Another WIP...

It never ends.

I get a lot of inspiration from Ravelry. I have been spending a lot of time on this social network and the more I see, the more that I want to knit. However, at the moment, I am very pressed for time. I have a constant battle between all of the things that I have to do, and all of the things that I WANT to do. It. Never. Ends. Especially with kids.

Since I started homeschooling my daughter, I have had less time to do anything else - housework, taking care of the dogs, relaxing, and worse of all, knitting. Then how do I spend a lot of time on Ravelry, you ask. Well, read on.

My days go like this: I wake up, drink a wee bit of coffee with lots of milk, make breakfast for the boy ("Crunchy cereal please!"), an egg burrito for the girl (cereal and oatmeal never fill her), breakfast and lunch for the man (this changes daily), remind her to get ready for the day (get dressed, and brush her teeth and hair) while I prepare the day's lessons.

I start her off with Math. Our kitchen table is our classroom. We tried having her do her lessons in her room - too distracting! The first day I taught her from home, I went in to check on her progress 30 minutes after she started and she was still on the first question because she started playing with Buggi. Grrrrrrrr. So now, we sit together at the kitchen table. I sit parallel to her, so she can ask me questions if needed, and I can check that she is not distracted by something. Here is where I spend my time on Ravelry. Personally, I hate people watching over my shoulder. I figure that if she knows that I am present but not hovering, then she will be more comfortable working on her own. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. It's still a work in progress. The problem is, if I leave the table for too long, she "forgets" she's supposed to be doing her schoolwork. So I need to stay in the immediate vicinity so that she stays on task. Therefore, forget about walking the dogs with her brother so she can work on her own, forget about cleaning the bedrooms, forget about playing a game with the boy, at least until her lessons are over for the day. I am glad that my son enjoys drawing and learning his letters, so he is not watching the TV all day.

Between all of this and keeping the kids occupied after "school" is over, I have less knitting time. I am grateful that we belong to a charter school that we have to visit every week for her Spanish class and my bimonthly meeting with our home teacher. I am grateful because this trek to the school gives me an excuse to stop at the nearby McDonalds. It has a nice children's area where both of my children can play and cushy chairs where I can sit down and knit. This is the only way I have been able to work on a shawl that I am making for a Christmas present.

Other times, I sneak in a few rows in other projects in between my chores, but only when my kids are playing and getting along in their room. Each time I start a row, I pray to the knitting gods that a fight won't erupt until after the row is done. It is only after the kids are in bed - 8:00 pm - not a minute later! - that I can get chunks of projects done.

Being Sunday, I have given myself permission to do nothing (well, okay, almost nothing) and surf through Ravelry, I found a circular shrug that I think I want to make. I like it because I can use any yarn at any gauge. It's super cute and perfect if you want something to wear on top of a tank top.

When am I going to have time to do this? I dunno. That's never stopped me from casting on before.

A Knitter, a Beader, a Stitchmarker Maker

Recently, I've decided to try to make and sell stitchmarkers again, after a long hiatus from my beading. I've sold a few at Babetta's Yarn and Gifts in Fair Oaks, and I have just started selling them at Knitique in Elk Grove. I thought that I would post some of my designs, with hopes of more publicity. If you have any questions about them, please send me an email or post a comment. I do not have an Etsy store, and do not plan on starting one. Frankly, with homeschooling my daughter, keeping my son occupied, keeping my 2 dogs out of trouble, knitting, and housework, I don't have the time. Besides, selling them at local yarn stores gives me an excuse to get out of the house and fondle yarn that hasn't been sitting in my closet begging to be knit.

All of my markers are snagless and flexible (with the exception of a small few from when I first starting selling them). The sets include an accent. They are made with Swarovski crystals, sterling silver, silver plated, and glass beads, strung on platinum quality wire.

Fair Isle Heart Motif for Tait

I figured out how to put the chart up:



For Tait, I am knitting the second to largest size, so I had to cast on 78 stitches, increasing to 80 after the ribbing. When I seam it, I will lose the 2 added stitches, which brought down the number of stitches to 78. The pink sides of the chart represent the selvedge stitches.

Hearts and Tait

I cast on for Tait, from Rowan Kids a few days ago. After I finished the rib for the back, I thought to add a fair isle pattern. I needed a motif that was 13 stitches wide; no restriction on the heighth. My laptop was not charged, so I decided to pull out my graph paper and design a fair isle chart myself. I put it onto an excel spreadsheet this morning. I think it turned out pretty well. As soon as I can figure out how, I will share the chart. For now, here is a picture of what I've knitted so far:

I will be making the top (sleeveless body with a hood). I had intended to make it for my daughter so she would be able to wear something blue and white for her school's spirit days. However, now that I am homeschooling her, I am just making it so she will have something to wear that will not be too warm for our fall days here in California.

I have to say that I am so glad that I learned how easy it is to seam. I guess I could have converted this top to knit it in the round; however, I still would have had to seam the shoulders. The way I had been seaming my knitted projects, I would have been too embarrassed to have my daughter wear her top. Yay!

To destash or not to destash

Sometimes I humor the idea of destashing some yarn. I pull out all of my yarn (it's really not that much, just a quarter closet full), I separate the bins, and decide where I am going to put the "destash pile".

First I start with my massive amount of sock yarn. I pull out the skeins that I definitely want to keep, put them back into the bin. Then I pull out the ones that I have ideas for, put them back into the bin. Then I pull out the ones that I am not sure of and put them aside for the destash pile.

I do the same for the rest of my yarn weights. These don't take as much time because I like to knit with heavier-than-sock weights. These are often tagged for sweaters and gifts.

I give my destash pile a once-over and pull out the balls/skeins that still speak to me...crazy colors - SOCKS for my daughter, too-similar color - SHAWL for a gift, too small yardage - DOLL CLOTHES for my niece, you get the idea.

I then take a final look at my destash pile and wonder if people will really pay $5 for even a lot for the yarn I first bought when I started knitting 3+ years ago...

And there you have it...the answer to my post title.

Blocked and ready to be seamed...

I finished knitting Max's sweater a few days ago. It has been washed and blocked. I've started seaming it. It is taking forever. Although I am glad that I learned how to seam (both for the learning experience and the fact that there are so much more patterns for seamed garments) I will probably always try to minimize doing so with the things that I knit.

Goomba Hat

As part of a gift, I made a Goomba Hat, using Fadecrazy's chart. Since I knit the hat in the round (I could not bring myself to knit it flat), I used duplicate stitch to add the face to the hat, with Plymouth Encore in brown and white, and Plymouth Encore Tweed (for the eyebrows). For the actual hat, I used the top-down hat technique from Cathy Carron's Hip Knit Hats. It's a cute hat and I hope that the recipient likes it!