a singular knitter

It’s no surprise, especially after the photographic proof in my last post, that I have numerous one-off skeins.  Many are from when I first started cultivating my stash.  Let’s be honest, though – I’ve accumulated single skeins of yarn throughout my knitting lifespan.

It’s Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival weekend.  So what does that usually mean for me?  An excessive amount of yarn and fiber purchasing.  Though it’s true that I seriously limit my craft-spending throughout the year, I do tend to go a bit overboard when I’m at festivals and retreats.

To counterbalance the overwhelming feeling of needing to purchase every beautiful skein of yarn and braid of fiber – I decided that the couple weeks before the festival would be a great time to go through and reorganize my stash.  What better way to remind myself that I already have plenty of amazing yarn and fiber?  Plus, I had let things get a bit out of hand in the craft room and was no longer certain what had and hadn’t been entered into Ravelry.

I started with yarn – I pulled out and sorted all of it by weight.  My yarn stash had originally been sorted this way, but over time a few added bins had entered into the mix and not necessarily following this guideline.

M decided she should give some perspective, so you can clearly see just how much yarn this is 😉

Once everything was sorted and it thoroughly sunk in just how much there is…. I started the fun and exciting job of confirming my stash listed in Ravelry.

I’m not going to lie this took forever.  This maybe might be why I didn’t finish this step for my next two sections of stash….

Next up – handspan yarn.  I definitely hadn’t realized how much of my handspun I haven’t knit up yet.  I usually am immediately inspired once it’s finished to find a project to knit.  However, I think once I started spinning and completing handspun projects more quickly, my knitting wasn’t able to keep up!  I also didn’t realize how many skeins I hadn’t entered into Ravelry…. not even the fiber prior to spinning.  This was a bit discouraging and I found myself placing these mystery skeins to the side as I will have to do some research to determine the fiber content.

Finally, I took out and sorted all of my fiber.  This included two Jacob fleeces (one of them I promise I have started spinning!) as well as samples I received in fiber boxes and my batt carding stash.  This is where I definitely still have an entire bin to catalog, but at least it has been isolated so that I don’t end up spinning it assuming it’s in Ravelry and somehow losing all the information in the process!

So now the question is – how good was I at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival earlier today?  You’d think that after seeing all of my stash spread out in all it’s glory across my craft room floor I would definitely have kept myself in check?  Right?!

That would probably have been the case if it hadn’t been for M – the other spinner and new knitter in the house who has decided she needs a stash too…… (plus the tons of other goodies we picked up!)

Happy Spring everyone! It’s been a while – as usual – but there has been a ton of progress since my last check in. This year, I am attempting to complete a year of handmade gifts.

Seriously.

The entire year’s-worth of presents will all be handmade. Okay, so there are two exceptions to this rule, but only because these gifts were actually purchased last year, and it would be silly to hold on to them for an entire year just to prove a point to myself.

At the beginning of the year, I made a list of people and events where a gift would be necessary – holidays, birthdays, baby showers. All of them made the list. Even end-of-year teacher’s gifts. Once I knew what I was trying to accomplish – then came the real fun: breaking down deadlines for each gift. In order to stay on top of everything, while still enjoying the holidays, I knew I needed a monthly breakdown. Aside from my niece’s birthday present, which has since been completed, I have been one hundred percent on track, thus far. Let’s also confirm, her birthday is still a couple months away – so the few extra days it took me to complete her present were definitely not devastating to my plan.

The sad news? Since nearly everything I am making this year is a gift – pictures may be limited. At least until after I have presented the gifts to their recipients! However, I will be sure to sprinkle in a few other projects here and there that will be safe to post. I know I need visuals, so I’ll try to keep things interesting for you, as well!

I am glad to say, that I have completed two crocheted baby blankets already this year. The first is seriously overdue (the baby is about to turn 1), and I maybe still have some ends to weave in (finishing always brings me down), but the crocheting is done!

The second I decided to keep simple so that I had any hopes of having it finished for the baby shower I was hosting…

Sugar Wheel Baby Blanket by Elena Hunt knit in Knit Picks Brava Bulky in the canary and orange colorways.

