Posts

• The remaining large totes turned out to be a) smaller than I'd thought (it was actually two small totes and a medium one stacked together funny), and b) not so easy to destash. One of them was "multiple skeins of brown acrylic, no two alike, that I intend to use in a single project together", and it got put back more or less intact (other than pulling the brown mohair out of it - last time I did the stash, I sorted it by color). The others were the fabric stash, and I'm not ready to go through it yet.
• Should I concede that I'm never going to make the "multiple skeins of brown acrylic" afghan and destash it all?
• I think this time I'm going to dump it all on the bed and sort by category, then by color. If I want a bunch of mohair for a single project, having some of it in the "white and offwhite" tote and some of it in the "brown" tote is nutso.
  
• The Stray Yarn Roundup completely filled the large tote I'd emptied. I think I might need to try this process one more time, because I know there's still stray yarn I haven't come across yet, and I put some questionable things into the stray yarn tote. And it hurts my brain that I've removed a large tote's worth of yarn from my stash, but the large tote is still full.
  
• Hubby loves me anyways, because I cleared out the shelves I was just stuffing spinning fiber onto wherever it would fit.
  
• I need a ball winder like nobody's business - I don't know if my nostepinne skills are up to the tangled mess some of the pull skeins have turned into. Happily, I have $13 left on a JoAnn gift card and they've got 50% off anything coupons for next week, so I might be able to get one for very little out-of-pocket.
• Is it weird that I made better yarn balls using a toilet paper tube as a nostepinne than I did with a real one?
• Why did Firefox flag "nostepinne" as misspelled once, but not after that?
  
• I found all the yarn and the completed squares and the hook and pattern for the 63-Square Afghan. This is a good first step in finishing it. :) I had more squares done on the second row than I thought, and one from the third row. I still need to decide what I'm going to do about the white squares, though.
• The stitch pattern for one of those squares would probably make a really good dishcloth. It's nice and textury.
  
• I also found two needlepoint projects I started years ago, only to discover that I don't like working on a painted canvas. Compensation stitches make me nuts. Trash?

Last night I got a couple boxes and started going through my stash - which totalled 3 large Rubbermaid totes, 2 small ones, and a collection of yarn and fiber that had gone loose in the wild.

I got through one of the large totes and two of the small ones, with the end result that when I went to round up all the "loose in the wild" stuff, I had a completely empty large tote to put it all in, and two very full cardboard boxes to send off to charity. There will be at least one more, but I need to come up with another mailable box of decent size. I think I have a trip to Office Max in my future.

The yarn (and probably some fabric, and maybe some of the crochet hooks and knitting needles I have duplicates of) is going to a fiber arts program at a charter school for "high-risk" girls. The program is apparently a huge success - the girls in it are doing academically and behaviorally better than their peers - but all their materials need to be donated. If anyone else is destashing and interested in helping this group out, the address is:

Ava McDowell
Clara B. Ford Academy
20651 W. Warren Avenue
Dearborn Heights, MI 48127.

(I'm keeping Clara Parkes' "Slow Stashing" in mind as I destash, and being reasonably aggressive about it - I'm getting rid of every skein that doesn't make me smile when I pick it up and pet it, or that I don't know what I want to do with it. Actually I'm probably even keeping more than I should...but there's nothing that says I can only aggressively prune the stash once. Ideally I would like to not be embarassed to put a picture of any skein in the stash on Ravelry...)

In light of the news of the mass layoffs at Livejournal, Inc., I finally broke down and slurped all my posts from stitchy_stitchy.livejournal.com onto Vox. This was a tedious process (only the first 25 posts are made available, and to get more, I had to friendslock each batch of 25, then slurp 25 more, lather, rinse, repeat), and some of the posts (basically anything with an lj-specific html tag) got somewhat mangled, and none of the comments transferred.

Hopefully Livejournal isn't going away any time soon, and I'm going to continue to crosspost for as long as it's available. But I figured it was best to save the content as soon as possible.

Turning the goals from a to-do list into a plan...what I found last year with the Rigorous Crafting Schedule is that sometimes life just happens. Daughter going back to school did more of a number on my free time than I thought it would...so another "rigorous schedule" is right out. (This is one of many reasons I don't do that much deadline crafting...)

On the other hand, having some principles to work on might be nice. So here's a couple:
1) If I do two afghan blocks a week, it will be done by July.
2) I should finish any present WIPs (other than Tradewinds and the afghan) before starting any more. This is, I think, Hubby's scarf, the Busy Bee sampler (still need to find paillettes!), spinning the tangerine silk, and the Irish crochet pincushion.*
3) Some of the goals can be scheduled. The stash-sorting can be done this Sunday. (Hubby will probably help.) The most convenient time to take a class will be at the Fiber Expo this fall (although I'll be keeping an eye on the Spinning Loft newsletter...). The edging should probably be done before capri-wearing season begins.
4) There needs to be room for projects I want to do, rather than projects I feel I have to do.

I'm thinking of some kind of rotation where I work on a "have to" project for a period of time, then a "want to" project in the same craft...although I don't have any "have to" spinning projects. :) Maybe alternate by months...
January: 2 afghan blocks a week, + Hubby's scarf, + "want to" spinning and cross stitch.
February: 2 afghan blocks a week, + Tradewinds, + "want to" knitting and crochet
March: 2 afghan blocks a week, + capri edging, + "want to" spinning and cross stitch
April: 2 blocks a week, + Tradewinds, + "want to" knitting and crochet
May: 2 blocks a week, + curtains, + "want to" spinning and cross stitch
June: 2 blocks a week, + Tradewinds, + "want to" knitting and crochet
July: finish afghan, + "want to" spinning and cross stitch
August:...re-evaluate goals?

