And that’s a wrap!

It’s over! It’s done! I went six months without buying yarn (outside of my carefully established parameters)!

I don’t think I’ll be able to extend it for a year, but I have decided to try and alter my behavior a bit – no yarn buying unless it’s for a very specific project, i.e. the ‘Greenfield Cardigan from New England Knits’, not ‘a cardigan’.

I feel that I can do this because I made a substantial run on the projects I’ve been buying yarn for and not completing. In fact part of thew reason I need to allow myself to buy yarn is because I have sweater quantities of it remaining!

I don’t have much in the way of FOs to show off, since I started one of Shelly Kang’s Sock Yarn Blankies in April and it has generally consumed my knitting time, leaving a little left over for OWLs and a token class project Hopefully I’ll be able to show you a finished blanket before July 23, when I leave for Japan.

For now, I leave you with the other thing I’ve found time for – Quidditch!

Almost there!

Alright! Just a month to go! I’m beginning to think about extending this thing for a year, since it went so well for six months. I’ll have to do a major stash toss and pattern search though, because I managed to knit up a lot of the patterns I’ve had my eye on for a good long while.

I did manage to acquire yarn this month, using up both of my get out of jail free cards – one purchase was yarn for something for a friend who’s currently having a hard time and the other for a friend who’s getting married! I also got lucky up in Saint Paul this weekend, when I went with my dad to pick out yarn for a pair of socks for his girlfriend and he decided to also pay for a skein of lovely red Malabrigo that tempted me.

Okay, onto this month’s progress!

I did manage to finish both of my OWLs for the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup, despite a wounded Ancient Runes shawl that had be laboriously repaired before being submitted.

It’s the shawl version of an Aeolian, knit from Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud in Tango Heather, bought over a year ago for another purpose. It was modified with a stockinette body, per the recipient’s request. She’s getting married in August and I’m glad I have this to send along, because it’s beginning to look like I won’t be able to make it.

Then there’s the second half of my Muggle Studies OWL, a Yosemite sweater that was dragging because I had fallen out of love with it. I felt better after I finished the body and tried it on – it was only finished because of the extremely flattering fit. It’s knit from Cascade Eco+, which was bought specifically for it about a year ago.

The next two projects are knit from some of the leftovers from the above two. A pair of booties from the Eco+ and a mini-Swallowtail from the Alpaca Cloud. I’m especially proud of that tiny shawl – I did all of the calculations myself.

Next up is a pair of colorwork mittens, knit entirely from leftover colors in my stash. It was pretty fun to come up with a workable combination from what I had available.

Finally, a pair of mini-socks knit from some possum yarn a friend bought in New Zealand.

March Stash Post

Once more, I managed to not buy yarn for a month. I didn’t even manage to acquire it through nefarious means.

Most of this month’s projects are projects from the end of February (actually…they all are). I haven’t started on class projects for March and my OWLs aren’t complete yet. Fingers crossed that they will be when I update in April.

First up is a true stashdown project – 14 baby hats knit entirely from stash I acquire back when I was first learning to knit.

Next is a pair of fingerless gloves knit from Blue Moon Socks that Rock Lightweight that’s been marinating in the stash since Sock Summit 2009. I decided to stop petting it and make it into something. Leftovers will be headed for the sock yarn blanket bag.

Third, an ugly pair of socks that I made into anklets because I couldn’t stand them anymore. They’re knit from Knit Picks Imagination, in the Pirate King colorway. One of those mistakes where you buy for the name, forgetting to imagine what it will look like knit up.

I don’t know what I’ll do with the leftovers. They’re an alpaca blend, so I’m not sure I want them in with the sock blanket scraps.

Finally, another true stashbuster, a pair of knee-highs knit from yarn leftover from a sweater from last September. A common failing of mine, buying so much yarn for a sweater that I have enough leftover for a pair of socks. *sigh*

Halfway Point

It’s official, as of yesterday I am halfway through this experiment and have managed to not buy any yarn. I’m beginning to think of extending it a year, with a slight pause in May to buy some sweater quantities of yarn. I’m working on one now, but it’s from the last stockpile of yarn that I have enough of to make a sweater. I don’t have a particular itch yet, but I know that making it through to November without another sweater or large project would drive me mad.

