The Thrifty Knitter

I’m really psyched it’s February. I’ve designated this as my official catch-up month. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s all snowmen and cupcakes–my catching up involves some VERY heavy lifting–but it does mean I don’t have any event-type commitments breaking up my mindspace.

Did I just say mindspace? What the hell kind of talk is that? Sheesh.

Anyway, so January was chockablock with all kindsa busy busy crap, so my ongoing craft goals from the old Überlist are a bit neglected. But considering how jam-packed January was, it’s a small triumph that I achieved any of them, and I will definitely be making them up.

Here are the ones I kept up with:

8. *FIX: Mend or eliminate an item of clothing every week. I mended a skirt and 3 pair of jeans!

57. *MAKE: Sweater a month. Convertible Hoodie for Craftzine.

58. *MAKE: Spin a pound a month. I spun this dk-sh 2-ply from a 1-pound Decadent Fibers Jellyroll Corriedale batt, bought Rhinebeck 2009. It will become a sweater of some sort. I also spun 4 oz of thick & thin from some Marilyn Pickle merino from the 2009 Spinsters Christmas swap.

from

63. *ORDER: Destash NET 100 balls and 10 pounds of fiber I’m down about 40 balls between destash and knitting.

101. *TCB: Submit a pattern to an online or print magazine every other month. I missed the knitty & Twist deadlines, but I successfully pitched a great new sweater pattern for Craftzine. It will be coming out in March.

And on these I fell behind:

47. *MAKE: Knit 2 feet a week on the building scarf I worked zero feet, so I’m behind 8 feet!

50. *MAKE: Photograph and document each foot of building scarf and make a giant scrolling panorama page for it. Haven’t yet started.

56. *MAKE: Sock a month. (Mitten = sock.)  Nope.

60. *MAKE: Write, photo, make a pdf and publish a new free pattern every other month. While I did have 2 free patterns published this month, I didn’t make their pdfs and self-publish, no coutsies.

104. *TCB: Write, photograph, make a nice pdf and publish one pattern for sale each month. I did write and photograph a couple new patterns, but I didn’t seal the deal with a new pdf in my ravelry store, so no countsies there, either.

And here are my crafty Überlist plans for February:

8. *FIX: Mend or eliminate an item of clothing every week. This month, I’ll be darning a big pile of socks, plus a pair of mittens. I plan to photograph and write up a nice how-to.

57. *MAKE: Sweater a month. This will probably be my Craftzine sweater for March.

58. *MAKE: Spin a pound a month. I’ll be spinning the rest of this:

and this

(Both from Triple R Farm, bought at Rhinebeck 2009.)

These will either become nice, sturdy socks, or I may spin them together and make a vest or little cardigan or something. I really need to get back on Weight Watchers so I can keep making smallish sweaters…

Plus I’ll spin up my Spinsters Club batt from last weekend. Those three together equal a pound. I originally planned the Spinsters Club batt as sort of an art yarn, but I recarded a little strip as a test, and I kind of love it reblended, so I think it has a future as a pair of mittens!

Plus I need to double up to escape my January craft debt.

February has begun with a big snow storm. Odds are, it’s impacting you in some way if live in the U.S., either by snowing you in or at least delaying your flights or package deliveries. After a day of freezing drizzle yesterday, I promised I wouldn’t whine about piles of snow if the ice stopped. Snow’s a bitch, but it doesn’t down the power lines. Winter’s too dark for too long to be without power, and I HATE hooking up and babysitting the generator.

It’s quite snowy but it’s really really windy. The problem with the wind (besides freezing your tits off) is that it fills in the ditches and obscures the road, so it’s very easy to wind up in a ditch. I don’t plan to do any driving until this thing’s over, but I worry about other people who must travel. I hate those terrible stories of people freezing in their cars a couple hundred yards from a store or something.

