And now we plan...

I hope your Christmas was restful and full of joy! The Incredibly-Patient-Mother and both Siblings joined the Philosopher and I at Chez Hedgehog.  We and the felines ate far too much food, watched movies, opened presents, and had pots and pots of tea.

I got a wonderful knitting related gift. The IPM bought me two packs of blocking mats! Each set covers a full 12 square feet of floor.  The giant shawls that I've knit and that Sibling-the-Elder has knit for me can finally be blocked in their glory. [Just as soon as I move everything out of the dining room]

The one knitting related gift I gave on Christmas day there is no picture of. I forgot to take photos of the red socks that I made for the Incredibly Patient Mother. They were from the Dallas yarn purchase of last January and weren't very well aged stash...

While I didn't do a whole lot of holiday knitting, now that the year is winding down and I'm considering the new year ahead, plans are leaping out of my brain. I need to block the green sweater and finally start wearing it, I'm still trying to finish up the ice blue socks before next week (don't worry, I'm almost to the toe of sock 2), I'm midway through a pair of fingerless gloves...

A high priority though will be to make myself some mittens. Yes I need new ones already. The fliptop mittens I'd so recently knit myself are gone. Last Thursday, somewhere between a taxi / a coffeeshop / and the theater, my flips disappeared. There was frantic searching after the performance when I realized they weren't in my purse and despite retracing my steps, they had disappeared. I hope someone found them together and is wearing them in good health.

I still have a fair chunk of STR Mediumweight left and I need to run it through my yard counter to see if I can repeat or if I need stripes or what the plan should be.

The Brunette's mitts still aren't done, the Brunette's husband's mitts are...um... yarn.  I've got some sock yarn wound up for the new year but need to sort things into project bags.  And I swear, this year is going to be the year that pink afghan gets finished. Per Ravelry, I've been working on it since May 2007. This year it is getting evicted from the bin it's been hiding in and turned into a functional, person-warming object. I also have pretty serious designs on the half dozen cones of bulky weight cotton still lurking around, so if anyone is interested in a hand knit washcloth, I should know about that sooner rather than later for the gift planning bin.

There's some yarn getting evicted from the stash. It's perfectly nice wool but it's just not anything I'm going to use, so I'll post a link to my Ravelry for-sale/trade when I get it sorted out the stuff that is leaving.

The Philosopher and I have started making general new year plans as well. A lot of them involve organizing and getting rid of excess things, going through things again and pruning the load, lightening up the apartment, being able to know whether or not we're actually out of something.  One particular plan involves scanning a LOT of papers and letting the hard copies go. The tax returns from when I was 15, for example, probably safe in PDF form especially considering I've barely had to keep anything the past three-five years, all of my w2s have been electronic, even most of my 1099s have come via email.  An external hard drive takes far less space and, while we're not planning to move anytime soon, we'd like to not have to move these things again in their current formats.

I just updated the KnitMeter and I'm very close to 11K, which is pretty satisfactory for a year full of many other things. Whether or not I can average 1000K a month this next year remains to be seen.  But there are many babies expected by friends due soon and a lot of really lovely wool floating around the stash that I'd like to get out and make things with...so we'll see what comes next.

What are your knitting plans for 2014?

Sick plus Sock Yarn

I am very grateful for sick days. Not for the part where I feel like garbage or where I'm sneezing so violently that the cats flee the room though Gypsy's adapted now that she's on my lap rather than my chest and I only get an ear twitch.  I'm grateful that I woke up this morning, recognized that between the exhaustion and the congestion and the diseased feeling, and was able to acknowledge that I was probably not going to be any good to anyone in my library.  I could email work and say "Nope, not today. I'll be in and hopefully less infectious tomorrow."  So I did, and then I crawled back under the covers and was fully unconscious before the Philosopher got up to take a shower. 

After sleeping very late and having now added a half dose of sudafed, I'm upright and thinking about moving the cat enough to go get another cup of tea. I might even tackle end weaving on my green sweater. Maybe. I'm not thinking very clearly. I do at least need to run down to the dry cleaners and pick up the Philosopher's suit that he's wearing to a wedding this weekend. Head cold plus wedding ought to be fantastic. 

It's year end and I'm counting only 4-5 projects that I'm hoping to wrap up in the next 14 days before I start misdating everything again.* To that end I took a quick look through my Ravelry stash to start evaluating how much sock yarn I have for 2014 that I'm intending to turn into socks. 