As with last month, I managed to acquire yarn without buying it. I traded another Raveler for a skein of hemp yarn, something I wouldn’t buy, but wanted to try. I also won a prize for a series of mittens I did last year, receiving two skeins of lovely hand-dyed fingering-weight yarn from ShaylaMyst’s shop.

Alright, on to the FOs. There aren’t as many this month – I broke out my sock yarn stash and February’s HPKCHC projects are moving slowly.

This is the Simple Things shawl (Rav link), knit from sock yarn dyed by SeeJayneKnit in the Gibbs colorway. I am a HUGE NCIS fan and pounced when I found this after someone in the HPKCHC mentioned it. The yarn was purchased to have, not for this specific project, but I think it shows it off well. My only criteria were ‘not socks, and no lace’. The leftovers from this skein will be headed for my collection of sock yarn scraps (hopefully eventually these will become one of the now ubiquitous sock yarn blankies).

Next up is a fairly large project. It seems like every knitter on the internet has themselves one of these – the February Lady Sweater (Rav link). It’s the adult version of the February Baby Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitter’s Almanac. I made mine with short sleeves and Cascade 220 that I bought almost a year ago just for this sweater. Of course, at the time I thought I be doing long sleeves, so I bought way too much yarn. I’m thinking a matching pair of worsted boot socks.

I mentioned last month how much I like Ysolda Teague‘s hats – well, here’s another one, Gretel. It’s knit from a skein of Cascade Eco Duo I received from another Raveler in a swap. It’s mostly alpaca, and so warm that I might send it up to a friend in the Great Snowy North.

Finally, another project I mentioned last month, the Ariadne mitts (Rav link), knit from Knit Picks Andean Treasure bought specifically for the project. The pattern was fairly easy if you have a good grasp of cabling.

The project just barely required part of a second skein, so I have almost an entire extra skein to deal with. Hmm…

December 26, 2010

In my last post, I briefly mentioned that one of the featured projects was knit from leftover yarn from a doll. Almost immediately upon writing that, I realized that the doll, though completed waaaaay back in August, deserved its own post.

Watching the Olympics this past February really helped pull me through my final semester at college. We had no TV in our house, so I spent an inordinate amount of time at the Blue Door Pub in Saint Paul, MN, watching whatever random Olympic scraps I could catch and munching on tater tots and Blucys. I even went by myself and sat at the bar on Valentine’s Day, which was probably one of the more socially daring things I’ve done on my own.

But by far the best part was on February 17th, after flying into Chicago with Lauren and Erin for our JET interviews, after almost missing our flight in such a variety of ways that we would have made an excellent sitcom episode, after getting slightly lost on the way to the hotel, we arrived in our room and turned on the TV just in time to catch Shaun White winning gold in the Men’s Snowboard Halfpipe event.

Epic. Win.

Literally.

And lo, a slight obsession was born and I needed to express it in knitting. Behold, ladies and gentlemen, Shaun White, the knit doll:

I had originally intended to make him a little snowboarding outfit but:

1) There was an incident involving his hair and my cat, the day after I spent several hours sewing, cutting, and swearing the orange yarn into place. This lead to the project being mothballed for several months until I felt ready to face it and by then snowboarding season was most definitely over.

2) I forgot the KISS principle and that I was making a coat for a doll, and the coat died a fiery demise after the fourth sleeve iteration.

3) I found a cute toy skateboard with a Boston terrier on it, like the one owned by the founders of Ravelry, and took it as fate. Besides, after the coat incident, I wasn’t too confident of my snowboard-making skills.

