Tag: hobbies

I got a ton of completed projects out of my queue. Don’t think that I have stopped crocheting! I just started several projects at once and they all sort of finished at once.

I made fade this nice black shell stitch hat with a carnation that I sent through the mail so I couldn’t put up until it was received. I made the flower much tighter than the first one I did and it came out well. The picture doesn’t really do it justice.

Katie demanded a bag that had to be pink with pink flowers! She would not let me stripe it with any other colors so the bag is very very pink. I was able to put in a little purple on the flower. For the picture I pressed it into its proper service, carrying around stuffies. Spongebob was pressed into service for this picture.

I made an amazingly purple bobble-headed hat and scarf. It is amazingly bobble headed and purple. And a scarf! You can see the stitches from the side view are actually pretty even.

Everyone wants scarves… just as it gets warm out. But I have yarn for scarves, so scarves shall be made!

My mom took me to the Yarn Garden in Annapolis, MD. This is a tiny little store stuffed on a second floor of a small complex in the corner of a giant strip Mall by the Annapolis Mall (the one with the Michael’s and Cheeseburger Cheeseburger and a ton of other places.) This store was:

A. Tiny.
B. Crowded.
C. Stuffed from floor to ceiling with hand-dyed, local and imported yarn to the point where it is impossible to walk, and it ran the gamut from standard $4/skein yarn to $35/skein imported 100% silk.

It is one of those stores where you go in with a plan. You cannot sort of browse because the aisles are tiny, the shop is full of old ladies who all want to talk to you about knitting, and other people trying to buy things. It is a shop where you trip over other people simply trying to shop. It is also the last True Bastion of the US Economy — they were doing so much business it took forever to get out of there.

My mom was buying, so I brought home for skeins of yarn for two different targeted projects — a second version of my ruffle scarf and a scarf for Eric. I brought home this Noro yarn from Japan and Rowan Purelife yarn from Britain. Also, I now have a yarn winder.

Personally, I believe it is when you have actual hardware is when you are committed to the hobby.

Yarn Garden is highly recommended, although have a plan. If I get visitors, I promise a pilgrimage.

On another note, the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is the first weekend of May. I am highly considering going this year.

I had these two balls of Patons Shetland Tweed that I bought from the craft store for one project that failed, and then tried it in another project that failed. I was determined to use it up in something and I was having a hard time finding a project I could whip out that made use of bulky yarn and didn’t require me to understand really fancy stitches.

I ended up using one of the free patterns off the Lion Brand Yarn web site. It is popular on ravelry so I figured I would try it. My general verdict is:

* A cool project that makes a nice scarf quickly that has some compelling texture to it. I really love how it curls and drapes.
* The Patons Shetland Tweed is definitely the right consistency but not the right color. A bright, homespun yarn with lots of fuzziness at a bulky (4) weight would give this scarf the right look and feel.

Next time I go to the craft store, I will pick around and try to find something happier and sunnier. I am going to skip the browns for now since they are clearly sweater colors.

Here is the Ruffle Scarf in Tweedy Brown on me. It does not go real well with the I Love Pirates t-shirt, but then again, who doesn’t love pirates? It would look great with a white or gold turtleneck — I have one, so I will try it tomorrow.

I can’t just sit on the couch and watch TV, even when it is Barack Obama being awesome. So I made a hat! I have all this awesome Lion Brand Micro-Fiber sports-weight yarn, and it was just ripe for hatting! I made a skull cap with a shell stitch out of bright green and attached a bright pink flower with some nice 3-D height to it. The pictures have me with no makeup on and sleepy, so I look kind of enh, but I grabbed some pictures:

Green hat is green.
Side view of Green Hat with nice big pink Flower.
Forward look of Greet Hat that is Green with Red Flower.

Now I am debating something new or Gameboy.

I finished my first project. It is the same very simple hat pattern I made with my first test hat, but instead I used the Lion Brand Midnight Mohair (Rain Forest) yarn. I learned quickly that the mohair is sort of an intermediate-level yarn and I messed up the start, snipped it off, and started again. I did get the hang of working with it, but at first it was very slow going.

I am pleased with the results! The hat fits correctly, it holds together well, it looks nice and shiny, it’s warm, and it is appropriately hat-like. Thus I have successfully completed a first actual, wearable project and have determined I am reasonably good at this crochet thing. Although at this rate my house will fill with hats as I practice different patterns.