And it's finally happened.  I've stopped binge buying long enough that, if I maintain my current knitting rate of about 1 pair a month, I might come close to running out of sock-designated yarn next year. A quick count through only turned up 17 skeins, not including the ice blue pair currently on the needles. Of those skeins, only 4 are sport weight, and fingering weight on size 1 (2.25mm) needles does take me a little longer, but only 1 set of socks is on size 0 (2.0mm) needles and those are usually my longest marathons.  

If I bought no new sock yarn (unlikely), and got through another 14 pair of socks (this year's current expectation), I'd have 3 skeins left. Now, of course, that doesn't count the yarn that could be used for socks but currently isn't designated for socks, yarn of any weight beyond light fingering/fingering/sport, or the Wollmeise stash. But it does signify a lot of pairs of socks having been knit.  And the possibility one day that there might be some room in the stash bins.  Perhaps.  

And it hasn't been all socks this year.  A quick count reveals: 1 pair mittens, a human sized sweater, a dog sweater, a baby blanket, a scarf, a kitchen rug, most of AudioGirl's slipper socks, but when you balance against 14 pairs of socks, you can see where most of the knitting time went.  

Hmm, I said 4-5 projects up there didn't I? In my defense, all of them are at least 50% done already, so it's not like I'm starting from wool. But I should really go tackle those and also make more tea, especially as the cat has abandoned me temporarily.

Hope you are all feeling well and your Christmas knitting is down to a few ends to weave in... 

*I almost said, writing the wrong year on checks but I'm not sure I wrote any physical checks this year.  How long will it be until that cultural touchpoint is gone for all of us? 

Sock Show Thursday: Maybe Ice Blue Wasn't My Best Choice

The week has become bitterly cold, though tomorrow promises a high nearly to the freezing point. As yet, we're not quite to double digits Fahrenheit. For the wool I've purchased and the skill of my hands this week, I am grateful.

I've been doing my best impression of a wool wrapped marshmallow with a wool shawl wrapped around my core, then a down coat, at least one scarf (two this morning), wool hat, and my new wool fliptop mittens(which still don't have flip thumbs). Also all of my wool socks have been going into rotation in my snow boots. On Saturday I don't think I have to leave my house and my plans involve washing all of these woolies that have been doing such heavy work this week.

I finally made some decent progress on the Brunette's Cobbler Fliptops. Cobbler as I'm cobbling them together from things I know, things I'm trying, patterns I'm skimming, etc). The main part of both mittens is done and now I need to knit flips and thumbs. He's asked for flip thumbs so I need to get that sorted sooner rather than later. I popped into Loopy Yarns earlier this week on my way home from work to pick up some conductive thread which I may  put in the package with the mitts or I may knit the entire right thumb tip. I haven't decided yet. See cobbling...

It's Thursday though and here I have been working on a new sock. This got started mostly by virtue of it was already wound and my size 1 dpns are still in the last socks  I was working on and my 1.5s are still with the fliptop leftovers so size 0 needles it is!! Very precise, I know.

Anyway, this is more KPPPM in the P444  colorway.  When I bought it, I thought it looked like a spring sky. As I'm knitting it during deep freeze, I'm seeing very winter colors in the yarn. After this pair, I have enough in pink for one more pair and 875 yards (5 skeins) in a crushed blueberry kind of colorway that I intended to use for a shawl or something. So I'm almost through it.

This has been riding around in one of my Jessalu bags and gets sporadic rows so I'm not making progress very quickly.  Tonight I'm headed to a Hobbit marathon that will see me at a theater for 6 hours. I'm thinking the other skein of this plus the size 0 9" circular needles and I could probably make a serious dent in Sock 2.

Or I might take a hat I've been working on. It's Malabrigo sock on size 2 or 3 I think and needs hours of mindless stockinette.  

Or I might just eat popcorn for 6 hours. 

We'll see.  

Avoiding all the other stuff I should be doing

We are having our first real snowstorm here in the Chicago area, though real is subjective. We're expected to get only about an inch of snow.  Of course, I had intended to make a run out to IKEA today.  Earlier the Philosopher and I got on the road so at least we'd drive out there in the daylight, if not back, only to find that there had been no particular attention paid yet to the roads in the form of salt trucks.  Everyone was driving very carefully but it was slippery and every intersection saw the Low Traction alarm dinging in the car.  We made it about a mile from home and then decided that we would just turn around.  Cross your fingers that the car got warm enough that tomorrow I get the all clear from my mechanic to take it for emissions testing because seriously, this has gotten beyond stupid.

