What I’ve been up to (infodump edition)

So, in between working, having a few mental breakdowns, losing my sleep schedule, I’ve also been crafting up a storm. More detailed posts will follow, but this is just an infodump to get it out of my head!

 

I finished the Paris sweater(this is the most recent picture I have of it, it will get its own photo shoot when I work out logistics)

I started knitting with my handspun!!!

(Again, old most recent pic!)

I’m doing a massive amount of spinning!

Some crochet

and I’m still cross stitching the 50 shades of blue

Longer posts to come on most of these!

A different finished project

Soooo, who remembers the blanket I was putting together?

It’s all done now!!!

About half the ends are now darned in; the other half should get done next weekend at my spinning group meeting. Then it should get washed but probably won’t bother before taking it to work to use as a lap blanket when it gets cold (like now! It snowed this morning!)

I’ve got a lot of partial balls of yarn left…any suggestions? I’m thinking crochet hexagons but nothing’s decided yet.

Aaaaaaaand a month later

Oh boy it’s been a while. But that’s ok. It’s ok for priorities to change, for ‘life’ to happen. My bipolar blew up (or I’m just become more aware of it). So, no guilt (they said…I’m trying, kay?). Instead, what has been happening?

The banket was finished and sent off to Sami, and she loves it.

Rather a lot has been done on the wedding sampler (oh yeah, and the wedding happened :D). Rather than show you each square, here is the whole thing so far:

Ok, that’s it almost so far. I’ve also done T. So now there’s only 6 more letters to go, then the name, date and beads. I’m a bit annoyed that after N I still had to keep going down to do T, rather than head over to the other side of the fabric, but oh well! Hardly a big problem!

And the blanket I’m doing at my friends place is nearly finished- here’s the start of it

There’s going to be a lot of sraps left over from this project. I’m thinking a scrappy hexagon blanket, but we’ll see. Other ideas gratefully accepted!

Umm, I think that’s all the big things!

Sami’s blanket is nearly doneeeee

The ends have been darned in (that was a very long session at my local crafting group!), and the border has been started.

The border will be these colours, in this order.

and so far I’ve done the yellow, the pale blue and half of the next one alone. Here’s hoping it can get finished today!

Update on everything

So, I didn’t mean to be gone so long! Instead of my planned post about the delights of backstitch, let’s have an update on EVERYTHING. (And it will also remind me what I’ve got going!)

Wedding sampler:

B, D and E are finished, F is started nearly finished:

I’m working on a blanket. Its done in pieces, and then sewn together. I’ve finished all the squares (and half squares and quarter squares)

and done the first 7 rounds of the octagons (there are 16 of these). Of course the second 7 rounds will take longer because it’s getting bigger.

I’m not thinking about all the ends I have to weave in afterwards…

I finished a spinning thing! This is 187 meters of singles. I had to spin it as two spindle-fuls, and then do some nifty stuff to make it one length in the end. I’m very pleased with that 🙂

I’m doing more spinning, but I dont think that’s particularly interesting to photograph. At the moment I’m going to use the yarn to make a blanket, but I figure there’s a 75% chance I’ll change my mind more than once before I start it, so…

I decided I didn’t want to make the bird socks for the mother, so I’m now making them for me. Surprisingly, this ended my massive procrastination over the whole thing, so I’m working on these at the moment

Umm, what else is there?

Sami’s blanket has kinda ground to a halt because I’m using the hook for the other blanket (and the cross stitch needs to be finished first), but Im up to here with that:

I may take it to spinning with the hook and just plow on with it. (Again, I’m ignoring the ends on this thing…)

The elephant head will get frogged (if anyone can remember that far back…) so no picture of that.

My OLAS cardigan is in the corner staring at me because I’m not working on it…

And the breathe embroidary is still mostly being ignored… I’m too busy having fun with other things?

I think that’s everything important. Of course I have many socks on the

So, umm, yeah. Hi?

Ok, so life has been somewhat crazy (surgery, recovery, etc). I’m better now, but so far behind on my to-do list I’m running in circles. Clearly I need a better to-do list, with things such as ‘eat breakfast’ on it. Sigh. NExt week…nah, next week is also going to be insane.(Side note, I really really really miss my bike right now. How do people cope catching the bus everywhere???????????)

Anyway, enough about that. Whilst on recovery, I had a friend come stay with me. And so naturally that meant I had to make her a blanket (She had to ditch the old one I made her due to an extremely bad personal set of circumstances, so a replacement was doubly necessary). She liked the harmony blanket by attic24, but wanted different colours this time, so I sent her colour samples for all of the attic24 blankets, and she went with the coastal ones. Over recovery I made all the squares:

(Note that of course I’m not being sensible and darning in the ends as I go….)

