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Google+: Facebook but classier.

I remember when I first joined Facebook. I liked how simple it was. Then it got less exclusive and more annoying. I think it's going the way of MySpace. I stopped putting my pictures on Facebook because of the awful privacy rules. I instead started using Picasa, but it was difficult to manage who is able to see my pictures. Now with Google+, that's really easy.

Now Google rules my life. Let's hope this turns out well.

Duckie

So, the sweater is slow going because I'm on the sleeves now, and it's just straight stockinette for the whole thing, and my attention span is pretty mediocre.

I'm taking a break to make these duck socks, because my boss is having a baby.

In the sweater from-the-neck-down class that I took, everyone was making baby/child sweaters, except for me. So while most people were on step 3 or 4, I was still stuck at step 1 because it takes so much longer to make an adult-sized sweater. I was so jealous of those other people. All the satisfaction of making a sweater, with a fraction of the time and effort. But I didn't know any babies or small children at the time, so I had no choice.

But now I know a baby. Or I will very soon. I've never made anything for a baby before, and I've also never made socks before. So this project will by doubly challenging.

The project so far has been pretty fun, but difficult. I didn't bother with the "magic" cast-on, and when I got to the Turkish cast-on part, I was just like "pffft... I can do this an easier way." So I tried k1fb to do the increases, until I got to the part where you do 12 increases at once. Yeah... that was a little tricky. I went back and actually learned the Turkish cast-on and guess what: it's totally easy! I was just over-thinking it. My advice: don't try to do it while reading the directions. Read the supplemental directions over once, then attempt it while looking at the example pictures in the pattern. The Turkish cast-on makes a lot of sense for this project.

I did the whole thing on dpn's, because I started out with no size 2 needles, and buying one set of dpn's was cheaper than buying a set of dpn's and two sets of circulars. But if I ever do this project or anything like it again, I will certainly get the circulars. I definitely got the gaps with the Turkish cast on as described on the Ravelry page, but that's almost certainly due to the fact that I used the dpn's throughout.

The applied I-cord is a pretty ingenious design. That's where I'm at now. I really need to hurry up though, because I wanted to give them to my boss before the baby arrived, and this baby is coming out any day now.

I am so obsessed with how cute these socks are. Here's one done!

I took this next picture when I was working the applied I-cord. I think this picture illustrates how much better it looks with the I-cord. It goes from having a messy-looking seam to looking like a real ducky foot!

In summary: I-cord is awesome. Ducky socks are extremely cute. I cannot wait to see how cute they look on the baby!

New Yarn!

As I've mentioned before, I love new yarn. Recycling is great, but nothing beats the feel of brand-new yarn. However, I rarely have enough money to buy new yarn for a big project. Well, someone who works in the Chemistry department with me is also a knitter, and bought a bunch of yarn for a blanket. She then discovered she hated the yarn, so she just gave it all to me! For free! I thought, wow, awesome, free brand new yarn. Well, let's take a look:

And there it is. Six skeins of Lion Brand Micro-Spun yarn of various colors. At first glance it's easy to figure out why it was given to me for free. It becomes un-spun at the drop of a hat.

 And I don't mean to be pretentious here but... it's acrylic so... yeah, ew. 

I'll still use it, that's for sure. For what, who knows. I'm a couple days into the Middlefield Sweater and I'm working about midway down the body of it so it will be a while before I can think of starting to use this stuff.

Speaking of the sweater, I'm starting to regret my haste in starting this project. It's pretty clear that there's a good chance I will run out of yarn, and since it's just from a taken-apart old sweater, there is no more. Making sweaters, especially from the neck-down I think, are arduous tasks. I'm afraid I will get to the second sleeve and then discover I'm out of yarn. Then I have to take it apart, again. That just sounds traumatic. We'll see, I guess! So far it's an easy sweater, though. Looking ahead, there's a fancy seam that I've never seen before. More on that when I get there.

New Book and Project

It's been way too hot for me in Madison these past couple of days. I have no a/c in my apartment, so after work I seek refuge in the library until the sun goes down. I woke up early this morning, unable to sleep through the heat, and started a new sweater: the Middlefield Pullover from New England Knits.

