More unfinished knitting projects

So I've spent some time cleaning out some drawers in my craft room and found some things I didn't even remember starting!


I have no idea what I was working on here. I know that the yarn was left over from a shawl that I made in 2009. This is getting ripped out and the yarn placed in my leftover bin.


This is clearly a feather and fan scarf. Pretty yarn, no idea now what it is. And no needles in the scarf so no chance of continuing confidently in the same gauge. So ripped it shall be.


Pretty scarf in progress. I think I bought this kit in 2006. Le sigh. Will probably never finish but since it's still on the needles, I'll keep it as such until I feel like ripping or finishing.


No idea what this was supposed to be. But at such a tiny gauge? Who knows? Rip!


Just the cast on row for the Annis shawl. Gorgeous Malabrigo yarn and I know that this will get made eventually.


Fair Isle hat in progress. Only a very small bit of this left so it can be finished up soon.

I believe there are a few more things hiding around my craft room. I'll catch up on those next time.

WIPs to the left of me, WIPs to the right

So I've been knitting away on the Skew socks that I talked about last time. I'm past the heel on the second sock so it's just a short matter of time before I've finished them. They are super snug fitting so they might end up as a gift. But I certainly will knit this pattern again. And to prove that I'm still as crazy as ever, I think I might try to make a stranded version. Not anytime soon though, I have a ton of uncompleted knitted items that need to be addressed first.

First off, let's look at what else I have recorded as in progress on Ravelry.

This is my leftover sock yarn blanket knit with three strands of sock yarn held together, adding a new bit when one runs out. The progress of this was interrupted when my dear Tipper cat had a bit of an accident. She was a dear old cat who passed away over the summer and had some elimination issues now and then. I was able to put the lives stitches on some waste yarn and wash the blanket, but the rest of the leftover yarn was tossed. Since then I've acquired some additional bits of sock yarn (Thanks Tim!) so I can work a bit on this again.


Now I know this Pi Shawl is not getting finished any time soon. For one, the knitting bag is usually in my car as emergency knitting only. Secondly, I usually only knit on it while in a movie theatre or when I need some auto-pilot knitting that I don't have to focus on very much. Also, it is cobweb weight yarn which means a super crap ton of stockinette stitch knitting increases by only a row or two. And lastly, I don't really think I'll ever wear it. The yarn is lovely but not really my color. I started it about 3 years ago and I might be slightly past halfway through. So it's a perpetual WIP and I've come to terms with that.


Here's the Tailored Scallops cardigan designed by Pam Allen. As you can see by this photo, I had some issues with the length on the front and back. Not really sure what is going on with the gauge but I think I've figured out what I need to do and plan to dive back into this project and finish it this winter.


Scotland yarn from Shilasdair! I've swatched and swatched this yarn and finally found a pattern that I like. Unfortunately there is no bust shaping in the pattern and I need to make the adjustments myself. So it's stalled until I get past that point.

Next time, finding all the started and abandoned projects in all the nooks & crannies of my craft room.

NaFiShMo

So it's November already and I'm not sure what happened to October. Many folks are doing the NaNoWriMo thing. I can barely write a blog post now and then so a novel is a bit beyond me.

Several knitters I know are participating in NaKniSweMO. Technically, I could knit a sweater in a month. But that would mean starting yet another sweater. And I haven't dug out all my knitting projects to double check but I believe I have at least four sweaters in progress at the moment. I thought about what I have in the works and I think there's well over a dozen unfinished knitted items in my house. (It might actually be closer to two dozen.) Heck, just two weeks ago, I cast on three new items...none of which are yet completed.

So with that in mind, I've decided to create my own slogan for the month. NaFiShMo. National Finishing Shit Month. The rules are simple.

1. You may not start any new items. (Second socks, gloves, etc are okay as long as the first one has already been cast on.

2. You must finish as many works in progress as possible before the end of the month.

And that is it. I will concede a special dispensation for casting on something new if it is for a knitting class.

So over the next month, I plan to dig out all of my unfinished items and document them. My Ravelry profile shows that I only have five but all that proves is I am a damn dirty liar. Hmmm...I may have to add a third rule.

3. All unfinished items must be documented, either in your Ravelry queue, your blog, Flickr account, actual physical notebook. Whatever, just make sure you know what you need to work on and have a list of it somewhere.

With that being said, what I've been working on the past few days are the Skew socks from Knitty.com. They are knit on the bias and have a very interesting heel.



I've finished the first one and have started the second. I had to rip back a bit last night but I'm sure I'll be back on track in no time.

So look for the rest of my WIPs to be documented soon and if you aren't knitting a sweater or writing a novel this month...then why not join me in finishing what you can this month?

Cleaning things up!

I have a pretty large craft room. In fact, it used to be the formal living room. But it never got much use and everyone hangs out in the family room anyway. So a couple years ago, we put glass french doors in the doorways and it became my craft room. I really like having so much room to sew, knit, spin, even scrapbook now and then. But it's been neglected for months and it has become a dumping ground for stuff that doesn't have a home. Here's what it looked like this past Saturday morning.



Shameful, really. So I devoted my day to putting things in order.



Once most of the junk was off the floor, I decided I need to tackle the desk.


That took me longer than the mess that was all over the floor.



Now that the room is pretty picked up, I feel like I can be creative again. But I do have three baskets worth of mending and alterations to get through now. So many projects, so little time.

Rebooting

It's been a year since I've done any blogging of sorts. LiveJournal was giving me a headache so I'm starting over here. I may eventually copy all my old posts over here but not anytime soon.

So I may as well kick off my blog reboot with a bit of bragging. Sure, why not?

So last week, I dropped off my handspun knee-high socks at the local county fair and entered in the knitted garment from handspun category. Unfortunately, I was so busy all week, I didn't get a chance to attend the fair or even see my competition. I was able to make some time to pick up my socks on the last day. To my shock and delight, I saw that I'd won two ribbons!



Turns out that I won first place (blue ribbon) for the knitted garment from handspun yarn and champion (purple ribbon) in the fiber arts class. Needless to say there was much squeeing and dancing about when I realized what the results were. It was my first time submitting anything to the fair and it felt really wonderful to get that validation.

So...about the socks. The fiber is Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Sheep to Shoe kit. I'm pretty sure the colorway is Farmhouse but there was no label on the bag.



I spun it all up fairly thin on my drop spindle. And instead of plying three singles together as suggested in the directions, I chain-plied it to keep the color progressions together.





As soon as I'd made yarn, I started knitting it up before I'd even finished the spinning. Big mistake. Huge.



First of all, I wasn't really crazy about how the hell looked with the color change. Second of all, it was biasing big time. Since I had just started spinning I had not yet realized it was best to set the twist BEFORE knitting with your handspun yarn. So I ripped out all the knitting I had done and concentrated on finishing the spinning and plying. As is the case with many of my projects it went through various stages of completion and neglect. I started the spinning in 2007 and finally finished the socks in June of this year.

Once I picked up the socks again, I had decided to make the heels match each other and so used a long section of green for each short row heel.



The nature of a handspun yarn means that I would not have perfectly matched socks but I think I came as close as possible without too much additional manipulation.




All in all, I'm very proud of them. It is a darn shame that I finished them in June and it's going to be some time before it is cool enough to wear them. Of course, as soon as the temperature dips slightly, I'm bound to wear them ASAP.

Where to find me

I post most of my knitting stuff here for now.
http://tjstein.livejournal.com