Noro scarf success (almost)

Finally, finally, FINALLY, I went out and bought the rest of that Noro yarn I've been talking about. So my Noro striped scarf is nearing the final stages of its completion.

I knitted a 1x1 rib, like Jared Flood did, and it turned out great. Squishy, no rolling, and it does indeed "plump up" into a stockinette-like fabric, like Jared said. Of course, it's hard to knit a six-foot long strip without some kind of tension issues, so there are a few spots that are wider than the rest, and one edge is perpetually tighter than the other, which I tried to correct as I progressed, but the scarf still has an overall curve to one side. Also, I wish I had chosen colorways with a few brighter and more vivid shades. But on the plus side, I figured out slipped-stitch edging (the trick is to hold the working yarn in front for purlwise and in back for knitwise), and, really, it's a scarf. No one's going to be using it as a ruler down at NASA. A few bumps don't matter, and maybe I can even fix them with a little blocking.

Back in action (blanket action, anyway)

I haven't updated in, oh, a few months, but it's been really busy, what with final projects and exams and graduation and all that.

Anyway, I finally finished the orange blanket for the SPCA:



Cat is included once again for scale, and to demonstrate that it's apparently already feline-approved. I guess this means I'll need to wash it before I bring it in so that it doesn't look gently used, what with the cat hairs and all.

So that's one down, ? to go. The next one will probably be white, and I'll probably be knitting on slightly larger needles. This one was done on 4.5mm, I think. I don't want it to be too loose, in case it falls apart more easily or isn't as warm, but I'd like it to go a little faster than the first one did. Once I use up the white stuff, I might have to do some stripes or some patchwork-style, since I won't have enough balls of the same colour to make a whole blanket. There might be one in neon yellow, pink, green, and orange stripes - I'm looking forward to it.

Anyway, that's pretty much all that I've done in the last couple of months. Next on the docket, aside from the blanket, is a pair of socks, assuming I can manage to get them started without losing an eye or throwing the whole thing down in a rage (which has already happened once or twice).

It's Friday night, my back still hurts...

...but I spent a couple of hours last night knitting my blanket and watching Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel on Youtube. I have to admit that as much as I love my Anne Shirley, knitting while watching really helps. It's not the most action-packed movie I've ever seen. There's a good ten minutes of Anne and Diana chasing a cow through the a field. Sure, it's accompanied by some rousing fiddled cow-chasin' music, but still, TEN MINUTES.

Anyway, I think I may attempt a pair of socks tonight. I've reading up on the Magic Loop method and I'm intrigued.

And then there's this:



Sometimes the sunset makes the view from my bedroom window pretty decent.

Decreased mobility (in a literal sense, of course)

I've been laid up for the last two days with a put-out back, but thanks to my wireless internet I can still do most of the schoolwork I need to, and I actually have more time, so who's to say this isn't a blessing, really? Aside from the fact that I have a hard time putting on underwear and sitting down to pee, everything's peachy.

Anyway, my point is that I foresee a large spike in the amount of time spent knitting in the near future. I'm still working on that garter stitch dog blanket, so luckily I can work while watching Youtube clips of Whose Line is it Anyway and not worry about messing up the pattern.

I was looking through this book called Not Your Mother's Knitting or somesuch (I don't actually have it on hand), and found a nice little pattern for cabled slipper-socks. Boy, I can't wait until I can afford nice yarn.


footnote: I fully realize that saying "laid up" makes me sound like I time-traveled here from the amazing year 1935.

Blanket update

Remember the blanket I'm making for the SPCA? I finally picked it up a week or so ago and I've made some decent progress*:



That's after (almost) three skeins of bright orange acrylic. I've got to say, it's extremely soft, squishy, and comfortable-seeming.

This weekend I kind of learned how to knit British-style (or "the right way", as my grandmother would say). I'm very slow, my tension is too tight, and I still prefer continental, but learning must count for something, right?

*cat included for scale

I'm pleased to announce my triumphant return to photo-taking!

So yesterday I finally snagged my new camera. It was $10 off, and it was the last one they had in stock, too. Everything was coming up Milhouse! I got a Nikon Coolpix S210. Like a good little Capricorn I read the manual last night and played with it a little today. There's a ton of modes and settings and options, but thankfully it's pretty easy to just click-flash-here-have-a-photo. In light of that, I went around my apartment experimenting and taking better pictures of some old projects I've already posted. First, the old stuff:

Here are those photograms I did in my art class and hung on my wall back in September. It was probably a little too hasty - I didn't mount them very well and they're kind of wrinkly and un-smooth. Oh well.







