Comments (29)

By kilax, September 14, 2015 6:22 am

36,750 stitches later… and the basketweave baby blanket for James is done!

I started knitting this blanket on August 8th, then took a week off from it to make this blanket, then traveled three weekends in a row (and didn’t work on it much) so… I guess it didn’t take me THAT long to make it (I finished it yesterday morning, September 13th). But the next time I knit a baby blanket, I’ll have the goal of having it done for the baby shower. Not AFTER the baby arrives. Oops!

I chose this basketweave pattern from a baby blanket book my mom gave me. The book has other cool and (way) more complicated patterns I’ll have to try when I’m a better knitter. I’m happy I chose this simple, timeless pattern that was easy to knit and fix mistakes in. Gotta get it right for baby James!

The color of this blanket is hard to capture. I used a stitch counter and would take a picture of it with the blanket each time I stopped work (to keep track of where I was in case the counter got bumped, which happened a few times) and the variance in color of the pictures is bizarro – some look super light green, some are true to color, and some look like day old guac (ha). But the color is closest to this:

I used two and a quarter skeins of Baby Bee Sweet Delight Yarn in 94 Pea Pod for the blanket. I actually returned the two extra skeins I bought (but then bought a bunch of other yarn… oops?).

The blanket is about 32″ x 32″. Ha – I would measure it as I was getting close to the end and tell Steven “I think I only have 24 rows left!” Then knit 16 rows and tell him, again “I think I only have 24 rows left!” I swear, this thing was shrinking as I worked on it (twss?).

But I am happy with how it turned out, and hope my brother and his wife find it useful! And I hope they send me a photo of James using it, hee hee.

Comments (17)

By kilax, September 3, 2015 6:26 am

I’ve been thinking about the first post I wrote about knitting – NOPE. Not a perfectionist. (For now?). Basically, everything I wrote in it turned out to be true – my first washcloth I knitted looked horrible, but showed progress as I moved along. I did stick with knitting and got better at it*. And I HAVE tried to make the things I knit for people** have as few flaws in them as possible. Not “perfect,” but as close as I can get.

I am not results based by any stretch of the imagination, so caring so much about how something turns out is new territory for me. And honestly, I think it’s good for me. Why not care about it, for once?

Ha, that makes me sound like some sort of jerk who never cares about anything. That’s not true! I’m just more process based for things that have a defined completion. Like training for a race, projects at work, or knitting something.

In racing? Eh, I definitely care how the race turns out, but I don’t get upset if things went to crap. I care more about the training and everything that led up to it. That’s where the joy lies, for me.

My job at work is to assist clients with design requirements and how their space will be laid out. But because of the way our divisions are set up at work, the project moves on to someone else and I rarely see the finished space. This has DEFINITELY made me process based, at work! I often have no idea what the results were! We obviously plan toward an ideal result, when working with the client, but not seeing the outcome*** really skews things for me.

And then knitting. I am still surprised I am doing it, because I’m not crafty at all, but I’ve found it’s something, that again, I immensely enjoy the process of. It’s so satisfying to see whatever I am working on “grow,” row by row. Sometimes a project surprises me – the yarn or pattern looks different than I thought it would – and that’s exciting for me. But… I have found that I am thinking about the end result much more than I tend to, compared to other things I work on.

There have been a few mistakes in the baby blanket but I’ve caught them and fixed them! Phew! I really want that to turn out nice (since it’s taking SO DAYUM LONG… and for my new nephew!!!).

I have to fix mistakes as soon as I find them (which is frustrating, but satisfying when it’s done). I have to plan out how much yarn I will need (ugh, planning). I have to figure out how big the thing will be. I have to constantly tell myself “Kim, this is a gift for someone else, and you don’t want a shoddy end-result with your name attached to it. FOCUS!” Ha ha.

Like I said, it’s good for me, just different.

And truthfully, not caring so much about end results before is probably what has kept me from doing crafty things. I know it’s kept me from doing house projects. And, any projects. I spent so much time in college building things with my hands that I have just been OVER it for a loooooong time. I didn’t want to have to think about how things were going to turn out. I didn’t want to be “graded” on it, anymore.

