Backlog: FOs Week 34

The Last Finished Objects!

Yep, I forgot.  Friday came and went, and I was too tired to remember.  Oh well.  There’s still a bit of knitting to show off!  For the last working week, I finished 3 objects!

Purple Tassel Scarf

First, the scarf I’ve mentioned a couple of times.  It’s exactly like the Tassel Scarf (knit sideways with fringe), but this one is purple instead.  For some reason, my camera refuses to recognize purple, so it looks rather blue in the picture.  In real life, it’s roughly UCA purple.

Purple Pom Pom Hat

To follow up on the Purple Tassel Scarf, I made a Purple Pom Pom hat.  I have always adored these sort of squared-off children’s hats with the pom pom on each corner.  I didn’t use a pattern.  Just cast on 60 stitches, work a few round of garter stitch, work a few inches in stockinette, then kitchener stitch the top together and add pom poms.  Brilliant, fast work.

I Love This Headband

Then, because I love the yarn so very much and was desparate for something to knit, I made an I Love This Headband.  You guessed, it’s made out of my leftover I Love this Yarn from the Easy Peasy Baby Blanket and Lace Ribbons Hat.  I followed the “It’s A Cinch Headwrap” pattern found here on Ravelry.  Ridiculously fast and easy.

So ends my knitting escapades.  For this project, anyhow.  Those are the last finished objects that will go to charity in the name of The Yarn Diet (at least, in its current incarnation as my Honors Thesis project).  I finished strong, with simple yet magnificent items that I can be proud of.

The Last FOs

 

Nothing to Knit

My school stash is even more pathetic than I thought.  After finishing the scarf and a little hat, I don’t have a single ball of yarn big enough for an adult hat.  I don’t have two colors that I could put together to create an adult hat.  I don’t have enough yarn to make anything, so I have absolutely nothing to knit!

And really, it’s scaring me, not because I HAVE to knit something to meet a certain goal anymore but because I’m afraid my passion for the craft will dissipate after this project is over.  Have I knit myself out?  I mean, 35 weeks of power knitting to reach a goal and keeping NOTHING back for myself is intense.  What I love about knitting is that it’s so relaxing, but this project has stressed me out time and time again.  What I love about knitting is that I can create beautiful items to keep myself warm in the winter, but I’ve been so busy working for the cause that I haven’t had time to make myself some bicycle mittens, even though my hands have been freezing on the cold rides to school in the morning.  What I love about knitting is that I do it for myself, and not for the approval of others, yet I’ve not knit a single stitch that people didn’t know about.  It’s all out there for the public.  My craft has gown outside myself, and I’m afraid it can never go back to what it was.

Today, I’m doing a practice presentation.  I’m presenting my artist statement that goes along with this blog.  See, this project has been my baby and my brainchild, my creative center since Spring Break, but I can’t forget that I’m also doing it for credit as an Honors Thesis, and that I have to do well on it so I can graduate this semester.  I have to convince academics that this project has been academic.  Not just a pastime but a meaningful intellectual pursuit.

Funny, I’ve spent weeks and weeks writing posts for the blogosphere, but I’m having a hard time coming up with enough to talk about to fill a 20-minute presentation slot.

And everything’s getting muddled because my fingers are shaking because I don’t have any knitting.  I’m such a junkie.

Revisiting the Stash

I did inventory again.  If you remember from my last post in March, “The Stash,” I started this project with 215 skeins of yarn.  That included acrylic, wool, cotton, silk, and other materials; lace, sport, dk, worsted, bulky weight; red, green, gray, navy, black, white, browns, and sparkly yellow; and every texture imaginable (and even some I’m pretty sure were made up when that particular yarn was invented).  Since then, I have used only yarn from the Stash to craft

• 41 hats
• 6 bibs
• 2 baby blankets
• 1 shawl
• 1 coat
• 10 pet blankets
• 1 baby cocoon
• 10 toys
• 12 scarves (including one I finished today!)
• 8 pairs of gloves/mittens/fingerless mitts
• 5 pieces of kid’s/baby clothing
• 4 pairs of slippers/booties
• and 1 backpack.

If you did the math, that’s 102 items (because I finished another scarf, did away with the cat boppy, and turned the lapghan into 3 pet blankets).  And it is not yet Thanksgiving Break!  I still have time.

