FOs: End of Year Edition

It occurs to me I finished quite a few things in the last couple of weeks and months. Granted, most of them where fish or rectangles but thanks to swaps and NerdWars, there's still some pretty stuff!

Lots of blue and white things for the Odd Ducks Oktoberfest swap on Ravelry:

Belle Ruffle Gloves

Bavarian Mittens

I didn't take very good photos of the bodice and project bag I made. Maybe I should make it a New Year's resolution to take more and better photos. I should also mention I got the most amazing package in return.
Nerd Wars highlights include, but are not limited to...

... Meisi gloves! Ok, these really are the only highlight. I do wear them all the time now. Comfy and pretty, what more could you ask for? I'm not sure I'd have enough patience for more gloves, the fingers just about killed me. To be fair, I did get it into my head to have as few ends as possible, so at the tip of each finger, I threaded the entire skein back to the hand and knit the next finger without breaking the yarn. Yeah... it seemed to make sense at the time.

Stash busting grannies.

Stripes make everything better.

Yarn wrestling.

Some people are yarn whisperers. I don’t remember where I first read the term, but the generally accepted definition seems to be: people to whom yarn speaks. It tells them what it wants to be and they go on to knit projects of intricate beauty in a perfect blending of material and pattern. Now I’ve never personally been to a yarn store and heard a skein going “Hey mate! Blimey, I’d be ever so chuffed if you could make me into a pair of lacy legwarmers and no mistake.” Because yarn, like most things, becomes twice as awesome with a fake British accent. I sometimes hear a voice in yarn stores saying it wouldn’t be a crime if I broke in at night and rolled around in the cashmere so long as I didn’t take anything and maybe dusted the shelves before I left. It’s the same voice that tells me to argue with people complaining about the disagree-button on Ravelry, so I know it’s best to ignore it.

I wonder if there is a word for people like me. I buy yarn and it will try to beat me into utter submission with a blunt object. But since I don’t speak its language, I do not know what it is trying to tell me and eventually, I have to admit defeat. I struggled like this with the Schoppel Turandot that would not work for anything. (Incidentally, how has no one else on Rav stashed this yarn yet? Despite my complete failure, I still think it was rather nice.) Eventually I gave it away – after making a sort of ok-ish hat to retain some knitterly pride.

Today I had to surrender to another yarn. It’s strange because I love Miro - it’s machine washable, it’s a cotton blend, it’s reasonably cheap, especially since I live near the factory outlet. But I think the point has come where I have to admit that Miro and I, we just don’t get along. We got off to a bad start when I decided that a newsboy cap was a perfectly reasonable item to knit. After all, I don’t think the only right a hat has to exist is to keep my ears warm and I am clearly an orphan boy in a Dickens novel. So yeah, my first Miro knit gathered dust for two years before I finally ripped it to make baby hats. (I’ve realized now that making baby hats is my version of throwing a yarn away.)

I bought the green Miro at the same time as the brown and to be honest, I didn’t even love the colour then. But it was on sale for something like 15 bucks for 10 skeins and I was still a pretty new knitter who hadn’t yet realized that yarn stores will gladly store (hence the name) the stash for you until you actually need it and that there wasn’t any real risk of the yarn supply running out in the foreseeable future. Anyway, I bought it even though the colour was something I can only describe as “depressed moss” and it even became my first sweater. It also became my first frogged sweater. I blame my poor choice of pattern. I didn’t really understand them at the time, but I think I should have noticed that horizontal slits probably don’t make for very comfortable armholes. Or that my failed Turandot projects came from the same book of patterns and clearly, nothing in there worked for my particular brand of curvy. Well, I’m nothing if not resistant to insight, so my next project was Juliana. Again, this is something I think looks beautiful, but I would never pick it out in a clothing store and I have nothing in my wardrobe that remotely matches it. But I found it before the whole rectangle with two sleeves = cardigan became popular and it looked so good on the mannequin, so it would look good on me, right? Now, I’m not only curvy in weird places, I’m also quite tall. That means I need a loooong scarf-with-sleeves to wrap a sufficient part of my torso. Which means I’d need about twenty strategically placed shawl pins to hold something like Juliana in place. I don’t own a singly shawl pin. On a positive note, I didn’t have to knit the whole thing to realize it wouldn’t work – only about half of it. See? Progress!