The wind also makes it impossible to tell how much snow there is. There’s really nothing to stop the wind out here, so between the back door and the barn, there are big swaths of bare ground, and waist-high drifts. When I went out this morning, the sheep were thickly dusted and there was a ton of snow swirling around inside the barn, so I stapled a bunch of empty feed sacks over all the western gaps and some of the southern ones, and it was instantly much snugger. See, I’m not a crazy person, folding and saving all my empty feed sacks. They’re very handy!

The gaps in the chicken coop were much more insidious. Earlier in the season, I used the feed sack trick on the north and west coop walls (the dominant wind directions in winter) and I made a sort of false ceiling out of more feed sacks (to keep more heat inside) but there was still a bunch of snow coming in from who knows where. I stapled some pieces of sack over the spots I could find, and moved a wooden box inside to hopefully make another little sheltered spot, but the hens still seemed discontented. Even inside the coop, it was well below freezing, and their treats (including half a brown avocado, normally a favorite) froze before they got very far with them. I’ll probably bring them some warm porridge or some bacon fat tomorrow and Wednesday morning, since our overnight lows are scheduled to be 0°F/-17°C and -7°F/-24°C, respectively.

On my way back inside, my path had already been completely filled in, and the snow was so thick it made me think of those Little House on the Prairie stories of people going out to the barn with a rope tied to them so they wouldn’t lose their way in the blizzard. That was Little House on the Prairie, right? Those pioneers were so ingenious.

I would have been an awful pioneer.

Ma, the wi-fi’s down. Pa, we’re out of Diet Coke and I can’t find my #7 Addis. Mary, where’s the remote? Oh, right. You’re blind. No help. And um, where exactly am I supposed to pee? In that thing? This sucks.

Yay! It actually worked for me. I’m not saying it’s a total breeze, but it is now actually feasible for me to trim hooves by myself with minimal stress!

Before, my “system” was  to tie up the sheep in question and/or have someone hold them, and struggle to trim their hooves without cutting off my finger or putting out an eye while they bucked and kicked me. It was an exhausting, near-tears experience that left the sheep with poorly-trimmed hooves or left me calling the vet for a house call. It was really defeating, and I’d put off trimming way too long out of dread.

So my plan this year was to get a sheep deck chair from Premier, which promised one-man trimming, and that you could even leave the animal in it while you fetched stuff.

My animals vary dramatically in size, so I’m not confident about the last bit–I did leave Fudgy to clean the clippers and grab the camera, but she was way less squirmy than the boys. I think you’d be safe leaving an animal if you had the chair adjusted down for a nice, tight fit, but the design doesn’t make that overly easy, so I had to stay with them.

My plan leading up to the big day was to handle the sheep more and more, and to get them used to being tightly penned (I made a makeshift cattle panel gate I could close around the hay rack), so that the whole affair would be relatively stress-free for all of us. And it worked!

The chair works thusly: you catch an animal and back it into the chair, where it tumbles back and gets kind of stuck on its butt, much like when they’re being sheared. The upshot is that you don’t need skill or much strength to set them there. Well, you do need some strength–to get them in the chair, you really have to lift up their heads, or you can’t tump them in. And sheep have STRONG necks. They totally hunker down, lower their, heads, and dig in. But once you get their heads up, it’s not too hard. I suspect when I’m more experienced, I’ll do it so quick they won’t have time to hunker down.

Some of them just kind of gave up and drooped right away, making trimming easy. Others bucked and squirmed a bit. For the squirmy ones, I kind of stood in front of the chair with my back to them and brought the limb I was working on either between my arm and body (front legs) or between my legs (back legs), and leaned into them a bit to settle them down when they protested. It’s surprisingly hard on your lower back, though, especially with the bigger animals. Once they relax, you can just pull up a chair and you’re all set, but the feisty ones can be harsh. I don’t think I had the chair at the optimal angle, but the only thing I had to hook it over was my gate. The top bar was a bit too high, I thought, and the next one a bit too low, so I went for the lower one, and it seemed to work out.