I went through the Stash again.  I still have acrylic, wool, cotton, silk, nylon, and other materials; lace sport, dk, worsted, bulky weight; and every color and texture you can imagine, though I only have scraps of black left.   I fondled every skein, to reaquaint myself with the odd texture of Patons Fashion Splash and the smell of Bernat Sweety (though, smelling that very hairy yarn is dangerous to my sinuses).  I currently have 148.5 skeins of yarn (plus scraps)! If you do the math, that means I used more than 66 skeins of yarn since March!  At this rate, I could continue working without buying more yarn until May 2013.

Somehow, though, I just don’t see that happening.

Want a sneak peek at my sorted stockpile as I was getting it all ready for donation?

Stockpile Sneak Peek

FOs Week 33

Countdown: 2 Weeks Left!

Today marked a momentous occasion.  Today is 11/11/11.  It’s a day of wishes.  My wish was to finish 100 items before Thanksgiving Break.  And with the four objects I finished this week… I met my goal!

100 Objects, 100 Posts!

This also happens to be post #100.  I love the duplicity of it all.  It’s just perfect.

Now, put away the confetti cannons and let me tell you about these objects.

The Accidentally Perfect Headband

FO #1 this week was supposed to be more than what it is.  I took a skein of my favorite sock yarn, Serenity, in a variegated purple-gray known as “Amethyst” and cast on for a women’s hat holding two strands together.  I fully believed that I had two skeins of this stuff.  Of course I had two skeins of this stuff, it’s sock yarn!  It would be silly to knit one single sock and not have yarn for a second one, right?  Well, someone has absconded with that other skein!  (Funny enough, my mother had a skein of it in her van the other night…)  So, I looked at the half-a-hat I had knit and I had two possibilities: rip it out or bind  it off.  I bound off, et voila!  A headband.  It fits perfectly, and headbands are THE accessory this season, almost more popular than scarves.

Manly Manly Hat

When I was planning out what I’m going to do with all my items (and I think I know where they’re all going!), I looked at the Gallery page and thought, “you know, there’s a definite lack of men’s items on here.”  I’m taking all my women’s and baby items with my men’s items to a shelter, and there’s just not an equal distribution.  I felt guilty about neglecting the guys, so I cast on for a manly manly hat.  It’s Navy Sayelle, knit in a rib stitch to stretch and fit any head.  Here my fiance acts as the head, and the Manly Manly Hat fits perfectly over his rather large dome.

Rib-a-Roni Hat

I enjoyed that ribbing so much (crazy, I know) that I wanted to do a kid’s hat next.  This time I actually followed a pattern, “Rib-a-Roni” by Jane Tanner (found here on Ravelry.com).  I have always loved the look of the Gryffindor colors, gold and scarlet.  These are just some random leftover acrylic.  It’ll fit a toddler to about a seven-year-old (made it a little short for anyone bigger).

Presto Hat 2

Then, just for something to knit, I made a baby hat similar to the Presto Hat out of some leftover-leftover acrylic.  I didn’t exactly follow the pattern, but it’s close enough that I probably got the idea from the original the designer, Katherine Vaughan, so I’ll go ahead and give her the credit.

That was my week in knitting.  I’ve finished 100 items, but there’s still time before Thanksgiving.  Until everything is donated, I will continue knitting, and everything I finish will go to a great cause.  I’m most of the way through a scarf, completely dismantled the Cat Boppy, and already started dismantling the lapghan.

Everything is going my way.

The Last of the Original 100

Repurposing

Something has been nagging me.  Some horrific feeling, just a little thought, a small voice, has been telling me that something is wrong.  What’s wrong?  A couple of my objects!

I have been giving serious thought this week to the recipients of my knit goods.  It’s TIME to donate.   I can easily find homes for my hats, mittens, baby items, toys, and cage pads.  But there are two objects in my gallery that I am not happy with.  I haven’t ever been completely thrilled with these items, and I can’t think of a single place that might seriously want them.

Remember?

First, the lapghan.  I’ve talked enough about this guy.  It’s smelly, scratchy, ugly and not fit for a human lap.  I’ve kept it around for sentimental reasons: it was my first blanket, it’s got a lot of feelings knit into it, I finished it on GrandmaW’s needles.  But it’s wacky, it’s tacky, and I don’t think anyone would really want it.

Allow me to rephrase: I don’t think any human would want it.  So I intend to repurpose it.  It’s too big to just give to an animal shelter, but I could carefully cut it into 4 or even 6 smaller pet blankets.  I would cut it up, then pick up the stitches and bind them off.  Remove the tassels, and it’s a perfectly good cage pad because it’s machine washable and animals don’t care what it smells like!

Oh, this guy!

