CathyCrafter

There are two projects on the needles today, but I don’t have photos of either yet, as they really don’t amount to much at this point.

I signed up for two mystery shawl alongs just before the test knitting opportunity.  This time the test knitting gave me the opportunity to take a step back from the pressure of the mystery knits and watch them unfold from the sidelines.   If you’ve never done a Mystery Knit Along (KAL), you are basically knitting blind.   You usually have no idea what it will look like beyond what type of garment it will be before you sign on.  You are given a swatch and yarn and notion information so you can be ready for the start date.  On the start date the first “clue” or portion of the pattern is released. Then additional clues are released (typically weekly) until you have the entire pattern (usually over the course of 4-5 weeks). There is immense pressure – mostly self inflicted – to keep up and complete each clue before the next is released.   Some designers even run contests open only to those who can keep up week to week.   If you’re working a rectangle the designer usually breaks it up into equal chunks that can easily be completed before the next clue. When you are working a triangular shaw or a circular shawl the row length grows (sometimes exponentially) and clues take more and more time to complete. Now if you’re working on a pattern you have given careful thought and consideration to and taken time to match your yarn to pictures you’ve seen of finished objects  you know what you are getting into and know the finished product will be something you will treasure.  With a mystery KAL not so much.  That happened to me this time with one of these mysteries.  I won’t name the KAL I decided not to knit.  I have knit other shawls by this designer in the past, but this one, while lovely, just didn’t seem worth the effort once I saw the finished objects.  I have decided to continue The Goddess Knits Anniversary Shawl 2009 Victorian Romance.  I was able to complete clue 1 before the test knitting began, then I had to just put it aside and collect clues for both KALs as I did the test knitting.  I am using a lace weight deep green heather and now that I have picked it up again I am chugging along slowly on clue 3 as the rows get longer and loving the emerging pattern.  I will most likely not include the ribbon lacing up the center back panel though.

Project number two on the needles today is a red scarf.  Now anyone who knows me knows that I typically wear earth tones and dark colors so as to fade into the background, except on my feet where pretty much anything goes with my socks.  The red scarf isn’t for me, or for anyone I know.  It, hopefully along with a few others, will be donated to the OFA Red Scarf Project.  I first learned of this while reading Norma’s blog.  She is a great champion of this cause and puts it all so eloquently – check out her posts tagged red scarf project.  Basically at about the time they go off to college most kids age out of the foster care system and are left on their own.  The Orphan Foundation of America is a charity dedicated to these kids.  They have an excellent rating and I encourage you to check them out.  Each year the OFA puts together care packages to send off to these students around the holidays.  Each package includes a red scarf knit by volunteers who make their contribution by buying yarn and knitting it into a suitable unisex scarf.  The OFA’s  Red Scarf Project page and the Ravelry group have lists of pattern ideas if you aren’t sure where to get started.  Keep in mind though if you decide to knit a scarf – only knit something you would wear yourself or gift to someone you know.  These kids deserve the best we can offer.

It was brought to my attention that I have been severely neglecting my blog since before Christmas.  I’ve been keeping my Ravelry project page updated for the most part so I’ll just give a quick rundown here and post some pics of my favorites.  As always most of these links are Ravelry links which are only available for members.  If you have the least bit of interest in fiber arts I really encourage you to check it out.  It is an incredible resource for cataloging materials and projects, searching yarns and patterns, and interacting with other fiber artists an designers through great forums and special interest groups.

Well, there was some stealth knitting going on for Christmas gifts and baby gifts that I just wasn’t able to blog about back then.

Nate’s Christmas Socks – Thuja in Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Mediumweight – color Corbie

Baby Gifts Baby #1 – A Baby Surprise Jacket, socks and a  Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap again knit with BMFA STR mediumweight  – this time in the Fire on the Mountain color – this took slightly more than 1 skein to complete the set – I had enough leftover for a pair of Leyburn socks for me.

