robknits

I'm Busy!

I am knitting away with my white cotton ribbon.  It is not soft and silky.  It actually has quite a bit of body, which is why I thought a jacket or cardigan would be a good idea.  The lace pattern is very simple -- though saying that might have been the curse of death for this project.  But so far so good.

You know how the tag line above my blog name says "I'm busy!"?  I have a compulsive need to be busy.  I used to spend hours/days/weeks of my life reading.  I love to read.  I still do read.  I am, in fact, a librarian.  But...  I read something interesting in a book I simply could not bear the first time I tried to read it, and that is Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way.  I couldn't read it the first time because I was uncomfortable with all the talk of "the Creator" being the source of creativity, and I found a lot of it to be a sort of sappy New Age psychobabble.  

Wait, really, there is a reason I am talking about a book I apparently hated.

I went back to the book -- several times I think -- and found one idea that stayed with me for a very long time.  She talks about how we seem to have inner critics (or the Inner Critic, in her typography) that immediately tells us that our work is lame, not creative, derivitive, choose-your-own way of devaluing the art work we are trying to do.  That really resonated with me.  Her attempts to psychoanalyze whose voice that is didn't impress me or resonate with me (not my mother, who encouraged my creativity, not my art teachers -- I think it's me.)  But I did manage to get that one point out of the book.  I am now conscious when that voice in my head denigrates my designs, and I am learning to tell it to shut up.

Upon rereading the book again, more recently, I noticed two things.  First, she says right at the beginning that if you are uncomfortable with her divine Creator, substitute whatever you are comfortable with:  for me, I decided, a creative urge.  Less woo-woo, less pseudo-New Age, and I like the fact that it is more visceral.  I do have an urge to be making things.

I also took note of something she said about reading (I was talking about reading, remember?).  In her workshops on creativity, she tells her participants at some point that for the next week?  (two weeks?  month?  I don't remember) that they should stop reading.

She said she gets more anger and vehement rejection to that notion than any other.  But her point is that while you are reading someone else's work, you are not writing your own.  

I have only the time after work and on weekends to do other than my full-time job.  At this stage of my life I find myself aware that if I spend a lot of that time reading, I do not get other things done.  No designs for my tapestries.  No weaving.  No sewing. No getting out of the house.  So of course I still read (just finished Buried in the Sky which one of those narratives about disastrous climbs on K2 but guess what -- this time the focus is on the Sherpas).  I also now listen to a lot of the books I used to read:  I listen while knitting, while sewing, while weaving.  I can't listen while designing, because my head is elsewhere.

After being relieved the rush of conferences, obligations, classes and visits that ate almost every weekend this spring had ended, I am in recreating that rush for June.  Because of some new obsessions.  While visiting a friend in Austin, I am going to stop in at the conerence being held there by the Latin American Jewish Studies Association meeting, to do a bit of indexer marketing.   I will be attending a THATcamp on publishing 10 days later.  Since THAT stands for The Humanities and Technology, the camps on publishing tend to be, of course, about e-books.  They are sort of un-conferences.  No one comes to lecture at you, or show you how things are done.  They are really brainstorming sessions, I think.  Anyway, they backed this one up against the annual conference of the American Association of University Presses.  From their program, it is easy to see that it is, of course, about e-books.  So I am going to attend at least one day of that conference.  My goal: to get involved with editors, publishers, and ebooks; to market myself as an indexer who is comfortable with ebook processes; and to stay interested.  I always need new things of interest.

Oh yeah, my annual library conference in is Chicago at the end of June-beginning of July.

And to help build the business, and the interest, I just signed up for Lynda.com, where, for about 30 bucks a month, I can take hundreds of online/video-based courses about all aspects of Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, basic business practices for freelancers, ebook production workflows, the new Adobe Creative Cloud, etc etc etc.  I do not expect to take hundreds.  I do expect to learn a lot about Adobe Indesign, and perhaps Illustrator.  