I also ended up adding a couple additional gifts into the mix at the last minute. We have two lovely, but somewhat fragile, Easter baskets in our family – handed down to me and my sister from my mother and aunt. Madison had been using one of them as her Easter Basket. However, the logistics of safely getting the other basket to my sister, as well as the knowledge that my daughter and niece will likely not be the only two grandchildren, gave me the silly idea that I should make them baskets. So back to crocheting I went (I swear I knit….) to make these using the Easter Basket pattern by Kara Gunza using various kitchen cotton for stability (and durability):

In addition to these blankets and baskets, I have also completed four sets of fingerless mitts using the Lovey Dovey Two Tone Mitts pattern by Jess Brown.  (See the below proof that I do actually knit).

Knit using Knit Picks Swish Worsted in the wonderland heather colorway and Miss Babs Yowza in the dalmation of purple colorway.

Knit using Cascade 220 Superwash in the walnut heather and baby denim colorways.

Also knit in 220 walnut Heather and baby denim colorways, reversed.  Modeled by M.

Knit using Lion Brand Vanna’s Choice in the grey marble and charcoal grey colorways with a touch of Knit Picks Swish Worsted in the Bordeaux colorway.

This pattern has proven to be incredibly addicting, as it is fun, SUPER simple and conveniently has been using up some leftovers. While completing other less-than-mindless projects, these mitts have saved my sanity. Plus, they are the perfect carry along project! M has helped pick out the color combinations for both of her teachers, as well as for herself. The fourth pair may also be gifted (shhhh – it’s a secret 😉 ).

So far, I have completed 18 projects so far in 2017 – totaling about 3,500 yds.  That’s more than half of the yardage used for all of 2016. I definitely foresee a very productive year!!

I know it may seem late, but what are your crafting goals for the year?  Have you ditched your previously set goals and are starting fresh with the new season?  Or are you keeping light and just going with the flow?

After a year of missing both Maryland Sheep and Wool and New York Sheep and Wool festivals, I couldn’t handle the wait leading up to MDSW this year.  Since I didn’t have any purchases that were necessary, we took a different approach than in years past.  This was the year M took the lead… and did she ever.

For every festival we have attended in the past, my mother has joined us – both to help out so there were two of us keeping an eye on M when she was super young, and to enjoy the festivities.  This year, though, my mother opted out so it was just M and I going to our first festival alone.  Oddly, it was also the first festival we went without a stroller….

Losing both my mother and the stroller did present some obstacles – especially including me not having a place to put my growing shopping bags and M not having another adult to distract her.  But M wasn’t phased.  She was so excited to be spending the entire day just the two of us to celebrate Mother’s Day a day early.  What I didn’t expect was her shopping enthusiasm.

Though, really, she is my daughter.  I’m not sure why this was a surprise.  I encouraged her to lead me wherever she wanted to go throughout the fair grounds.  We made it only steps past the gate before she was pulling me into a booth.  Luckily, that was the information booth and I didn’t start hemorrhaging money yet.

Our first several purchases of the day were definitely for M – she fell in love with a basket, a hand-woven coin purse and a stuffed llama within ten minutes.  I then, somehow, managed to convince her we couldn’t buy an entire ceramic tea set at the very beginning of our day as it would likely be broken by the time we would head to the car.

I am incredibly lucky, though.  She hasn’t lost her love of sheep. We spent the majority of our time in the barns staring at and petting all the different breeds and loving every minute of it.

I also can’t complain about M’s love of shopping as she pulled me into several amazing booths to purchase yarn and fiber.  She even helped me pick out a new Jacob fleece – this one only about a pound and much smaller than my last.  I couldn’t justify buying anything larger, since I still haven’t spun up the last Jacob fleece…

Overall, it was everything I needed it to be.  M and I had some serious mother-daughter time and enjoyed being outdoors and surrounded by the things we love.  M’s favorite part? “Walking and spending time with you, Mom.”  (Insert a serious AWWWW face here – because my heart totally melted)

Alright, it’s definitely been a significant amount of time since I finished the epic project and I think it’s finally time to talk about it.  This project completely changed how I think about myself as a crafter.  For those of you who are new to this blog, I started off as a knitter.  I’ve been knitting now for 15 years and I began spinning over 4 years ago.  But could I crochet? Not hardly.  I tried once back in high school before deciding that learning to knit might be a better idea for me (I ended up with the wonkiest piece of fabric when first trying to crochet).  Over the last couple of years, though, I’ve slowly taught myself basic crochet stitches and even successfully made a few items.  However, all of these were somewhat simple projects, usually involving only one type of stitch.