Baby Gifts – Baby #2  A Baby Yours Sweater and accessories  – BMFA STR Medium weight again – this time in Beryl

In January I moved on to a complete restart of a mystery shawl I had joined and started the previous summer.  That shawl was also destined to be a gift.  But here it is Eala

Another project I worked on in January was this Moebius Cowl.  If you have never tried working a moebius knit – this is the pattern to start with.   You don’t just twist your cast on to create the moebius.  You need a long circular needle which you loop and you then cast onto the loop.   Your cast on virtually disappears as you work into the “top and bottom” of the cast on loops and work the cowl from the center out to the single edge.  The end result is this cool moebius with one edge and one side.

I also spin my own yarn.  This project was my first attempt at spinning from a bat.  I have been working on getting enough yardage of a good sock weight yarn from about 4 ounces of fiber.  This attempt came close and I probably could have gotten some short socks out if the skein, but I wound up making fingerless Merletto Mitts since the yarn turned out just a little too wiry to make comfy socks.

After the mitts I moved back onto socks, knitting the installments from the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin Sock Club.  This is another “mystery” project.  Every other month you are shipped an exclusive yarn and pattern.  The yarns are always special club dyed colorways by Tina of Blue Moon Fiber Arts matched with a pattern from some of the top sock designers in the business.  So far I have knit each yarn with the intended pattern, but I may branch out this month since the current pattern really doesn’t appeal to me.

January – Queen of Beads

March – Rogue Roses

May – Fraggle Squiggle Socks

I haven’t photographed these yet.  I just finished these the other night while I had some down time due to my hard drive crash.  Unfortunately the stress of the hard drive crash and the uncertain fate of my files must have affected my knitting more than I realized.  When I tried them on the second sock was a bit baggy.  I know I won’t be happy unless I rip it out and re-knit it, but I really have to psych myself up to do that.

July – the new pattern and yarn just arrived.  I absolutely love the colors in the yarn, but I have to decide on a pattern still.  I just know I wouldn’t wear the socks if I knit it in the kit pattern.

I also made another BMFA STR medium weight socks for myself using the Nanner pattern.  I have to say so far STR is probably my favorite sock yarn.  The base is springy, squooshy and works up into beautiful socks.  I have had the opportunity to try both medium weight and lightweight in colors from the watercolor wave,  multicolor wave, shaded solid and raven clan color families and been pleased with the dyeing and colorfastness of each and every skein.

In April I took a bit of a break from socks to use up some stash yarn and satisfy an itch for lace and knit myself a Laminaria

During April, May and June personal things slowed down a bit as I got an incredible opportunity to do some test knitting and profesional knitting.  Unfortunately I can’t yet show pictures of that knitting or talk about it.  I am very excited about the projects though and will go over them all once I get the ok.

That brings us up to date and to what is on the needles now, but that’s a post for another day.  I still have to set up the camera to work with the new hard drive.

I have been working on a bunch of little projects and finishing up one big one before I settle down to my annual Christmas Angel crochet frenzy.

There is a new nephew and a friend’s first baby due in January so baby knits have been high on the list.  Neither shower has taken place yet though so I won’t spoil any surprises here, but if you are on Ravelry you can find my latest baby projects here, here, and here.  There is still one baby piece to finish this week to complete a set.

Someplace in there I snuck in my third test knit.  The square spiral hat by Samantha Leopold-Sullivan.  This was the first double knitting project I ever attempted and this was an excellent pattern to do this with.  After a few false starts as I learned to double knit, the hat knitted up quickly and easily.  It is super warm, but a little big for our small heads.  I used 100% wool so it too is sitting in the “needs final finishing” pile awaiting a quick wash and gentle felting.