So, I'm busy.  The knitting will have to be portable. The books will have to be recorded (though actually airplanes are a great place to read.) And since this year's Tour de Fleece starts while I will be in Chicago, the spinning will have to be portable too.  I will either travel with a supported spindle and an ongoing project, like this one:

 

This is alpaca-silk-bamboo roving being spun on a Turkish-style support spindle.  For the non-spinners, a support spindle rests on a table or in a bowl and is not dropped into the air.  The 4 arms on this spindle make it a Turkish spindle (though this one was made in Texas).  On this style spindle, you wrap the yarn you are making above and below the arms, pull the shaft up out of the arms when you are done, pull the arms out of the ball, and the result is a ball of yarn right off the spindle.  Here it is with a silk-tencel fiber, which was seriously like spinning air.

Since the yarn does not have to support the weight of the spindle dangling in air, you can spin a very very fine thread on support spindles.  Known to some as "frog hair."  Spinners have a weird sense of humor.

Or, I will take a drop spindle, and spin some slightly heavier yarn.  I certainly have a large stash of fiber these days, but most was purchased to spin on the wheel or very slippery stuff to spin on support spindles. I will have to see what I might have to spin on my herd of drop spindles.  You see that pretty white one on the right?  That's made of holly.  I think it might be time to spin on that one.

 

 

Oh, here's the knitting obsession... couldn't find it there for a moment

I finished my first paying freelance indexing gig, and was suddenly ready to knit everything, and sew everything, and read a few books too.  So it was not a funk so much as absorption in something else.  I guess it would be contradictory to want to be totally absorbed in more than one thing, wouldn't it?  But the index is done, and submitted, and so last night I sat down...

looked at all those swatches...

looked at some older swatches...

And cast on for something else entirely.  Really, why do I keep a queue on Ravelry?  Just as suggestions, I think.  But I really liked how this swatch feels, and so I went looking for a pattern in garter stitch in that weight, reminding myself of the good old days when I would have just made up my own.  Have I gotten lazy?  As a barely capable knitter I changed gauges, yarns, fibers, sizes, sleeves, necklines, the direction in which items were knit...  But instead, lazily, I searched the Ravelry database and came up one and said, "Eureka!  That's it!"

Now, the thing is, I do not wear cap sleeves.  I do not like sweaters that look as if they shrank in the wash.  I don't usually go for little-girlish things.  But I LOVE the lace pattern on the bottom, and there is the garter stitch that will show off the yarn.  So here is what is going to happen.

You start this sweater with the sleeves, which you knit individually from the cuff to where the sleeve would meet the raglan sleeve.  You then put the sleeves on holders, and knit up the body of the sweater to the beginning of that raglan seam.  Then all the pieces are put on the needle and you knit them all at one time.

So, I started a sleeve, but where it says "knit for two inches after the lace rows" I am going to knit 4 or 5 inches.  Then, once I have both sleeves to that point, I will cast on for the body of the sweater which will NOT be a cardigan!  Or too small.  Instead, I am going to knit it in the round as a pullover.  Plus, that neckline is going to be narrower, and the shoulders wider, so that the darn thing doesn't just fall off my narrow-shouldered frame.

Other than that, the same identical sweater.  

 

In white ribbon yarn:

and the beginnings

How many...

How many projects can a person pursue if a person could pursue projects?

Hmm, works better with woodchucks.

How many projects peut a person pursue if a person peut pursue projects?  

Getting pretty stupid there.

I have been űber focused on my first professional moonlighting gig as an indexer, and so worked very consistenly on that.  But everything else has been unfocused and unsatisfying, including my job.  I have been unable to settle down to a sewing project since coming home from Maryland, and knitting has been limited to swatching.  Endless swatching.  See?  Ok, maybe 3 is not endless but...

For the knitters: the swatch on the left is Shachenmayr Nomotta Cotton Bamboo, in a blue that is unfortunately duller than it appear in this picture.  The center swatch is Cascade Cotton Rich DK, and the one on the right is Araucania Ruca, a rayon made of sugar cane.  That is the latest craze in yarn -- new rayons made of sugar cane, bamboo, banana leaves, etc.  They tout them as ecologically sound, but they are not: the material may be renewable, but the production process is highly polluting.  Sigh.  I just wish they would not make claims for environmental benefits.  Anyway, as a yarn it is very shiny, slippery and beautiful.  All of them are experiments in knitting in yarns I can actually wear in San Antonio.