And start joining them up with the yellow

It worked so much better than I was expecting 🙂 Here it is with 4 stripes joined

Unfortunately, it’s also a lot slower than I was expecting, so I had to cart it back to my place after recoery (I went to stay with the parents)

These are the colours I chose for the border

Unfortunately, it’s kinda fallen onto the back burner as I have a few urgent projects on the go which I can’t stop doing for the length of time it’ll take me to finish the blanket 😦

Must dash to the bus, back later with a cross stitch I did over recovery (after I finish-finish it!)

Let’s pretend it’s Wednesday and I’ll tell you about the elephant in the room

It is unfortunately nowhere near finished. Even if I hadn’t forgotten the week I spent away or the many weekends I was travelling rather than crocheting, I was also hit by a bad shoulder which meant no crochet for a (different) week 😦 I haven’t even finished the main head yet, for crying out loud!

Here’s where I’m up to, so far.

At least the front of the head is made, I guess! The tusks were really awkward to fit in, but I’m oretty happy with how it went.

I have a bit of a respite- the rest of my year plan for crafting looks like this:

October- test knit a pair of socks for John

November- do the writing NaNo (I write HP fanfiction)

December- knit my OLAS cardigan as a delayed NaNo project

(Then when January starts I’ll do most of that as the cross stitch NaNo and see how far into this wedding sampler I can get).

Am I slightly insane for thinking this is all feasible? Almost certainly. Am I going to learn from this if/when it all fails spectacularly. Probably not. And most importantly- what is the repite I was talking about?

Well, this comes in two parts.

A-I can easily knit a sock in less than a month, so I have quite a lot of October to also finish this elephant. (Also, the knitting group at Uni has started again so I have even more time to make things)

B- the pattern for the socks I’m test knitting hasn’t arrived yet, so even if I wanted to start work on it, I can’t. (John, please keep procrastinating…)

Right, I’m off to keep crocheting! Wish me luck on this deadline!

Ok, what happened to August??? (August/September goals…)

Umm, August happened already, what is going on??? Let’s have a look at what was supposed to happen…

1. Finish Mildred’s socks. This is getting stupid now. They are also the last things (on the needles) to give other people, so double incentive to finish them!
   Umm, nope. September maybe???
2. Sew Kita’s pillowcase together. The procrastination is wildly strong on this one…:/
   Yes!!!!!! I finally did the thing! And it can now be posted as their new place
3. Work out what on Earth is going on with my cockatoo brae. If it is my gauge I’m going to be annoyed…
   Nope. The nope is strong on this one…I have bigger fish to fry right now. This will probably get looked at after Christmas at the rate of things at the moment…
4. Work out which socks have the most left to do that are mindless for all the train rides (4, or 5 if you count connections as separate trains) (If I finish the Mildred socks this is totally a good enough excuse to start new socks…)
   Nope. I decided to do cross stitch Mill Hill kits, which is definitely a good thing. Now I just need to order some more…
5. Bonus: get to the yoke of cockatoo brae, depending on what is going on with it.
   Hahahahahaha nope. See above
6. Bonus: work out what everyone’s getting for Christmas, and if it’s crafting work out a plan of attack for them…
   Yes! So I now have revised plans for the rest of the year!

 

Ok, so we’re now 2/3 of the way through the year, and I’m throwing out my original plans for the year. Christmas somehow snuck up on me (as if it wasn’t the same time every year…). So, new goals:

1. Crochet this elephant for my aunt. This is the only Christmas present I’m making this year (unless I decide to make something for my brother-in-law. I have no idea on what to get him. Any suggestions???)
2. See how much of this wedding sampler I can get done. I’ve finished S, so I now have A-H,J-N, T-Z as well as the names, dates and beads. So 20 small sections, beads and backstitching. Arguably z should count as 2-4 sections, but let’s count it as one and plan on doing bits of it while technically working on other sections. 2 sections a month is probably the minimum to keep on track with this, but let’s aim for 3.
3. Finish Mildred’s socks. (This is starting to feel a bit silly. All I have left to do is one afterthought heel… I think I’m stuck on picking the stitches up for it, and the fact that the project is at work, and knitting club doesn’t meet during the summer…so that needs to come home to get done.)

 

 

So, September goals and a plan of attack:

1. Three sections of the wedding sampler. W, X and Y I suppose.
2. Bring home Mildred’s socks and pick up the stitches for the heel (baby steps…as soon as I do this the rest of it will just fall into place…)
3. Get gauge on the elephant??? IDK, I’m having a mental block on how to deal with the sampler and the elephant goals….halp???