For those who aren't Illinois local, every two years we have to take our cars for emissions testing to verify that we're not contributing to the local area pollution more than we should be.  About a month ago I took my car over to Mike the Car Guy and had him fix all of the things that were currently making me non-compliant--my car is nearly 15 years old, it tends to sprout little leaks and things--and ever since then I've been doing a boatload of unnecessary driving in order to get all of the triggers to reset in the car. If the triggers aren't reset, I can't go to the testing. Well, I can, but I'll fail and have to go back.  And I can't renew my plates until I pass the test.  So, no point in going to the testing despite the fact all the things are fixed.  Last week, I'd really hoped we'd be set but not yet.  And Mike can't tell me what exactly I need to do to trigger whichever test is left--it's not miles or anything like that. It just "isn't ready."  He suggested it's a hint that I need a new car, I responded that when the state of Illinois would like to buy me a new one, I'll consider it.

The whole part of having to drive around for no good reason, thereby increasing my personal vehicle's emissions, adding to holiday congestion, etc, just to try and get this trigger to reset itself has not been lost on me. It's been a waste of gas, time, energy, all sorts of things. About the only things good to come out of it so far is that I finally took my new work chair to work and I dropped off two bags of "stuff" (clothes etc) and a large bag of books for donation.

Little happening on the knitting front. Right now I'm working on the Brunette's Mitts.  The USPS still can't tell me where the Blonde's blanket is.  They still haven't delivered it either to her or back to me. I have a new phone number to call tomorrow though.

I should be knitting all sorts of things but of late I just don't care. Part of that is winter malaise setting in, which means more time with the Vitamin D pills and the sun lamp.

I think in January I'm going to go through the stash and put things up on Ravelry again for sale. Not that I expect a whole lot to go but there are skeins floating around in there that it is unlikely that I'll ever actually knit them up. Why not send them on to a better home than this one?

I need to get out some bright yarn and work on that. Not sure what bright yarn I have floating around that would be appropriate but there must be something. It's plenty gray and dreary outside without only working on gray and dreary yarn. (Please note, I'm happy to knit the Brunette gray mittens per request but they're gray..you know? At least his husband asked for a very pale green.)

Now I'm thinking about a quick pair of mittens for my massage therapist.  She should always have warm hands, right? And there's some yarn already wound out in the stash.....

All But Thumbs

It's the day before Thanksgiving and thankfully, I'm pretty sure I don't need to go to the grocery tonight.  There's the season's first quart of eggnog in the refrigerator and the Philosopher and I picked up a turkey and the traditional fixings and some wine, so we should be set.  We're going to be eating turkey leftovers from now until Valentines Day but hey, mid January, thawing out a large chunk of turkey and making chili is going to sound like a brilliant plan.

We have to have a brief moment of loss for the Tweety Bird stretch gloves I've been wearing the past couple of winters in the early-winter/late-winter it's not quite cold enough for my ski gloves periods.  They were your basic black glove except for a small plastic square with really random Tweety designs on them. Unfortunately, yesterday morning, they disappeared. I'm relatively sure I dropped them between getting off my train yesterday and getting to my building but by the time I realized that about four hours later, they were long gone.

Fortunately, I started those mitts last week! A baby shower and a couple of commutes later and ta da!



I decreased a little too fast and funny on the flips and I don't have flips knit on the thumbs yet but they got worn to work today and none too soon. 15 degree weather calls for warm gloves.  My office is really chilly today, so I'm wearing them inside too.



Here is where I am on the thumb so far. I had seriously thought about just making these fingerless mitts. My thumbtips are now loudly reminding me that making flips was a better idea.  Ideally, I would probably round up some conductive thread and just finish off the thumbs but in the absence of that, I'm planning on thumb flips.



Misc close up shot of picking up the stitches for the flip. These were done as 1x1 rib all the way up and on the flip. This means they fit me, the Philsopher, pretty much anyone and everyone. Well, okay, not the Brunette, but that is just because his fingers are much longer than mine are.To do the picked up stitches I alternated picking up a knit stitch and backward looping for the purl stitches. Ultimately I only picked up 11 stitches on the back of each mitt. They seem anchored satisfactorily.



And finally a flip picture.

These went really fast and now I want to knit all the mitts.  Hoping to drag out the ones for the Brunette and Husband this weekend.  They're DK weight, they'll go SUPER FAST.