I also am swatching, at this very minute, this gorgeous cotton/rayon yarn called Callista that I bought years ago from elann.com.  The color is actually a warmer olive than it appears here.

 

 

 Unfortunately they don't have it any more.  But I think it might be a good choice for this:

Pretty, huh?  We are starting a little knit-along on Ravelry.  I will unfortunately not look like the model.  So, I have to decide whether I am going to use the slightly dull dark blue Cotton Bamboo, or the olive green Callista.  It depends on the gauge I get with the Callista.

I am boring even myself with this post.  I think I need to insist on action, and creativity, to get myself out of this funk.  So here is the plan:

-- I am going to finish the Callista swatch

-- I am going to dig out the spare bedroom that will be the home of Current Indexing.

-- I will actually start weaving the tapestry design I have been staring at since August.

Stay tuned.  The next image you see will be of the beginnings of a tapestry, and maybe of a home office.

A Weekend with Friends

I was going to title this post "Maryland Sheep and Wool 2013."  But then again..

When I lived in central Pennsylvania, I went on a bus excursion to the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival every year.  It was, and still is, organized by Kim Bierly, I think for the Penns Valley knitters group.  In the midst of opening a new yarn store, Kim organized the bus tour once again.  Of course, as in the past 5 years, I was in San Antonio. 

But, in the meantime, two very good friends had moved to Hyattsville, Md.  So I spent a few days' vacation doing what I should almost always do with vacation time: I went to visit friends.  I got to see D and G, celebrate their lovely new home, explore their great new neighborhood ... I have serious neighborhood envy ... and then on Saturday I went to the fairgrounds to meet up with Kim.

I went really early in an effort to avoid the loooong line to get into the parking lot, a plan that worked very well.  I knew I was heading in the right direction when i saw the car in front of me.

A sign of my people.

I got in very early.  And I began wandering.  And before the bus from central PA even got there, I had found a skein of Trekking in the pastels I use only for socks:

 

 

And, behind it, is some rayon boucle to knit with.  Because all that beautiful wool and mohair just is not in the cards for me in south Texas.  I think that rayon is going to be a tee.

Wait, here is a better picture of the rayon, though the colors are better in the picture above.  My digital camera sucks the warmth out of colors.

I took a deep breath, texted Kim, still on the road, who told me to sit tight til she got there.  What are friends for?  So I sat in the gorgeous gorgeous weather: brilliant sun, cool temperatures, and enjoyed being surrounded by knitters, spinners, weavers, all their equipment and supplies, and all the people who produce the equipment and supplies.  And then Kim arrived and I got to spend a gorgeous day in that great setting with another very good friend.  So it was probably the best of all possible weekends, except for that stomach thing on Sunday, but still...  it was great.  There was a moment of disorientation -- I kept hearing my name, and running into friends from central PA, some of whom came down on the bus with Kim.  Folks from the library at Penn State, and Katherine, with whom I learned to weave, and her very interesting daughter Emily, who is off to do something interesting with sustainable development in Latin America.

I wasn't up to the pre-Raphaelite exhibit at the National Gallery on Sunday (that stomach thing), so D and G brought me back a gift for a textile lover:

 

 

 

That's a William Morris design.  Here's a blurb from Wikipedia that explains why the phrase "William Morris design" means so much.

William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and libertarian socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and English Arts and Crafts Movement. He founded a design firm in partnership with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti which profoundly influenced the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. As an author, illustrator and medievalist, he helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, and was a direct influence on postwar authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien. He was also a major contributor to reviving traditional textile arts and methods of production, and one of the founders of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, now a statutory element in the preservation of historic buildings in the UK.

And that bag is so gorgeous.

It is sitting on my last yarn purchase at the festival.  This is a three-stranded yarn.  One strand is cotton, one is silk, and one is rayon.  It is likely to drive me insane to knit with, but the plan is to make a loose lacy pullover to wear over all those sleeveless dresses they show.  They are ALL sleeveless.  Kim says she blames Michelle Obama.  Anyway, my arms do not look like hers, so I like to put something over those dresses.  Light, loose and lacy.