The base pattern I used is Ysolda Teague’s Poppy (Rav link), though I stole the feet from Sally, the Eco Fairy pattern (Rav link) so that I could make him shoes. The hair was made curly by knitting up a garter swatch that I then washed and dried before unraveling – it came out a little too kinked, so I wet it again and gave a few tugs to create looser curls. I really recommend the Poppy pattern for it’s hair directions: up until that pattern, all attempts at doll hair on my part had been in vain. And when Ysolda says to stuff the neck firmly  – DO IT! I might have to perform surgery soon with a pipe cleaner…

Project Page – Shaun White (Rav link)

Stash Busting Update

Well, it’s been exactly a month since I last purchased yarn (a selection of lovelies from both The Yarnery and Borealis Yarns in Saint Paul). It was a bit harder than I thought it would be, since it seemed that as soon as I posted my resolution, I started receiving notices from my favorite yarn-purchasing venues about their Christmas sales. However, I resisted temptation and knit solely from stash this past month.

So, a quick line-up – starting things off is a potholder, double-knit for extra thickness, that I knit for the in-house Gryffindor swap. The swap was character based and I had to put together a package representing Parvati Patil, which was kind of fun and challenging. You can see the reverse image of the potholder on my project page (Ravelry). The yarn for this came from two former projects – the gray yarn from my Fylingdales cardigan (Ravelry) and the purple from a Foliage hat (Ravelry) that I knit for a friend. I’ve also used that gray yarn on a pair of knee-high socks (Ravelry) and my first amigurumi (Ravelry) – I can’t seem to be rid of it.

Next, a pair of quick baby booties, to go into the pile for when friends start having babies.

Cute, no? The yarn for these came from my Trinity vest (Ravelry), which is from the same book as Fylingdales. This yarn also seems impossible to get rid of, but it’s useful for when I need scraps of brown for wee stuffed pumpkins and the like.

I did a lot of scrappy things in November it seems. Here’s a cat-toy dreidel (Ravelry) that I made for a friend’s cat in time for Hanukkah.  The yarn is from a doll I finished over the summer (I should do a post just on that doll).

Isn’t Boomer looking adorable?

Next up is a commission project for one of my aunts. Black yarn = hard to photograph well.

This is this yarn’s first outing, but there were enough scraps that I’ll probably be able to get a blanket square or two out of them.

The scraps of yarn for this next project came from the Christmas ornaments I made last year, along with a pair of fair isle mittens (Ravelry). It’s a good thing they weren scraps, because I’m afraid that I treated them very poorly indeed.

Yes, that is our Thanksgiving turkey.

Almost finishing up here, I have another commission project (Ravelry), so the yarn was new (purchased by someone else!). There’s enough left over for a sock blanket square or three.

The last I’ve decided to save for another post, because 1) The recipient might be reading this and 2) It ties in better as a story with a knitting adventure I had at the end of the summer. Hopefully I’ll have something up about that soon, but if not, see January 16th!

I’m baaaaaack(-ish)

I needed a place to post my Yarn Diet 2010-2011 plan, since I keep my other online spaces fairly fiber-free and I’d lose it on Ravelry.

I was inspired by Emilee’s resolutions here and the fact that all five cats can now comfortably nest in my stash. It’s big enough that I can’t even tell you how much I have, just that it’s starting to make me nervous that five cats can nest in it.

Now, my biggest concern was setting a time frame for this – a year seems to be a pretty common goal, but I break into a cold sweat at the thought of it. So for now the main goal is May 16, 2011, six months from the last day I bought yarn (yesterday). However, if I get through the holiday season (defined as from now to January 6, 2011) without a fiber-y falldown, I’ll treat myself to a single skein of something good.

A few exceptions, of course:

1. Yarn for commissions. This is kind of a gimme – I make the money back when the commission is complete.

2. Yarn to complete my Couverture blanket squares. I was originally aiming for 80 squares, which gives me a 56″x70″ blankie – not bad. But now I have visions of a queen-size dancing in my head.

3. Yarn for future OWLs for the HPKCHC on Ravelry. I’m thinking that this isn’t such a big thing, but might get more important in April.

4. Two free passes – but neither can be used before January 6th.

Inkubook

Way back in March I stumbled upon a site called Inkubook, which was set up so that the user could create their own photo book. I immediately hit upon the idea of creating a book about my time in Japan and started uploading photos.

I was very impressed with the site software. You select which type of book you were putting together and are presented with a certain number of layouts and themed backgrounds to use in your project, though I later discovered that you could access all of the available backgrounds and layouts if you so desired.

