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?
I’m not sure if I’ve told you, or just think I’ve told you, but in 2020, my “New Years Resolution” was to knit out of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitter’s Almanac. Well, this is (the end of) February 2021, and I’m talking about January of 2020. So, that really tells you all you need to know about that particular endeavor.
The left shows what I was “supposed” to have completed in January. The right shows what was done. I’m assuming she was thinking of us finishing just one sweater…but who the hell knows what goes on in her noggin. Now, to be fair to Ms. Zimmerman, I had to restart a couple times because gauge. The yarn is some yarn I spun forever ago. I’m not positive of the fiber. Because I never noted it, because clearly, how could I ever forget?? The discerning reader may notice the different color yarns in my knitted work. I had played with dying with Oregon Grape berries. I did half the yarn, and now I have to deal with THAT decision. So, the sweater is going to have some subtle striping.
I’m not sure it’s necessary to spell out the many lessons here. I’ll do it anyway, at least some of them.
Always label your fiber. At every step. You won’t remember.
Be cautious when experimenting with knitting amounts of fiber…you are going to be stuck figuring out how to use this stuff.
Never believe a kindly old British knitter when she tells you you can knit a sweater in a month.
The fact of the matter is that I will have to rip this out YET AGAIN. I got gauge, but my forever fight with gauge means that the sweater is still too small. I do, however, have enough done that I can feel confident measuring the *actual* gauge. Somehow, I epitomize the concept of “works on paper….but…” I mean, seriously, I got the right number of stitches per inch, I checked my maths, and still too small. Like, not even putting Poopie on a starvation diet will do it. And don’t think I didn’t consider that, Dear Reader.
Last year, I thought this year I would try working on the same months’ projects and finish up. I.e. I’d finish the January 2020 project in January 2021. I was wrong. I have several other works in progress that I’m working on instead. Plus, doing this resolution really hampered me, and made me less happy than I thought it would.
Throughout my mental health journey, professionals have opined that I may be happier if I were more focused. Keep in mind that in the real world, people who deal with me opine that I’m TOO focused. I didn’t intend for this to be an experiment in that, but it turned out to be. It turns out that I’m not happier focusing on just one thing. I get bored (as well as other more complicated feelings) if I *have* to do something. If that something is one of several projects, I don’t seem to have those issues so much. What has worked for me is to commit to working for a time period, or to a certain point every day (week/month/whatever). For example, work one repeat of this pattern and then work on something else. Or do an hour of picking up the house, and then an hour of binge (un) worthy TV.
As I had said earlier, the craziness of pandemic didn’t help this project, but January was NOT pandemic, so I can’t blame this on plague. To re iterate my defense of the esteemed Ms. Zimmerman, I was working with random hand spun, so I had to futz with gauge quite a bit. She had been so practiced, she probably had a go to yarn, and go to needles, which I did (do) not. So, a good several days to a week was spent in design and gauge. I don’t think this time was taken into consideration in her calculations. I still don’t think a working person with any semblance of a life outside of knitting should aspire to complete a cabled Aran sweater in a month. That being said, just because I couldn’t do it, doesn’t mean YOU can’t do it. Just… don’t beat yourself up for not being able to do it. Trust me, I did enough beating up for all of us.
Clearly, I’m not getting to February 2020 in February 2021, but I’ll try to get caught up.
Once again, it seems that life conspires against me. I start to get into a groove, and then something comes along to shake it up. I had so many good intentions of getting at least one post done this last weekend, and finishing up/starting a couple more so future Me would have things easy. We knew we were supposed to have an ice storm last Friday, so Poopie made sure to have us all stocked up so we wouldn’t have to go anywhere over the weekend. I was going to be watching the Red Alder interviews in the evenings and while away the days doing whatever craft, and finding a new show to binge watch. I’m sure he had his plans which likely involved loud music, either listening to, or creating.
And then our power went out Friday night. There went all of my plans for the weekend. As well as the following week. We were without power for 12 hours shy of a full week, just getting it back yesterday morning.
So we come to hoarding. Or…allusions to hoarding. For over a decade, I have dealt with not so thinly veiled criticisms of me keeping things. Don’t go thinking it was just from Poopie, I also hear from other people who have no problems giving me their unsolicited opinions on my things. There are many reasons why I keep Useful Things. I mean, firstly, they are Useful Things. I have Plans for them. Yes, I have many Plans; and some do not come to fruition, but some DO! Secondly, I grew up poor enough that we couldn’t afford to throw out Useful Things. Take paper bags, they can be reused for all sorts of things: garbage sacks, and just…sacks. Book covers as well. No, I’m not old enough for that to have been a “thing”, school mates thought I was weird…of course, this was not the only evidence for their thinking that way. Paper bags also were wrapping paper. Fun fact: this year, they were again. That’s saying nothing of fabric, string, yarn, stuffing, etc…
I’ve already mentioned this, but way last March, when we needed to start wearing masks, but there weren’t enough of the disposable kind (and who wants to keep making more garbage????), I found a pattern for a relatively easy mask. I could actually make 2 out of a single fat quarter. But…why would I use up my fat quarters? I still had a ton of fabrics left over from goodness knows what else because I’ve inherited a BUNCH of fabric scraps. Friends and family all know I’ll welcome them. In fact, for one of Thing 2’s birthday parties, instead of goodie bags for the guests, she wanted purses, so I made a bunch of simple purses out of scraps I had gotten from my MIL (which included her mom’s stuff, I believe). I think she (MIL) enjoyed the memories of a skirt or dress she had made herself in school. I’ll be honest, I take a great amount of pride in making things from scraps that look like they are supposed to look that way. I love making trash into treasure, and I fancy myself good at it.
