A Knitting Assessment

I am leaving for Virginia tomorrow and have spent the day packing up all the knitting projects I'll need to last through Christmas. My mom has had a small stroke and I don't know how long I will be there. I've spent the last week making the final decision on my Christmas knitting and then gathering everything I need. (And then some!) I will also be turning in my charity knitting to From the Heart in Richmond. Going through this process is very revealing. The first thing I noticed was that I have enough needles for myself and 3 more very active knitters! Why do I have so many needles?

Reason #1 I got some needles on eBay and they contained the needles I wanted and a whole lot more! It was like Christmas when they came. I was looking for some very small but long double point needles and at the time, they were very hard to find. What I bought was some knitter's stash of needles and tools. It was so exciting when the package finally arrived. Along with the needles were all sorts of tools from the UK which we don't have here. That was about 15 years ago and a few months ago I finally figured out what one of the last tools was for...a knitting machine.

Reason #2 I have been working on UFOs for the last 3-5 years. As each project is finished, I collect the stitch markers, the needles and the stitch holders. I had NO idea how many needles and such that I had tied up in UFOs! It's very gratifying, but what am I to do with all these needles? I gave some of them to a young knitter in my group, but she is moving to Seattle in a few days and won't be settled for a while. I need to sit down on the floor and take inventory and then cull, cull, cull.  When that is done, I need to find another new knitter and and make her very happy!!

I've been going through my projects on Ravelry to see what I am going to knit for Christmas presents.  I have a fairly large stash and I have been working through it..  Here's what I've done.  First, I brought down about 16 plastic see through storage bins...about the size two shoe boxes, and put them along the wall that I face when I am on the computer.  Next, I pulled up my queue in Ravelry and started deciding what I already had yarn for.  I couldn't believe how much easier it was to do it that way.  Usually, I either see a pattern and then go upstairs to find some yarn.  Of course, that usually means I will get distracted and spend hours up there and finally come down stairs having forgotten why I went up there.

After I paired the yarn with the pattern, I put them in a bag to start to swatch.  Decisions, decisions.  After going back and forth a few times, I finally decided to get the yarn first and see what other people in Ravelry had made from it.  That was a whole lot easier.  I settled for some patterns that would work on my yarn and then started swatching.  When I got what I liked, I made up a project in my notebook (on Ravelry) and put them first in a bag, and then back in the plastic boxes so I could see what I had lined up.  This was much better.

About 10 days ago, my mother had a small stroke.  I have the idea that I will need to go to Virginia and be with her.  My two sisters are in VA and have been taking turns being with her, but I am the only one free enough to go up there and stay.  She has made a remarkable recovery, but she isn't ready to be on her own.
I was just there for several months and I enjoy just sitting and knitting with her.  She has handed down a love of knitting to three generations and I feel very blessed.

I have been working on lots of charity projects this year and also trying to get some of my Christmas presents done ahead of time.  I knit like the Dickens during the Olympics and I had a lot to turn into the Ravellenic Games:

My fingers were about worn to nubbins, but I had a great feeling of satisfaction.

My granddaughter has a new blog. It's called Smile Its Harry Potter.

I am so behind on this blog. I'll need to look back in my journal and fill in the posts I am missing. I am doing so well with my knitting and am very pleased. This is mainly due to the Ravelry group HPKCHC or Harry Potter Knit & Crochet House Cup. Each month we have pseudo Hogwarts Classes with homework we have to turn in. At the beginning of the month, I list the things I want to accomplish and then I look at the "classes" and see what projects fit. When turning projects in, we have to write some kind of story explaining why the project we chose fits the prompt. Sometimes you have to get creative in your story to fit the project you want to do, but I love creative writing and it is so much fun. Here's an example

Since joining this group, I have learned how to do a number of things I never would have gotten around to. As I read the posts of others in the group and see their pictures, I am encouraged to try things like dyeing yarn that I never have done before. Some of the prompts are to try a technique you are afraid to do. Well, I certainly was afraid to dye my sock block. I was afraid I would make a mess of it, but friends in the group encouraged me and noted that if I didn't like the way the yarn turned out for my particular project, I could make charity hats and know that some homeless person would love the yarn that was a little more purple than I wished.

The classes give me a reason to start a particular project start and end date.  I have to completely finish the project in order to take the picture, so I can't have four pairs of socks waiting for the toes to be grafted or sweaters with no buttons.  I have an appreciative audience for my projects, so it encourages me to add special details that I might not add, especially for charity.  I get some Christmas presents done in the summer instead of beginning in November.

Well, I could go on and on, but I will leave it at this and try to upload some pictures to my blog to chart my progress.

Three Hats

Well, these aren't the most beautiful hats I have made by a long stretch, but I am told by the homeless shelters that this is exactly what they need. Men and boys don't seem to be enthused by the same things knitters are.

This group of hats is remarkable in one respect. I had two skeins of yarn and I managed to have only a 10 inch piece of yarn left over!!

Sock Stash

I am having a love/hate relationship with my socks. I love knitting them. They are so easy to grab and stick in a purse for those unoccupied moments. I love watching the striped patterns develop and I love not having to work from a pattern. So why the "hate?" I am making a sincere resolution to knit from my stash and socks just don't deplete the stash fast enough. I can work on a pair for weeks and when I am finished, I have only made the tiniest dent in my yarn bins.

Still, I have 3 pair on the needles and I will keep at them until they are all done. Even if they don't take off much from the stash pile, they are counted on my "Christmas Gift" tally, so I see the progress on my little counters on this blog and see my Christmas bin fill up.

It is so easy for me to get the cart before the horse. I knit because it calms and refreshes me. The creative process is soothing and when I am finished, I have a feeling that I have somehow given back to the universe. How can a pair of socks give to the universe...isn't that a little pretentious? Not really, at least not to me. Doing something creative feels like giving something back...being a part of creating instead of destroying. We are plunked down on this earth as babies and immediately we start the using process. As babies we take take take...food, clothing, heat, love. We slurp it right up and give little back except what is destined for the landfill. At first, we aren't even very good at giving love, although we are adept at getting it. Scientists are always talking about our footprint and I feel like the creative work we do should help to balance what we take.

So, even though the socks don't use up much stash, they fill my need to create and, hopefully, the recipient of the socks will feel some of the creative energy and love that went in to making them. Socks are very satisfying and that is what knitting is all about anyway.

Happy New Year!!!

Boy am I behind on this blog! I wasn't able to do it in Virginia this summer and since I was there 4 months, I really got behind on everything. My internet is so limited there and I only do the necessary things...like play games. Well, that isn't all, I don't even get them done without help.

So, I am going to try to catch up with some pictures and statistics and start a new list of goals for this year. Even if don't get all of them done, I find I do better with a list than without one :>)

To tell the truth, I got a LOT of knitting done. I look back and can see that I more than met my goals and while I didn't get all the things on my list done, I did a lot of things, mostly charity, that were not on the list. I turned in 40+ items to my sister's knitting guild and emptied 2 1/2 storage bins of stash. If I have another year like the last, I will have made significant progress on making my sewing room more livable.

I should say that it is still a big task. I moved from a great big house to an nice converted garage and I have less than 1/5 of the space I started with and very little attic space. Of course, my daughter and family live in the original house that is only about 10 feet away, so I still have some things in the old attic, but my goal this year is to get all the yarn down and at least go through it and plan projects.

This is complicated by the fact that I am a quilter and my sewing room is full of fabric stash also, but that is also getting whittled away.