I had a wonderful weekend.  And Maryland Sheep and Wool was nice too.

 

The Stitch Lab and (pre-) Maryland Sheep and Wool

A friend and I took a class at the Stitch Lab in Austin TX.  The class had us make 4 small bags using modern oilcloth.  Everyone chose a different fabric, of course, and we took home patterns and instructions for future projects.  Here are my results:

Cute, huh?  This sort of oilcloth -- actually a sort of plastic these days -- doesn't have much body, so they flatten kind of easily, but I really like them.  They will be great for travel, and of course when my bottles leak, as they always do, these are washable.  They were very fun and surprisingly easy to make.  Surprising to me anyway. I liked "popping" color onto the black and gray print by using different colored zippers.

Next expedition to the Stitch Lab will be to their "zipper lab" on how to put in centered, lapped and invisible zippers.

In the meantime, I have made three pairs of pants.  Pictures to follow.  

This week any time for fiber arts will be dedicated to knitting, since I am preparing for a trip to Maryland, visiting friends at UMd, and meeting up with Kim at -- ta da!!! -- the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  I like our two little fiber festivals here in San Antonio, the Kid n Ewe festival in November in Boerne, a hill-country town, and the new Yellow Rose Fiber Festival in Seguin in April.  But MDSW is in a class by itself, and is a nostalgia trip for me, since I always went down with Kim on the bus she organizes from central PA.  My goal is NOT to buy huge honking amounts of yarn, since I already have huge honking amounts of yarn.  I will be looking for interesting bits and pieces, though I am hoping to mostly look.  (I can hear people laughing now.)  The booth I always used to head to was the Brooks Farm Yarn booth, but they are Texas folks, and always have a booth at Kid n Ewe, without having to elbow my way past 3,000 East Coasters.  

In the meantime, I have fallen for a new pattern, and I am trying trying to use stash yarn.  The pattern is by Vera Sanon, whose designs I like, and it is for a top called Symmetry in Motion.  Here is the front, with that nifty diagonal band, and then the side with those gorgeous gussets:

But there is no way I am going to make this in wool.  I have two possibilities that might work in the stash.  One is a yarn called Hempathy, which is cotton, hemp and rayon.  The other is one of the "new" rayons, a yarn by the company Araucania called Ruca. Ruca is a viscose made from sugar cane, but I learned at a spinning class last year at the Yellow Rose festival that those processes are highly contaminating of local water supplies.  So I won't be buying more of that.  With either yarn, I have to see if I can get gauge, of course, so while I work on the Daybreak shawl, I will be swatching.  I am hoping the Hempathy will work with Symmetry in Motion.

More after MDSW.

 

 

 

 

One thing at a time (edited)

I have not been able to stop sewing, and I have not been able to knit a damn thing.  Every knitting project I have touched has gone down in flames.  Apparently I can only have skills in one craft at a time.  That was an issue with languages too.  After years and years of studying French, I went to Mexico to study Spanish.  They spoke to me in Spanish, I understood and answered in French.  Every. time.  So I had to suppress the French, learned Spanish very quickly, and then could not remember how to say the most basic words in French.  Well, that wasn't going to work, if every new language was going to wipe out the one that came before.  So I had to concentrate on recovering my (lame) French, which I did.  So last night I did NOT sew.  Instead I sat down with some knitting.  I started Daybreak for the, oh, 6th time.  This is Daybreak.  The designer, Stephen West, creates very contemporary geometric shawls and scarves.  Folks on Ravelry have been playing with color, and as you may have noticed, I have a thing for color.  One of my favorites was done by a Raveler who lives in Essen, Germany and who very kindly gave me permission to post a picture of her lovely version of Daybreak.  Her colorwork is gorgeous.  Here is her Daybreak.

I am using a gorgeous handpainted yarn by BuenaSuerte (who at the moment has nothing in her Etsy shop).  She is based in Texas, and so I have access to her yarn at our various fiber festivals.  She named this color Red Sky at Night.  I paired it with a gray yarn, color name Hawk. 

The Red Sky at Night is knitting up beautifully, but I was struggling with the increases.  I finally found one I like to make and that looks good with this pattern, so progress is being made.