I originally got this book from the library to make a different project, but when I saw how many cool patterns there were in the book, I purchased a copy for myself. I'm making it out of the same recycled sweater yarn that I made Tosha's Scarf from (see Ravelry project.) I know I said previously that I would soon do a "from-start-to-finish" recycled sweater project, but I also decided that I would use up all of the yarn that I already have (which is a lot) before going out and getting any more. I plan on making this sweater, at least two others, and the hat and the scarf from this book (ambitious, I know.) So many cool projects! I'm so happy I bought this book.

Now that I think about it, it's kind of silly sounding that I'm making a sweater when it's 80 billion degrees outside. WHATEVER. I do what I want.

I'm making this with size 7's instead of the recommended 8's, because I'm a small person and I don't have size 8's, and the nearest knitting store is too far away to conveniently get to by bus, so the only other way I can get there is by bike, AND IT'S TOO HOT to do that. 7's it is!

How about that Ravelry hack? Weird. I changed my password, did you?

Food and You

I like food. I like making food, eating food at restaurants, and trying new things. I love going to Taste Spotting and making huge lists of dishes I want to make.

I like good food. Sometimes I like bad food, but rarely. I like things made out of quality ingredients. Real food. Food that comes from the ground, not a factory. I like giving my money to hard working farmers, not big corporations.

I stopped eating meat about 7 years ago after discovering how most meat is produced. It took a lot of will power to give up bacon, but now I don't even think about it anymore. I started contemplating incorporating meat into my diet again, as long as it was locally, and responsibly produced. I tried a buffalo burger last summer, but after 7 or so years of not eating meat, my stomach just couldn't take it. I've been cooking a lot of fish lately, because my stomach can handle fish, and because my favorite guy is a meat-eater and I have sympathy for him for all of the meat-free food I make. Unfortunately, eating a lot of fish from the midwest is NOT recommended because of how gross these lakes are.

I usually don't like talking about it, though, because I can very easily sound very preachy. So I'll leave it at that, and show you something I made super quick the other day:

Whitefish in a white wine sauce with sautéed mushrooms and broccoli and some cheese & baguette. It's super quick, here's how:
Cover the whitefish fillets in olive oil, salt and pepper. Wrap them up in tin foil, and put them in the oven (375 F) for 20-30 minutes depending on the size of the fillets. Meanwhile, measure a cup of cream (half & half works too) a cup of white wine, a tablespoon of flour and some parsley flakes into a saucepan and bring to a boil, then simmer until the fish is done.

I was doing this, then I was planning on roasting the mushrooms and broccoli, but I was running out of time so I decided to sauté them. Just some oil, salt, pepper, a little bit of garlic, and the veggies on a frying pan for a few minutes.

The cheese we had with this is my favorite. Goat cheese from the farmers' market.

Then, of course, there's the rest of the bottle of the white wine. I'm no wine snob (I kind of wish I was sometimes, though) so I usually just get what's on sale at the store.

What's the perfect activity for after eating a delicious meal like this? Watching Ancient Aliens, of course.

The Sweater-To-Sweater Conversion

I just finished my first sweater-to-sweater conversion. Meaning, I took apart an entire sweater and made a different sweater out of it. Sadly, I did not take any pictures, which I realize now was a huge mistake, but I had no idea it would turn out even slightly ok-looking. Here I'll go over the basic concepts of how to go about doing this, and next time I'll do more of a step-by-step.

Step 1: Picking out a sweater to take apart
There are certain qualities in a sweater that you have to look for when you want to take it apart (to make it into a sweater or anything else.) First and foremost: The seams. This has to do with the fundamentals of knitting. The most important rule is stay away from serged seams. Most of the time, when a sweater is constructed in pieces, the pieces are just sewed together. When this is the case, all you have to do is cut the pieces apart, and unravel the pieces. This way, you can (theoretically) unravel each piece of the sweater into one long piece of yarn. If you imagine a sweater (or any piece of knitted fabric) to be one piece of yarn, weaved back and forth, the process looks something like this barbaric paint drawing I made:

A serged seam is a kind of seam, made by a serger, that cuts the fabric while sewing it together. When this occurs, if you look at my crude drawing, it's pretty easy to see why this could be a problem. At each edge, the yarn is cut apart. Now you have a billion little fragments of yarn that are pretty useless.

