I have taken my knitting or crochet project with me when I set out to walk to the boat launch about a 1/2 mile from our house. Once there I settle on a rock or fence and take in the lovely view of the water, clouds, and/or sun, but I find that I do this more often during the off-season than not. I guess I just like the quiet while I work and relax. This makes having a portable project going at all times rather important to me. Maybe I am rationalizing the multitude of items I’m making at any given point in time, but I want something that will pop into my backpack and I don’t want to take my car project. We all know how that goes. You take the car project “just this once” and suddenly it’s a home when you need it most.

I have taken my knitting or crochet project with me when I set out to walk to the boat launch about a 1/2 mile from our house. Once there I settle on a rock or fence and take in the lovely view of the water, clouds, and/or sun, but I find that I do this more often during the off-season than not. I guess I just like the quiet while I work and relax. This makes having a portable project going at all times rather important to me. Maybe I am rationalizing the multitude of items I’m making at any given point in time, but I want something that will pop into my backpack and I don’t want to take my car project. We all know how that goes. You take the car project “just this once” and suddenly it’s a home when you need it most.

My livingroom has baskets with my various projects in it. This worked well during the storm we had in October when we lost power for almost a week. I had projects in various stages of progress so I could choose an item to go with the light I had throughout the day. It was too snowy to sit on the deck then.

A bit breezy outside for this.

So back to my original question, I do craft outside. I’m looking forward to weaving outdoors again and I am planning to hold a friends knitting/crocheting/whatever-you-make afternoon on my deck and yard just to enjoy the company and ideas of the people who humor me in my flights of lunacy. I think cookies should be involved.

This is one of the three squares I am working on from the Austentatious Crochet book. The three square button together to make a lovely shawl, but for practical – and lazy – reasons I am not going to sew on the 42 buttons to make this a shawl that can be made into two different styles. While the buttons are lovely, I have waist length hair and unless I wore my hair up every time I wore the shawl I would spend many unhappy moments untangling my locks from the buttons. Plus I’m bone lazy when it comes to sewing and the thought of 42 buttons makes me cringe. This and the first square look to be my Friday Finish project since I haven’t gotten back to my son’s fingerless mitts since I beat up my hands at work.  Maybe those will be next week’s finish. That would be lovely.

I also want to make up some cotton baby bibs for the studio. They look adorable and they are very soft. AND there are no plastic edges or iron-on pictures on them to begin the latex allergy trip. I would like to make something to go with the bibs as a set, but I just can’t decide what to make. Booties don’t necessarily go with bibs, hats are seasonal for the most part, and toys don’t mix nicely with baby food.  If anyone has an idea for me to jump on I will be happy to entertain it and perhaps pass along a bib to the idea maker. Thanks for thinking about it.

The second project is the brown cotton/acrylic fingerless mitts I’m making for my son. I’ve almost finished the first one and in all honesty I don’t think that I could finish the other by tomorrow unless I’m not working. Sadly, my day job gets in my way.  I really like the Kraemer Tamany Tweed yarn. I also have it in a cream color that works up beautifully. Very comfy. I might just have to make a vest or sweater out of it. There’s another project just waiting to be started. Oh, my.

Last and certainly not least, I have the Romney roving to spin. This is my own personal little Catch-22. I’m not very good at spinning so I don’t spin often and I’m not very good at spinning because I don’t spin often.  I’m still trying to map out my scheduling with all of the new things I’ve decided I just HAVE to do and it’s a slow trip. If I could just set a 1/2 hour a day aside for spinning I’d be doing much better at it. Wish I had more time in my day, baby steps are just taking too long. So, how do you focus on your projects, whatever they may be, to get you to the end result?

Image via Wikipedia

I’m on my first viewing of my DVD Warping Your Loom by Madelyn van der Hoogt and I’m enjoying immensely. She is literally starting from the beginning and explaining everything in language that I, a novice, can understand. I know that this sounds somewhat simple for an instructional DVD, but I’ve run across others on other topics that tend to talk above the viewer. I’m sure it’s not intentional, and I know that I have to rethink my wording every time I start teaching another group because we all tend to forget steps we’ve done a hundred times and has become rote. I think I shall watch it a few times before starting my warping. It’s been this long, I might as well be completely comfortable when I do it. Also I have to get my warping board mounted to the wall. Such a minor thing, but it solves the sore back muscle issue nicely. The first lesson I’ve learned from this is to go to a professional and a visual one if possible.

Yesterday we had our first substantial snow of the year and it made for a cozy afternoon to be inside with this DVD and some yarn. I don’t seem to be able to just sit and watch TV or listen to a show without doing something, so even while I was watching this wonderful warping DVD I was knitting a fingerless mitt. The yarn is Kraemer’s Tatamy Tweed cotton/acrylic blend. I chose this yarn for durability and I think that I will be able to work more comfortably in these than the alpaca mitts I made last month. I love the alpaca. The color is a deep rich brown and they are incredibly soft and warm, but I would prefer to wear them for reading than working because they are just too luscious to ruin. They have made a much bigger difference for me than I expected. My hands are much happier warm than not and winter will be winter in New England.

I clearly need to get a hand model since my arms are too short for not only reading, but for modeling my own gloves and mitts. This yarn I bought from an alpaca farm near me and I am hoping to visit there soon. I like the idea of using locally grown and/or bred merchandise. Another of my winter projects is to find other sources of yarn and fiber within my state.  I don’t think this will slow down my other yarn purchasing, but I think we should try to support those around us as best we can.

The shawl that isn't.

This has been an unproductive few days for me. I began a shawl on New Year’s Day in a white flecked Red Heart yarn. I picked up again on Sunday night and had to start again as I’d lost my row count paper. I’m sure I’ll find it now, but it was no where to be seen on Sunday. I worked about 15 rows on Sunday into Monday in between doing household chores and decided that I really like the pattern. Then I checked the yarn. One of the skeins had several cuts in it and I was getting an end about every 12 – 15 feet. Apparently my cats had a good time one day while I wasn’t home. I ripped that out and put the two skeins that I do have intact aside for another project.

Next up I took some of the Dazzleaire yarn that I knitted my last triangular shawl out of and started the pattern again. I have about 4 skeins of that and I loved the colors. I worked on that on Tuesday and Wednesday while watching TV and it was coming along nicely until I realized that it would still be shorter than I wanted when it was finished. I don’t think that they make this color Dazzleaire any longer so here I go again….ripping it apart.

I think perhaps I’ll just call it a day on this shawl and start another project, one that I plan out a little better. What do you have planned for the weekend?

The yarn I used on my second attempt.

It’s a perfect day for staying inside and working with wool. The wind is howling around the house and the temp is a bone chilling 1 degree F. Some hot tea, my handbook, a scratch pad, and I should be golden. The pictures will tell the tale.

I’ve hit my first snag. After finally figuring out (I think) the right number of epi and the correct sequence on the warping board, I find that my back is screaming after about 25 rounds. I need 384 if my calculations are correct so it would appear that you won’t see a picture of the loom warped today. I will however continue to return to the warping board to continue my wrapping so that with any kind of luck and a good breeze I will have much more interesting news to share with you on Thursday.

Commonsense has finally prevailed. I am going to order the Warping Your Loom DVD from Interweave. Sometimes  I can be so dense it amazes even me. I’ve been beating my head against a wall on this for 4 months. Should have just ordered the video earlier! I guess I’ll head off to work on a rug that I can make now. Thanks for your patience on this one.