Thursday 26 February 2015

Progress

I was a bit worried that the blanket wouldn't be done on time.  I'm 27 weeks pregnant now and that means my due date is 13 weeks away, but I figure I should have the blanket done by 37 weeks just in case the baby comes early.  I have no reason to suspect it will, but I always get a bit nervous cutting it close on deadlines.  The other night I was lying in bed and was seriously concerned about the fact that I want the blanket to be 3' square, which means I need 36 squares, which means 4 a week and that leaves me an extra week to seam them together and crochet the border.

The fact that I have been working on a blanket out of sock yarn with 2.25mm needles might have coloured my idea of how long this would take.  This yarn, however, is quite chunky and I've made 6 squares (I'm almost done the seventh) in the last 4 days.  My yarn isn't quite as variegated as the yarn for the dots in the original pop blanket, so I'm contemplating reversing the main colour and contrastign colour for half of the squares and assembling it in a checker-board pattern.

Tuesday 24 February 2015

Chosen

The new baby's blanket will be Pop! by TinCanKnits.  I love the design and am happily making the squares.  Initially I thought I had lots of time and then I realized that I'm in my third trimester and should probably get cracking.  I think if I make 4 squares a week I'll be fine, and the squares are knitting up faster than I expected.   I started on Sunday evening and already have three.  This week's been nuts already with frozen pipes, which is particularily spectacular when they occur in the laundry room and I use cloth diapers.  Thankfully my parents live in town and came to get us and let me take over their laundry room for the day.  The pipes are unfrozen and our home's warranty people have a plan that seems reasonable.  This does mean that my to do list from yesterday is shot and I need to get a million things done during Caleb's nap.

Friday 20 February 2015

Not knitting but pretty cute

Caleb has had some issues with diaper rash, and I thought if we could work on toilet training that might help.  Not necessarily completely toilet-trained and able to independently able to use the bathroom, but better at communicating when he might be about to go or that he's wet.

So I went out to get training pants, they were something we all had when I was little, I figured there would be lots and some of them would be a reasonable price.  I found some at Walmart that were two for $6 and pretty cute so I bought those, but when I brought them home and took them out of the package the part between the legs was only about 1.5" wide (about half as wide as they should be).  They were hopeless, thankfully they had a satisfaction guarantee so I got my money back.  When I started looking at other ones I found most brands run $17-25 per pair here in Canada, and given that I want to have 8-10 that is insane.

A little internet searching later I came across this pattern and went off to fabric land.  I had fleece and old t-shirts laying around the house so bought some water-proof backed fabric and blue fabric for $45 and sat down to work.  It turns out I could have bought about half the fabric for what I want but that's fine.  I've got 3 done and 5 more being cut out and I love them.  Caleb even likes wearing them and will sometimes tell me that he's wet them (for which he gets a big "well done" as communication is basically what I was going for.)



Tuesday 17 February 2015

Learning

The other day I was on Ravelry and was excited to see that someone who'd bought one of my patterns had entered it as a project with pictures.  Then I saw what they said, which was that the pattern was super-pretty (yay!) but badly written (sad!).  I found that quite demoralizing but went and ate some chocolate (first step in making things better) then made a plan (second step in making things better).

The plan involves the following:
1. Read up on technical editing and knitting patterns.

2. Compare my typed tea cozy pattern to other similar patterns to see if there are spots where I'm being unclear while others are being succinct (I figure it makes sense to start with the next one to get published).

3.  Repeat step two with my already published Christmas stocking pattern and upload an errata/corrected version.

4.  Have some more chocolate.

Friday 13 February 2015

Little steps

A few years ago I was talking to friends about how they kept their house clean, it was always ready for visitors and I just couldn't imagine keeping my home that nice, even though I really wanted to live in a home like that.  They said they followed this lady called the Fly Lady on the internet and that it really helped them.  I looked at it and it seemed extraordinarily cheesy but I figured I'd give it a shot.