 

In the meantime, the sheer jacket is waiting until I can figure out whether to use bias tape that doesn't quite match or invent some other way of finishing the back neck.  So in the meantime I made a couple of pairs of pants.  This is hilarious.  40 years of pent-up sewing frustration is exploding into a huge creative burst.  I am working on embellishing some cotton knits a la Alabama Chanin. which mostly means two layers of cotton, reverse applique and hand embellishment with stitches and beads.  And I have some silk I stare at but don't dare cut yet.

And the tapestry designs sit there.  I need a block of time to start them, and this month is insane.  I have a conference this week, and I am experiencing that trip as pure, irritating, frustrating interruption.  I have a conference next week, in San Antonio thank Cthulu, that I am looking forward too.  Then a trip to Austin, then a trip to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  All except this first trip are causes for enjoyment and excitement, but it is a

 bit too much

An apparent extrovert, I am actually not, much.  I talk a lot and easily enough to people, but I find it exhausting.  Someone else I met who is taken for an extrovert described it like a sugar high: you are all out there, talking, introducing yourself, laughing, shining, and then you crash and can't wait to lock yourself into the quiet of your car or home.  I get home after a day of working with people and just hate it if the doorbell rings.  This is MY time.  And it had better be quiet.  And that is the creative time.

There won't be much of that this month.  So I am taking Daybreak with me during this marathon of extroversion.  It will be therapy.  Quiet.  While the Red Sky at NIght color just glows.  'Cause color is almost always good.

Adventures in sewing

Having recently returned to sewing after a multi-decade absence,  I discovered that:

-- I am of course not the least bit interested in sewing basics in basic easy cotton.  Nuh uh.  First I started with knits.  Now I have gotten into sheer fabrics.  And as usual, as a friend of mine pointed out, my first instinct was to gather as much information as possible.  That's not a bad instinct to have, by the way.  And the internet is full of good bloggers who provide tons of information and advice.  

Aside: That's how I made the header image for this version of the blog by the way.  A craft blogger had a tutorial on how to make a web banner on Picassa. 

Anyway, so I read up on knits, and took Craftsy classes on sewing with knits.

Aside.  Wow, Craftsy.  I keep finding coupons and discounts and signing up for more and more classes, all in sewing.  A free one on different sewing machine feet, a sewing with knits class, a fabric manipulation class that I have not yet taken,  several other classes I haven't spent much time on yet, like pants fitting, and sewing with silk, and the Alabama Chanin class on embellishment....

 Then I fell in love with some silk chiffon.  I certainly wasn't going to experiment on that.  And that's something I learned from knitting.  I no longer mind preparation.  Used to be all I wanted to do was get to the fabric, rush through the production process and have the finished product.  Apparently, it has become more about the process.  Though finishing is good too.

Anyway, so I went to Joanns and bought some polyester chiffon to experiment with.  This is it:

And I am trying to make it into the plain version of this Simplicity pattern:

In a no-pockets, no lace, no-froo-froo sheer fabric.  Hmmm.  Maybe.  So far so good.  I of course did some research, to learn how to deal with slippery sheer fabrics.  So now I tuck scraps of the pattern paper between the feed dogs and the fabric, and use very sharp silk pins and a very sharp Microtex sewing machine needle.  And I do things that never occurred to me as a teenager sewing, like putting in a new needle for a new project, or even, as I did today, changing the blade in the rotary cutter.  Wow.  Amazing what a difference knowing and caring for your tools makes.  So, so far so good with this project, but I forgot to buy matching single-fold bias tape, so this project is now on hold until I can get some.  But it is amazing how interesting the process (and the knowledge) has become to me.  And how much more comfortable i am with sewing once I got smart and began making muslins before chopping up the good fabric.

And, of course, we all knew stashing is a fabric-issue as wel as a yarn issue.  The tools in sewing are also a source of obsession.  Who knew sewing machine needles could be so interesting?  I should have known, after decades of searching for satisfying circular needles for knitting.

New version, new posts, new obsessions

You might have noticed: things have changed.  It was time to shake things up.  So much of what the blog used to be now happens on Ravelry, but I still want to keep talking about creative projects.  So here it is.  I will still of course be talking about knitting and weaving, about color, and now about crochet, and sewing (!!) and also about adding freelancing to my life.  