Final details for these mitts:
Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Medium Weight
Water One Off Colorway from (I think) the Rare Gems sale in May
Size 1.5, 2.5mm needles
One week to complete!

Stress Knitting

Tuesday night I went home and told the Philosopher that I just needed 30 minutes to nap before I tackled the current pile of things to do.

Just 30 minutes, wake me up then and we'll eat.

Curled on the bed, trying to shut my brain off, I noticed I had to forcibly relax my hands, which were tightly fisted. My fingernails aren't that long but I cannot imagine that sleeping with clenched fists was going to do anything particularly good to my palms.

I'd spent the afternoon in a research forum, listening to presentations from fellow faculty and giving two presentations of my own. I've grown weary and a little resentful of the current red sock project and was determined to use the time to get through it. I'm almost to the toe on Sock 2, so I made some significant progress but if my hands were anything to go by, it apparently that hadn't brought my stress level down enough. I worry, a bit, how much more stressed I might have been had I not been repeating those K1P1 stitches over and over and over.

Such it was that when I woke up at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday (note that the Philosopher did not wake me up on Tuesday evening), I was pretty sure that I needed something different to knit for a couple of days. The red socks are in time out and I picked up a skein of BMFA Medium Weight and some size 1.5 (2.5mm) needles that I'd stuffed into a project bag a few days ago while sorting the stash.

Oh yes, I sorted the stash a little on Monday. After nearly a year of managing to only really binge once on yarn (the sweater quantities with AudioGirl), I actually feel like I'm starting to get a handle on how much yarn I have. I also wound up another four skeins for socks once I've finished the current pair. If I knit another two sweaters and about a half dozen pair more socks, I might even be able to mostly fit the yarn in it's bins.

Yesterday and today have been a lot of attend-and-listen meetings and with that, the commute, and stress rounds, I've made some progress.

Stress rounds?  Those are those one or two rounds squeezed in when I get back from a meeting or as I read a particularly long email and try to bring my blood pressure down. Can't think clearly, knit a round. Tempted to put my fist through the computer monitor (oddly a less satisfying thought now that we don't have CRT monitors anymore--not that I miss them), knit three rounds.  At only 40 stitches and on such 'large' needles, a round goes quickly and I can set down my security knitting and go back to the problem.

It's a one-off Water from Tina's dyepot and I'm really enjoying it. Hopefully in the next day or so I can have some mittens as it's getting colder.  Maybe also I can have some sanity, but that might be too much to ask from a single skein of wool. 

Sock Show Thursday: Paucity of Mojo

We're mostly thru the super cold snap that charged into Chicago this week. I'm still wearing my hat but not totally yanked down around my ears with a scarf entirely muffling my face.

Knitting mojo has been really low this week. I took a couple of projects with me to Vegas over last weekend and yes, I knit in the casinos. Gambling doesn't appeal to me (as I told the Incredibly Patient Mother, all I could think was how much yarn I could buy with that money) but I'll hang out and the Philosophers friends and the dealers were all charmed and curious about the current sock.

Mostly, though, we were busy and in the days since we got back little has been done. Our return travel day, Monday, saw our flight three hours delayed due to the rain/ice/weather in the area and after landing at 12:15 a.m., we found an iced car! Hooray. Fortunately one door opened so I could dig out the scraper and the Philosopher, who had slightly warmer clothes on and mittens, could scrape things off while I sat in the car with the heater going full blast and slowly melting things from the inside.  With that kind of reentry and getting to bed at 3 a.m. rather than the 11 p.m. we'd hoped for, we've both gotten through what we have to for work and that's about it. 

I think we're hoping for a 7 p.m. bedtime tomorrow so we can get a solid night's sleep before a very full weekend ahead.  

While we were in Vegas I finished sock one of Pair 13. Hmm, you haven't seen those yet.  And there are no pictures to show you.  And it's 9 p.m. and I'm in bed with bad lighting.  So, picture a shaded red yarn, knit in my usual 1x1 ribbed sock.  Now picture Sock 2 as a dozen rows of ribbing.  Tada!  

The muppet scarf is off the needles and waiting for a bath. 

And with the cold, I keep dreaming of new mittens and matching hat and mittens and all the things I want to knit this winter so I'm warm and stylish and everyone I love is also warm and stylish with fresh hats and mitts and scarves. I wonder if I'll get that home-self-cloning kit for Christmas so I can duplicate me...