Or should I do two bits for the wedding sampler, and two weeks on the elephant??? Advice please, peoples! Or do I just concentrate on the elephant and see if I can crochet it in a month??? (Actually, I really like that idea… Yeah, let’s go with that one)

Change of plan:

1. Finish Mildred’s socks. Just…just do it already.
2. Crochet all the bits of the elephant.
3. Order Christmas stocking mill hill kits (as in, the Mill Hill kits I think people would like), and make a start on them. There’s 5, and the seagull is one of them. This is one of thse spontaneous plans which is always more trouble than it’s worth, but always just works out for me so I never learn from them…

WIP…something day? Scatter brained edition

Ok, so, phew, I survived my three weeks of slight insanity. Umm. Crafting kinda fell by the wayside, with the result of it all wanting attention NOW. Unfortunately, my holiday is now over and therefore I have to do the work thing…

Anyway, what has been happening? Well, I was in York at the weekend for Pride, so much knitting was accomplished on cockatoo brae (long train trips are made longer by delays…amusingly, the train ticket I had was a complimentary one due to the delays I had coming back from York from my viva…this makes claiming compensation rather awkward…) Anyway, cockatoo brae is coming along well ahead of schedule! As well as all the rows I planned to do this month, I have started the increases as well 🙂

(Isn’t all the brown lovely. Find the sarcasm in the last sentence…)

This weekend I will be teaching my aunt how to crochet jellyfish for premature babies. Naturally, this means I a) need more yarn(and crochet hooks), and b) need to crochet one in the first instance so I know what’s going on. 4ply yarn and a 2mm crochet hook are fun! Fiddly, but fun.

My mother’s socks have been started…just. I really need to get on with these, but I can’t take them home this weekend, since I’m visiting her…These will become my priority when I finish Mildred’s socks.

Speaking of Mildred’s socks, I have one finished and the other one past the toe. Before Pride at the weekend there were three members of knitsoc in a cafe, all knitting socks, all from the toe up, (two on circular, one on DPNS), in various colours and patterns. It was rather surreal to be sat there, and have someone ask what we were knitting, and all three of us saying ‘socks’ in unison. Anyway, these socks need finishing soonish. 🙂 They’ll be coming with me at the weekend.

Finally, the cross stitch wedding sampler has been ignored. But you can have a picture on what was done before but not photographed. Hopefully I’ll come back to this after the weekend (it’s probably a little bit optimistic to think it might happen before the weekend, given how it’s all going!)

Right, that’s me pretty much caught up I think (except for what I’ve been spinning/knitting but that should end up being a blog post by itself sooner rather than later…)

‘Tis the season to be blocking…

Firstly, Sami’s blanket! The blocking has been finished, and it’s been readied for wrapping. I don’t want to actually wrap it up until I know what’s happening to it (if it’s going to be taken to Japan in luggage, I should probably find a vacumm pack bag to shrink it down some…), but it has been prettified now 🙂

The blanket of doom is finished!!!! I think the entirety of KnitSoc here knows how much I dislike it, but last night while I was there I embroidered the name, and the year 2016 (I wasn’t about to announce to the world that it took me more than a year to make the thing…), and now its blocking (again, taking up the entirety of my floor…).

It won’t be properly finished until I go home and can use my mum’s sewing machine to back it with something soft (she’s going to buy the backing material, so I don’t know what she’s going to get).

Having finished that, I then started on an advent calender I’m making for the friend who got the blanket. Last year I bought both of us a tea advent calender, which was a disaster because most of the teas were green and fruity teas, and neither of us liked those. So this year I’m making the advent calender out of a crochet garland pattern(ravelry link here), and stuffing each of the bits with a ‘proper’ tea bag.

And of course, I’ve still been working on my aunt’s Advent calender scarf. I’m now half way through (I’m at pattern number 13, and if I recall correctly, there are a few of the later patterns I decide to skip), so hopefully this will be finished soon! (Maybe itll be being blocked next week…)

I was looking up what I said about this pattern last year as I was making the other Advent scarf, and found my old blog post about work of the year. That kinda fell down last year when life got massively hectic over the summer, so here’s a word for next year: breathe! One way or the other, the PhD is going to be over, and while my back-up plan of staying in academic (which was going over to America…) has been shot out of the water, I still hope to stay in academia, my PhD expects me to be able to, and if not, I can always move back in with my parents while I sort my life out. So whatever happens, however hectic life gets, I need to remember to breathe, and that knitting helps me to relax, and nothing is permanent…