So of course, when I found out my sister was having her first child, I decided to go all out and find the most complex crochet blanket I have ever seen.  Okay – in my credit, that’s not exactly how this went down.  I saw the pattern on Pinterest and fell in love.  The colors were so bright and cheerful and all the textures looked like a baby’s dream come true.  I was so smitten that I couldn’t dream of NOT making this blanket.

Seemingly, anyone who crochets, and even many knitters, now know that I’m talking about the Sophie’s Universe blanket by Dedri Uys.  At the time that I found the pattern, it was just Sophie’s Garden – a much smaller blanket that I decided I would just add more rounds to until it was a size I was happy with.  But then when I was ready to buy the yarn, I noticed that the designer was hosting a mystery KAL for this larger version, and clearly I had to join in!

Little did I know that this blanket would take me nearly nine months to finish!  I took little breaks here and there when I had NO idea what I was doing and I just wasn’t mentally capable of learning another stitch or technique.  Plus, once it got to a certain size, and I couldn’t bring it back and forth to work on it during my lunch breaks, it became a bit more slow-going.  However, most of the slow down was that almost every round, I had to learn even more about crochet.

Yes, I used my sleeping child to give some perspective on the size…

Some of my knitting friends joked with me at a retreat that I could no longer go around saying that I don’t really know how to crochet.  This blanket was essentially a master-crochet project.  I don’t really believe that’s the case – even though it certainly felt like it – but it definitely threw me into the deep end of crochet!  Or maybe off the deep end, I can’t decide….

Luckily, there was only one time that I was seriously discouraged while working on this blanket.  I foolishly started looking at other Ravelry project pages and nearly cried when I saw that someone had managed to crochet the entire blanket in 15 days.  15 DAYS!  At this point, I had put in a solid 6 months.  I was a little bit devastated by my incompetence and slowness.

In the end, I have no regrets.  This blanket became everything I dreamt of and every time my sister posts pictures of my niece even near this blanket, my heart sings.  The somewhat sad part – I’ve already promised my own daughter that I will eventually make her one.  I just have to somehow muster the inner-strength to take that one on… I’m thinking monotones and less color changes will likely be the game plan!

Now that the holidays are solidly behind us and all the decorations have been put away, I’ve finally started to think about whether or not I’ll be setting any goals for 2016.  I’m not big into resolutions that just make me feel like a failure halfway through the year.  I’m totally okay with setting goals, though.  It’s a small difference, I know, but I can look at a goal that’s even half-achieved and see the accomplishment.

That being said – I’m not making a ton of knitting goals this year.  Last year, I spent over half the year on one crochet project – a true labor of love – and this year, I just want to knit or crochet whatever I’m drawn to.  I do have a couple projects I definitely want to finish, like a well-deserved sweater I’ve been working on for my mother.  Otherwise, I just want to knit whatever inspires me.

However, I did find that my spinning fell by the wayside last year.  Mostly because I was so determined to finish that one project (I’m clearly not even ready to talk about the project… maybe soon).  I also think I was just in a spinning funk.  The last few spinning projects I worked on all ended up being fingering weight or finer and took me what felt like forever to finish.  In fact, the spinning project I finished today, is a three-ply fingering weight.  I’m ready to cleanse my palate, so to speak, and do some fun and easy spinning.  Mix things up a bit.  Spin some small sample projects, even.  Especially since my biggest goal of all this year is finally spinning my jacob fleece for my Rhinebeck sweater.

I’ve decided to make up a spinning bin.  There is already a group on Revelry that does a Spin Your Bin spin-along.  I’m not taking part in the spin-along, but I’m definitely taking inspiration from it.  I pulled out some of my oldest fiber, as well as other new and interesting things to keep me on my toes.  I’ve gathered it all up, photographed it for some accountability and put it all in a nice clear bin by my spinning wheel.  This way, when I finish one spinning project, I won’t go into analysis paralysis when deciding what to spin next.