This April I decided that the problem with my pound of dying-Kermit-coloured yarn was in fact its colour. I’m no Lady Gaga, I can’t pull off frog genocide as a style choice! So I went and dyed it all black.

Before.

After.

It did become horribly entangled in the washing machine and untangling all of it was probably the most satisfaction this yarn has given me to this day.

Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a sure sign of insanity. But my yarn was black now! Surely, knitting a third sweater was the right thing to do! My third Miro sweater was Spring Fling. It’s a cute little cropped cardigan and up to that point, Knitty patterns had never not worked for me. I feel I repeat myself here, but I don’t own a single cropped cardigan, cute or otherwise. In fact, when extra long shirts became fashionable a couple of years back, I thought it was the best trend EVAR! and threw out all my old pullovers which didn’t provide at least 50% butt-coverage. I also think cropped cardigans only really work with dresses. (HA! I do have dresses! I just never wear them.)

The body of my Spring Fling had been done for a while and after completing all my Nerd Wars projects last month I decided to finally do the sleeves. It only took me 75% of the sleeves to realize that I had made the armholes way, way too big (clearly, I’m still compensating for my first sweater experience) and that I would basically end up with a cropped kimono if I wanted sleeves that fit.

So that’s it. Moss-coloured, black Miro, you have finally beaten me! I’m sure there’s a perfect pattern for you out there and even though you still hold up remarkably well after all the ripping and dying, I just can’t keep looking for it. I’ve learned a lot of things, mostly that I cannot be trusted to make sensible knitting choices and also that it is possible to feel personal resentment towards crafting supplies. I’ve already started on the first hat:

Through thick and thin.

It's funny how all this time I tried to get my spinning as thin and even as possible just to realize that I've completely lost the ability to spin thick yarn. Well, I say lost. While my first skein was considerably thicker than what I do now, it probably wasn't very even either. However, I clearly remember it being better than this:

Fiber: Süddeutsche (South German) from Wollknoll. Yay for local products!

If I were a whimsical Etsy seller, I would now write something about how the yarn has retained a lot of the sheep's character and that I've created an interesting organic texture to bring out the natural colour. No. It just turned out very wonky. I wanted to try fulling a single, so I thought it would be better to make the yarn thicker. No wonder most commercial yarns are plied rather than singles! Still, the fulling was fun and not too bad, BUT even though every tutorial said not to be scared and that the individual strands wouldn't felt together, they slightly did for me. Not too badly, just enough to make them stick a little to one another. Maybe I overdid it? It does make the yarn soft yet very sturdy though, so I'll definitely experiment some more with it.
Characterful yarn aside, I did spin up some BFL that I'm very pleased with:

Pink and purple BFL from Das Wollschaf.

I had 100 grams of each, yet for some strange reason I was left with quite a bit of purple after plying. If I wasn't so lazy I'd meassure the WIP, but it's approximately a light fingering weight. ... Sometimes I wonder who came up with these names, frankly that sounds more like foreplay than fiber. But I digress. Aaaanyway, I had both singles wound on knitting needles for a while before I plied them, only to find that the yarn on the inside had already set and lost all its twist. Is that a normal thing to happen? So while plying I had to add a lot of extra spin again, which I couldn't entirely get rid off during finishing. It was mostly even, just had a few twisted bits. So against my usual preferences, I wound it into a ball in the hopes that it would set some more, much like the singles did:

I've very much taken my cue from the Zauberball school of yarn winding here.