The day before trimming day, I skipped their evening hay so their bellies would be empty the next day, just like on shearing day. Then when it was time to trim, I  gave them a couple flakes to gather them up, penned them, and got to work. I wore tight kid gloves to protect my  hands but not hinder my dexterity.

I realized pretty quickly that two animals a day would be my limit. It’s way easier than before, but I’m still slow and inexperienced, so halfway through sheep #3, I started to wear out and get frustrated and they started to get brattier, maybe because they’d had time to get a little food in their stomachs.

The first day, I trimmed Agnes and Ronnie, plus the wool around Ronnie’s eyes, and I started on Hokey Pokey. The next day, I breezed through Fudgy and Mr. Shivers, then stupidly forgot my own rule and tried to squeeze in Uncle Honebunch as well, which was a mistake.

For one, the chair really should be adjusted down for the smaller sheep. I  got lucky with Mr. Shivers. I was very careful to keep his feet up out of the mesh, but it was a struggle. With Uncle Honeybunch, I was tired already from restraining Mr. Shivers, and Honeybunch kept getting his feet through the webbing–a couple of times he got so tangled so quickly that I almost freaked out. Ultimately, I gave up and tumped him out. Then, forgetting my 2-sheep daily limit yet again, I got Jayne into the chair and realized almost immediately I wasn’t up to it, and so I tumped him right back out, too.

The shortfall of the chair is that it’s not quickly adjustable. To make it narrower, you have to loosen a bunch of nuts, which means 1) tools; 2) time; and 3) the potential to loose a screw or a nut in the straw. A better design would be some kind of quick-release clamp. I assume these chairs are designed for large flocks of same-sized animals, but even in large flocks, there would be runts and lambs. They’ve made improvements to the design in the past, and hopefully they’ll continue in the future.

My solution was to slip a fleece bag over the webbing. While the chair was still too wide, the Shetlands are small enough to restrain without too much trouble. Holding them still was much less of an issue than avoiding crippling them from tangled limbs. Of course, my thin fleece bag got shredded in short order, but it lasted long enough to do the job. Next time, I’ll make a sturdy denim cover.

This morning, I zipped through Uncle Honeybunch then pulled the cover back off and finished Hokey Pokey (who also got a nice haircut–well, on one side, anyway) and then a very indignant Jayne.

I’m still a bit tentative, but I decided to trim to my comfort level, instead of being aggressive and risking drawing blood. It’s so soggy out right now, and I don’t want to open anyone to infection. I definitely waited too long on a few of them–I’ve got a few splits and breaks, but everything looks normal, and I think with the more frequent trimming the chair will facilitate, I’ll have their hooves in great shape again by spring.

Before…

During…

After!

Lazy Weekend Convertible Hoodie Sweater

I was so busy with the Insubordiknit workshop last weekend (very fun, by the way!) that I wasn’t able to post Lazy Weekend (ravelry), my new convertible hoodie sweater pattern that went up on Craftzine last Friday. It’s an oversized short-sleeved sweater for 3-seasons layering with an oversided removable hood (that can be work separately). It’s knit of Knit Picks City Tweed HW and works up FAST. It’s a top-down raglan knit to size, so you can fudge if you’re cutting it close on the yarn. And it’s designed in reverse stockinette but knit inside-out so you can avoid a sweater’s worth of purling.

(Sheesh, I look a hundred there. How did I not notice that? Deadline must have outweighed my vanity in the heat of the moment.)

Insubordiknit was great fun! I either new or quickly came to know everyone in attendance. It was a really marvelous group, and while I didn’t get to sit in on much, the lessons were outstanding. I especially loved that this workshop includes many similar yarns to Camp Pluckyfluff, but taught in a very different way. I love both versions for different reasons. Lexy’s style is so relaxed and creative and very freeing if you’re kind of stuck in your spinning. Jacey’s style is just the opposite, deconstructing the process and giving you a very technical approach. Very opposite but utterly complementary!

I’m going to be carrying Jacey’s DVDS because the corespinning technique is just the thing for my batts! I think I might put together a spinning playdate package around the various lessons on the DVD.

