Ria Knits!

Over the past week or so, I’ve been talking to someone who’s become a very good friend friend, and who’s been giving me lots of advice. Among other things, we’ve been talking about writing, and going pro. Nonfiction sells better than fiction, typically. But what do I know well enough that I could write a nonfiction books about?

Recycling yarn. Yup, I’ve got my groove really back for the Reinyarnations book, with more ideas for projects for it, too. The feather and fan wrap I’m currently working on will definitely be in there, since it’s a simple lace pattern, and the alternating colour stripes makes it a good project for a recycled Fair Isle sweater. I’ve got a good felting and dyeing project in mind, also, which ought to be fun to make. A few other projects are coming to mind for various things, too. Not too many details right now, since plans may change, and I don’t want to give too much away.

I may be jumping the gun on this one. Maybe the book won’t sell. Maybe I’ll get my hopes up and plan for marketing and hope to make some money off this, and then it’ll flop. But from the people I’ve talked to, both in a recycled yarn community and in various writing communities, think that this book idea will sell, especially with the revival of lots of craft stuff plus environmental issues that people seem to be becoming more aware of. If I do it right, it might actually work out.

Remember how pleased I was when I put out my first knitting pattern? Expect that to be increased tenfold if I end up getting a whole book published!

So now you know. I’ve got bits and pieces of the book written already. Instructions, reviews of different fibre types, tips and trick on how to find good bargains… Other stuff will be easy to write up, too, like how to dye using cheap stuff like Kool Aid. The biggest things missing right now are pictures to help along the written instructions (which won’t be hard to take, but might just get a little time-consuming) and the rest of the projects and patterns that I plan to have in there (which will be even more time-consuming than the other pictures).

And it won’t just involve knitting. I’ll stick some crochet in there as well, just to be inclusive of the craft (though I might require the help of someone who can crochet better than I can), and some felt-cut-and-sew projects, too. Anything and everything I can think of that one can do with a recycled sweater will end up in the book, so it won’t just appeal to knitters, but to other fibre artists, environmentally-conscious crafters, people who just think it’s a neat idea!

I’m not the original sweater-recycler, not by a longshot. I’m not even the person who made it popular, since I learned from someone else who’d already sucked others into it. I’m not aiming to be a pioneer with this. But in writing, I’ve learned, you have to write not only what you know, but what you love. Even if someone else has already done it, there’s a chance that your approach will be different, fresh and new. Think of all the how-to-knit books that are on the shelves. Do you really think they’re all needed? But someone liked knitting enough to want to teach others, to put their own spin on it and include their own words of advice, their own suggestions for projects, and some publishing company saw that it was a saleable idea, and helped them get it on the shelves. Even if this has already been done, there’s a chance I can jump in to that niche too, tell people what I love and why I love it and what I do with it, and end up coming out of it with a few extra dollars in my pocket. I’d love to be able to support myself by doing what I love rather than what I have to do, and this is one way I can help achieve that.

So that’s my plan. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it all works out.

Yessir, the proof that I actually seem to accomplish more if I don’t feel I have deadlines looming over me.

Maybe I shouldn’t be striving to become a novelist someday…

Either way, though, I’ve accomplished a fair bit over this past week on various projects, namely the feather and fan wrap (which still needs a name)…

…and the Arvika shawl.

Kitten’s right, it does sort of look like a watermelon without the rind right now.

I’m going to need circulars to continue Arvika, which unfortunately, I just don’t have at the moment. Hopefully I’ll be able to find a little bit of extra money in my budget to buy a set. I hope this shawl isn’t late. I already wasted too long on it, trying to work with patterns that just didn’t work even before I got to them.

But either way, I’m happy that progress has been made. Hopefully there’ll be more to come.

(That is, of course, assuming I don’t get side-tracked by the massive amount of books I just brought home today from the library’s annual book sale! Bibliogeek rides again!)

See, I could have just saved this post for tomorrow and still been mostly on schedule for posting three times a week. Except that I really wouldn’t have had anything to post on Friday…

Anyway, I have a rant. A rant about badly-done patterns. Now, I understand that you get what you pay for, and that if I’m getting a pattern for a lace shawl for free, I shouldn’t expect the most wonderful thing in the world from it.

But I’d hope that the designer bothered to pay attention to what they were writing before they put it out for the world to knit. A little quality control, please!

I gave up on the Inanna cape. I was doing fine, cruising along with no mistakes, until I got to row 45, which is where things started to go to hell last time I tried this. Following the written pattern made the rows come out looking really wonky. Thinking I must have misread something, I tinked back, paid very careful attention, and started the row again.

Still bad.

I made a change where I thought it made the pattern line up better, but it just made the bits after the edit look even worse! So I turned to the pattern itself, seeing if I could find any problems.

I found a big one. The stitch count didn’t line up. It claimed that after that row, I ought to have 110 stitches on the needles. Last time I knit this, I had 106. This time, I’d had 106. I counted out the stitches according to the pattern. The pattern comes out to 106 stitches.

Except it says at the end of the line that I should have 110. So either the pattern’s wrong, the stitch count is wrong, or I repeatedly had brain farts just at that exact moment to make everything fall apart.

