HA HA! Estoy Usando El Internet!

Click to embiggen

I'm not sure if this counts for blog week, since comics aren't exactly new here, though I haven't done a full page one in years.

Where Are They Now?

And day four (2KCBWDAY4) with this prompt:

Whatever happened to your __________?
Write about the fate of a past knitting project. Whether it be something that you crocheted or knitted for yourself or to give to another person. An item that lives with you or something which you sent off to charity.

It took a little bit of digging because most of my winter wear has been put up (and to be truthful, I don't pull this out much even then) but I have found my very first finished object.

Not pictured: All the giggling I was doing because taking photos of myself feels so silly.

Blog friends, people shouldn't be allowed onto the internet as teenagers.  They just shouldn't.  Not to protect their delicate sensibilities, but to spare them the embarrassment of going back ten years later to find the blog post they wrote about learning to knit.

The post itself isn't too bad (though I seem to have had an interesting relationship with spelling and grammar, my god) but having to go through all of My Very Important Adolescent Feelings to find it was horrifying.  Like, kid, some day you'll have bills to pay, stop whining about your English teacher being useless.*

I tried to clean up the typos and some of the grammar, though I left the frenetic run-on sentences because I still haven't grown out of those.  Here's what my seventeen year old self had to say about learning to knit:

I feel like Penelope, only I'm knitting instead of weaving.

Let me explain. 

Sometime today I decided I should learn how to knit, so I went to Michael's bought some yarn and needles and a how-to book and all afternoon and evening I've been learning how to knit. So I practiced casting on, until about three hours ago when I decided that my edge was good enough to start actually knitting so, I started knitting (while listening to "My Evil Plans" *heart*) and of course I keep pulling the entire thing apart over and over again so I can continue practicing. And my hands hurt from me making them move like they're not used to moving.

But all this pain, frustration and infernal clicking later what do I have to show for it? A slightly frayed length of yarn and an empty pair of knitting needles. That's right, I've undone it all. So this is where Penelope comes in. I work all day and carefully undo it at night, so I have nothing to show for my labors.

*whacks head on table* Somebody just kill me now. I haven't even tried to learn how to purl yet.

Shortly after learning how to purl I made the above scarf.  I remember it was Caron on 5mm needles and I hadn't learned the magic of tinking yet, so that when I made a mistake I oh-so-cleverly pulled out the needle and frogged back until I was past it.  Then I carefully put the needle back in and kept on keeping on.

Unsurprisingly, it has some quirks:

I've helpfully labelled my cast on edge (where I was still clearly in the 'ooh, knitting is hard' stage) and a row of twisted stitches where I yanked out the needle to fix a mistake.  I don't actually remember it, but I think it's safe to assume I was feeling pretty good about having this knitting thing down only to catch a mistake, curse in every language I could think of and then chuck it across the room.

Here's something I didn't notice until months later and I know I should probably fix (especially as I do still wear this from time to time) but I leave it out of a goofy sense of nostalgia:

Well, that was a fun trip back in time.  If only there were more DeLoreans and less teenage angst.

*Obviously he was if I was seventeen and still confusing 'their' and 'they're.'  Even if it was informal, off the cuff, internet-y writing.

Tidy Mind, Tidy Stitches

Here we are at day three of blog week (2KCBWDAY3) with the following prompt:

How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.

 Curse you new floors!  That bit about personally daring me to photograph yarn as I find it?  Two weeks ago I could have done that handily and proven that, truly, there are those of us who just don't have anything in the way of organization.

Well. That may be overstating things a little.  But only just.  I have a rather large chest in the corner of the living room next to my side of the couch (the one with my hard won butt dent) that has zip top bags filled with yarn.  But the likelihood of yarn making it from purchase to zip top to chest is pretty darn small.  And if I want to use the yarn right away or just look at it for a while then I don't even have the advantage of knowing which shopping bag it was in.  It could literally be anywhere I might have put it down.  Or hidden it from the cats after putting it down.  Or hidden it from myself because it got in the way.

Despite that my tendency to lose things is actually not that bad.  In fact, I'm more likely to lose something if I've put it away someplace obvious.  Which is why I can tell the Boyfriend that the shopping bag from the trip to the hardware store three months ago is beneath the chair in the dining room near his shoes.  Ask me to find my favorite black bra after I specifically announce to myself aloud, 'I am putting this in this drawer because I have just washed it,' and I'm tearing apart the house.

So, I know my Cascade Magnum was on the DVD shelf next to Zoolander*, the red variegated sock yarn was on the corner of the coffee table, bits and bobs of the cotton acrylic blend for the commissioned monkeys was behind the left hand cushion of the love seat, the Baby Ull and half a fingerless mitt that I really need to start over was in the magazine rack.... I could keep going but why?

Now all my yarn is in three places: the chest (which has no organizational system besides 'what will fit in this bag'), a box packed with all the crafty related shenanigans I could round up from downstairs (and my copy of The Wasteland, for some reason) and the freezer.  I guess, four places if you count the trash.

Why the freezer and the trash? Well, this:

If you see this bastard anywhere in your house just burn the place down and salt the earth.  Even then you'll have nagging doubts about whether it really, truly is this time gone.

I knew there was a point to all those zip top bags when I first started using them.

*Wait, that's a filing system that almost makes sense.  If you squint.

Skill + 1UP

And it's day two of blog week (2KCBWDAY2) and the prompt is:

Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet (can you crochet cable stitches now where you didn’t even know such things existed last year? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?

 Hmm.  I rather wish I was better at keeping note of what I've made so that I could do a proper job of this prompt.  Frankly, I'm probably more curious about the answer than anyone else.

Pater's hat that I gave him for Christmas was both the first bit of stranded color work I did in the round and managed to keep even tension with so it didn't pucker and look strange.  Here's Pater's hat, what you can see of it because he liked it pushed back on his head:

I also bought a copy of Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard which has know convinced me that I can make sweaters that actually fit me in the way they're meant.  I haven't shown you a finished picture of Slinky Ribs (Ravelry link) here on the blog yet because it's still technically unfinished.  I still have the sleeves to do.  But, I know it fits and fits well because I might have worn it as a vest once or twice.

Ahem.

I've also learned quite a bit about shaping knitting when it comes to making toys.  I got the hang of making various geometric shapes (like Cezanne, I see toys as basic geometric solids that simply need to be put together in the correct way) and so have gone from Monkey Mark I, who I made after quite a few improvements when it came to thinking three dimensionally in knitting, I should add:

to the more appealing Monkey Mark IV (it was apparently quite the learning curve):

On the crochet front, I've finally jumped on board with granny squares.  It's not that I didn't like them, it was that it took quite a while to power through my mental block about crochet.

My great aunt made me this granny square afghan out of bits and bobs and it's one of my most treasured possessions.

Now, once I'd thought I'd gotten the hang of crochet one of the first things I did was make a basic granny square, so I can't say that this is much of a step up.  It just took me a while to get there.  But I think that I finally understand granny squares, enough that I can stop following patterns to the letter.  Now, I don't want to say that I've come up with an all new afghan block, I used motifs from several existing squares to get where I am now.

Unfortunately, all the finished squares have been packed up because of the impending new floors, but I can show the center of one of the squares:

Sorry about the dark photo, the red was making my camera have a nutty under the lamp.

If you could just imagine the usual granny square dc 'shells' in white around it until its about seven inches, then a black sc border, I'd appreciate it.

And that's all I can think of.  Aside from learning that I should use the project notebook on Ravelry more frequently because I like the time capsule into my crafting that it provides.  But as that's a lesson I didn't learn until today I don't think it should count.