Second, the cat boppy.  This pattern was a great idea when I first thought of it: something soft for a cat to lay on and climb over.  I didn’t realize that it would be so big.  Too big for a regular animal shelter, for sure.  I mean, if you put that thing in a cage, there would be no room for a cat!  I tried contacting the only animal shelter I know of that might have had a place for it, a no-kill shelter I once volunteered at in Hot Springs, AR, that keeps its cats in large open rooms rather than small confined cages.  I thought they might be able to take it, and that would solve my problem.

They aren’t answering their phones.  They aren’t responding to emails.  My only other option is to drive the hour-and-a-half to the shelter in the hopes of maybe donating one single item.

Not going to happen.

And so, I intend to dismantle the cat boppy.  I can reuse the yarn, reuse the filling, and cut my losses.  This one object that took a lot of yarn, a lot of stuffing, and a lot of time, can be so much more than it is now.  It can be toys, cage pads, mittens, slippers, anything it wants to be (and I want to make it).  It can be bigger and better than the cat boppy.

So that’s the plan.  It’s going to influence my project count, and I might not get around to it until next week because the items are inconveniently at home in the hamper o’ finished objects, rather than at school where I happen to be.  But it’s a good plan.  The items I take apart will multiply and be even better than they are now.  Maybe the nagging voice in my head will even shut up.

Gratitude

When I was very young (and could get away with being a brat), I destroyed a piece of knitting.  A gift, actually, from my paternal grandmother, Grandma Moore.  She used to send us these big Christmas packages, with homemade cookies, candy, toys, and other gifts.  I can still remember the taste of her mince meat cookies, my favorite thing in the whole box.  One year, there was a pair of slippers for each of us.  I think Penny got pink, Daniel got red, Ben got blue, and Carrie probably got purple (Carrie always got purple, even though it was my favorite color).  Mine were variegated green, bright bright green.  They were too big, and too slippery.  I couldn’t really walk in them without falling over.

Kinda like these, only GREENER

I thought about just hiding them until I could grow out of them.  Yep, even when I was about 4 years old, I knew how to buck the system.  But that strategy came with one particular risk: Mom could find them.  And so I killed them.  Now, I can’t exactly remember what I did.  Maybe I just cut them up, maybe I ripped them apart, maybe I buried them alive in the back yard.  Maybe I tried to blame it on one of the cats.  Whatever happened, I destroyed them.

Looking back on this incident, I realize how selfish it was.  Why couldn’t I have been grateful?  Why didn’t I keep the slippers, which I would look back on now (or even wear, because my feet haven’t grown much since then) and think of my Grandma Moore?

Now, as a Knitter, I understand the kind of work that goes into a pair of slippers like that.  There’s casting on, knitting, purling, decreasing, perhaps a bit of increasing, binding off.  And then all the finishing: weaving in ends, sewing seams, constructing and attaching pom poms.  It’s work.  It doesn’t happen in an instant.  If I’m working fast, I can do a pair in an hour, depending on the pattern.  But that’s still an hour of my Grandma Moore’s precious time that she devoted just to me.  She thought about me as she crafted every stitch.  As she put the objects in a box to send to us for Christmas, she probably said a little prayer, hoping that the items would find us safe and warm up our holidays.

I did a lot of knitting for kids.  Some of the items I know will be well received because they are simple and look like what you might find in the stores.  Others of them… not so much.  I’m worried about the toys that came out a little… unique.  The hats that came out a little… wonky.  The shirts that aren’t necessarily the right size or proportions.  I’m worried that the kids I send my work to won’t like it.  They can be really harsh critics, you know?

Will they hate the colors?  The fit?  The pattern or embellishments?  Will they kill my knitting without even giving it a chance?  Will they ever understand the time and effort I put into my work?

I know that I will never meet them.  They will never get a chance to say, “Thanks,” and that’s not what I’m after.  But I can’t help knitting these worries into my work (because I truly believe that a piece of knitting contains and conveys emotions and thoughts).

Maybe I’m overthinking it.  Just because I was a bit ungrateful as a child doesn’t mean all kids are the same way.  Even better,  I’m fairly certain that Grandma Moore never knew what happened to those slippers (and never will, unless she reads this post).  She had the luxury her whole life of believing that they were well received, well cared for, and loved very much.  And I’m going to believe the same thing about my objects.

 

A Slight Postponement

Your regularly schedule “FO Friday” post will be slightly postponed thanks to poor scheduling on the part of the blogger.  With fewer than five rows left on an object, she refuses to leave it out of this week’s post but lacks the time to finish it as well as get a quality post in.  Expect the post by morning.