I gave up. I frogged again. On my break at work, I went and found another free shawl pattern that I could use and that would suit my needs. Oh, the 24 Carats shawl, also from Elann.com is pretty! I’ll so that one.

I was confused by row 11. Continue the eyelet pattern, increasing every 4 rows… It made no sense when you consider that the eyelet pattern increased on every row! So I went and checked to see if there were any errata.

Not so much errata as a lot of people complaining that this shawl was badly put together, most likely not test-knit, and needed some serious revisions for it to even begin to make sense. Bravo, designer! Or bravo, Elann, for not bothering to pay attention to the patterns you put out.

Now again, I understand that I got this pattern for free. I got what I paid for. But given that I take pride in the few patterns I’ve managed to put out online for free, and I occasionally do vanity searches to see what, if anything, people might be saying, and if there are mistakes in the patterns I fix them accordingly, I figure it’s not too much to ask for others to do the same. Just because a thing is free doesn’t mean it has to suck. It seems to me some places just shove out pattern after pattern in an attempt to boost their popularity, no matter how rushed or how badly written the pattern is. Places with lots of free knitting patterns get lots of visitors, and visitors might want to buy some of the for-sale patterns too, after all.

Yes, that’s a sly dig at certainly companies. But after attempting to knit two of their patterns and finding both riddled with errors, I think I’m entitled to a dig or two.

And I understand that not all Elann free shawl patterns are bad. Luna Moth, Moonlight Sonata, and Sun Ray all seem to be popular patterns with plenty of knitters who’ve completed them with no problems. I guess I just got the two duds. But I still think my point stands. Quality control is a good thing.

So anyway, I frogged again, and carefully browsed patterns in my collection last night for something that was what I wanted in a pattern that made sense. It wasn’t my ideal choice at the time, but I eventually settled on the Arvika shawl. And let me say how glad I am that I did this! The pattern is very simple, intuitive, and looks very nice even in the plain red yarn I’m using. I imagine it would look even better in a variegated yarn, which I intend to try someday. It’s also simple enough that I’d recommend this as a good shawl pattern for beginning lace knitters who want to do something impressive and big. The pattern is that easy to get into.

And you know what? Arvika wasn’t knit by a big-name designer and put out on a big-name site. But it’s well done, looks good, and has no errors. I can tell this because the pattern is actually working. So I give hearty and un-sarcastic kudos to you, Arvika’s designer, for giving me what I needed when I needed it.

To give you an idea of just how easy and quick this thing is, the picture is of the shawl as of this moment. I cast on for it this morning, and this is approximately a morning’s work, in between calls. Granted, I’m using US 10 needles and knitting at a looser gauge than I did for Inanna, but even so, it’s moving much faster than Inanna did, and I think I’ve got the pattern memorized already, so I can knit it just about anywhere!

I know at the beginning of the year, I said I’d do my damnedest to update this journal three times a week, which would hopefully make me keep making forward motion on my knitting. It worked, for a while. Now, the thought of a promised update when I really have little worth showing is adding fuel to the stress-fire, and I can’t take that right now. My health has been suffering from the stress of all the other stuff going on in my life, and I hate thinking that this is or may play a part in things.

So I’ve reneged on that vow. I’ll now be updating when there’s actually something to update with, not three times a week. It may end up being more, it may be less. But at least I’ll have something worth saying in each entry, instead of really reaching and stretching to find something, anything, that might be remotely related to my current knitting adventures.

Watch me now suddenly have stuff happen that equals about three weeks of good-content entries. It always happens like that. I mention that I’m in a knitting slump and am taking a break to recover creativity, and suddenly I can’t put the needles down. Or the reverse, going at stuff full-steam, and bragging a little about it, and then hitting the slump.

So yeah, back to good old-fashioned content blogging. Saying stuff when it’s worth saying. Less entries with barely-noticeable progress on WiPs. :p

The feather and fan wrap has been moving slowly along. It would be longer if it wasn’t for the fact that every day I’m trying to sit down and work on my writing. See, in addition to being a knitter, I’m also a fantasy writer who has dreams of going pro someday. So, feeling inspired, I’ve been trying to get in the habit of working on my writing every day, instead of just in fits and starts.

Hence the great lack of progress.

Turns out I was wrong about there only being three shades of grey in the yarn that I’m using. The light grey and the charcoal black grey are just as I described them, but it turns out that I was seeing two different greys as the same shade at first, when they’re actually a bit different.

The top grey, which has more blue in it than the bottom grey, is actually the first shade of grey that I used. So now the order of greys in between the white sections is: blue-grey, light grey, charcoal, medium grey.

At least I discovered this early on in the wrap, instead of getting halfway through it and then noticing that I’d been using two different shades all along.

Red Dwarf’s Cat hit the nail on the head when he said, “I’m a cat, I need to nap. If I don’t nap nine or ten times a day, I don’t have enough energy for my main snooze.”

The Inanna cape seems to be fighting me every step of the way. Somehow, as I knit, I ended up short a stitch in one row. Okay, no problem, the pattern still lined up as it was supposed to (or so I thought), so I just did a quick increase at the very end of the row, thinking it was just a minor blunder.