And of course, I had to card and spin a floor batt:

Yesterday, I tried my hand at trimming hooves with the new sheep deck chair. It’s still a little early, but I’m going to call it a win. I only got through Agnes (forgot to trim her face, so she might be going back in the chair today) and Ronnie, who got a nice haircut!

I also got 3 of Hokey Pokey’s 4 hooves, so he’s going back in the hot seat today. I’ll take my camera out so you can get a glimpse of the process. Speaking of which, I’m late! Those poor sheep are going hungry while I blather on.

I’m very excited to have a pattern in the new knitty: Sweetheart Socks! (one of FIVE on ravelry by that name, yikes!)

(Thanks to Marta for her feet & fireplace in those, plus Ron’s heel and my mom’s feet in the others!)

I’m really proud of this pattern. It has a cable of my own design, it’s easy and fast to knit, and best of all, they are truly my favorite handknit socks to wear. I love them, period, but I especially love them for the way the hearts peep through my Dansko mary janes.

I’ve got so many irons in the fire right now, I feel like I’m on the brink of exploding! I’m adding a few flourishes to a new book proposal and finishing up a new pattern for Craftzine and getting ready for Jacey’s Insubordiknit workshop this weekend and cleaning up the pdfs on the hat patterns I taught last weekend. Plus I have half a dozen other patterns in progress that I want to finish up and publish, and lots of personal odds & ends. That little outburst made me feel a bit better, though! Time to have another cup of coffee and keep my head down!

I finally ran out of both clean wool socks and clean wool sweaters yesterday and did a long-overdue load of wool. I wash all my woolens in the machine. I use the wool cycle and cold water with regular detergent and extra fabric softener, and no spin, then I run a separate extra-fast drain and spin cycle. The gentle wool cycle spin is just too weak to get all the water out. Then I tumble socks, long underwear and most store-bought sweaters on extra low, and dry my hand-knit sweaters and accessories flat.

When I did laundry yesterday, I discovered I had over 3 dozen pair of wool socks! Since I had nearly every sock I own in the load, I went ahead and did a little annual inspection (I say annual, but this is the first time I’ve done it–but it seems like a good annual plan, don’t you think?). I pulled out all of the pairs with worn spots or holes (the store-bought socks tend to wear down to the nylon in the blend so they look like wool socks with little spots of pantyhose here and there) to darn later. My sock drawer has all the sound pairs, and the holey rejects went into a big bowl.

Then I spent 20 minutes on etsy dithering over a darning egg. Last time I darned socks, I used the bottom of the remote control as an egg, but I kept accidentally changing channels. When I saw that there were many darners on offer on etsy for under $10 shipped, I decided to invest in a proper tool. I almost selected a set of 2 (one dark for light socks and one light for dark socks) or a great double-sided plastic one, but I finally settled on this one because 1) I really liked its shape and the wood grain on the underside and 2) I’m a bull in a china shop & I don’t trust myself with plastic and 3) it was cheap, and I’m really minding my pennies.

Here are some darners from etsy, most of them under $10 (plus one gorgeous pricier one). [Note: this is from my etsy favorites list, so if you’re looking at this in the future, it may not be darners anymore.] If you search etsy, here’s a good search. It’s “darner -dragonfly -pottery” (just darners brings up a lot of darner dragonfly stuff and pottery), with category exclusions removed (if you do a fresh search from the etsy home page, don’t forget to check the vintage & supplies options, where the bargains are–the default is handmade).

I’m going to make up a little darning tutorial in February, trying out a could of different methods from an old book I have. Here’s a method I tried out from memory a couple weeks ago, but when I write the tutorial, I’ll do it up properly. Even from memory (not quite right–sort of a hybrid between a woven darn and this), it was a pretty satisfying, attractive darn.

Winter Woolfest was great fun again this year! Thanks to the lovely & charming Jennifer Schermerhorn of The Wicked Stitch for putting this great event together another year!