It took almost three months, working on and off with varying amounts of intensity to get all of the photos I wanted arranged correctly, to add captions and fill in some of the blank space around the photos with excerpts from my journal.

As far as I could see, they were only three drawbacks: No built-in spellcheck, which for me meant getting my very willing dad to proofread (no easy task considering the amount of Japanese place names). The software could occasionally take forever to load and while finishing up on my new netbook I almost developed eyestrain. Finally, the software required a certain quality of image to guarantee a good product, which was fine for my own photos, but a little more problematic when it came to using friends’ photos for events I had no photographic record of. The images looked fine onscreen, but  I had a few nervous moments imagining how they could ruin the final product.

I finished up last week and the book arrived today.

You have to select the size you want before you start, since that affects the photo layouts. This is the 8.5×8.5 size, currently only available in softcover. For sixty-five pages of material, it ran me 23.95 plus about ten dollars flat shipping for the two copies I ordered.

If you want hardcover, the three larger sizes, 8.5×11 portrait, 8.5×11 landscape, and 11×11 square are are all available, with prices varying by page number. You can fill up to 120 pages.

I am very happy with quality of the paper and the photo printing job. My pictures are huge and bright and crisp, and the ones that were of a lower quality still aren’t too bad. They certainly don’t take away from the overall quality.

While there were plenty of cutesy, scrapbook style backgrounds available, they were so European-themed that I went with black matte backgrounds for almost every page. I was trying to fit in as many pictures as possible, so most of the time I stuck with the layouts of the sort visible on the right and put the captions in the back of the book. In some cases, however, I had the slightly more panoramic pictures stand alone on a page with their own caption right there.

In some cases, I used a really nice picture to fill the whole page or picked a color from the palette available to fill in the background. These are the pages I’m really proud of – I almost never get prints bigger than 4×6 and it was awesome to see these huge, high-quality prints of my pictures of the Golden Pavilion.

In some cases, there was enough space on the page that I could include a journal entry from the same day. My journal and Mauri in Japan turned out to be indispensable for adding dates to all of the pictures. This book wouldn’t be nearly as accurate as it is without them.

At the end of the book, I put in a dramatis personae, listing everyone in the book and giving the page numbers for each picture they appear in. There are also captions for every picture that appeared on a page that didn’t have its own caption box.

This was probably my biggest mistake – I spent so much time in the program double-checking that the page numbers were correct and the captions were accurate that I neglected to think about how the page numbers would be printed.

There are no page numbers in my book. The captions are not quite useless, since the go page-by-page in order, but it should be fun to see how easy it is to look up a picture of a person. *sigh*

Overall, I am extremely happy with the book and if this seems like one huge plug for Inkubook, well it kind of is.

Final tip – they send out coupons fairly often, so keep an eye on them if you’re close to finishing the book. I ended up using a 30% off coupon they sent me in a panic after I didn’t work on my book for more than a month, afraid that I had abandoned it permanently.

What I Have Learned While Studying for the MCAT

1. I know more Latin than I think I do. Anything with -ase attached to it means that it breaks up whatever is attached to the front. In other words, maltase breaks up maltose, a sugar. You can tell it’s a sugar because it ends in -ose. Lactase –> lactose. Sucrase –> sucrose. And so forth.

2. My Biology professor taught us nothing useful about animals or the human body. That’s right – I’m going into the MCAT with a ninth grade biology understanding of the human body. Fungi? Forget it.

3. I still hate the Kreb’s Cycle.

4. College organic chemistry courses are there to prepare you to become chemists. Doctors are not chemists. MCAT organic chemistry is baby organic chemistry. I believe that the requirement made by most medical schools that applicants have at least two semesters of organic chemistry has two purposes:

– To make sure the applicants know some of the chemistry that is not taught in the first two semesters, in general chemistry.

– To weed out the weak-willed from the herd.

5. The math required for the MCAT does not rise above ninth grade basics. This is amusing because the physics required for the MCAT is all calculus based.

6. I am not as worried about the Verbal Reasoning section as I should be.