Here's that collage I mentioned that I made out of CD liner notes, currently on my bedroom wall:



And here are some shots of that ink drawing I posted way back at the beginning of the blog, when I had to use the camera on my Macbook. I started it in Gaspé in the August of 2007 and finished it over the next few months. You can probably see the words I based it around.



"Must not sleep,"



"must warn others."



The words are from "Commencement at the Obedience Academy", by Aesop Rock.

And now the new stuff:

This is what Kyle painted when we took my new acrylics for a test run. He very graciously let me hang it on my wall. I particularly like the funny 70s sunset at the top and the little round window-y part underneath it. The colours are more vivid in person, it was just bright in my apartment when I took the photo.



Here's a necklace that I don't think I've posted yet. I bought a bracelet at H&M that had these great little origami crane charms, but I never wore it because the charms were always clinking on my desk while I wrote and it drove me crazy. So I got a length of chain and some jump rings and made this lariat necklace. I still don't really wear it, but it's more because I haven't figured out the best way to put it on. I might turn it into a regular necklace eventually.



This is my first attempt at a tuxedo t-shirt for my brother (see last post). It failed. I guess it's a little punk rock, what with the splatters of bleach and fuzzy design, but, well, eh. I kept it to sleep in. It's huge.



Here's a top I made last summer from an idea in a book on refashioning old clothes. I had this ugly, paint-y Episode I t-shirt that was too big, so I made it into not-quite-halter-ish tank top. It's really comfortable and it looks awesome under a cardigan. I just wish it wasn't Episode I.



And this is a Presidents of the United States of America t-shirt that was also way too big. Again, I followed a pattern (if you can call it that) from the same book, but I'm not really crazy about how it turned out. The front doesn't drape very well, though I like how I tied the straps.



I'm not sure why this shot went all crazy glowing coals red, maybe it was the sun and the combination of red shirt on red sheet. Anyway, if you can't see, I cut the back up the middle, cut strips into both sides, then tied the strips into knots. Neat idea, but I didn't really measure, so the two sides aren't even, and also it looks kind of funny when I put it on. Maybe some wear and tear and lots of washing would soften the shirt up, I don't know.



Anyway, there's a Whole Whack O'Photos. I'm hoping to get the rest of my Noro yarn soon, so maybe I'll have some knitting to show off.

Oh, I almost forgot. This is two of the four balls of Noro Silk Garden that I need for the scarf. It's very pretty.

Oh well.

I completely forgot to take photos of the Christmas presents I made this year, and I was so excited to show them off. I guess you can read that as "show them off IN THEORY" since I don't think anyone is reading this.

Anyway, notes to self: I made a scarf for my mom with the lace pattern here, I think it's called Feathers and Fan or something similar. I gave her a pair of earrings and a jar of lilac and lavender bath salts too. I made my brother a tuxedo t-shirt that I did with cardboard stencils and bleach sprayed onto a black shirt. He's also getting something else that I was too drunk to work on on Christmas Eve. My dad got two jars of marinated olives (recipe not on the internet) and a coffee liqueur that I made by reducing coffee, sugar, and water to a syrup and adding it to brandy.

I got some very nice crafty stuff for Christmas this year, including some canvases, a palette knife, some acrylics, beads, and The Guerilla Art Kit by Keri Smith, which is really cool. I also got a basket to keep my knitting in my living room, some great sock yarn, and a knitting book (do I dare attempt cabling?). My mom gave me a metric buttload of needles, too, so I'm totally stocked. The only thing I'm missing is yarn for all the things I want to do, and that will have to wait. My Christmas money is going straight to my bank account. I have a few projects planned for myself (hooray), like the Shalom cardigan on Ravelry and my long-awaited Noro scarf. I have to finish the dog blanket, too.

In other news, yesterday I ruined my own birthday surprise and discovered that I'm going to get a new digital camera (I have never owned a brand-new one). It turns out well because my old camera got knocked over and broken on Christmas Eve. It was taking really weird photos, too, maybe it was time. Anyway, I'm stoked. I'm going to head down to Future Shop tomorrow and check them out.

I'm finding myself with tons of projects planned, both crafty and otherwise, and I literally don't know where to start! Good thing I have a lot of time on my hands right now.

UGH!

Okay, so I can't give any details here because this is a Christmas present we're talking about, but holy crap, knitting can SUCK sometimes! I knitted last night for roughly 4 hours and when midnight rolled around, what did I have? Nothing. Really. Nothing. Literally zero. I ripped my little heart out. I restarted this morning and things are going much better but JESUS.