This year, we were at the Columbian Theater, so we had lots of room to spread out. There was even a separate classroom space upstairs, so we could have two consecutive classes, with no shouting!

I gave a demonstration of carding various types of batts. I made a basic fleece, layered stripes, reblending a striped batt (two of the ladies in the group spun up samples of the striped vs. blended–dramatically different, and I’ll show them off when I find the spindles!), a tweed batt, a kitchen sink batt, and a dized roving. There were all kinds of FREE knitting and spinning classes all day: drop spindling, different cast-ons, cabling w/o cable needles, the magic cast-on, double knitting, alpaca care, stranded knitting, and a top-down heel without pickups (I’m taking that next year if it’s offered again!).

I had my DIY Batt Bar set up again. I always LOVE the batts people produce! I only brought one carder this year, but next year, I’ll figure out a way to have two again. Maybe I’ll bring the table and carder to Jennifer’s early (it’s hard fitting all that crap in a Prius).

For my part, I was late again–not for the event itself (last year, I rolled in about an hour after it started and had to climb over everyone like a jackass to set up)–but I arrived 20 minutes before the official start time, which didn’t give me enough time to haul in all my gear and set up before the nice people strolled in. But my booth still did very well, so I’m not beating myself up about it. (If I were a psychologist, I might question whether my chronic lateness is a handy self-sabotaging mechanism. But I’m not really one for introspection, so let’s just say I lost track of time, as usual.)

I got a couple shots of my booth but neglected to photograph my newest display system, the converted drying racks! I made fabric slings for my cheap wooden drying racks to turn them into little shelved bins. It was rather ingenious, if I do say so myself. If I do the KAWS thing this spring, I’ll be sure to get some shots.

I also used an antique drying rack that was in constant peril of tumping over, and resisted collapse during setup only thanks to a heroic save from a patron. But doesn’t it look so pretty, even somewhat depleted of its fibery burden:

My little goodies cubbies were there in the back corner. They held 3 types of sparkle, plus marvelous dyed kid mohair locks and angora fluff, and 3 types of recycled silk (sari, thown & banana). I also brought Cupcake Ranch fiber, a whole display of samplers and kits, luxury fibers, and the very popular Sock Sacks, specifically designed for spinning socks. The surplus will go up on etsy later this week.

I always do something of a post-mortem after fairs (though, curiously, I seldom learn from my mistakes). Besides being late, which may be unavoidable for me, my biggest shortcoming was lack of a central supplies/signage bin. I packed my signs and supplies willy-nilly, so I didn’t realized I was missing a bunch of odds and ends until I needed them. That left me scrambling to find stuff and making a lot of stupid hand-printed signs. My printing is fine, but it brought down the unity of the booth and wasted a lot of my time. This isn’t the first time I’ve suffered from this particular error. But it will be my last. This week, while I’m unpacking all my gear, I’m going to follow through and replace all of my hasty last-minute signs with nice printed ones to match all the others. I packed up most of those signs with my stuff, so it will be easy to track what I was missing. I’d also like to make a few informational displays (different fibers and preps and what they’re best for). Then I’m going to pack all of them, along with bags, pens, my booth apron, and a master check-list, in a special booth bin, which I can just squirrel away with my new dryer rack bins and cubbies, until the next event. Ta da! Look at me, actually learning from my mistakes!

I also plan to add a natural wool/alpaca batt to my demo repertoire, since a lot of people do grown their own fiber and don’t know exactly what to do with it.

But all in all, I had a great time with almost zero stress, and met a hoard of wonderful people. Yay, Woolfest!

Every time I work something in linen stitch, I vow never again to use linen stitch. But I just love the fabric it makes, so I keep coming back for more abuse. I’m knitting with Quince & Co Lark, which is springy, and thus, easier on my hands. But still. It takes for EVER. But look! A lovely, rigid, heavy, woven-looking fabric.

