September 2012: Wrap-up

Yardage Totals 2012:

January: 817 yds

February: 782 yds
March: 1350 yds
April: 421 yds

May: 789 yds
June: 485 yds
July: 511yds
August: 368yds

September: 1786yds

Year to date: 7,309 yds or 4.15 miles

I knit over a mile's worth of yarn in September, kittens.  A. Mile.  The last time I did that was not anytime in 2011, but December 2010.  It's been almost 2 years since I was this productive while knitting.  I'm really hoping to keep things up at close to this pace for the remainder of the year: it will help me get all of my projects done.  It's much easier to work with wool when it's chilly outside.  We're still not cold here yet--well, December weather by Texas standards, so fairly wintery for the South already--but it's been enough that working with my hands is quite desirable.  It helps keep my fingers warm and blood circulating to them.  Our leaves are starting to turn lovely shades of orange and rust, and it's been raining most days; is it getting pretty where you are at, kittens?  Is autumn finally showing signs of arriving?

2012 Stashdown: Q3

Kittens, it was another awful quarter for me.  Ouch.  But I am very pleased at the high yardage output and that almost 90% of it was from knitting and projects rather than destashing.   I really hope that Q4 will at least be green, even if only by a few hundred yards.  I do have some plans to do a lot of knitting and much less stashing;  I hope to stay under 2000 yards in*.  I have high hopes to finish a sport weight sweater, a pair of socks for me, 2 pairs of mittens, and 4 pairs of socks for the kiddles.  Those alone should be enough to keep me green for the quarter.  Wish me luck!  

*I did plan to do a No Buy for Q4, but that's unrealistic: one of my favorite dyers is offering some of my most coveted colorways as dye-to-orders the next three months.   There's no way I'm passing those up.  The new plan is to do minimal damage with those and then pretend all other yarn doesn't exist.  If I keep myself as busy as I plan, that shouldn't be too difficult.

Not A Podcast: Episode 4

Not a Podcast: Episode 4 from SewKnitpicky on Vimeo.





EDIT: I couldn't post this yesterday, kittens; it just did not want to upload correctly and play in Flash for some reason.  But here is it...a day later.

It's that time of the week, kittens! I'm going to ramble at you for about 18 minutes and hopefully you'll enjoy it. ;)  I'll attempt to catch anything that needs linking to down in the notes here and hit them in the order they were mentioned.


FOs:
♥ None

WIPs:
♥ Ghastly Uma -  Barring serious illness or plague, this should be done before next week.

Future Cast On Ideas:
♥ Aquaphobia socks in Trick or Treat
♥ Goodale with Bugga! Arge Moth

Other Notes:
♥ Jimmy Bean's Wool from Reno, NV.  I was close...right?
♥ Hanging Charging Station.  You have to follow a few links and it's in German, but it looks simple enough to figure out.
♥ Finish quilting this quilt so I can move onto another one.

Stash Flash:
♥ Lollipop Yarn
♥ Oh, that "other podcast" I mentioned: Snappy Stitches.  She's currently finding a new webhost,  so I linked her Ravelry profile instead.   Even though I'm giving Podcasting a go myself, I'm actually not a big podcast watcher.  Strange, I know.  I think there are 3 I regularly watch now?  I just can not get into most of the ones I've sampled.
♥  And yes, I did manage to fix the color issue while I was editing.  Yay!

Opinion, kittens.

A minor stash flash--crash, I should say.  Oh stashdown yardage in number, how you hurt me!!--and a question of opinion.  Do you think these have enough contrast to do another Color Affection?  They're all from the same dyer and the same base.  I hadn't intentionally bought ones that coordinated so nicely together; that was a fluke.   Apparently I had autumn on the brain when I ordered them; they're so seasonally appropriate right now which makes them all the more hard to resist.  I think this may be another immediate cast on after I finish Uma. These are from Politically Incorrect Fibers, colorways WTF OMG LOL, Mrs. Robinson, and Bastard.

Friday Night Tease

Where I left it off tonight: starting to look like an actual sweater!   Have a lovely weekend, kittens!

Not a Podcast: 3

NotAPodcast19September2012 from SewKnitpicky on Vimeo.

It's that time of the week again, kittens.  I was a bit long-winded this week.  Enjoy!

Linkies: (Keeping these short because it was so late by the time this was edited and ready to go.)

FOs:
♥ Starving Children Hats
♥ I ♥ Color

WIP:
♥ Ghastly Uma

Other Notes:
♥ Do not try to record when house is full of people.  It doesn't end well.
♥ And do not have The Mister proof watch an episode where you admit to buying All. The. Yarn.  Again, that ending, not so good.

...

Just being a tease today, kittens.  I hope to talk to you about this project soon. ♥

I ♥ Pinterest: September 2012

Before I get going on this post, I first have a confession to make: I am constantly making things I pin off of Pinterest.   (I adore the idea of a visual bookmark application--trust me, you do not want to see all of my bookmarks still stashed on my browser.  Thousands of them with no rhyme or reason.  It's chaos!)  So it feels sort of like I'm cheating to be participating in my friend Kitten's Pinterest along.... I'm not really stepping outside of my comfort zone if on a regular basis I go to the recipes I've Pinned and try them out, right?  For this month I think I'll stick to my usual, but I'd like to maybe try something more daring when it comes to October.  With Halloween coming up--Best. Holiday. Ever!--that's very likely to happen.

