Washcloths and more washcloths

I know there are those out there who will loudly attest that they will never knit a washcloth, or dishcloth or whatever you want to call it cloth. I used to be one of them. I mean, why would I, who was not raised in the mid-west, want to do that? I found my answer...stitch patterns.

I like trying out new stitch patterns, and I hate swatching. So, what do you get when you mix some cotton yarn, a new stitch pattern and the desire to make something useful? A dishcloth. Now, I don't do dishes. I have a dishwasher (and a husband). But I do take showers (on a regular basis, even) and I do like me a washcloth. I've discovered that hand made washcloths are the best. And why wouldn't they be? Isn't hand-knit anything better than its machine made cousin?

I'll get back to the discloth thing in a minute.

One of the benefits of my media vacation is that all the creative juices started moving around again, after the mind-numbing winter in front of both TV and monitor. I was flipping through Barbara Walker's 2nd Treasury of Knitting Patterns and read the introduction (for the first time). In it she says (and I'm paraphrasing here) that many people learn to form a knit stitch and a purl stitch and think they now know how to knit, when in fact, they've begun to learn to knit.

It got me thinking. I go to Friday Night Knitting at Beau Knits in Cohoes on a regular basis. There are a LOT of new knitters there, and I realized that there seem to be many who have looked at the The Husband's intrepid dive into knitting with awe and wonder. Yes, he's pretty intrepid, but come on guys....it's only knitting. It's only sticks and strings and lots of loops.

I went back to the book and started looking at all the stitch patterns that are simply combinations of knits and purls, no increases, no decreases, not a yarn over in sight. I thought, aha, there's a class here. So I pitched a class on Beyond the Basics to Barbara Hildreth, the proprietess of Beau Knits and so I will be teaching a 4 part series starting in mid-march. What will be making?

Dishcloths!

What have I been knitting in preparation for the class?

Dishcloths!!

Piccies will be shown when they're all done.

In the meantime....keep giving those sheep a reason to part with their wool.

Piccies

First, these are the beads that I made at Glass Beadmaking Class.


Did I mention that making them was SO MUCH FUN!!!!??

Something about working with a superhot torch and molten glass just lit up my soul. If you'll pardon the almost pun. Seriously, it was a blast. The most fun I've had since I learned how to spin.

It's all in the "making" I think. Creating something out of nothing...transmuting...I'm not sure I have words for it. All in all I made 6 beads. 2 cracked coming off the mandril. It happens. The photo is pretty crappy, but two of the beads are pretty well matched and will become earrings. I can't wait to do it again. Probably in April.

And then...the other BIG NEWS is the car. As some of you know, I've been driving around in a 1994 Toyota Corolla with 175,000+ miles on her. Tim's been driving something older with less mileage and more rust. Not anymore.....

Now Tim is driving the Corolla and I am driving:




A 2008 Kia Rio5. Isn't she a beauty!?

With help from Dad (thanks again, Dad), we were able to buy her and pick her up yesterday...which explains why I was driving all the way back of beyond, running errands all day.

And, because there must be knitting content, remember when I was in the midst of winter doldrums, bogged down by projects that wouldn't end? Many of you suggested that I do something small, immediately gratifying and that used some of my luscious looking (and feeling) handspun? This is what I did with less than 4 oz of dk weight handspun BFL. I leave you with fingerless gloves.






More reasons to shear the sheep....

I'm Baaaaak!!!

Didja miss me? Didja notice?

I had a wonderful media vacation. In fact, so wonderful that I'm planning at least one day per week to be media free. It might even be electronic free. It sounds like Sabbath, except there will be knitting and spinning and both of those qualify, at least in Judaism, as work (I think).


Somehow I managed to get myself into all sorts of trouble, though.

It was very odd, I did my morning pages, ate breakfast and sat in the kitchen thinking...now what? On any other day, the answer would be "check email." Since there was no email checking I started to look around. I cleaned the kitchen.

I looked around some more and decided I wasn't crazy about anything I was looking at. I didn't feel like spending my entire "vacation" cleaning, so I went up to my office. I organized my desk. I threw out 2 large garbage bags of paper. I found all the pens that the cat had hidden in the far corner behind my desk.


More in next post

Media Vacation

Although I haven't been posting regularly, I have been overwhelmed by the amount of media in my life. (read too much TV, internet, email, facebook, etc.) I've realized I spend more hours per day doing these things and not enough time writing, knitting, spinning, meditating or just plain ole thinking my own thoughts.