 

 I'll upload some pictures of serged/not-surged seams with my next sweater project, but a simple Google search can be a big help.

Another basic rule-of-thumb that I follow is don't pick a sweater made up of yarn too light. Once a sweater is worn and washed for years, the yarn gets significantly weaker. You'll have to spend hours upon hours unraveling a sweater made up of fingerling-weight yarn, and I'll bet that it will break a lot in the process. It's a pain in the butt, so I do not recommend it. 

Now, because of my ideology, I have to stick in this rule: Try to buy an ugly sweater. Going to the thrift store generally guarantees that it's used, but if it's a cute sweater, there's a chance that someone will come in and buy it and actually wear the sweater. My big thought behind this project is to save sweaters from the land fill. Think of the principles of recycling, re-using comes before re-cycling. I've found many ugly sweaters that are made of quality, good-looking yarn. You just have to be able to see beyond the construction.

Step 2: Unraveling

The first thing you have to do to take apart a sweater is take it apart into it's components. Generally, a sweater is sewn together using thread that is a little different from the yarn the sweater is actually made up of. Identify this yarn, make a few snips and pull the fabric apart to see if it worked. If you can see the space between the pieces, you've found the seam thread, keep going. Cutting the knitted yarn a couple times is not the end of the world. 

Unravel the piece into a skein, not a ball right away. There's one additional step that I recommend.

After the piece is in a skein, it's time to wash it. Once you've gotten to this point, you probably think this yarn is too lumpy to work with. Here's a picture of a piece of a sweater unraveled into a skein before washing:

Take the skein, tied together at a few points, and put it in a sink filled with water and soap. You can use regular dish soap, or crazy-people soap like I did.

Swish it around a little bit, making sure all the yarn got soapy. Drain the soapy water and rinse the yarn thoroughly. Hang to dry! Here's what the same skein looked like after washing & drying:

Wow, what a difference! I have to say, washing is not completely necessary, but it does help a bunch. Now you can roll it up into a ball. Now you have a ball of yarn that you obtained for a tiny fraction of the price of buying it at the yarn store. In the above skein's case, this was a sleeve from a sweater I bought at Goodwill for $3.

Disclaimer: I love buying new yarn. Recycled yarn definitely isn't as nice as brand new right-off-the-alpaca yarn. But if I bought nice new yarn for every project I do, I would not have enough money to eat. Literally. I usually buy nice yarn when I'm knitting something for someone else as a gift. If you look at my Ravelry, you'll see that the mittens I made for my grandmother for mothers' day was new yarn, as well as the mittens I made for my sister for her birthday. I'll post some pictures of the sweater I made on Ravelry if you'd like to see the finished product. Stay tuned for a full step-by-step sweater-to-sweater conversion soon!

Recycle Knitting and Introductions

I started knitting when I was in third grade, and I learned from a friend's mom. I mass-produced garter-stitch scarfs for anyone who wanted one for years. Then, a knitting/quilting store opened just around the corner from my house when I was in high school. I took just about every lesson they offered. My first class: lace knitting, where I learned increases, decreases, and other basics. Having no knowledge of what good yarn was, prior to the class I just picked up what I had lying around in the basement, which happened to be an orange acrylic yarn. At the time I bought it, the color looked to me more like an autumn, pumpkin orange, but in hind-sight it was more of a hunting-vest annoying orange. But the important thing is that I learned useful skills.

My intro to circular knitting was a class on mittens. This time, I spared no expense and bought the softest, prettiest yarn in the store. The mittens I made in that class - the very first pair I ever made - I still wear today, they are my favorite pair of mittens ever.