First up, how my knitting hates me.

In the fall, I put aside the gorgeous Vogue vest I was working on to make a series of hats, using the Easy peasy charity hat pattern, that I donated to folks who were driving into areas hit by Hurricane Sandy to hand out supplies.   The Red Cross and other charities had said there was no need for clothing.  I do understand that  they did not want people's worn-out summer clothes, but what was heard on site was that people were cold.  The hats were grabbed up.  Then I decided I would power through the Elizabeth cardigan by Cecily Glowik MacDonald.  Done.  When I tried to go back to the vest, uhuh.  I dropped stitches.  Repeatedly.  Made mistakes on the simple cable.  Repeatedly.  I have lost track of the number of times I restarted the chart area of the back of the vest.  Honestly.  I think it is in the double digits.  I do not think there is anything particularly hard about that charted area.  It is just that all my knitting fu disappears, and I stumble around making careless mistakes.  So that went into a time out.

Then I (re)learned how to crochet, started the Painted vest, and have lost track of the number of times I have ripped that out.  Which, considering I am making it in Noro Silk Garden, means the yarn is looking a bit, well, sad.  I started it again this weekend and realized while I was at knit group that I had twisted it at some point.  This project has become a sort of Zen thing -- I crochet, I take it out, I crochet, I take it out.  

So where has all my obsessively creative energy gone?  Two places: sewing and starting a new freelancing gig.

I was taught to sew when I was very young.  My mother made her clothes, our clothes, the curtains in the house.  She considered it a basic skill.  I found it horrendously frustrating, and sewing projects always turned into screaming fits and tears.  Repeatedly.  For years.  Then, when I was graduating from high school, my parents suddenly said to me that graduation came along with a gift, and what did I want?  I remember it as an odd interaction -- I am not sure why they seemed uncertain.  I guess they really didn't know what to get me, since it sure as hell was not going to be a car (we were not that sort of family).  I still remember how surprised I was.  Apparently I hadn't thought of a graduation gift at all.  So I looked at them, and thought about going off into the world (ok, I was going off to college, but still) and what I would need off in that world and I said "I think I'd like a sewing machine."  To this day, I remember the stunned looks on their faces.  And I got a sewing machine.

I still have it.  The most basic Sears Kenmore sewing machine being sold in 1971.  And ya know what?  After cleaning and oiling it, it works just fine.  So when a friend decided she was going to learn to sew, and that I was going to be her coach, I dragged it out and discovered that -- around all that frustration and angst -- I really had learned to sew.  My friend has had the very good fortune of being taught to sew at the Stitch Lab in Austin and after a very short time has been making tops, pants, aprons -- basically whatever she wants.  So of course I have gotten into it too, and given my native propensities, I have been studying about how to fit pants (oy), how to sew with knits and now, how to sew with sheers.  So far I have tried a couple of tops and several pairs of pants.  I have one wearable top and a pair of sort of wearable pants.  But I keep trying.  Instead of being frustrating, each project feels more like an experiment, a skill builder.  I am experimenting with muslin and cheap fabric, but of course, stashing of nice stuff has been happening too.

And on another front, since apparently I don't have enough to do, despite my new title at the top of this page, I have started a moonlighting/freelancing indexing service.  I write back-of-the-book indexes.  Want an index?  You have come to the right place.  My extremely talented friend KB created a logo for me:

With a book/not-a-book logo.   We didn't want anything very traditional or obvious.  Isn't it cool?  And by the way, KB also creates some lovely original handknits.  You should check out her Etsy store.  Orignal designs of hats, scarves, etc.  She is playing with double knits these days.  So check out

So what is next?

• I want to find a summer knitting project with the cobalt blue Lavold Hempathy yarn I have.
• I want to talk about setting up a freelancing business.  I also need to market myself to find some work.  This is a moonlighting operation -- I am keeping my day job!
• I am experimenting with sewing a sheer fabric into a cover up that will let me wear sleeveless things in the San Antonio heat.  

Pics to come.

Adventures to come.

If you have any suggestions about a summer top with Hempathy, tell me about it in a comment.