Maybe I am changing!

*still have so much to learn! yay!
**everything I knit – I haven’t made anything for me, yet!
***one of my current projects is not a typical one at all, and I am acting as the project manager instead of designer, so I will get to see how things turn out!

Comments (12)

By kilax, August 26, 2015 12:30 pm

Now that my snister’s birthday has passed, I can tell you what I was working on with that jumbo yarn – a cowl for her!

Doesn’t it go perfectly with the hoodie Mom gave her?!

This is the first time the photo on the yarn label (<— click there for pattern) has attracted me to the skein first, rather than the yarn itself. A project that only requires one skein, and just 17 stitches per row? Sounds easy-peasy!

It was! Easy enough that I got three done in three days, only spending a bit more than an hour on each.

I made another for my friend Dawn, for her birthday.

That’s me, not Dawn, ha ha

Steven liked the way they turned out, so I bought a skein to make him one as well*! I might even make myself one. Can you believe, that with all this knitting, I haven’t made anything for myself, yet?!

*Although he keeps asking when I’m going to knit him the tie he requested months ago, hee hee.

Comments (21)

By kilax, August 22, 2015 8:42 pm

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to give Christina the blanket I knitted her for her birthday – Data was claiming it for himself!

It does bring out the yellow in his eyes!

… which was funny to me, because he’s never shown an interest in any knitting project until this one. And even then, he just liked to paw at the yarn – he seemed intimidated by the blanket itself while I was working on it.

But once I was done? All bets were off. He snuggled right up.

And played a little.

I actually felt kind of guilty giving it away, since he loved it so much. I guess I will have to make him his own. I mean, it’s not like this one is cat sized – it’s a bit bigger!

So, last year, Christina showed me a blanket she liked that had such big yarn you had to use PVC pipe to knit it (similar to this)! Crazy! I’ve had the idea to make her “big yarn” blanket since then, and when I found out I liked working with jumbo yarn so much, I decided to make her one with that (technically though, this yarn is “super bulky”).

The blanket was super easy to make (It’s 76 stitches, 80 rows, all knit) and didn’t take me too long (seven days – started Saturday and finished Friday), but it wasn’t without its issues. The first being that I needed a ton of yarn and couldn’t find any place that could get me enough skeins in the same lot. I didn’t want color variation if I did a solid color, so I decided to do stripes (I used 5 skeins each of Yarn Bee Astounding in Teal, White, Charcoal and Mustard – interesting, there was quite a bit of white and charcoal leftover, but no teal or mustard. Each skein was 43 yards.)

Then I decided the stripes needed to be long and narrow and tried to cast on all four colors, um… big nope, that was a fail. Then I tried a lace pattern to make it more interesting, since I was doing the color blocks the other way, and that took way too much time and was confusing. So finally, I decided to knit all the rows. Ha ha. Nice and easy.

Then there were all the knots in the skeins. GRRRRR! And then I ran out of yarn at the end while I was casting off, so I had to take two rows out and cast off again (this was actually a blessing in disguise because I had one extra row in there, anyway).

But it’s finished. And it actually got cool out the last day I was working on it and it felt nice to have such a cozy, warm blanket on my lap! Christina will get good use out of it in the fall and winter!

I gave it to her today and she loved it! Yay!

Now, back to work on the baby blanket…

Comments (13)

By kilax, August 19, 2015 6:32 am

And rage, in general.

You know what makes me extremely irate when I am knitting? Finding knots like this throughout the skein.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I understand it’s going to happen, but 3-4 knots per skein?! When I am already using 5 skeins and have to weave all those loose ends in?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! This project will never be finished! Ha ha.

Deep breaths, Kim. You know things are pretty good in life when you’re frustrated by something as trivial as one of your hobbies, right?!

Unfortunately though, it’s not just my hobbies. I was so stressed out when I took my lunch break yesterday that I ended up doing speedwork during my run. It wasn’t planned – I was just that frustrated and needed to get it out. It helped. I was too physically exhausted to be mentally annoyed anymore! Yay, speedwork!