Some pictures:

The hat on me, sideways.
A dramatic picture of the hat on me from above. My eyes are weirdly green in this picture.
My considerably more attractive model shows off the hat.
The look of joy has me suspecting that the model will turn into a nefarious Hat Thief.

Quick note:

Down 29 this morning, about at every mile, signs are posted stating that 29 is closed to buses only on the 20th. I could not get to work if I wanted. Going home, the signs over the Beltway warned of Major Delays all around the Beltway starting this weekend. As much as I am an Obama-maniac like everyone else, he keeps stealing all the parking spots around here.

My second hat did not work out.  I am not sure what went wrong.  I used the right yarn, the right sized hook, followed the pattern correctly, etc.  And yet the hat turned into Hatthulhu, the Head Eating Hat of Madness from Beyond Space and Time.  Ia!  Ia!  It is enormous, and floppy, and without body, and it eats heads.

You may witness the horror that is Hatthulhu here for lo, it is horrible to behold.

I am not doing much else in the evening at the moment, so you are all stuck reading about my adventures in yarn. Listening to techno podcasts and crochet! Oh the woe! The woe!

I’ve started a hat. It actually looks plausibly hat-like. However, it is in the old, terrible yarn which is stringy and falls apart if you look at it too hard and rough on the hands and generally nasty. So it is now a white-ish, plausibly hat-like but not fun to hold hat. I made it about halfway through the pattern last night and generally intend to finish it this evening to see exactly how far my hat-making prowess has come. Then I will take pictures of it and everyone can say, “That? That is a hat.”

All I am really good for right now are lumpy things (square), lumpy things (round) and hats. Katie has claimed anything that looks plausibly useful for dolls as hers and has made off with it all and made demands that I clothe all her dolls entirely in strange looking crochet contraptions. I made Crochethulhu, which started as a round granny square and grew horribly out of control, and she claimed it as a horrible orange hippy crocheted doll skirt that, for reasons not quite clear, had to go on the Daddy doll in her dollhouse.

I have gotten over my Death Yarn Grip problem, so there is something.

I did discover I have a 4 hour cap. After four hours, neither hand can work very well and I get real problems with my left hand. Even if my left hand is merely holding the piece and some yarn, I start getting magnificent shooting pains that never really seem to end. This is, of course, 3:55 longer than I can hold normal crochet needles or yarn needles, so it is an improvement. (And 1:55 longer than I can hold drumsticks for Rock Band or my guitars.)

Eventually I will do something more interesting with my life but for now it’s all sort of yarn-based.

I cannot knit.

This is not some sort of surprise revelation of the Gods or anything.  I have rheumatoid arthritis, and it mostly lives in my left hand.  I can do certain things with my left hand from muscle memory but most everything has to be taught or I need an extensive hack.  It means I can never get very good at fretting a guitar, but I have learned how to do hats with my left hand on Rock Band despite not being able to feel the hits.  Knitting means holding something small and thin in my left hand for hours at a time, and that is right off the table.  Even big fat needles are no good because my left hand needs to do something other than move up and down.

I had taken crochet off the table, too, because of the super skinny needles.  Sure it only needs one hand while the other hand works like a big wooden bobbin — perfect! — but I can’t really hold the skinny needle in my right hand for more than 2-3 hours, max. Then, for Christmas, Eric found this crochet needle set from Provo Craft for little old ladies with hands curled him like THE CLAW.  These work for me.

I generally suck at crafting.  I’m not terrifically good at it. But right now I am surrounded by little swatches of really ugly, lumpy, plausibly crocheted squares and a tiny plausibly crocheted hat because hey, I can do this with my right hand.  I am still working out how to get my left hand to work as a bobbin effectively but I’m vaguely happy because I need to do something that lets me just sit and veg and I despise just sitting and watching TV.

I have 35 year old practice yarn.  It is all the colors of the 70s.  It’s pretty awful.  But.  Practice yarn!  And perhaps I will get good enough to produce something.

I am considering taking a picture of all my little lumpy creations to share.

Also, Rock Band?  Eric bought me a new kick, and now I’ve gone from 100-150 in a row to 700-750.  Problem solved!  My kick pedal was clearly not registering.  Time to move to a harder level.