The other day it occurred to me that I need a media vacation. I need to unplug. And so, I'm turning it all off. The TV, the computer, the radio. I will spend the week catching up with friends on the phone, writing, reading, knitting and spinning. Perhaps I will get all the laundry put away or finally get the house really clean. Maybe I'll get to my office more than a half minute before my first client, and have a chance to get centered before I work. Maybe I'll get another 50 pages written on my book.

I don't know how this will play out, which is half the fun.

Look for "How I spent my media vacation" on February 16th or within a few days thereafter.

Have fun!!!

Further thoughts

I want to thank everyone who commented yesterday for their thoughtful posts.

I did rip out the socks. As Tina said, life is too short not to knit something that makes me happy. I'm still using the Mirasol Hacho yarn, because I do love it; but I changed needle size, correcting the sizing issue that I should have corrected by ripping out starting over, and I'm happily knitting myself a pair of socks.

I have 140 yards of sport to dk weight, handspun BFL that I would love to make into something nice for myself. Any ideas? I'm not terribly into Cowls, because I always ending up sweating and not wanting anything around my neck (damn hormones). Other ideas?

I stayed up way too late last night reading Burn Out by one of my favorite mystery writers, Marcia Muller. I've been reading this series since it first premiered 1977 (youch!) and Muller has never disappointed me. If you want a mystery series that keeps its heroine edgy and yet takes her through character growth over time, get a copy of Edwin of the Iron Shoes and go forward from there.

Must update blog....

Sometimes, when I sit down to write a blog post, I look back on my recent weeks and wonder what I've been doing. Frequently I can't find anything to write about. Today is no exception. But, since I'm rarely at a loss for words, I'll babble for a awhile, and you can stop reading when you lose interest.

I spent yesterday watching President Obama's inauguration with a dear friend who doesn't blog. I don't think she reads this either. All I can say is that it was really, really nice to just hang out with a girlfriend during the afternoon. It's been a long time since I've done that. Not since I had to cut A. loose.

I've been knitting, but I don't have anything to show for it. The hat for J. isn't done yet, I'm still in the process of the Mirasol Hacho simple socks . I'm about 1/3 of the way done and I don't like the way they're turning out but I don't want to start over. So in the spirit of deluded knitters everwhere, I'm forging ahead.

Mr. Greenjeans is still on the needles. If I read the pattern correctly, I misread the pattern about 81 rows ago. It's sitting in time-out until I have the presence of mind to read the pattern again, count stitches, see where I am and what I can do from here. If I have to frog it again, the yarn will become something else. I will accept that Mr. GJ is NOT for me.

I'm still working on Waves of Grain, which is currently the only project that I have on the needles that is pleasing to me. Although, truth be told, I kind of wish I'd used a different yarn. Don't get me wrong, the yarn I'm using is lovely, handspun merino, but I think it could have been better showcased in a different project. But again, I'm not going back. I'm also in the super boring section of repeating the same 2 rows SEVENTY FIVE times (and that's just for the first half...oh look! I get to do it all over again for the 2nd half!!!!)

And then there's The Luna Moth Shawl which is still in its embryonic phase and, as far as I can tell, looks like crap. True, that's the general issue with lace until it is blocked, but there's something about either the yarn or my general lack of confidence about the knitting (don't understand that one) that makes me want to rip it out and start over.

As I'm reading this, I can tell I'm not feeling very enthusiastic about anything that's on the needles. Maybe that is why I keep thinking about starting another project.

On the writing front. Wait is there a writing front? For there to be a writing front, I would actually have to be writing no? Ever since my crit group exploded last April, I have been writing only sporadically. Of course, the manuscript critique I received that said, "this book cannot be salvaged" didn't help. Nor did the rejection from the agent that said, "I wish there was someway I could have loved this book." (maybe not a direct quote). Maybe that hurt more than I've been allowing it to hurt. Maybe I've needed to put it out to the world that something that I thought may have needed some more work, but was essentially a good piece of work (and certainly better than a lot of crap on the market) was actually crap. Maybe putting that out there in this journal will help spur my creativity. Let's hope so, anyway.

Spinning. Yet another thing that has been languishing. After a fairly good start at the beginning of the month, in which I spun up a half bobbin of alpaco/merino blend, I've kind of been watching the wheel collect dust while I've been struggling with less than satisfying knitting. Is anyone seeing a pattern?

I am. And I think it means I need to dust myself off and get back to work. Thanks for reading this guys (if you've gotten this far), I think it helped.

A missed opportunity

Because I didn't post it earlier, here is another picture from Yule and Yarn 2008.