sucka sc: knit & crochet

The echo chamber

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

I struggle with avoiding the echo chamber. If I’m not careful, I end up listening to the same music, reading the same news, hearing the same friends and, of course, browsing the same knitting patterns. I’m hardly a novelty freak, but it’s important to not cut myself off from new things completely.

There’s some work involved: raw piles of data aren’t helpful, but over-filtered information gets kinda samey. I try to get around it by finding other people to do the work for me: For music, I follow music blogs and have a handful of friends who report to me with the names of bands that OMIGOD I HAVE TO CHECK OUT, and occasionally google phrases like “the Vietnamese Tom Waits” to inject some unfiltered noise into my comfortable habits.

On Ravelry, I watch my friends’ activity like a hawk, and I obsessively check test-knitting groups. It’s a great way to scope out new patterns, and I like occasionally signing on for a test knit and donating a little extra time to proofing patterns.

New hat!

Hence: This hat! It’s brioche stitch, which I love; the cables are awesome; and with bulky yarn, I cranked it out in no time flat. It’s warm and plush and RED. The test pattern was already pretty polished, so I didn’t have to spend a lot of time counting and double-checking. Total cakewalk. And as an inveterate indie-rock hipster-wannabe, it’s like getting into a band before they’ve even released their first EP: total bragging rights.

Earflaps!

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Earflaps!

Just as I decided that what I really needed a hat with earflaps, someone on Ravelry posted a call for test knitters for a hat with earflaps.

Solved!

Instead of doing the quick braids the pattern called for, I spent almost as long on the i-cord ties with tiny contrast-color stripes as I did on the rest of the hat. It was worth it.

I’m starting to develop a taste for tiny, meticulous finishing details, especially after seeing a bunch of vintage and contemporary sewing projects with incredibly gorgeous (and finicky) stitching and accents. Striped i-cord is kind of a bitch to get right, but man, the results make me happy.

The black vertical stripes are actually cabled owls. They’re kinda hard to see, so I’m considering embroidering French knots on them, because I just learned to make French knots the other day and I’m so excited about it that I want to cover everything I own in French knots. Maybe if I make enough French knots, the embroidery gods will smile on me and fix my wobbly chain stitch!

And maybe the knitting gods will smile on me, too, for spending almost as much time on the embellishments as I spent on the rest of the hat. Anyway, the results are on Ravelry if you’re interested.

A new knitting record

Friday, December 4th, 2009

I appear to have broken a knitting record: casting off a project and misplacing it in less than a single day.

Less than an hour, even.

Honestly? It didn’t even last five minutes.

I’m retooling and rewriting one of my hat patterns, and made yet another hat from the pattern to make sure everything worked. I painstakingly grafted together the edges of the tubular bind-off, wove in the ends, and with a huge wave of satisfaction, declared it done. Then, in a move I really ought to know by now never ends well, I put it somewhere special to make sure I wouldn’t lose it.

Now, the problem with “somewhere special” is that “somewhere special” isn’t a certain place; it roughly translates as “somewhere that isn’t one of my usual places, and I’ll remember where because it’s special.” If only my brain worked like that. Instead, as I firmly think to myself this is where I am putting this thing right now in case I need it, my brain nods its metaphorical head, solemnly promises to cherish this information forever, and immediately jettisons it overboard, leaving only a tiny sensory trace in its wake. Very many clothes, drugs and important papers have disappeared this way, only to surface months or weeks later when they’re no longer needed.

So no, I don’t remember where the hat is. I only know that it’s somewhere special, it’s in my room, it was nighttime when I put it away, and that the place I jammed it so I wouldn’t lose it was soft and felt like fabric. Which is why I was up at 1 a.m. the other night, emptying my entire clothes drawer onto the floor and sifting fruitlessly through my million t-shirts, hoping that maybe, just this once, I hadn’t outsmarted myself again.

No dice, of course. I didn’t find it. I think maybe I scared it away.