The same thing happened on the next patterned row, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out where I’d made the mistake.

One the third row I knit that day, I somehow came up 4 stitches short at the end. By that point, I just frogged the whole damn thing and decided to start again.

I’ve been extra careful this time. I’m counting the stitches at the end of each row, making sure I’ve done exactly what I’m supposed to. So of course, the one time I don’t do that, I end up two stitches short on the row after it, and I realize that I forgot to add two yo’s on the patterned row before it. Sigh. Tink back. Redo.

I’m keeping at it. I’m pretty much back to the place I was when I had to rip everything out, so only a few days of knitting time have been lost, really. Working on this shawl during the first two hours of my shift at work, when it’s so early that there are barely any calls, has helped move this project along very quickly.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t run into anymore errors. I’m not sure my fraying nerves can take it!

I probably shouldn’t have done this, but on payday, I tend to get a little (read: very self-indulgent, and buy treats for myself when I really ought to be saving money or putting another $20 or so toward paying off my debt. But I allow myself a sinful treat, most often in the form of books or magazines.

Today, it was both. Or all. Whichever. Three books (though the two paperback fantasy novels were second-hand, and thus a little cheaper than brand new), and one magazine.

Yes, my geek certainly is showing!

I promise I have something knitterly to share today.

It doesn’t have a name yet, so I’m sticking with “Feather and Fan Wrap” until I or someone else comes up with something better. I’m open to suggestions, folks!

It’s knit on 3mm needles, in th softest fingering-weight alpaca I’ve ever found, recycled, of course, from a thrift store sweater. The first sweater in this entry, for those who are curious. Three different shades of grey and the rest is a creamy off-white. I’m doing three repeats of the pattern in white, then one repeat in one of the greys, in the order of medium, light, and dark. I imagine it’s going to look quite pretty when it’s all done.

Ooh, and here’s something else to get my geek going! (Ravelry link). The Vkandis Sunlord circular shawl, which I imagine I’m going to cast on for the very second I find or dye the right yarn and find the right size needles. The Lackey-lover in me won’t let this one lie, that’s for sure!

Which reminds me that I really ought to get back to working on the Bardic shawl I had planned, and then the Herald’s shawl…

This is what a warm spring day does for me. It gets me excited, it gets me planning, and it makes me feel incredibly good!

Jakob, surprise surprise, just feels incredibly sleepy.

I’ve started taking the Inanna cape to work with me now, since I work early enough in the morning that it’s fairly quiet. I only get about five calls during the first two hours, so that gives me plenty of time to work a few rows here, a few rows there, and gradually add to the cape.

I’m only up to row 40 now, but that’s about twice as far as I was before starting to do this at work, a little bit at a time. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to have the cape finished by the time these early shifts end. Honestly, if I keep up at this rate, and maybe do a little bit at home in the evenings too, that shouldn’t be too big a challenge. I do have another three weeks of this schedule, after all.

It’s a shame that top-down shawls don’t look that great on straight needles. It’s also a shame that I don’t have circulars that I can use for this, though I suspect I’m going to need them at some point or else this project is going to get awfully difficult to manage, what with so many stitches on the needles and all.

And by the way, I’d like to make a small announcement. Cosette, of Cosymakes, is giving people the chance to get a signed copy of her upcoming book if they order it direct through her instead of going through other places like Amazon. I know I’m all for this (I’ve been looking forward to her book being released for months now), so I figured I’d give the readers of my blog a little head’s up, in case you might want a signed copy of a cool book by an awesome knitter.

Jakob is so excited about this chance that he tired himself out and had to take a nap on his favourite yarn bag again.

Why is it that whenever I start a new project, something happens that makes me have to stop knitting it?

This was part of ASOMAMF. I learnt, after trying desperately to make the yarn cooperate, that it just wasn’t going to work out for that project. It’s beautiful stuff, very soft, rich colour, but it’s just not suited to that project, I guess. Into the frog pond with it!

So what am I going to give to my coworker instead?

I picked the Sampler Shawl back up the other day, and am now finished the first two chart patterns. Two down, 8 bazillion to go.

Well, not really. But it’s a long list of charts to knit, and then I do them again in reverse order for the second half of the shawl. I could be at this for a while.

But at least progress is being made, so that’s a good thing. I’m being very careful with this, because I’m not using stitch markers of lifelines. So far I haven’t had trouble, but I’m keeping a close eye on things, and praying daily and nightly to the deities of knitting that I don’t screw up so badly that I can’t tink back and fix it.

Jakob will help me in this endeavour by guarding any yarn that may try to waylay me and convince me to start yet another new project.

Not actually a purple fluffy laptop cozy, as it looks. It just turns out that what would be good lighting for most projects is actually bad lighting for furry objects. So I instead moved it to a clear section of the floor to take a better picture.

Knit on US size 9 needles and taking two skeins of Bernat Boa yarn, this was just a quick and mindless project for me to knit at work. When I could pull myself away from my video games, that is.

Jakob says I should have been using that downtime to contemplate how cute he is.