As you can see, there is quite a lot in the bin, but I already have a pretty good idea how I want to spin each project.

Some of the projects are already in progress.

Some are samplers of different fiber blends.

Some are even combinations of different fiber braids that I’d like to play with plying together.

The real goal: I want to get back to playing and experimenting with my spinning while getting some major, maybe even looming, spinning projects completed.

This may end up being a much longer post than my norm.  But I really do want to let you in on a few things that have happened over the course of the year that have caused me to refocus!

In case you didn’t pick up on the little hint in the last post, one of the biggest changes is that I am now a first-time homeowner.  M and I moved into our first house back in July and we’re absolutely in love with our new home!  Of course, one of the wonderful joys of owning a house: LOTS of projects!  We were very lucky to find a house that was completely move-in ready and there still aren’t any major projects that are needed.  We are incredibly grateful!

That being said, the projects I’m referring to are not major renovations and I have, sadly, done absolutely no furniture building thus far.  At this point, we’re only working on organizational systems and little crafty projects to make the house feel like home.  But we’re loving every minute of it (even when it means I have to go up on the roof)!

One of the other major changes is that M is now in grade school! Not only is this just awesome and she impresses me daily, but it also means so many adjustments to our daily lives.  Instead of driving her to daycare every day, at whatever time fit with my work schedule, we’re now pressed to drop her off at school right when the school opens so that I can get to work on time.  Plus, we have to pack her lunch EVERY DAY!  The HORROR! 😉 *yes, I know we were super spoiled before….. and I only mini-miss it..*

Obviously, packing a lunch isn’t the end of the world and, sometimes, it’s even super fun when I can get M involved.  But packing a lunch for a child who was lucky enough to be served a healthy, hot lunch everyday at her old daycare tends to be a crazy challenge.  Especially when most of her suggestions go like this:

M: How about soup?

Me: To eat cold? There are no microwaves…

M: Oh.  What about pasta?

Me: Still no way to heat it up….

M: Right…. ummmmmmmmmmmmm

Regardless, we’ve managed to make preparing her lunches almost an easy experience… after a few months of practice!

The final major change isn’t quite as upbeat as the other two, though it’s really not the end of the world.  I toyed with whether or not to mention it – but in the end, it will be a major part of my life now – and maybe discussing it here could help others who may be dealing with a similar issue.  I won’t go into a lot of detail in this post, as I’d like to give people the option to easily skip over a post about medical issues – which has little to do with the general crafty-nature of this blog.

However, I was diagnosed with Gastroparesis a few months ago after experiencing pain very similar to the pain I had prior to having my gallbladder removed last summer.  After freaking out thinking the major organ that had been attached to my gallbladder (i.e. – my LIVER) was failing (truth – the pain really does radiate throughout the chest making it incredibly difficult to really localize), my awesome specialist was able to confirm somewhat quickly – after many tests – that I have moderate Gastroparesis.  My specialists explained it to me as this: if I eat the same meal as a “normal” person – in three to four hours, the other person’s stomach would be empty.  Mine? Still half full.  I’m still super holding onto that optimistic “half-full” concept 😉

Since I am still in the “moderate” zone of this condition, and due to the amount of pills I have to ingest for another unfortunate condition, my doctor and I agreed that for now we would try to maintain my health through dietary changes.  This is DEFINITELY still a work in progress. A couple times a week, I’m on a liquid diet to give my stomach a much-needed break.  I was warned that the best possible way to keep my stomach happy is to “eat” like I don’t have teeth.  Smoothies are my best friend.  Too bad I love solid food.  So everything in moderation has become an extreme and I’m struggling to find a balance with still enjoying food (even my love of salads isn’t helping me here) while not causing extreme pain that makes me want to both scrunch up in a ball of pain and bend all the way backwards to somehow stretch my stomach out… it’s bizarre, I know.

Though I’m not likely to spend many days writing about these struggles – there may be instances, especially during the holidays, when this condition will play a major role in our lives and will probably sneak its way into posts.

All in all, I certainly cannot complain about the past year.  I have so much to share with you all and I can’t wait to get started! I promise much more crafty-talk and pictures to come soon!! Now to get caught up with work so that I have the time to fill you in on all the exciting things we’ve been doing!!