 

2013 Yarn Consumption: Keeping Track

Am I using stash or buying new yarn for projects? Tracking 2013's yarn consumption

Stash:   1                                                     New Purchase:  1

Project:

• Ribs and Bobbles vest: stash
• Painted Wool vest: new

 

The wild accumulation of fiber tools

Never make New Year's resolutions.  That was my resolution this year.  That tautology pleases my grad-school-shaped mind.  It is Escher-like, sending me in constant circles.  Which since that is my natural state, apparently, it fits me well.

I had decided (resolved?) to use stashed yarns for a while for projects.  I had resolved to limit my fiber arts-related buying.  Elizabeth was made from yarn newly purchased for the project, but that was last fall. I labeled the patterns in my Ravelry queue (the patterns waiting in line to be knit) with a yarn in the stash.  The problem though is when I find a new pattern that requires a different yarn.  So I have to break the habit of looking at patterns.

Uh huh.  See the last post, about the Painted Wool vest. Oh, and the lap afghan.  But really, the next knitting projects all connect to stashed yarns.

There has been consumption of another type going on, that I have to stop.  Since I started crocheting, I need crochet hooks, right?  Crochet hooks are cheap, at places like Joanns or Michaels.  And I like the hooks on the basic Boye or Susan Bates hooks you find there.  What I don't like, though, is how thin the handles are.  And for British patterns like the one I blogged about here, I needed to find a 3mm hook.  Weirdly enough, most US crochet brands do not offer a 3 mm.  They jump from C/2.75 to D/3.25mm, leaving a gap that is noticeable if you are trying to get gauge.  That 3mm is really needed (by me anyway) to use fingering weight yarn, a nice light yarn that is great for this climate.  So (not realizing that two brands selling in the US had started offering 3 mm -- Hiya Hiya and Addi Swing --They are labeling them as C/D 3 mm), I found this lovely thing on Etsy:

Folks who work with polymer clay have been adding handles to the basic crochet hooks.  This Etsy seller is in Australia, where 3mm basic aluminum hooks are common.  So I bought it, and love working with a handle like that.

So I began looking for other crochet hooks with handles, buying sizes I need to try out different styles and brands.  Susan Bates now makes a new crochet hook -- steel with a bamboo handle, so I bought one of those in size F/3.75.  I like the handle, have my doubts about the hook.  Knit Picks makes lovely hooks out of laminated wood, so I bought some of those in larger sizes, but discovered I want a handle on those as well.  I tried one of the new  Addi Swing needles, touted as perfect for preventing repetitive stress injuries (common with the motion of crochet):

Hated it, and that one was pricey.  I decided the one I liked best was the polymer one.  Unfortunately the hook has a bit of a burr, and it catches on thread.  So two things happened:

I made the mistake of looking on Etsy for crochet hooks, and found this beauty: a D/3.25 with a polymer handle:

Bought it. And I began reading about how to add polymer clay handles myself to those basic Boye and Susan Bates hooks.  I don't know how to make those beautiful millefleur handles, of course, but I could manage solid ones or polka dots.  But you have to bake the polymer after shaping it, and you have to be careful of fumes, and I found myself reluctant.  So instead I found some Crayola (!) Model Magic.  It is a plastic (i.e. polymer) clay of some kind that hardens if you let it air dry.  So I tried it, and ended up with this:

I modeled the size on the yellow-dotted one.  They looked very plain, so I rolled them across a corrugated cardboard notebook cover for some texture.  I did this last night, and today I am not sure if they are going to retain some give or if they are not completely dry. I think it is going to work really well.  And cheap.

But now I have to figure out how to store all these hooks.  The ones with the larger handles do not fit in my basic case, which is this beautiful thing:

So at the moment the ones with the large handles live in my old double-pointed needle case, but they don't fit in the slots with their mm measurement.  Sigh.  Oh yeah, the lime green and blue handled hooks on the right?  Another try, and hooks that I like: Clover Amour.  I like them a lot, but at about $8 a hook, kinda pricey.  So I was glad to come up with a way of modifying my simple aluminum ones.  And I may sew a case with wide enough slots for my fancy-handled hooks.