, I finally got that dealt with, got the references taken care of; in short, pretty much everything is done. Now I just wait and see if I can afford what financial aid won’t cover.

On the fibery side of life,  I’ve managed to put in some more time in the practice sock on the sock loom, and have been practicing spindling more. The spindling has been going pretty well, at least on the Ashford. The whorl being wider, it spins a lot longer than either of my other two.  The sock, on the other hand, isn’t coming along quite as well. Now that its starting to emerge from the bottom of the loom, the mistakes are becoming very, very obvious. There are holes where I’ve missed or lost stitches, and now I can see them. They’re all closer to the beginning of the piece, not to the more recent stitches, which tells me that I’ve improved, but doesn’t fix them. Good thing this one is only practice!

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Spindling to Earth, Wind, and Fire

I’m very glad to finally be able to use my spindles. Now I have an excuse for looking at them and making a wish list of so many of them! If you look up “drop spindles” on Etsy or Google, you will find tons of them, and there are so many beautiful ones out there! And they’re so much more affordable than a wheel that I–ahem, I meant you–could conceivably collect them! I’ve even seen a couple whose whorls were made of stained glass! Don’t want to drop that!

That being said, yes, I bought my third spindle yesterday.  It’s a bottom-whorl, my second one, and very simple, not a decorative one like my malachite spindle. Ashford makes this one, and of the three that I have, I’m finding this one the easiest to work with. It’s the heaviest of the three, and also has the largest whorl at about a three inch diameter.

I’ve done everything backwards here. Most people have told me that spindles are easier to learn on than wheels, and that heavier spindles make thicker yarn than lighter ones. For me, the experience has been in direct opposition to that! For me, learning to spin on the wheel was a traipse. The spindle was a complete struggle for me.  And I’ve found myself  spinning thinner yarn with the Ashford than I am with my other two, much lighter spindles.

Tonight, hubby connected his iPod to speakers and put on Earth, Wind, and Fire’s greatest hits from the 70’s. Talk about a walk down memory lane! “Fantasy” was one of my all-time favorites, as were “Reasons” and “September”. No male could compete with Philip Bailey’s high notes, except maybe J. T. Taylor of Kool and the Gang. So tonight I’m spindling away while  listening to pre-disco 70s music. I’ve really got to go through his 60 gigabytes of music! Hubby collects music, whether he likes it or not, because he can, and because some of what he has is so difficult to find now. I’m wondering if he has “Wildfire” or “Horse With No Name”, “Cat’s in the Cradle”, or any Christopher Cross. Don’t know why, but lately I’ve been in the mood for those.

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