Maybe I just tend to wind my yarn too tightly, but that 200 gram ball is only very slightly bigger than an average 50g ball of sock yarn. I do like the colour and it's as even as I've managed to spin thus far. It'll probably become a shawl in the future, something simple since the colours would probably eat up any intricate lace patterns. I quite like The Age of Brass and Lazy Daisy. Or I could just make a Baktus or one of its many variations, which have the advantage of rows that don't take half an hour to finish. Herbivore looks lovely as well, but I've grown a bit weary of shawl shapes that aren't just plain triangular.

The Discworld Bag.

Just because it took so much trial and error (mostly error), the Discworld Bag I made for the swap package gets its own damn post. You see, I had this beautiful vision in my head of a fully formed, perfectly detailed Discworld. Except it would be a project bag. How clever am I? ... yeah, not very.
People make Discworlds all the time. They crochet them, they sew them, they even bake them! They do not, however, assume that a good idea is an appropriate substitute for experience and/or talent in their chosen craft. I'm not saying that I'm horrible with a sewing machine, but working with fabric has one disadvantage that knitting usually doesn't: you just cannot fix some mistakes. This means you generally should know exactly what you want to do. Once the pieces are cut, you cannot undo them. You can only redo a seam so often before it looks shabby. That's fine for bags, which are usually simple geometric shapes. Tiny plush elephants? A bit more challenging. I sewed about 10 of them, ranging from horribly disfigured creatures of the night to the stuff of nightmares. And there are lots of cute elephant patterns to use for reference! The problem wasn't so much the technique as it was the size. I'd already bought an adorable turtle plushy so I couldn't just make the elephants bigger. In the end, I did something I'm more than a bit embarrassed about: I just glued shit on. There, I said it. I believe glue and fabric aren't two things that should go together, ever. But I was starting to panick and had a deadline and decided the elephants would just have to be 2-dimensional. Oh well. At least that meant that the bag was resting on the turtle itself, which made it a little bit bigger. It's still tiny, but maybe just big enough for a pair of mittens in progress. Maybe.
The inside of the bag has two pockets for needles and various stuff, plus the planet XXX on the bottom. I only later realized that it's actually XXXX. It really helps to look up book references if you read said book 2 years ago...

It's just about impossible to make a round map fit on a long square with any accuracy at all. I meant to sew the mountain range to the blue part as well, but then noticed I kind of like the 3D effect of it standing up even when the bag is closed. It's made from felt so there should be no fraying:

I couldn't bring myself to take photos of the disfigured elephants. These ones only have 2 legs each, but at least the ears make them somewhat recognisable. I experimented with horns, but they looked kind of odd. This is definitely the evil one, just look at that evil eye:

Maybe he's just grumpy. And this is my favourite. He looks almost like I wanted them to look originally. You know, just slighty worse:

I had planned to embroider the map onto the green part. I have access to a cheap Singer Edition which I believe was purchased at Aldi. Which really tells you all you need to know. Suffice to say that didn't really work out either, so I drew stuff on with a pen. I try not to think about it too much.

It still turned out alright I guess. The recipient seemed to like it, which is really the only thing that counts in the end.

Nerd Wars Swap.

Yep, more Nerd Wars. What can I say, my non-competetive crafting has been a been a bit lackluster this summer. The NW swap was great fun and small enough for me as a first time swapper to test the waters. I'll be honest, when I first read that my swap partner was KokoCat, all I could think was: "I can't possibly spoil this woman! For Bob's sake, she has her own yarn store! She's been knitting for longer than I've been alive!" But that's what happens when you hang out with a bunch of knitting nerds, they are awesome and you just have to deal with it. This is what I ultimately came up with:

I actually had to buy the seeds and sweets to get above the minimum amount to spend. Thrifting, Ebay and handmades are real budget savers. I included three knitted items, although I had a lot more ideas (but not the time).

Crivens!

A tiny Nac Mac Feegle. Incidentally, I finally bought a copy of I Shall Wear Midnight which arrived yesterday. The Tiffany arc is one of my favourite since Wintersmith was the first Dicworld novel I read.

It's the Doctor's name. We think.

