Category: Friday Fails and Fixes

More (not so) EZ
Friday Fails and Fixes

More (not so) EZ

La TejedoraLeave a comment

Yes, yes, I realize it’s March of 2021. So, lets talk about February of 2020! Specifically, the Knitter’s Almanac. To get you caught up…I have not completed the January project of a highly cabled Aran sweater. February seems a bit more reasonable…baby clothes.

On the left, we have Elizabeth Zimmerman’s glorious plan. The two on the right are what I had done by the end of February 2020. I started by doing the changing pad (the one in the middle), but relatively quickly realized that wasn’t gong to get done, so I decided to see if I could finish the sweater instead. It’s a SUPER quick knit, I just didn’t bail to it until towards the end of the month. So, clearly, no, I could not finish the sweater. Had I *just* done the sweater, then yes, I would have.

Update on this, the pad is a double knit, in that it’s do the border, slip 1, knit 1, then do the other border, turn. All the ones you slipped, you now knit, and the ones you knit you now slip. This makes a double thick fabric, with the wrong side on the inside. It’s a great pattern/project to do to ease yourself into more complicated double knitting. But, the changing pad is a relatively large project, and you are in effect making 2, just both at the same time. So, it sits by my desk at work, and when I’m on hold, or in a meeting, I can get a few stitches in here and there. It was also my lights out project, so I’ve gotten it close to being done….just not close enough.

I’ve done literally nothing more on that sweater. Other than disconnecting the needle tips for other projects, and putting them back on when I’m done. I so love interchangeable circular needles. 🙂

While I seem to be posting these Knitter’s Almanac thoughts on Fridays, they really aren’t failures for me. Yeah, it’s kind of a bummer that I didn’t complete my stated goal. But, goals are things that are just out of reach. If we could always reach our goals, they wouldn’t need to be goals, they would just be things we are doing. That being said, there’s a difference between not trying and not succeeding. I legitimately tried, and we are getting to some months where I succeeded. I want to be careful here that you don’t “hear” me give you permission to never stretch what you think your boundaries might be.

Firstly, you don’t need my permission for anything. (Unless you do, and you know who you are!) I’m a bunch of random words on your screen of choice, and am here for entertainment purposes only. Secondly, though, stretching is good! Generally, the worst thing that happens is you decide not to do that thing again. The cost/benefit analysis, for ME makes it worth stretching a bit. Not all the time, mind you. There is clearly something to be said for the soothing comfort of the rivers and the lakes that you are used to. (Ha! those of us of a certain age have that song in our heads now)

Before I leave you tonight, I’ll share one small EZ related bon mot. I’m taking a quilting class (yes, yes, I’ll share about that later, I am quite behind on so many things). Sunday night, our homework for this Saturday (by noon) was to complete 20 quilt blocks 10.5″ x 10.5″, plus the sashing in between. So…the entire top. I have been frantically sewing in all my spare moments, and I have completed 6 blocks. I have GB tonight, so I won’t be getting much more done. When telling Poopie of my homework earlier this week, his response was “Is Elizabeth Zimmerman teaching this class?” Clearly, she is. So, that’s my fail, I’m not going to have my homework done. Think they’ll believe the baby ate it?

Failure is always an option!
Friday Fails and Fixes · Uncategorized

Failure is always an option!

Featured La Tejedora2 Comments

I’ve discussed before the need to be documenting what you do. I’m not that great at it when it comes to crafting, though. The featured picture is my weaving “journal”. I really only use when I’m making a pattern in the weft, since that is what I’m actively doing, and I don’t want to unwind everything to figure out if I did 6 inches or 8 inches in that stripe. I also use it to doodle my patterning for my warp. I have x number of spaces, and I want y number of stripes, but I want z number such and such a width. For everyone who thought math wouldn’t help them…I have to draw pictures…and I actually did pretty good in math. As you can see, I futz, and then end up with “nothing like this”. But I guess it’s a place to start, right?

So, what is my “failure”? I didn’t figure out how much yarn I was starting with. I had teal and lavender, and then a variegated mess of the two. I knew I wanted stripes of the solid, and make the weft the variegated. This was “found” yarn. I have no idea where or when I got it, but it came without bands, and so I just kind of went for it.