Word to my future self: do not jump into a pattern before making sure that you know exactly what everything on the chart means. Even that red box around certain stitches which you completely ignored. And OH YEAH, don't forget to maybe find a photo of a stitch before attempting it!

In short: yarn-overs can bite me!

Anyway, I'll be working on Christmas stuff for the next little while so I'll be adding photos and whatnot after the gifts are given. I'd love to rant and rave some more, but it would ruin the surprise. Also, I couldn't digital-photo-take my way out of paper bag. I have to play with the settings on my camera.

Simple jewelry

I played around with my jewelry stuff tonight. I made a few pairs of earrings, really quick and easy ones. Hopefully I'll wear them a few times. I'd like to improve my jewelry-making techniques - all I can really do is bead and attach things with jump rings. I'd love to pull off complex designs, but... I've got a list of hobby-related "things to do" up to here. I have to pick and choose. As an interesting contrast to the homemade-ness of my jewelry, I've drooling over the jewelry here. My favourite is this pair of earrings. Nerdy, but not obvious! Also - thirty dollars. But beautiful.

Anyway, I finally got my camera back but don't really know how to use it, so I can't figure out how to get my photos any less blurry than these. Onto the jewelry!



Pretty much the easiest earrings ever. Add beads, make a loop at the top of the straight wire, attach hooks. Done.



Slightly more "labour"-intensive, but not by much! Still, looks good.



Wacky picture frame earrings! They don't match! Zany! I like these. The picture frames are actually meant for scrapbooking. They came with these little pointy things to stick them into paper. Dollar store, baby!



Memory wire bracelet. Again with the same beads. I like doing memory wire stuff, it always looks good at the end and it's so easy.



This is a weird little lariat necklace I made awhile ago. You'll notice I have pretty limited supplies - that's the same picture frame-y pendant as the earrings. Plus I have only one type of bead. I don't wear this very often, I haven't quite figured out the best way to.

I have plans for some sea glass jewelry, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to mount/attach/secure the glass. I'm not crazy about wire wrapping, I'd like something more polished. I don't really have the tools for anything else more metalwork-ish. I have some really great pieces that would make an awesome necklace.

I started my first doggie blanket too.



You probably can't see in this tiny photo, but I'm doing a seed stitch border and garter stitch for the rest (I was going to do all seed stitch, but I kept getting distracted and making mistakes and I'd like this to be as quick a knit as possible). The colour looks pretty yellow in the photo, but it's really a bright, not-quite-neon orange. I have about 12 skeins of the stuff, which is good because it will probably take me several more to finish this. Also, it's my first time using circular needles, which is great. I'm not knitting in the round, but it's great to have everything attached and all. My next project will probably be something in the round, once I finish my Christmas stuff.

Oh, the plaid backdrop on some of the photos? My couch. Yeah, I know.

Yay!

The SPCA person emailed me back and seemed really excited. So I'm going to start with some truly heinous orange stuff that my mom gave me and which I never make into anything that anybody will ever want to wear. Hopefully I'll get to start this weekend.

An interesting idea...

So when I started knitting, I got a bunch of yarn from family members that had been lying around. Some of the colours are, well, ugly. And it's good yarn, but mostly acrylic, which I don't really like the feel of. Also, I'm low on cash right now and I can't really afford to buy yarn to work on my other planned projects, stuff that I'll be wearing and so would rather do in wool.

But today I came across a great suggestion - use the yarn you don't want to wear to knit small blankets to donate to a local animal shelter! They're washable, warm, free, and good practice for me! So I emailed my local SPCA branch to see if they'd be interested in a couple of blankets. I might also make some ipod "socks" and other small projects with it. That way I can use the crazy colours.

Anyway, I'd really like to get some practice with circular needles in AND help keep some kitty warm!

New projects in mind

Okay, so it's been a little while since I posted. I'm working on a couple of knitting projects right now, one of which is the Noro scarf you can find here. The others are Christmas-related and so I can't post anything right now, since my "fan base" is made up of mostly family members. Anyway, I'd like to post some better photos of projects when I get my camera back. I've also got some photo-related things I'd like to work on. 

My main crafty time right now is spent on knitting and reviving my journal, which used to be noting more than a place for whining but which I'm trying to make more interesting. 

I started by gathering a bunch of odds and ends that I've been saving and gluing them in, scrapbook-ishly. Heather, if you're reading, can you spot the thing you wrote (hint: it's backwards, it's blurry, and it's in German).

There's also the Great Wall of Movies, spanning 1999-2003, otherwise known as the Era of Cheap Tickets.

Anyway, that's it for now. Hope to get the camera back soon.