It is cheesy, but I also really like it.  She has all these sayings, like "housework done imperfectly still blesses your family" and "your house didn't get dirty in a day and it's not going to get clean in a day." Mostly she's about grace, and giving people permission to keep going even when things aren't perfect.  I find I'm such a perfectionist and it's easy to want to quit when I've done things imperfectly or fallen off the band wagon, but she's about little steps and keeping going without beating yourself up.  I'm finding that really true for my knitting patterns, sometimes I go longer than I'd like between working on them or feel like I haven't done something well and want to quit but little steps whenever I can get me a lot further than only working when I feel like things are going well.

The mittens need their ends woven in, I'm going to finish the first one today, the second one another day, and sew in the linings on a third day.   The photos will be taken next Thursday.

Tuesday 10 February 2015

Ended

So the 10 rounds a day thing totally worked, it was done.  If I had set out to finish it in 5 days, never would have happened, but since there was about 50 rounds to go when I decided to do ten rounds a day, it did happen, and now I just need to weave in the ends and sew in the lining.  I'm quite happy about this.

I normally have two things on the needles at once, one interesting and one plain (to be taken places or done at times where the fussy knitting isn't going to get enough attention).  At the moment I have the blanket (plain) and the mother's day presents (plain), which means something more interesting is in order.  I think I might have decided on the pattern for this baby's blanket, however that requires buying yarn and that requires me to wait for the current month's credit card statement to be issued.  I absolutely will not put more on my card than is in the budget to pay it off in a month and getting Caleb's new room ready required a dresser and a shelf and that took up the wiggle room in this month's budget.  I'm okay with that, good things come to those who wait, and let me tell you not having credit card debt and meeting our financial goals are a very very good thing.

So I'm going to have to come up with something interesting to knit with my stash.  This is getting more and more difficult, mainly because I keep doing it which both uses up my stash-busting knitting ideas as well as the available yarn.  But I kind of like it, because that makes it sort of like a puzzle, and I like puzzles (but not the jigsaw kind, those drive me nuts, possibly because they involve sitting still AND not knitting).

Saturday 7 February 2015

Just 10 a day

I have been making a pair of mittens for a friend.  I love how the pattern looks, and it's knitting up exactly like I pictured, I just keep making stupid mistakes that require me to undo things and do parts again.  I have the first mitten done and would like to be able to give it to her the Sunday after this one so she'll actually get to wear them when it's still winter.  I've resolved to do at least 10 rounds a day which is working beautifully.  There's something about having an out that makes it easier to keep going and the fact that I'm making fewer mistakes on the second mitten is helping too.

My plan is going well, and I'm almost at the point where I attach the thumb (the mittens are worked top-down).  I will have a ton of ends to weave in and the linings to sew in but I should be done the actually knitting by Friday.  I'm actually starting to like this project again.

Tuesday 3 February 2015

Twisted and Lovely

I got home from the yarn shop with my lovely, but expensive, ball of yarn a little while ago and pulled up Ravelry to figure out what to do with it.  I love that you can search based on guage and yardage, and I also really like the fact that you can look up a yarn and see patterns that other people have made with the same yarn.  I only had one ball, and planned to make a hat.  I originally wanted a cowl but didn't think I would have enough yarn until I came across this pattern.  I was sure I'd have enough and loved it so I cast it on.

It took me a couple of tries to get the mobius cast on (the pattern contains a link to a tutorial by Cat Bordhi), butthen it was super-quick.  I did the larger size, although the smaller size would have been fine too, and added an extra 6 rounds to make it cozier.  (This decision was made after I was most of the way through and had the chance to do some math after weighing what I had left).  I LOVE it.  I have a bit of yarn left over and it's probably enough to make a headbank but at the moment I have a pair of mittens that I really want to have done (I don't actually want to knit them, they're annoying me at the moment, not for any good reason, they're just not the funnest thing I can think of to knit).  I am showing great restraint in actually working on the mittens.  I would like them done by the end of the weekend.