I was going to have a perfectly symmetrical warp, so, I started in the middle and worked my way out, and yeah, not enough yarn. Oops. That’s OK, though! One of my favorite sayings is “If you don’t have a Plan B, you don’t have a Plan”. I’m pretty sure I first heard that on NCIS because I’ve ALWAYS been an old lady. I had some left over teal from the yarn potluck, I figured I’d just add that into the mix and see. This is even adding that in, and I’m still not balanced AT ALL. Plus, I ran out of the teal potluck yarn.

So, yeah, that didn’t work either. My entryway was out of commission for a day until I could get more of the potluck yarn to finish up the warp. (Poor Poopie) As you can see, there really ended up being almost no rhyme or reason to the stripes, though it looks like there should be. When these things happen, I think fondly of my BFF from high school, A. We would go to our friend’s house for lunch, where they had a wall hanging that *ALMOST* had a pattern to the quilt blocks. If you pulled off this row, then the remainder had a pattern, or if you pulled from the other side, the rest would have a pattern. It drove A batty. This stripe pattern looks like it should have a pattern, and just maybe you aren’t smart enough to see it. If you see it, you are smarter than me. This is what happens when you don’t properly prepare, and neither Plans A nor B really work out.

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I am confident enough in my weaving that this isn’t a big deal. Also, despite what I have thought for years and years, I am a process crafter. There’s a school of thought that one is either a “process” (knitter, but I’m substituting crafter), or a “product”. Are you in it for the process? or just the finished product? I’ve always thought I’m a product crafter, since in so much of my life I’m so goal-oriented. However, I’ve had to come to terms that I’m not necessarily what I always thought I was. I’m taking a journey, not arriving at a destination. Since I’m not trying to make something in particular, there isn’t a place I’m heading, so I can’t get lost. For those of you who know me IRL and are confused…this is in crafting ONLY. And ONLY when I don’t have a Project in mind. I can be Zen with whatever comes. IRL, I have obligations I need to meet. I cannot just be Zen with whatever comes, because that could mean I’m not able to fulfill my obligations. When I’m making a Project, Poopie can attest that the frustrations of gauge not working or colors not being right drives me to tears. As I’ve stated before, I have no weaving obligations. I make cloth. That’s it. Cloth. And you are the A hole for trying to make it more. So, maybe I have a “direction” I’m going, I’m heading towards Cloth, as long as I’m still heading in that direction, I’m good.

This is the weaving I was doing during my experiment with living without electricity. (Like the spin I put on that awful week?) But, one of the warp threads broke, and while totally fixable, it wasn’t something I felt comfortable doing by candlelight. One of the things I love about crafting is that all of the problems in crafting (unlike life) can be fixed. By me. Even if the fix is tearing it all out, and never looking at it again. This wasn’t that drastic an issue. I can fix a broken warp thread. See?

Yes, these pictures are all the same project. The difference in light makes a huge difference, and is a major reason why I miss buying fiber in person. I just can’t tell over the computer screen what color something is. I’d also like you to note the subtleness that all the cross colors create. It almost looks like it should be plaid. Again, A’s brain would explode. In most of my crafting, as long as I don’t let anyone see the pattern (you know, like the weaving journal I posted at the top), I’m golden. I made Cloth. No one has any way of knowing I wanted North Cloth, and ended up with South Cloth. Except, Dear Reader, I’m letting you in on my secret. I’m counting on you to keep it.

There’s another lesson in here about colors mixing, and the unexpected joys that can bring, but I’m tired right now, and it’s not quite formulating for me. I’m going to go and watch a serial killer documentary and work on some more weaving. Have a great weekend!

Party foul
Friday Fails and Fixes

Party foul

La TejedoraLeave a comment

Last night, Poopie and I were going to support some friends by watching their band play.  However, it was a venue I had never been to before.  Poopie hadn’t been there in a very long time.  Dear Reader, you know what that means…I had no idea what to take to work on.  The comparable bar Poopie suggested I use as a guide happens to have a well lit table in the back, I can’t count on that.

I started a concert hat just in case.  20180222_141950.jpgBut…I had some projects half started from Madrona.  Plus another thing I just started (which is not the shawl I’m supposed to make for Sheri, because I suck).  IMG_20180222_194635.jpgPlus spinning, plus…plus…plus… So, I just packed a little of everything. There’s the weaving on the knitting loom that hopes to become a hat someday.  There’s the new hat.  There’s the drop spindling.