So one of my goals is to spin a pound a month. I can’t actually start spinning until next week, but I decided to go ahead and pick out my pound for the month. I’m really looking forward to coordinating all my Hello Yarn fiber from Yarn Schools past, but for my first month/pound of spinning, I wanted a no brainer. So I  picked my 1-pound corriedale Jelly Roll from Decadant Fibers from Rhinebeck 2009. The outside looks like a smashed watermelon, and the inside looks like a gas station oil puddle rainbow. At first, I thought to break it all up and spin it with some kind of plan, but I decided to roll with serendipity and just spin it willy-nilly and ply it likewise. And I think I may try to spin it without the TV. I may listen to an audio book or a podcast, but I think it will be more relaxy and zen without the TV blaring. Maybe from there, I’ll graduate to silent spinning. Baby steps.

Besides my pound of spinning a month, I also have to produce a sweater a month and a mitten/sock a month. For the mittens, I’ll reknit my iPhone mittens to test my new pattern. And I’ll use… let’s see… the rest of my Cascade 220 leftover from Sue’s watermelon set? And for my sweater, I’m writing a new pattern for Craftzine this month, a nice layerable number in Knit Picks City Tweed HW. Ta da! January, planned!

It’s a superbusy month! Here’s my lineup:

This weekend: Woolfest! I’m vending and I’ll be doing carding demos as well. I’m selling fiber, spindles, etc. and I’ll have my famous DIY Carding Bar with Fiber Buffet set up for DIY batts. Which reminds me, I’ll be spending all day tomorrow dyeing! Zip!

Next weekend: 2-Hour Hat and Cozy Cowl classes at The Wicked Stitch. Both classes include both the yarn and ALL of the pattern options for the class. (So for the hat class, you get 4 hat patterns, including Laurel and French Kiss!)

Weekend after that: Insubordiknit workshop

Weekend after that: Kansas Day demo on Saturday, then Spinsters Club on Sunday!

I’m keeping February obligation-free. Well, that’s not strictly true. But I’m not going anywhere or signing up for any eventy things. I am taking a class on cold frame winter gardening  at Flint Hills Technical School or whatever it’s called, and I have shitloads of work to catch up on. Which is why I’m keeping it open in the first place. It’s more like I’m reserving it to catch up before spring busy madness than using it to take a breather. But a catch-up is even better than a breather, because you get all that exercise patting yourself on the back.

I tried to order the sheep deck chair from Premier last weekend, but it’s back-ordered until the 15th. On the bright side, that gives me two solid weeks to really infiltrate the sheep. I’m making it part of my morning routine (and by “part of my morning routine,” I mean “the entirety of my morning routine,” because I don’t have an actual routine per se, aside from peeing and getting coffee into my gut at some point).

I set up a chair and I’ve been lurking around every morning while they enjoy their fresh hay. My plan is to start handling them a bit as I go. Hopefully by the time the sheep chair arrives, they’ll be less antsy pantsy and it won’t be traumatic for any of us. I might also fashion a little makeshift gate from cattle panels to cordon off the little section around the feeder. Then I can have the deck chair over the corner gate, and everyone who’s not being bumrushed into the chair and trimmed up can be nibbling to calm them down. In fact! Oh, I’ll leave them hayless the night before so they’ll be hungry and relatively less full and squirmy.

Of course, none of my brilliant plans of animal husbandry ever work out. But still. Keep trying!

I bought the grill paint and scrubbed out all my roaster inserts for my roaster re-enameling experiment, but between my Secret Project and Woolfest this weekend I’m going to force myself to wait to actually try it out. I will definitely report back with the results. I hope for success and to start snapping up cheap roasters when I find them on sale, because each can hold a couple pounds of combed top.

I have to go bottle my beer tonight. I blew it off before Christmas, but my 2nd batch in the primary has been sitting there for about 3 weeks, and everyone warns not to leave it in the primary more than a month. I only have enough bottles for the first batch (currently in the secondary), so assuming the gravity is correct, the plan is to bottle that batch and move the other to the secondary. And then start some cider next week! Yip!