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Become a minimalist… by having children.
I think I discovered the key to minimizing your life… and that key is a toddler. For years and years I had glorious free time. And in that free time, I was free to do whatever I damn well pleased. Which is why half our back yard is taken up with garden, I have a pantry full of canning equipment, a spinning wheel, more yarn than I really need, fabric stash to nearly match, etc. Free time meant I needed to fill it with something… and fill it I did. Now that I have a toddler, I have less time for hobbies. Or cleaning. Or thinking, really. What I’d rather…
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Knitting in progress: la grasse matinée
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All dry
Green, on the left, dyed with a ratio of 4 drops yellow to 1 green, with some of the darker bits 4 yellow to 1 blue. The teal in the middle was 4 blue to 1 green. The rainbow on the end, or “unicorn fart” as my friend Stephanie named it, was dyed with kool-aid on just one small chunk.
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A little like childbirth
For Christmas I made my knitting friends little knitting bags. I made enough to basically have the construction concept memorized, so when I decided to make a smaller version for a Ravelry swap I’m in I basically winged it. 4″x6″ pieces of fabric and fusible fleece, a zipper, notching 1″ squares out of the corners… piece of cake, right? I mean, I’ve made at least 5 of these already so sizing the pattern down is no big deal. Except it WAS a big deal. Let me tell you: making this bag was a little like childbirth. In the beginning it was fun and exciting. “Little itsy bitsy bag for postage…
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Spring dyeing
My life is going to get a little busier these next few weeks as I go back to full time employment. Which means the sudden urge to craft has hit me since I’ll be losing my Mondays at home with Declan and my nap time craft time. I’m kicking my weekend off with some yarn dyeing. 4 skeins of this yarn have lingered in my stash. I have a plan for a gift but not enough time to knit it. But since these friends are knitters, too, hand dyed yarn seems more like a perfect alternative. Stay tuned for how this process turns out. Hopefully I can capture some good…
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New kicks and old goals
I’ve taken up my 5k training again. Week 3 already. You know what sucks? Well, besides the 3 minutes of running and thinking your going to die, I mean. What sucks is knowing that 4 years ago you did this before, and then life and babies happened and now I’m back to starting over. I’ve lost what I earned and it blows. But I’m armed with new shoes (and new/smaller running pants! Healthy eating for the win!) and music loud enough to drown out my breathing. I’m going to get through it, even if I have to bribe myself with a beer at the end of each run.
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Bitty Twist Socks
An otherwise plain sock knit with a line of twisted stitches down one side – enough to keep you from getting bored without being overly complicated should you be employed by a tiny dictator toddler who demands frequent attention. If you notice any errors or think I wrote something down wrong, please feel free to tell me – when you’re writing things up as fast as possible during nap time sometimes you try to cram too much in that needs done and you miss things in proofreading 🙂 Yarn: Knit Picks Hawthorne in Nob Hill Needles: Size 1/2.25mm dpns Pattern: Cast on 64 stitches, dividing evenly across needles. Knit 15 rounds of…
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Knitting math (or why I don’t sell what I make)
Nearly every knitter I know hears the following at some point of their hobby: “Can you make me a ____?” “You should sell your knitting/crochet!” “How much would you charge me for ____?” 90% of the time, my reaction tends to be the following: Mind you, I always feel kind of like a giant bitch about it. I really do absolutely love giving people handmade things. But often, in today’s world where we import things made overseas for pennies to sell for $5 at Walmart, people don’t really understand the time and money that goes into making something for someone. There’s a concept in the knitting world of someone being…
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Sunday stitches
Little Oak in progress. I’m making surprising progress this weekend with chasing my kid around, trying to keep him from killing himself by standing on the rocking chair, etc. But little sweaters for little munchkins are always a faster knit given their small proportions.
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Hitch Mitts
I improvised a bit with these mitts. Nothing really appealed to me on my Ravelry searches, and I ended up wasting more time looking for a pattern instead of just getting started knitting. I flipped through a few of my magazine stash and ran across the Hitch pullover and the cable pattern was interesting, thus the “hitch mitts” were born. Yarn is Patons Kroy FX sock yarn I picked up on clearance at Joanns (or possibly Hobby Lobby, but most likely Joanns).
– Handmade in Ohio –