I don’t think that solution is going to help every day though. Hopefully knitting goes back to being my calming activity!

Comments (17)

By kilax, August 12, 2015 6:37 am

I wasn’t sure if I should sit on the quiet car this morning for my train ride because I wasn’t sure if I’d nap or knit. If I knitted, I didn’t want my plastic needles touching each other to annoy people.*

So I tried to knit quietly.

I went to the hobby store Saturday night to pick out yarn for a baby blanket for my younger brother and his wife and got completely distracted by the Red Heart Boutique Boulevard jumbo yarn. I probably never would have gotten started on the baby blanket if I hadn’t had to wait for Monday for the size 19 needles to arrive to use the jumbo yarn.

Gah, this stuff is so easy, quick and fun to knit with. I finished a project on Monday**, another on Tuesday, and started a third this morning on the train! Can I just use jumbo yarn for the rest of my projects?! Please?!

Or I could work on that slow-moving, 150 stitch per row baby blanket… Getting used to circulars was interesting (thanks to Mica for sending me a kit and to Gina for sending me a pair!), but I think I finally got the hang of it. The baby is due Sunday. It’s okay if I get the blanket done in October, right?!

*I felt less bad about this when I took my headphones off and realized the woman sitting behind me was blaring music so loudly on hers I would’ve heard it if I didn’t have mine on.
**I will share a photo after I give it away!

Comments (26)

By kilax, July 16, 2015 6:24 am

• I’m still knitting! I haven’t dedicated time to learning any new skills, so I’m still just knitting lots of washcloths for my mom and her mom. However, Mica sent me some DPNs (double pointed needles), I still want to make those cacti for my snister, and I just received these fun knitting books! So I have some ideas for what I want to try when I get around to it. And I want to start holiday gifts soon. Keeping them secret while I work on them is going to be hard for me, ha ha!

• Have you ever had to take one of those personality tests for work? The one where they tell you your strength and weaknesses in areas like leadership, influencing others, working in a team, etc.? I always score low in the area of influencing others/selling ideas, because I HIGHLY DISLIKE TRYING TO INFLUENCE OTHER PEOPLE. Especially when I don’t have the authority to do so. I don’t want to be a sales person, period. I am more of a “live and let live” person – in all areas of life. (Ha, that doesn’t mean I don’t often wonder why people do the things they do, just that I don’t want to tell them how to do things, myself.)
• We had a beautiful lightning storm here Monday night! I could have stayed outside all night watching it, but… that’s not safe! Ha.

• One of my goals for the year was to take a swim lesson (to see how my form is) and I have it scheduled for this month. I am excited about it, and hope that I am able to remember all the things the coach is bound to tell me are messed up with my form. No, I am not doing a triathlon. A few people have asked me lately “Why don’t you just do one?” since I run and bike, and sometimes swim. Eh, just not interested in it right meow. Maybe someday though!
• Oh my gosh, talking with a coworker yesterday about her daughter coming back home from a three week summer trip reminded me how mean I was to my mom and sister when they picked up me and my dad from the airport on our return leg from Spain in 2002 (when I was 17 years old). I did NOT want to be coming home. And they were so excited to see us, and I think even made “welcome back” signs. And I was just like “eh, whatever.” Sigh. I still get this hurt feeling in my heart when I think about how I treated them. But… that was thirteen years ago! Ha! Hopefully they don’t ever think about it.

Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 73

Comments (17)

By kilax, June 2, 2015 6:20 am

(Un?)Fortunately, it’s not this exciting ^

A few weeks ago I was having a hard time typing on my computer after lunch break. I felt like my pinky finger was frozen and took a long time to “thaw.” I just figured it was a bit too chilly in our house, and didn’t pay any attention to it.

Until it kept happening again, and again. So, bizarre, right?

Ha ha. Yeah, I finally figured it out. Knitting is making some of my fingers go numb (and since I knit during lunch break, I sometimes feel it in the afternoon). It’s only happening in the left hand though, which seems odd – the right hand is the one with yarn wrapped all over it.

