Saturday, May 14, 2011

So, I was knitting this sock...

A lovely sock.  A blue sock.  A sock for ME.  The thing with designing is that it really cuts into my selfish crafting time, so this was special.  It was nearly done when suddenly I realized I had an appointment in ten minutes.  No problem -- I tucked it away in it's bag, put it on the bed, and off I went.

I realized that something was slightly off when the bag was under my desk and not on the bed when I got home, but didn't think too much about it... I often put my project bags under my desk, maybe I just mis-remembered where I put it.  After dinner when I went to work on it again, though, I realized I had a problem.  The needles were gone.

Not just "pulled out of the stitches" gone.  "I can't find them anywhere" gone.  Initial inspection reveals one nearby on the floor.  Now I'm starting to panic.  I dig around under the desk and find what I'd feared -- a broken DPN.  Careful questioning however reveals that that one has been broken for some time.  Elspeth gets a chat (again) about not touching mommy's knitting stuff without permission.  This is the point where I basically gave up.  I could not find these needles ANYWHERE.

Which of course means my husband found them an hour later.  In the bath tub.  Why were they in the bath tub?  I don't even care.  I got my needles back, and the sock was saved.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Ah, handspun...

How many yards do I have?  Heaven only knows.
So I love spinning.  I mean, seriously, I'm one of those crazy spinners that buys raw, unwashed fleece and processes it myself, by hand.  What I have a problem with is what on earth do I do with the resultant yarn.  A lot of it is in small skeins (hey, I get distracted easily), and it's difficult to know exactly how many yards of the stuff I have.  Thus, most of my handspun has been relegated to sitting in my stash.  But, I've been thinking about it, and have some ideas to use the lovely stuff.
  • Scarves and shawls.  If it looks like you're going to run out of yarn, you can just make them smaller.
  • Hats.  Don't take much yardage.
  • For my high quantity handspun, start with a sweater vest in mind rather than a sweater.  If there's still yarn when you've got the body sewn up, do your sleeves two at a time.
So yeah, handspun!  Hopefully I'll be able to stash down a little bit with this strategy.