Oops.

I had grand plans to stick to it and finish that sweater. Grand plans.

Yeah.

So, the Crazy House (CH) is big and empty and has wood floors. This means that there is hellacious echoes. The place needs rugs!

You see where this is going?

Yeah.

I've got a bunch of boucle yarn that I've been trying to use for years. YEARS. I hate working with boucle, so it's been a challenge. Therefore, I cast on this.

I'll get back to the sweater when I can find the box it is in again. :p

Moving is revealing.

So, in the midst of packing up all of our stuff to move from house A to house B (which I persist in thinking of as the "Crazy House" due to it's funky level setup), I've had a chance to review and handle nearly everything I've got on the needles.

...damn.

There's a lot of projects that I started and wandered off from. I'm meaning at least two or three good sized boxes of cast-on-get-distracted. It did finally guilt me into finishing the sleeve of a sweater I'd been waiting to knit itself for the last several months...I can't imagine why that strategy didn't work. Funny how much faster things get done if you work on them. Now I've got all of the bits done (yes, I put the project down with the front, back and one sleeve done, and the second sleeve about 3/4 of the way complete), actually finishing it is going to be my top crafting priority in the Crazy House. But after that (between bouts of spinning), I need to FINISH some of these damn pieces. Starteritis is all well and good, but there has to be a case of finishitis.

The current plan is to photograph all of these items and post them on my Flickr account to keep myself accountable. It's somewhat embarrassing how many there are, and hopefully it will motivate me to complete some of these , or send them to the frog pond.

I was tagged, I tell you, tagged!

By HappyGoth

The Rules:

Rules are posted at the beginning. At the end of the post, the player tags 6 people and posts their names. Then the player goes to each of the “named” people’s blogs and leaves a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. If you’ve been tagged, you do the same, letting the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer. Your answer, of course, is the answer to the following questions. Here we go!

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
Lessee...I think this was the month I was back in ND from Scotland, getting a bunch of dental work done before I went back to Scotland for another 6 months.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today?
Pack more, paint, spin, knit, eat

3. Snacks I enjoy: dried berries (especially strawberries!), maple brown sugar rice cakes, chocolate, popcorn, dill pickles

4. Places I’ve lived: All of them? Ok... Taylor ND, Lauderdale MN (suburb of St. Paul), Bismarck ND, back to Lauderdale, New England ND, Fargo ND, St. Andrews Scotland, Forfar Scotland, East Kilbride Scotland, Herndon VA, Springfield VA, Manassas VA (all three are suburbs of DC), Winnetka CA (suburb of LA), Reston VA, back to Herndon, Vienna VA and now moving back to Springfield. I've not lived anywhere for more than 3 years since I was 12.

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Standard response: Pay off all debt. Buy a ranch. Buy alpacas. Travel the world (prior to the alpacas, methinks). Pay off my family's debts (as a debt reset...this wouldn't mean I'd support them from then on out, just give them a chance to start fresh). I imagine there would be a lot of fibre purchased.

I tag no one, as only HappyGoth and Darcy read my blog. Darcy, you can play along if you like. :)

It has begun.

Oh dear. I got sucked into Etsy.

I don't know how long that link will be good for, but I was obsessing over it for several days and I finally had to get it. Keep in mind, anything that reminds me of flames (work with me here, it looks flame'y to me) is probably going to be purchased by me. I'm an addict.

Fire! Fire! hunnh hunnh hunnh... /end channeling Beavis&Butthead

Learn something new every day.

For example, I just found out that the cast on that I use for damn near everything, the only cast on that I was taught growing up, that Laura had commented "looked kinda lacy"...Yeah, there's a reason for that. It's apparently a specific lace cast on.

Eunny has this to say about it:

Lace Cast On

This is a peculiar cast on, not overly popular or well-known, but very useful. It forms a loopy, open edge, sturdier than a backwards loop, but far more elastic than the long-tail. Worked loosely, this cast on is suitable for any lace project that requires a real beginning row.

The movements are basically that of a cable cast on, except the new stitches are drawn through the last stitch, rather than between the last two stitches.

Well, not well-known or popular unless that's the only one you knew for years. *shifty eyes* On the upside, I'm a learning a lot of other cast ons these days, but I found it somewhat hilarious that when I was casting on some lace, it specified using this cast on and I had to look up to see what it was. *rolls her eyes*

Quack.

My sister, who is pregnant, has requested that I return to the dark side of crochet and produce another one of these blankets. Sigh. The problem with making neat stuff is that you occasionally have to do it more than once. However, the ducks will be multi-coloured, and there may be other kinds of ducks, too! You never know when I'm feelin' wacky with a needle.

Productive usage of time

My manager looked at me today and politely suggested that I work remotely for the remainder of the day so I can be miserable at home instead of at work and I was more than happy to take him up on it.

So far, as I know he doesn't have very high expectations for me when I'm all sore and sickly (massive dental work + sinus infection = I'm so much fun to be around right now), I've instead used my time to teach myself how to knit continental style. People had professed disappointment that I didn't know how, so, I was curious if it was superior. Well, it certainly isn't so far, but I'll keep practicing. I'm much more comfortable with the English style as that's what I learned as a wee one, but I'm open to new knowledge. :)

Now, to attempt to purl...

Always something to suck you back in.

I've been at this fibre thing for a long time. My mother taught my sister and myself to knit when I was 5 during a bout of flu, and cross stitch came the following year during another flu visitation. My mother learned early on that keeping my hands occupied was a good idea. Once we'd learned how to cross stitch, she had little minions to sew Christmas Tree ornaments for her custom cross stitch business.

I played around a bit with knitting, but pretty much was a stitchin' fiend for years.

When I was 18 and livin' in Scotland and had nothing better to do with myself (I got a lot of cross stitch done, as well as becoming an avid fan of turf horse racing, in addition to playing house-wife...I'm not good at one of these things), I decided to teach myself how to crochet. It took a little while, and lord knows I had a few "What the hell is this?" results, but I persevered. I became an absolute crochet addict, churning out afghans like there was no tomorrow, graduating to making...well, anything that was soft. (Including, but not limited to, a bong cozy for a friend, and a stuffed jellyfish.)

When I was 25 and living in L.A., I randomly worked at Michaels for a while as an event coordinator and crochet teacher. Since I was now getting paid to play with yarn (AWESOME!), I decided I should remember how to knit, too. So, I picked up some sticks and string and away I went.

Now days I'm crazy about knitting, and I have a bajillion projects on the needles at any time.

But what has been fascinating me lately has been the discovery of dyeing yarn (only with kool-aid so far, but I assure you I'll pick up some of the poisonous stuff soon) and the gift of a spinning wheel for my 30th birthday. Taking fluff and turning it into something useful (if not always beautiful) is just fantastic to me.

So, that's the brief background overview of where I'm coming from. From here on out, pictures and kvetching.

Yet another damn fibre blog

Because the world doesn't have enough of these. A place to keep track of what I'm working on, or not working on as the case may be.

There will be photos and possibly links, but mostly I know myself and I realize that I suck at updating this type of thing, so there will be a lot of dry spells between posts.