I dunno. Maybe the idea of setting goals is a little silly to begin with...although if I can keep that schedule, I'll have five out of ten goals done by the end of July, if not more. (And if I can take a class on naalbinding, that's two more... :) ) To some extent, it might just be a matter of acknowledging that I'm not the fastest crafter out there to begin with, and that it's not practical for me to let the dishes pile up for a week while I knit a sweater.

* I discovered recently that Hubby has a different definition of "WIP" than I do...and I corrected him. When asked to enumerate my WIPs, I gave those six, and then he asked about "that box of cross-stitch patterns, and all that unspun fiber?" That's not WIPs, I explained; that's stash. It's not a WIP until I actually start working on it. "And the afghan you started 15 years ago and haven't touched in about that long?" A UFO, and maybe not even that, since I've made a baby sweater and a half out of the yarn I'd bought for it and lost the pattern (and the half-finished afghan... :) )

A few of them will look familiar:
1) Get three pieces from the cross-stitch finish pile framed or otherwise rendered suitable for display.
2) Finish the curtains.
3) Finish Hubby's scarf.
4) Make meaningful progress on Tradewinds.

And some new ones, some more "craft management" than actual projects.
5) Destash the yarn and fabric that I'm never actually going to use.
6) Finish the 63-Square Blanket.
7) Attend at least one meeting of the Spinner's Flock.
8) Take at least one yarn-related class.
9) Make edging for my capris. (It ticked me off that the "Misses" capris had pretty lace at the cuff, and the "plus size" ones were all plain...)
10) Naalbind something!

1) Finish the Blackwork Dragon - Done!
2) Finish the living room curtains - Not done! Argh.
3) Make one useful piece of Irish Crochet work - Mostly done! Need to block the lace and stitch up the item.
4) Learn to knit in stranded colorwork - Done! Made a super-duper hat.
5) Make visible progress on Tradewinds - Done!
6) Finish Mo's art - Not done! Probably moot!
7) Knit or crochet something useful from my own handspun. - Done, kinda. I had spun the fluff from a bottle of ibuprofen into some kind of lumpy thread. I tried to crochet a snowflake from it, intending to make it into a pin, and didn't quite have enough yardage - but the thread is not going to stand up to frogging. Credit for the attempt?
8) Frame or get framed or otherwise finish at least three of the stack of cross-stitch finishes. - Done!
9) a Tux shadow-knit scarf for Hubby.- A Tux scarf for another friend was completed; Hubby's is 15% done.

Counting partial credits, that gives me about 6 out of 9. Better than last year. :)

I was looking through vintage needlework books one day last week - notably Thérèse de Dillmont's Encyclopedia of Needlework from 1884, which covers pretty much everything you can do with thread from basic hand-sewing through knitting and crochet to amazingly complex lacemaking and embroidery. The book is sprinkled with DMC product placement, since they published her, but except for a couple illustrations out of order, the instructions and diagrams are clear, readable, and understandable, and she defines all her terms so you don't have to go in with a pre-existing knowledge of 19th-century British knitting jargon.

A couple things surprised me - I noticed at least three techniques that I'd thought were fairly recent innovations, and certainly aren't widely known in the relevant communities today, but there they were in a 125-year-old book presented as basic skills everyone should have in their repertoire:

- Gridding the fabric of a large needlework project. She describes it for canvaswork, but it's definitely applicable to "linen embroidery". Most of the LiveJournal cross_stitch community were mystified when we were instructed to do this for a stitch-along project, but it's really caught on.

- Stitching on waste canvas to work counted embroidery on plain cloth, apparently such a common thing that she didn't even explain the concept, just gave a couple helpful tips. I suspect a modern product designed to be easily removed from under the embroidery is much easier to use than standard needlework canvas (or not, giving that I've heard people grouse about how hard pulling the threads out is), but even with the product available, many stitchers are unfamiliar with the technique.

- The "foundation single crochet", even if she called it "plain stitches for a chain" - Doris Chan has popularized the technique (if you know it, you probably learned it from the "special stitches" section of a pattern she wrote) and I'd thought she invented it because I'd never even heard of it through years of crochet until I came across it in several of her patterns. Apparently not. (This is why noted knitter Elizabeth Zimmermann referred to many techniques and designs she developed as having been "unvented", on the premise that they must have been done before but were lost to common knowledge.)

It's also interesting to note that many of the colors of DMC products are still sold under the same shade number they were in 1884 - and that "Cordonnet 6 fils pour Crochet" is now "Cordonnet special", but the sizes that are still available match the vintage sizes. Now that I know this, I'm trying to decide if I'm insane enough to put "work a length of vintage lace to trim up an otherwise-boring garment" on my 2009 goal list.

Tux scarf #1: received and loved by new owner.

Nifty red and white alpaca: Spun. 31 grams, 71 yards, so I guess DK-to-worsted weight overall.

Kendra's blankie: received and loved by mother of new owner. I might have enough left over to make a hat.

Irish crochet pincushion: almost done. Need to make 2 more leaves, then sew it up. I'm glad I used #20 instead of #30 thread; this is hard enough on my eyesight as it is.

Tux Scarf #2: Started. This involved a tragic yarn barf - half the skein of the darker color came out when I tried to free the end. And knitting on the #6 needles feels like toothpicks after the #13 broom handles.

KnittingScholar is giving away some of the review copies of knitting books she's been sent by publishers. (She hasn't said which yet - it may depend on which ones she feels she can bear to part with on the day she does the drawing. But hey, free books!)

To enter, leave a comment in that post, and please mention that CathyW sent you (maybe link back to this post?). You also get extra chances to win if you, yourself, post a link to the contest and people drop your name.