We vaguely knew where the new-to-us venue is located, and went there.  We pulled into a cruddy parking lot, and saw our friends’ car, so we knew we were in the right place.  Huzzah! The Facebooks told us that our friends’ duo was going to be a solo since their poor children had come down with the plague.  We walked into the bar, which was NOT situated for live music.  Ok…many bars aren’t really set up for that.  However, we didn’t see our friend.  How weird.  Poopie didn’t think much of it, though.  He went to get us drinks.

Meanwhile, I am trying to use the information from my Madrona class on social media.  I was taking the picture of all my stuffs and typing up a caption for Instagram when he came back.  He brought the largest White Russian I’ve seen outside of my kitchen.  The featured image shows that it’s in a diner’s juice glass.  He also brought menus, just in case.  “Huh” he said.  I was happily typing on my phone..clickity clack.  “What?” I asked without looking up (I can be rude like that).  “We are in the wrong place.  I guess that explains why our friend isn’t here.”  Sure ’nuff…

SO…if you were to follow me on Instagram (latejedoracrafts), you would see the picture, and the caption, which says: “When Poopie makes me go to a new venue, I need to pack ALL THE PROJECTS. Also. We are in the wrong venue.”  I find me hilarious.  I had believed from my class that the post would also share to my Facebook page (La Tejedora Crafts).  I was wrong.  Apparently, I have to go in and check it over? I’ll have to do more research to see if I can make it auto-cross-pollinate

In my defense, I was busy hating on Kristi (not her real name) during my class.  She was loud, obnoxious, and was clearly always right…even when she wasn’t (no! she was not me!).  It started off with her being snotty about my laptop “I don’t know why people spend thousands of dollars on a laptop when a tablet will do everything a laptop does”.  Except, Kristi couldn’t figure out how to log into the WiFi, and had to ask for the password like five times (take that!).  It went downhill from there.  I mentally added an “e” to the end of her name.  She strikes me as someone who would HATE that.  She kept talking over the teacher, and interrupting.  At one point, the teacher was working with a student one on one, and Kristie (notice the e??) just started asking her random questions from across the room.  All this means that the instructor was not able to share as much as she probably planned, nor was I able to glean as much as I wanted.  But…I know how to Google.  It’ll happen, just slowly and painfully.  Kristie will forever be my social media scapegoat.

Back to last night…I chugged that White Russian.  It wasn’t very good.  I think they were running out of Kahlua? What it lacked in flavor, it made up for in volume.  (insert NSFW joke here) We went across the parking lot to the correct bar.  It was what I imagined it would be.  There really wasn’t a stage space.IMG_20180222_225216.jpg  The tables were lit with Beer signs.  There was even a large biker dude, complete with motorcycle patches on his leather jacket.  Also, he had an itty bitty dog with its own leather vest.  Apparently, it was a support dog? The dichotomy was startling to say the least.

While the various bands played, I worked on the loom weaving. As you can see from the beginning of the night, to the end, it’s relatively quick work.  And I can do it by the light of the beer sign.  This post and caption DID happen to make it from Instagram to Facebook.  My social media ineptitude is making me fear I am totally turning into my mother.  Pretty soon, I’ll be over-using and abusing emojis in my texting.  (Don’t ask, I have a rant all prepared concerning my mom’s texting habits)

So, last night’s party fouls were only somewhat failures.  We made it to the right place (eventually), and were able to show music love.  It ended up just being a hiccup in the process.  Hopefully, the continuing social media fails will be hiccups in the process.  And even if they are not, they are apparently making good blog fodder.  Just please, as much as I love my mother, don’t let me turn completely into her.

Totally off topic, I’m writing this in a coffee shop, and this couple next to me are clearly on a first date.  Spoiler alert, he is NOT failing.  He’s making good eye contact, clearly listening, asking all sorts of follow up questions.