It was particularly bad Saturday night – my ring finger tip went numb and felt tingly all day Sunday, and still felt weird Monday! I wonder if my wedding rings are messing with the circulation to my finger tip, but why does it sometimes bug my pinky, too?

The two fingers that tend to go numb aren’t even doing anything! Maybe that is why they start to lose feeling?

I’ve been noticing it more when I use smaller (size 5) needles – they’re more flexible and I think I press against them harder.

A quick google search shows lots of different ways people become sore from knitting, and ways to prevent it. Who knew there was so much “risk” in knitting? Ha ha. I am going to pay more attention to it and try to figure out how to prevent it from happening again. I don’t sit down and knit for hours on end (I’d fall asleep before that could happen), so I am a bit surprised! Anyway…

What is making my fingers go numb? More washcloths! My mom bought yarn for me to make her some, and I will see her this weekend and want to have a few done:

The one on the bottom right is me getting rid of extra yarn. Ha ha-  it’s my little fraken-cloth. Also, isn’t it interesting what that yarn is doing with the waffle pattern compared to this one?

My snister sent me this link for a waffle pattern washcloth so I tried to do a few of those. As you can tell, the orange one was the first one – ha ha – I have to be really careful to hold the yarn at a consistent tightness with those. It’s a fun pattern though, and it’s easy to remember and really quick to make. Just gives you a numb finger… which always beats impalement.

Comments (7)

By kilax, May 26, 2015 6:09 am

Hey! I finally used some of those college textbooks I insisted on saving!

As weight, while (half-assedly) blocking this scarf:

The edges were completely curled in, which made for an interesting skinny scarf look, but not quite the look I was going for.

Of course, I didn’t research much (like… at all) about blocking before I did it. Maybe I should get better about that…

But hey! It’s flat now, and I was able to stretch it out a bit, too. I would have knitted the scarf a bit longer, but I got to the end of the skein* and am not buying another one just to use a little bit of it. Luckily, the scarf is going to someone who’s petite!

Ha ha, not Data though.

Unlike the last scarf I made, I liked the way this one looked the entire time I was working on it, and enjoyed working on it, once I finally got it going. I think I’ll use this pattern again, especially since I cast off the wrong way and would like to figure out how to do it correctly next time.

After I do a few more projects, I want to start working on holiday gifts which means I can’t post them here since a few friends and family read the blog. Guess you’ll be seeing a lot of knitting posts in January!

fvggred<— a message from Data
*A few people have asked me if I used various skeins for this or one – it’s all one! It’s I Love this Yarn in Songbird.

Comments (23)

By kilax, May 19, 2015 6:29 am

Has anyone ever asked to use you as a reference on a resume?

Probably, right?

This year is the first time I’ve been asked! But, I’ve been asked by three people, who all have jobs and are looking to change things up. That’s promising – the market must be getting better and people feel comfortable to try to move around! And it’s promising that someone values my opinion enough to ask me to be a reference (or maybe I am a last resort… muah ha ha… er…).

Whatever the reason, it’s exciting to see people putting themselves out there and looking for something that’s a better fit for them! (Says the girl who will probably stay at her government job for life.)

What’s a post without pictures? Let’s talk about knitting so I can throw some in!

I gave my mom the washcloths for my grandma this weekend. I decided to throw a sponge on the package to mess with her. Ha!

I was happy to see she got a kick out of it:

And that she liked the washcloths:

I hope her friends enjoy receiving them as birthday gifts!

My mom and I picked out yarn this weekend for her washcloths. I got one done for her while she was here (and gave her the first two crummy ones I ever knitted and a monogrammed “I” one I made in March):

Those will be fun to work on! I hope to have more done before I see her again in two and a half weeks!

And I finally started on this scarf I’ve been itching to get going on. Man, the pattern is NOT complicated, but I misread it a few times (huge thanks to Mica for setting me straight), and had to re-cast on 10-15 times because I messed it up so much. Now that I’m finally in a groove, I am really digging it! Maybe I will keep it for me instead of its original intended recipient, ha! (Note: I haven’t knitted anything for myself yet…)