And another fun bit of trivia : I giggle like crazy at people who talk about, "Pinterest recipes," as if the recipe actually came from that service.  Like Pinterest somehow gives or takes credibility from the recipe used and you know, not the website it was Pinned from.  I think there are a lot of people out there who are still confused about how it actually works and do not actively Pin, but merely re-Pin from their feeds.  Too funny.  Always check the recipe source, people.  Anywho.

For September, I tried out Gluten-Free Snickerdoodles from Elizabeth Barbone.   The Boy ADORES Snickerdoodles; they're his favorite cookie. Other GF people probably recognize her name since she wrote a GF cook book awhile back.  (It's not a bad basic book for starting out.  And oh wait, I see she wrote another one this year.  That one also looks pretty basic but has some interesting looking things in it none-the-less...ooh!  Mozzarella sticks!)  As I mentioned before, a very safe Pin since I am familiar with the source and her work.  I'm not at all surprised it was a success.  I followed the recipe except to substitute unrefined coconut oil for the shortening.  You will pretty much never catch me using that stuff.  Ever.

I'm planning to make another batch of these the day The Mister is due in.  I'm sure these along with some stew or other homemade meal will make him feel extra sorry he was away. ;D

Good Friday!

Well, kittens!  I can finally update something I was talking about in my video earlier this week: I've finally found pictures of the far side of other knitter's Color Affection shawls and realized they had the same "problem" I did.  So it's not actually a problem and I do not have to knit all of those extra section three pattern repeats! HUZZAH!  I am down to a single color of working yarn again...which makes me so very, very happy.    It's crazy how out of over 5800 projects, almost no one shows that end of the shawl and the pattern doesn't clearly say that there will be ____ stitches left over when done.  It leaves the impression that all of the body stitches will be consumed by the short rows.  (Now I need to figure out what I'm going to do with these small balls of leftovers.  They do not seem to be enough to use for colorwork, but they're too much to just chuck out.  And dude, cashmere/silk blend!  I'm thinking of maybe holding them double and knitting a small luxury toy for myself? I'll likely do a Rebecca Danger Monster or something else really simple.  We'll see. )

So my thoughts have been turning to how 2012 Q3 Stashdown are going to end for me and man, it's not looking so good.  At this point if I can stay at or above .1 yard out for each yard in, I'll declare it a win.  I stashed this quarter and most of it was in the last month when I was so sad and lonely that I needed some fiber comfort.  (And I'm getting this sinking feeling that The Mister will be out of town again around Rhinebeck time...I doubt I'll get to go this year which just compounded my SAD and spurred the impulse to purchase more.) I do not regret any of the purchases, but I am currently the most red person in the group.   Sorry Stashdowners, I didn't mean to drag you all down with me!  At least if I finish my Color Affection in time, I should make my laughable goal.   Because of this, I'm thinking of imposing a No Buy Q4--and No Buy 2013 Q1-- on myself to see if I can't get some of that extra yarn knit up this fall into the winter.  One of the nice things about living where I am now, it will be much easier to want to knit: it will be so nice and chilly.

I'm half-tempted to do a Stash Flash post of all of the insanely pretty things I've been comforting myself with...but I can't decide if that would be vulgar of me.  Hmmm.

I did it again: Not A Podcast

12September2012 from SewKnitpicky on Vimeo.

Kittens!  I decided to try another video.  Things were a bit more chaotic this time but I eventually got what I wanted to say out.  Here are the linkies I mentioned:

♥  Starving Musician hats
♥  Knit Picks Swish Tonal (Summer BLOOMS and Canopy.  I came close on that one!  Also it's $14.39, not $14.99.)
♥  Amineko, just a bit closer to being finished.  If I can find my stuffing pellets, I'd be done.
♥  I tried a different editing program this week.  I like some things about it better, others not so much.  What I really need to do is buckle down and spend the time learning to use them rather than guessing and pressing buttons with wild abandon.
♥  I use the word "actually" too much when I'm flustered.

And I think that's it.  Hopefully it wasn't too painful to watch. :)

WIP-it Wednesday: video edition

05Sept2012 from SewKnitpicky on Vimeo.

Here are a few links for you, kittens. I hope that wasn't too painful to watch. It's surprisingly hard to stay on-task while talking.  If this becomes a regular feature, I may need a lap-top and a more visually quiet space to film in.  The camera had a hard time deciding what to focus on.  It probably doesn't help that I move around too fast for it to follow easily either.  D;


♥ My Color Affection
♥Amineko: the pattern I can never seem to complete
♥Uma (not Ume) by Chic Knits.
♥ And I did manage to alter the color a smidge with the editing program: so they're truer-to-life now than they were in the original video.
♥ It's really...fun to try and explain to a 4 year old why her vulva can not be plastered all over the internet.  OY.  Time for some Kraken.

I hope it's starting to cool off where you all are, and you can get some relief from the heat!  I'm going to continue crafting and setting up my area here, as well as do projects around the rest of the house.  I'm also looking to refresh my blog design finally.  It's about due again.