 

 

 

Madrona day 2
Friday Fails and Fixes

Madrona day 2

La TejedoraLeave a comment

Remember how I told you I went to a sports ball event last week? Well, I won Blazers tickets at Christmas party for my day job.  My plan originally was to give them to Thing 2 and her S.O. for Christmas. However, Poopie thought it might be fun/interesting to go to the game.  So, last Thursday night, we went.  As you can tell, our seats were nosebleed seats (third row from the top).  Which means that Poopie and I were both terrified we would randomly fall over, and tumble to our deaths.  Neither one of us is really into any of the sports balls.  This was an experiment.20180208_185625.jpg

Wednesday, I realized that I needed to start another hat so I could knit while watching the sports ball tournament (full disclosure, I’m totally using the wrong terminology for purposes of aggravation).  I mentioned this to Poopie, and he asked me if I wouldn’t rather do a project where things change when there’s a score.  Don’t worry that this sentence didn’t make sense.  This happens in long term relationships (a friend and I have been known to have entire conversations without saying a single word). The important thing is that I knew what he was talking about.

Poopie was referring to one of the first classes (I think it was *the* first class, but don’t want to exaggerate) I took at a festival.  I don’t recall the name of the class.  But the instructor was Debbie New.  I had no idea who she was, but she had already written Unexpected Knitting.  This class was a very interesting take on patterning.  If you check out her book at the library, or purchase a copy, you will find that she is an insanely smart person.  This particular idea is a variation on the one she calls “Cellular Automaton” knitting.  It’s an idea taken from nature, where the environment dictates how the pattern develops.  (I really need to figure out what would be necessary to teach this technique) Anyhoo, I thought this sounded like a great idea for a souvenir of the sports ball event.

The idea *was* great.  The execution was not.

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pre-game

The first section here is my attempt at remembering what to do.  I separated it with a purl row.

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first quarter

Then we have the first quarter.  My plan was to do a yarn over each basket, and the direction of the decrease would be who made the basket, so right leaning would be us, and left leaning would be them.  I chose to do lace vs. a knit/purl patterning because the yarn is speckled and fuzzy.

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second quarter

What that means, though is that the “wrong” side is generally stockinette, so I can’t “record” any points during my knitting back section.  So, you can see partway through, I gave up on that, and did yarn overs regardless of right or wrong side.

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third quarter

I missed soooo many baskets though, because I was going off of crowd reaction.  I apparently dropped a bunch of stitches, because everything got smaller.

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fourth quarter

As you can see, the match went into overtime.  Poopie was less than enthusiastic about that.  Which made me unreasonably happy.

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OT hahahahaha

The featured photo is what I ended up with.  While I am perfectly happy with a random patterning, this just looked like I had no idea what I was doing.  Even if that is often true, I try not to advertise that.  It’s a secret between us, Dear Reader. So, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.  I like the idea of a keepsake of the sports ball.  But I did NOT like the scarf.  I decided to take it out and start over.  Poopie reminded me to take pictures.  So here they are!!

Why, you may ask, am I talking about sports ball from last week when I’m at Madrona?  Well, this is the scarf that I was working on on the train.  So, there’s that.  I’ve restarted it, and re-did the rules.  I may post more specifics about it, but yesterday had a story that I thought would go well with Friday Fails and Fixes.

Remember how L was working on green? It’s a pattern that Madrona put out in 2014 for the event.  Well, yesterday, while waiting for Pam, L had to frog and tink and was *very* mildly irritated with a mistake somewhere in her knitting.  Meanwhile, I was knitting away on this scarf.  Then I got super excited.  I had had a mutation!20180215_162212-e1518840096919  There was some error somewhere, and the patterning I hadn’t even realized was occurring in my “random” stitches got messed up.  It may be difficult to tell, but the eyelets below the box tend to go up towards the right.  Regardless of how random the pattern is, the eyelet is always to the right.  However, you can see in the box that the eyelets are to the left of the row below. I got off a stitch somehow.  It was super exciting for me.  L thinks I should teach her this technique so that she can be excited for mistakes as well, rather than irritated. I told her I’d think about it.

So, in this post we have a couple of methods of dealing with failure.  We can be glad we tried something, but decide that it’s really not for us (sports ball games).  We can admit that something isn’t working in the form that it’s in and try something new (first scarf). Or, we can be excited to see what new fresh hell we’ve wrought exciting things we can discover (current scarf).  Regardless, if you aren’t failing, you aren’t trying new things!

 

In which she drops the f bomb (once)
Friday Fails and Fixes

In which she drops the f bomb (once)

La Tejedora2 Comments

OK,  I said yesterday I’m expanding, and so I am (that’s not a fat joke).  I *wanted* Friday to be Friday Fuck-ups.  But, I was reminded I’m supposed to be PG-13.  Apparently, you can only have one f-bomb in the movie to keep it PG-13.  I hope to be doing more Friday posts, so….I had to rethink.  Thinking in the first place can be rough.  Re-thinking…torture ;).