Shocking no one, I digress….back to cutting up scraps for masks. I made some for our household, for my in laws, for the households of my mom, sister, and aunt. Basically anyone who wanted them. The only thing I needed to purchase was the elastic. I did not have a hoard stash of that. I was also able to make a bunch of masks to donate to various drives. Again, with very little out of pocket. And the time spent making masks was time I didn’t spend dreading/worrying like so many others. I’ll try to talk about this “trick” of mine in another post.
When the wildfires came, and the local charities were gathering toiletries for fire refugees, all those tiny bottles of shampoos, and little wrapped hotel soaps, and who knows what else I dragged out of my linen closet were put to good use. See? Not hoard — stash. Not junk — Useful Things.
We’ve been the family way station for firewood. Got extra wood that needs burning? It ends up at our house. Anyone going on a camping trip calls up, and they end up grabbing a load of wood from us. We have a fireplace in our house, so it makes sense for us to have the wood. We don’t heat with it. My house was built in 1979, so the fireplace is more ornamental than functional. Unless our electricity is out for almost a week. It’s still more ornamental than functional, but we managed to keep the living room at 50 degrees, while the rest of the house was 40-42. This lovely picture is of Poopie restocking the wood by the front door. He’s wearing the helmet because while the temperature was warming the next morning, that just meant giant ice chunks were falling from the cedar. He said it was a good thing he was wearing the helmet considering the loud crashing he kept hearing in the helmet.
And for my final “hoarding” story….the candles from our wedding…11 years ago. I had an evening wedding in winter. Instead of flowers everywhere, there were candles. What do you do with a metric ton of 1/2 burned candles? (Actually, just one under bed sized tote) I mean, no one wants them, but I can’t just throw them away. It’s not like they’ll go bad. Well, we went through about half that tub. I was so very glad I had that hoard stash of candles. Especially since I still haven’t received the tapers I ordered online yet. Sitting in the dark, even with your spouse is depressing…I assume. I didn’t have to find out…because I was prepared with a stash of candles.
I was able to use the electricity at my local volunteer gig for my computer for my day job. But, I’d come home just as it was getting dark. So lots of candlelight. We do have electric lanterns, but they don’t really give off much more light it turns out than the candles do, and the light isn’t as nice. I was able to channel our textile fore bearers (finally! she gets to some textiles!) during our outage. I sat by the fire and spun up the last of the random fiber I had been spinning when I last chatted with you. I now need to figure out how/what to ply it with. I couldn’t before because I didn’t have enough light to be able to see, but I’m hoping to figure that out tomorrow. It wasn’t light enough for me to weave. It might have been, but I broke a warp on Saturday, and the light was never good enough for me to confidently fix it. I spent most evenings knitting on one of last year’s Knitter’s Almanac projects (more on that elsewhere).
I have been keeping my patterns on a cool app in my iPad, and working off that. That meant I wasn’t able to work on either the shawl or scarf I have on needles because I didn’t want to drain my iPad. Basically, I was hoarding conserving the power I did have. I did realize that the lighting with candles probably isn’t good enough if trying to do a project that you need to refer to a pattern for, anyway. My black out knitting was an easy peasy double knit single color. garter edge, k1, sl1wif. all the way to the garter edge, turn, repeat.
Honestly, the roughest part for me was the job portion, the computer set up going to a laptop was terrible. The desk was an ergonomic nightmare as well…my back is still super unhappy with me. At home, we were able to borrow a generator to keep our freezer running, so we lost a minimal amount of food. We have no kids at home, so the only whining was our own. Of course, if it had to go much longer, I’m not sure how sanguine I could continue to be, I was starting to feel the strain. I spent today watching Franklin Habit on YouTube which has restored my knitting zen.
The blackout knitting just wasn’t enough to rejuvenate my zen. After this year, with pandemic, wildfires, surgery, other family issues, and now this, I think it’s fairly reasonable that I was seeing cracks in my zen. The blackout knitting was definitely keeping the beasts at bay, but I am always grateful for any added assistance.
Back to my thesis. These examples show that it’s not hoarding if you use it. Sometimes, if you have the resources, it makes sense to set aside for the rainy (insert plaguey, firey, or icey) day (week, month, year). And if you find you have some good fabric or yarn that needs a home, Poopie doesn’t have access to this site’s email…just sayin’ 😉
La Tejedora Crafts 