The Museum of Kitschy Stitches

This website is incredible.
www.stitchymcyarnpants.com

Swallowtail Shawl

When your car has been towed to the shop, there isn’t much to do except sit on the couch and knit.

The change of plans

A lot of things have been on my mind.

I think I am making enough money to shift some into savings, but then more bills arrive. My dogs need their shots. My refrigerator is empty. And then my car has broken down. Again.

Visiting Savannah last weekend reminded me what the south really is, because Atlanta is barely a shadow of what surrounds the city. Downtown is all displaced northerners. Next year I want a real career, and before I let myself settle down I desperately want to try to get out of the south. The dream is Oregon. This takes considerably more money.

Finally, trying to figure out life in the London suburbs has been difficult. Figuring out where we would live, get around, and what I would do all day… it’s not accessible like the city center. I could see myself going stir crazy and racking up credit card debt.

So. I am not going to England for three months.

I’ll take the dogs up home to Annapolis for a few months, write my thesis, look around for an internship, and not pay rent. Meet up with Dave in England for a week or so in November and see my sister in Amsterdam. And then, hopefully, move to the West Coast.

Things completed

The laminaria is finished!

I passed my candidacy review. The letter came with a list of complaints about my portfolio. Complaints about a book review on which I received a perfect score in the class for which it was written, about not having page numbers on every page when that wasn’t something I could coordinate between word, excel, and pdf pages, and other things I just don’t care to argue.

I passed. And now I can move on to getting my thesis proposal written.

Newly dyed yarns

Tan yarn, food coloring and cherry kool-aid. Looks like a tomato, or the movie Amelie.

Tan yarn and food coloring. Makes me think of blueberry pie or those skirts that new-age women wear.

I found it, finally

I’ve been reading up about different dyeing techniques to escape from that mess of kool-aid experiments. Natural dyeing has a draw for me, especially when you see the beautiful colors that can escape red cabbage, spinach, onion skins and the rainbow of mushrooms. But the prepping work, the chemicals and heavy metals involved, it all feels prohibitive while I live in an apartment. I decided to move along to food coloring, which uses the same method as kool aid but without the toxic fruit smell. There are so many more colors available this way.

I ended up buying an inexpensive crock pot at Target so that I would have a controllable environment with a white background so that I can see where I’m pouring my colors. I still have two skeins of tan prepping in some vinegar water for an overdye later today or tomorrow, but I was too excited and had to play with my single skein of white last night. The method I used was hot dye from an article in knitty.

I could not be happier with this! It makes me think of Monet’s water lilies.

My plans for this will be dyeing roving and spinning hand dyed yarn. I planned to buy a drop spindle this weekend, but other things such as vet appointments for the dogs took the front seat. I know that I want a spindle from butterflygirl on etsy, and I can’t wait for my next big challenge.

Holy crap

I was so glad this weekend to finish the star chart on the laminaria shawl and work into the second of three stages, the blossom chart. I was knitting away in front of BBC America with the windows wide open (oh how I love weekends) when I somehow lost a stitch. I tugged at my work, it slipped down a few good inches, and I froze. There was a stranded hole in my work.

How on EARTH am I supposed to pick up a stitch in this complicated pattern? I even got out a small dpn and tried, and my eyes hurt trying to focus on tiny little loops and compared it to the next blossom pattern over to attempt a backwards recreation…

But I had to accept it - this was never going to happen. The only thing to do was to tear out a few hours worth of beautiful lace work.

I was going to have a picture for you, but now you’ll just have to wait until I catch back up with where I was before the horror struck.

Estonian speedbumps

Critiques, cover pages, explanations of intent, revisions, and a vision paper later, I think my portfolio is finally about ready to drop in the mail.

Maybe I’ll keep an extra copy to burn and shred and throw all over the place.

After a few good hours of solid head throbbing work at my computer last night, I finally let myself cast on for Laminaria.  The Estonian knit stitches are beautiful, but between k3tog and sssk3tog on laceweight yarn, I was constantly missing stitches, feeling completely confused about how you would pick up your stitches in this pattern, and unraveling my work.

I got myself back to a spot where I could begin again, more slowly this time.  I’m used to being a little speed demon with my knitting, keeping tight tension and a crazy excitement to see what my project will look like.  But I don’t really need more hats or gloves, I think right now I’d much rather end up with a complicated stunning shawl and some Estonian stitch skill than a pile of worsted weight 3-day projects.

This attention span

Casting on for an intricate project when I’m not sure I will have enough yarn.  Just think of all of the horrible metaphors I am avoiding right now.

The project in question might be a lightweight spring scarf.  If not, it will be a lightweight spring rectangle.

I decided that my thesis portfolio will be completed this weekend.  Since I’m really discovering how bad my attention span is, two ideas came to mind.  First, that I could publish my critiques as a private blog post and edit it here, since I am so much more motivated writing in this format than on MS Word.  Second, that I should sleep all afternoon and stay up late at night writing.  For some reason, my mind slows down and concentrates much better at night.  Even if my apartment is completely quiet at three in the afternoon, late at night just feels more relaxed.

I’m lucky that I was doing late night ghost tours when I did my undergraduate thesis since I could come home at 9 pm, stay up till 3 am writing, and sleep in until late morning.  There’s still a possibility that working 9-5 (and all that comes along with that kind of job) is just a temporary stage in my life, and I will find something that fits better.

Rainy Baltimore

Knitting with kool-aid dyed yarn is funny because it still has this fruity smell. The yarn has lightened, and I can’t really decide if it’s too pink for me. It’s such an odd in-between color.

Baltimore has more abandoned storefronts than I remember. I was surprised by a sudden influx of senior citizens bearing nametags into my sister’s cello recital, the conservatory must be a stop on a tour. This resulted in silly comments from the row behind me like, “Well I like classical music, but I’m really not so sure about this contemporary stuff!” (But the following Beethoven blew them away. She is amazing.)

My mom and I stopped into a Baltimore yarn store while we were driving home in the rain. There were no prices marked on anything because the women who worked there thought it was just too tedious. Instead, they figured, you can just ask them. I resisted the urge to walk around the store asking, “This one? How about this one? And this?”

Still, I fulfilled my mission to find some laceweight:

Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace (70% alpaca, 30% silk)

Mmm exciting possibilities. And my yarn pictures look nicer with my new camera.