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

Scary

When I was little, I helped decorate the house for Halloween.  We had a spooky two-story home with high ceilings and dark shadows.  I hung cobwebs on the hedges.  I raked leaves for giant jack-o-lantern bags.  And I put together little handmade ghosts to hang from the porch.  They were simple, really.  Two tissues, a rubber band or twisty tie, and a black marker was all it took.  With your thumb, you make a pocket in one tissue, which you stuff the other tissue into.  Then you wrap the rubber band or twisty tie around the bulge to keep it in place and use the marker to make eyes and a mouth.  They didn’t work so well when it rained, but other than that, they were great little decorations.

Once you grow up, you might forget about all the little arts and crafts things you did when you were a child.  Paper mache, styrofoam snowmen, popsicle statues.  Did you keep any of them?  I didn’t.  I wanted to make things, and enjoyed making things, but either they fell apart or I didn’t think they were worth keeping.  Or, in the case of my last batch of ghosts, my brother’s friend set them on fire.

I’m a scaredy cat.  The dark, heights, creepy music in scary movies, the quickly approaching Zombie Apocalypse.  They all freak me out.  But it’s not the ghouls and ghosties I’m afraid of this Halloween.  I’m terrified of deadlines, writer’s block, and dwindling yarn stashes.  My school stash currently has five partial balls of assorted acrylic (2 greens, 2 reds, one mauve, one off-white, and one yellow) and 4 partial balls of cotton (two yellow, one black, and assorted scraps).  That’s not enough.  But I am reluctant to bring more yarn to school because my home stash isn’t as big as I would like either.  Still formidable, but…

So what am I to do?  Live in fear for another four weeks. Stay focused.  Keep knitting.   That’s all I can do!

I Don’t Know About Artist, But…

I’ve been grappling with semantics lately.  Everyone uses synonyms, and I use a lot of synonyms on here because I don’t want to continually use “knit” over and over and over again.  So I substitute words like “craft,” “skill,” “art,” “hobby.”  What’s the difference?  I want to draw a line between skill and craft, between craft and art, and take the word “hobby” out of usage all together.  Each word has its own connotations, its own deeper meaning, emotions and ideas that go with it.  But what does any of it mean?

Francis of Assisi had some ideas about the difference between labor, craft, and art.  He once said:

He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

I don’t think of myself as an artist.  My knit goods all have a utilitarian purpose; they’re useful.  I’m not making blobs of fabric or wall decorations.  I’m making clothing and toys, things that someone will find benefitial.

But then there are purely artistic Knitters.  Works displayed in galleries.  Political pieces, like knit wombs.  That sort of stuff, that is meant to be looked at, to convey a message, but not necessarily to be used.

And a hobby… well, a hobby isn’t good for anything.  I’m not sure there really is such a thing.  I guess people take up a hobby to pass the time, but eventually, if they stick with it, their craft of choice will grow out of its hobbyness and into something more.  It’ll be useful, it’ll be on display, it’ll be something the former hobbyist is proud of.  Maybe I’m wrong or maybe I idealize craft, but latch hookers and ship-in-a-bottle builders get something out of the work they do, something more than just a pastime.

Other phrases exist in the handmade world to take issue with.  “Made from scratch” isn’t really made from scratch most of the time; you didn’t grow the tomatoes or necessarily make the noodles that went into your lasagna.  Even “handmade” isn’t entirely handmade, unless you raised and sheered the sheep, spun the yarn, and then knit it up.  It’s all hazy.

Stupid semantics.

Wings for the Flightless

Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, I have been informed three  or four times in the last two weeks of the penguin sweaters being sent to a New Zealand yarn shop to protect the birds from an oil spill that happened in the beginning of October.  It’s a really popular story thanks to a combination of adorable animals, funky jumpers, and environmental disaster.

That’s cool.  But I think it’s gotten way too much publicity.  First, I’d like to point out that the yarn shop has stated on its blog, The Yarn Kitchen, that they have received more tiny sweaters than they need for the crisis.  They are overwhelmed by the international response and have found other charities to direct the donations towards.

Second, and here’s what really bothers me about this, is that our animal shelters need more pet blankets and cage pads.  Where is the publicity for Fayetteville Animal Shelter— features from ABC News or Good Morning America, like the shop in New Zealand received?  Where is the overwhelming response to needs in our own community?  Why have I never gotten a single tip from a Facebook friend about a charity in Arkansas that might take my knit goods (though I’ve been asking for ideas since March)?

Don’t get me wrong; penguin sweaters!  That’s an adorable and unique idea.  But to see so many people interested in something on the other side of the globe and very few people talking about the opportunities we have to make a difference locally, it just bothered me.