Moving, etc.

So I haven't posted in a while because I've been busy moving to a new part of town. It's pretty neat, and I'll post some cool things about that later. But for now, some house-keeping.

My sweater is on hold because 1) I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of yarn and 2) I'm almost certain it will not fit me and lastly 3) I'm kind of bored with it. A while ago I bought this deer hat pattern, and I actually bought yarn to start it but I lost it.


A friend gave me this nice colorful alpaca yarn, and I started making these hand-warmers, which I intended on just finishing off into real mittens, but this pattern has given me some grief.

Whaaaaat happened here??? I don't know. I messed up somewhere. But the biggest problem is that the bound-off stitches didn't match up with the yarn overs. Maybe I was just tired from unpacking and forgot how to read.

Is that a thumb hole?

The yarn didn't stripe as well as I thought it would anyways, so I'm looking for another project to use it on.

Google+

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!