I also took a class on sweaters from the neck down. I picked out a Lamb's Pride shade of light green. Problem: at the time, I am a high school student with extremely limited income, and making sweaters is expensive!!! Something I liked so much about the idea of knitting is that you can avoid the costs one would associate with buying one from the store, but this is not the case. Fortunately, my mom was a fan of my choice of hobby, and helped me buy the yarn. I never finished that sweater, sadly, because I ran out of yarn and money. It's been about three years, and maybe soon I'll finish that sweater.

I loved taking knitting classes, and for anyone interested in starting to knit, I strongly recommend it. There are other ways to learn, and each has its pros and cons, which I will explain:

1. Self-learning: There are a ton of excellent resources out there for learning by yourself, including videos and detailed articles (and blogs, too!). But what I find from people who have tried this is that it can be frustrating. If you're not doing something quite right, it's difficult to figure out exactly where you went wrong. And the real tragedy of this is that I feel like the people who go at it this way first get discouraged and quit relatively quickly. But if you're a determined individual, it can be a cheap (or free) alternative, especially if you have limited means and no one else to teach you.

2. Learn from a friend: Most knitters I know (including myself) are very willing to pass on our knowledge to anyone who wants it, and (unless you have some horrible friends) they probably wont charge you. But learning can be a time-consuming activity, and since your friend is the one doing you the favor, you might find yourself going significantly out of your way to learn. Also, even if your friend might be very willing to teach you, they might not be the best at it.

3. Taking lessons: Most knitting stores offer lessons, and I think this is a great resource. The people who teach these classes are at least supposed to know what they're doing, and probably have a lot of experience teaching others. Yes, it costs money, but in my experience it's not extraordinary. If you've tried learning by yourself, or from a friend, and just can't seem to get a hang of it, I implore you to explore this option.

Another great advantage to taking classes is the social aspect. I love knitting in groups - it's a lot better than sitting in your house knitting alone for hours on end. Also, you'd be surprised what you can learn even from knitters at or below your own skill level.

My explorations with recycle-knitting came from the knitting teacher at the store where I took lessons. She once told me about her college room mate who would buy some yarn, knit a sweater, then take it apart just to knit it all over again. "What???" you might be yelling right now and wondering why in the world one would go through all the trouble of knitting an entire sweater just to take it all apart and start over. Well, as college students, she understandably didn't have much money, and yarn for a sweater is expensive, and for her it wasn't about the product, but the process that mattered.

So when I was in my favorite thrift store one day, I thought 'If one could take apart a sweater they made, I could take apart a sweater someone else made!' Some of these sweaters were ugly, but the yarn they were made out of were sometimes nice. I could take this sweater that no one wants, and make it into something someone would want.

Up-cycling. I had heard the term before, but now it had a whole new meaning as I sought to combine this concept with one of my favorite hobbies.

Growing up, my family had this nice, sturdy, wood dining room table. It was actually an heirloom of sorts, coming from my mother's family. However, decades of wear, including vandalism from crayons and markers my siblings and I had inflicted upon it, had reduced this once beautiful table into a useless artifact of the past. Its place was now in storage. We had no real use for it, but my mother did not want to part with it. My sister, needing a coffee table, saw the potential in this table. Yes, it was unsightly, but it was made out of something of great quality. Once sanded, refinished, and the legs cut in half, it was once again a beautiful, functional, useful table. It was once again wanted.

I see great beauty in this process. Turning unwanted things into wanted things, and using no extra resources. I get excited about it. The way I see it, it's the way of the future.

I think home-made things have gotten a bad reputation, and maybe rightly so. The craft world is filled with way too many useless things, which turns the response to the idea of hand-crafted from "cool, something unique" to "Oh great, Aunt Maybel made me ANOTHER bejewled lanyard..." I'd like to turn to DIY projects as a way to be sustainable, not to make a lot of stuff that (although you may have put a lot of love into) is relatively useless. And I don't mean "useless" as an offensive term, but literally, something that probably will not get used. It's creating more "stuff" and using more resources, as opposed to creating unique, useful things that REDUCES the amount of "stuff" on the earth. Just think about the amount of junk that starts out from a factory in China, get shipped to a Dollar Store, sits on the shelf for months and then gets put in a land fill. Way. Too. Much. Stuff.

In summary, I implore you to get creative and help reduce the clutter on the planet.