Lots of crazy crap on the walls

I recently found myself with nearly bare walls in my living room. I hate painting rooms, and I'm reluctant to do it when I'll just be moving in less than a year. So I figured I'd better buy, make, or steal something to make my place look less I just moved in and more like I've been living here for two years (which I have).

I stopped by an art store and bought two medium-sized canvases. I painted one today with some acrylics I had from my studio art class a few semesters ago. I really enjoy painting, but I'm not that skilled and I'm hopeless at painting anything realistic (everything tends to look cartoonish), so I thought I'd go with something very simple.

First, it has to be said that simple design does not equal easy. I didn't realize how difficult it is to get a good sharp line or do small details. As a result the edge of the red portion is not quite straight. Also, the big fields of colour show brushstrokes really clearly, and it was hard to get the colour opaque and an even shade. Looking at the photo I can still see some streaks, which I may touch up later.

It was a lot of fun to do though. Painting, for me, takes so much careful planning and preparation, from coming up with the design to mixing colours to choosing brushes, that it's not quite a spontaneous expression like drawing or writing can be. It's more like doing a craft, like making jewelry or knitting. In any case, at least I have something decent to break up the white expanse above my TV.

I also wanted to add that I did something with some of the neon yarn I posted already. I made a scarf out of the neon yellow, neon green, and a navy blue. I knitted 3 strands together in a big giant garter stitch with orange pony beads. It took me about two hours, it's bright, and it's long.

Good way to do a project when you don't want to put in too much time or effort. I think I did this while watching a couple of episodes of the X-Files.

Still to do: get my digital camera back so I can stop using Photo Booth to show off my stuff, and frame some photo-lab-black-and-white-objects-type photos I did ages ago in my art class. Results to follow, I hope.

My first knitted thing - and a drawing

So I neglected this blog pretty consistently since early May, partly because I have no digital camera, and partly because I was waiting for my preciousssss sewing machine (which still isn't fixed). 

But recently I decided to take up knitting, and I've gone hog-wild (in terms of enthusiasm, not productivity). I even joined Ravelry, where I've enthusiastically made up a list of projects that are still way out of my (enthusiastic) league. In any case, today I finished my first knitted thing, a purple scarf. I forget the brand of wool, but it's a pretty basic not-too-chunky kind of thing. I promise to read the labels more in the future. Anyway, because I still have no digital camera I took some photos with my Macbook. They're not going to win any Pulitzers, but since this is ostensibly a blog that's mostly for my own records, that should be okay.

Here it is. It turned out pretty evenly, the only holes, mistakes and general wonkiness came toward the beginning when I was still learning. I did a few accidental yarnovers and added two stitches (I originally intended to have only twenty, but that changed after only a few rows!), but really I'm very pleased. The only thing left is to add fringe, although I'm out of the yarn. 

Interesting note: I taught myself the basic using the videos on knittinghelp.com, where I chose continental over English because it was the easiest for me to follow. This amazed both my grandmothers and my friend, who all knit English. I've gone through the English style quickly now, and it's hard! One of my grandmothers is adamant that I won't be able to follow patterns knitting continental, but I haven't quite reached that point yet.

 

In other knitting related news, my mom dug out this garbage bag full of yarn that was sitting in the attic. The highlights are several balls of these colours, which don't look so crazy on my Macbook camera, but let me assure you, they are of the most DayGlo-ingly neon persuasion. Like the colours we used to wear before we cared about clothes. I'm not sure yet what to do with it... I might use one of the colours for the fringe on my purple scarf... but I have to wait for the perfect idea. These colours are too incredible to be wasted.

The other thing I have to show off is this. Apologies for the reflection. It's an ink drawing that I started last summer while in Gaspe, but put off for awhile. I finally finished it a few weeks ago. I took an art class a couple of semesters ago and a girl there was doing these drawings, really intricate, lots of little shapes and designs, and she just sort of did it and let the final shape form itself. This is inspired by her stuff. The photo is reversed, but if you look closely you might see the words "Must not sleep, must warn others", taken from Commencement at the Obedience Academy by Aesop Rock. The letters formed a sort of framework and I went from there. It was fun, very soothing. Plus, it looks really neat. I hope I can post a nicer photo sometime.

Coming soon, maybe: I really want to get into screen printing. The build-it-yourself tutorials seems pretty daunting, though, and I'm the type of person who really likes to get a preassembled kit for the first time I try something, just so I can get a feel for it. Problem is, screen printing kits run about $60 and I've heard that they're not such good quality anyway. I might make a foray into Omer Deserres and see what they have, but I may end up attempting to build my own screen. Either way, I'll be documenting the results, for better or for worse.