Lifecycle of a sweater
Ok so I want to do a thing. I want to document the lifecycle of these sweaters. By that I mean I want to keep track of when I wear them and when I wash them and when I depill them and when I mend them and when they go from being the Wear Out In The World sweaters to the Wear Around The House sweaters and when, in the fullness of time, they are eventually worn enough that they can't be sweaters any more and instead turn into something else entirely. Because lately I'm loving seeing how things come [...]
Block baby block
Right, so...blocking. Every now and then I say 'a big part of the reason my pieces look the way they look is because I am picky about my blocking, so if you want the thing you make to look as much as possible like the thing I made, this is how I blocked mine, and you could do the same thing with yours if you want.' And every time I do, there are a handful of folks who hear 'you are required to block things the exact way I block things, and if you don't, you are a bad person [...]
Pockets
You know that thing where you go and have a secret, sneaky, unexpected feeling about something you never intended to have a fucking feeling about? Yeah. That thing is happening. That thing is happening kind of a lot lately, maybe a little too much. This is what I'm having a feeling about today. And I don't think I ever showed you the finished version, so it seemed like the thing to do.* I started this in early January. There was a picture on a wall in my house that needed to come down for Feelings Management Reasons. But having that [...]
Monthly Reminder
Look I'm tired. I'm tired, and I'm scared, and I don't feel like I have anything new to say. But we're doing this anyway. Because there's no other choice. My rule is when I feel overwhelmed, I look for a way to take an action (something beyond just scrolling on my phone or reading a news story that will make me angry). Because if I can find a way to learn more or do more or help more, I usually stop feeling so damn overwhelmed and instead feel like at least I did something. And today I want to talk [...]
About those ends
Right, so, we're done, save for weaving in the ends. And weaving in the ends is a bit contrary under the best of circumstances (yes, I am secretly judging the folks with two year old sweaters with unwoven ends, but that's a me problem, not a them problem, I'm working on it, and you should absolutely do what works best for you). Things only get more complicated when you don't even have a wrong side you can get to to hide things in. So how do you do it when the whole piece is the right side and thus offers [...]
Less…anatomical
Right, so, there's a stage in these where they look like a nipple. They just do. But we can fix it. Or at least minimize it (I suspect the human brain just has a part whose whole job is to go 'ooooooh, boob, tee-hee' as often as possible, so it is difficult to totally eliminate the issue). The trick on these is to make a little drawstring at the junction between the color change between the white and the yolk and then tuck something flat and round (coin, milk carton lid, little wooden disk, look around, you'll find something) and [...]
Keep digging
We started digging through the bin earlier, but we did not get all the way to the bottom, so let's pull out some more pieces. Video over on instagram if you want to watch me shove my sweaty hand into a slightly too small mitt on a hot, humid day (gee, what a treat...). For anyone just joining us, this is the bin of samples that are in good enough shape that I could totally just take new photos, instead of getting new samples knit, were I ever to bring theses patterns back out. We're talking about this today because [...]
I’m nosy
Ok so I'm nosy... The retired patterns are back for their summer holiday. They've been up since Tuesday morning, and I wanted to see which ones were the most popular. So I did a little bit of swearing at spreadsheets (I did not get spreadsheet autism, I got 'look at the pretty moss' autism) and found us some answers! Among the individual patterns, the top three favorites are: Nestled (what was that about pretty moss?) (rav, payhip), Abeyance (yup, more moss) (rav, payhip), and Glazed (even I don't generally eat the moss) (rav, payhip). Which honestly, yes, I support those choices, [...]
Rummage around
I have a bin in the closet mentally labeled 'samples that are in good enough shape that, were I ever to wish to revisit that pattern, I could probably just take new pictures instead of getting new samples knit' (look, I know myself well enough to know that all old work will eventually bug me enough that I wish to either revisit it or hide it away forever...I can't change this, but I have learned to work with it). And since lots of the retired patterns are available for the next few days, it seemed like a fine time to [...]
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