I wanted it to be in that same vein, though.  And here’s why: we see on social media (blogs included) the best facet of people’s lives.  When we meet someone in person, we meet their Facebook persona.  Life is *not* like that though.  As an example, I have an affinity for crafts, and naturally catch on. So, in classes, I soar ahead of the other students.  HOWEVER, I still have epic fails. They don’t see that in classes, and may think it always comes easy… which it doesn’t.

Comparing ourselves to the online versions of people is an awful thing to do to yourself.  I have had it described to me as comparing our rough draft lives to someone’s final draft.  “Oh look, she has this perfect family, her husband bought her flowers.” Meanwhile, I’m over here giving mine the silent treatment and he doesn’t even notice it’s been three days since I spoke to him.  What she’s not saying is that he bought her flowers because he was out all night, and came home smelling of booze and cheap perfume.

Dear Reader, I hope by now you’ve grocked to the fact that my stories about crafting are VERY thinly veiled stories about life.  They are all true, mind you, but the lessons have more to do with life than the actual craft. For example, I’m not going to be telling you about the time my husband farted in my face on my 30th birthday because he thought it would be hilarious. That would be rude and uncalled for…kind of like farting in someone’s face ON THEIR BIRTHDAY.

Instead, I’ll tell you about the above shawl, and you can infer what you want from that.

This summer, my LYS had an event wherein each month, you made something that fulfilled the requirements they put forth at the beginning of the month.  August’s project needed to have a pattern who’s name included Sun, or Solar, or Eclipse (I think).  So, I bought yarn, and a pattern.  This is a big deal for me.  I rarely buy yarn anymore *cough* yarn wall *cough*.  Same with patterns–there’s so much out there for free!  And I almost never buy both for a project.  Even more shocking, I ended up purchasing (on accident) the yarn called for.

I set about knitting this thing.  And I hated almost every moment of it.  The lace pattern was not intuitive at all, the pattern was confusing.  I had been spoiled by shawl patterns by Sivia Harding*. I really liked the yarn and color-way, but was slogging through the shawl.  Fellow crafters were in love with the shawl.  Pam even bought the pattern and some yarn to do one herself (over my strong objections).  I just couldn’t have the same enthusiasm…until I finished.  Huzzah! I was done!!!!

Sivia had finally convinced me of the joys of blocking (we will get there someday, Dear Reader), so I went to block this shawl….and that’s what I saw….A giant freaking hole (already dropped an f-bomb in the post can’t do another.  Believe me, in real life, this was a hard R moment).

I was about ready to cry.  The only thing that saved me from tears was my absurdist sense of humor.  Of course the shawl I hated would be a fail.  Of course I spent a solid month working on something there was no salvaging.  While I’ve taken classes and become fairly adept at fixing lacework…this lace has no repeat.  It’s a mess to do it in the first place, much less to figure out what dropped where.

No.  the only fix was to take a picture to share my shame with my crafting friends, and rip the sucker out.  The pattern has been shredded, and the yarn, as you can see is back on the yarn wall where it can think about what it did.

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Yarn in its naughty spot

So that’s the fail.  In this case, the fix is to delete, delete, delete.  In life, we don’t always have that option.  He can’t unfart in my face, and is that really a break-up-able offense if you aren’t Elaine?  I know, I had to think hard about it too…  Unlike life, crafting ALWAYS has that option.

When I first taught DeAnna to knit, we were knitting squares for Warm up America.  She went off to knit, and came back with…something. It wasn’t square, or even a rhombus, we don’t know what it was.  She was almost in tears, she was so frustrated.  She had no idea what she did wrong (neither did I frankly, to this day I don’t know).  I told her not to worry, we’d fix it.  I pulled out the needles, and undid the whole thing.

Just like life, my crafting advice can be a bit…dubious.  I mean, a better teacher would probably have figured out what she did, and actually fixed it, instead of just tearing it out and having her do it over again.  But, I know DeAnna.  What she needed that day was a do-over.  Some days are like that…even in Australia.

So, if you have need of dubious advice, let me know! I’m more than happy to oblige!

*no sponsorship, I just love her classes and designs!