A cowl inspired by Doctor Who. Not a Doctor Who scarf, though. I may be an ambitious swapper, but I would have needed a Tardis, time-turner or other nerdy device for time travel to pull that off. I wasn't a bug fan of cowls before, but now I can see the point of them. Well, at least the longer ones you wrap around once or twice.

Mio pattern.

These didn't come out as nice as planned. It's a cute enough pattern, but in 100% cotton (Schachenmayr Cotton Eco) they lacked a bit of stretch and the rolled-up thumb edging is a bit bulky for my liking.

I was alternately hating and loving the colours as well, but didn't have a suitable backup yarn. I hope it'll wear better than the first blocking suggested. Argh! This is why I don't gift hand-mades! (That and I've embraced the principles of selfish crafting(tm).)

Nerd Wars Projects.

The 3rd Nerd Wars round is almost upon us, so it's high time I shared last round's projects! I have yet to find a better way to stash-bust and get motivated than these challenges were. All in all I completed 12 out of 18, which seems like a good if slightly obsessive quote. Some of them were really boring, but the results I quiete liked are:

This lightning scarf wouldn't have come out half as nice
if I hadn't run out of red yarn halfway through! (Pattern)

Bookmark. Although spinning plarn makes it a lot nicer to work with,
crocheting is still easier than knitting. (Pattern)

It may not be the cutest kid's set out there, but I love the hat pattern.
I should make one for myself some time.

These are easily my favourite two projects.
Plarn Cthulhu and Tiny Old Spice man.

Starting Saturady, I'll play for team Shady Cells (comics, animation, etc.) which should be fun because there's very little in popular culture that hasn't had its own comic at some point.

Stimulating the economy.

I certainly did my part last week. Other than swap goodies, I also went on a shopping trip extravaganza down south. First stop: Wollmeise summer sale. I really was a picture of restraint; the plan was to get two or three skeins.

The colours are really much brighter but hard to photograph.

From what I gathered, it's important to know which colourways you have. I haven't really checked, I just call them Shiny 1 and Shiny 2. Or the green one and the blue one. Really, if you only have two skeins, a nominal system isn't necessary. So now I know what that particular craze is about. Kind of. The lace was pretty tempting as well, I figure I'll try to get a skein of that once I'm finally able to make cardigans that fit. There was a whole shelf of some lovely lavender sockweight as well, but I just keep chanting "stick to colours you'll wear" over and over. Well, not out loud, just in my head - I'm not that crazy. Same for the very colourful skeins. "Yes, it looks lovely in the skein, but will it still do as a scarf?" So I went for a very subtle semi-solid and a slightly more colourful skein to test the waters. It's odd, it feels both very underwhelming (because by definition, if *I* was able to aquire it, it can't be that terribly rare or special) and daunting (you need to think of something extra special for these immensely precious treasures) to have they laying around. Also, it's the most expensive yarn I've ever bought. Don't get me wrong, 13€/150g is good value for money, especially for handdyed yarn on what feels like a very high-quality base. It's certainly crazy cheap for such a popular product.

Since it wasn't a huge detour, I also visited the Buttinette store on my way back. Last time I was there with my mom for a birthday present and I forgot half the stuff I wanted to buy. So this time I had a list with article numbers and everything. It'd probably have been cheaper without, despite the many bargains they have.

I got some fabric, party swap related - I especially love the dark green one at the bottom. I found it at the bottom of the leftovers bin and it has lovely drape. I'm worried the crappy sewing machine won't be able to handle it though. Also some embroidery thread and a hoop. No, I don't know how to embroider - yet. If my mantra in the Wollmeise shop was to stick to my favourite colours, here it should have been to stick to crafts I know and have the necessary equipment for. Which really only leaves knitting. I got a skein of Opal Regenwald in Caterpillar (did I mention I love the Regenwald line?) and Addi lace circs in 2,0. Yay! Can't wait to try them out. Finally some fabric paint and plastic buttons so I can have matching buttons for that cardigan I shall knit someday which will actually fit.

All in all, a very successful trip and certainly a good investment of my birthday money.