The big thing keeping me busy lately was a new cardigan for me.  I used Lion Brand Homespun in the olive colorway to knit the Lion Brand Cropped Cardigan. I planned to modify this by adding a bit of length so it sits at the hip instead of being cropped.  This is finished – except for the buttons which are on order.   I remembered to put the body together and measured for the sleeves before knitting them and wound up needing shorter sleeves than the pattern called for.  Once the sweater was together, the neck wound up very wide and low, so I added a collar to this. As written the neck is left with just the bound off stair-step edge around the front of the neck.  This was a  very unprofessional finish to a pattern and left the sweater looking half finished.

I have always loved spending my free time making things. Everyone says that the best job you can ever have is doing what you love. I have been trying to think of ways to make my crafting pay for years. Unfortunately, everything I love to do is so time intensive, that even at bargain labor rates I would be hard pressed to find someone who could afford the finished products when you figure in time and materials. The internet knitting community has shown me some opportunities I had never before considered. I don’t think that I will be paying the bills by test knitting any time soon, but for now it is an interesting pursuit which may lead to some more lucrative things.

So far I have test knit twice. Once for CookieA’s Ornette Socks (Ravelry link), and once just recently for VeryBusyMonkey’s Sneak Peek Socks (Ravelry too).

Both were very enjoyable learning experiences.  CookieA did hers in the style of a knit along.  She formed a yahoo group for the test knitters and we were able to share experiences.  Ornette is a very complicated sock with many charts and different styles of cables.  CookieA released the pattern to us in stages, revising and perfecting it as we went along.  It was nice to share in the feed back of the other knitters and know whether you were on the right track.  VeryBusyMonkey’s socks, have a beautiful, simple to execute lace pattern.  I got this as a nearly ready to publish pattern that only needed a few tweaks.  Each of her test knitters worked independently on this and VeryBusyMonkey was wonderfully quick with her response to my feedback and questions throughout the whole process.

I am looking forward to doing more test knitting in the future.  Both these “jobs” paid in copies of the test knit pattern and a copy of another pattern from the designer.   I am always on the lookout for more test knitting opportunities.  Hopefully this is one step on the journey to making my hobby at least self supporting and becoming a professional at what I love.

Well, today I have been investigating some gallery and flickr integration tools for use here. So I am going to get things started here by showing you what I have been up to this week. I am participating in the Secret of the Stole III Knit-A-Long (KAL) by the NauticalKnitter. You can find her and her wonderful patterns at www.knitwith.us. I finished hint 1 a few days ago and hint 2 was just released this morning. This is an exciting project so far. I am using Coulormart 3/44 merino in the glacier colorway with clear iridescent size 6 beads. In the sunlight the beads sparkle and look like icy crystals against the pale blue background. I’ll try to get some pictures outside soon. I got very excited about my color and bead choices when I saw hint 2 this morning and realized that the motifs which we got a hint at in clue 1 were definitely snowflakes.

As best as I can remember, this is the first time I have knit with beads. This is certainly the first time I have tried the crochet hook method of adding the beads to knitting. NauticalKnitter has an excellent video on her website illustrating the technique. You don’t have to count out and thread all the beads for your project onto your yarn before you begin working! My mom kept looking at my work last week and searching my thread cone to see where I had hidden the beads.

The technique is simple and elegant. As you come up to a stitch requiring a bead, you place a bead on a very fine steel crochet hook. You then hook the stitch needing the bead off the left needle, pull the loop on the crochet hook through the bead and then replace the stitch onto the left needle ready to be knit (or purled) into as the pattern dictates. Now that I have tried this I really don’t know why you would do it any other way (unless of course you don’t have a fine steel crochet hook). The beads sit so nicely over both legs of the stitch this way, no more fussing about what part of the loop the bead should sit on.

Welcome to my little spot on the web.  I plan to use this space to chronicle my crafting endeavors.  I enjoy a wide variety of crafts including spinning, crocheting, sewing, needlework and even stained glass, but my current obsession is knitting.  I have bounced around from craft to craft over the years, but yarn keeps calling me back.  I find myself returning time and time again to the knitting needles and crochet hook.  Some of my earliest memories of my grandmother include learning to crochet chains on my finger as I sat and watched her and my mother at their needlework.