Oh, I had big plans for this weekend. Then I woke up on Saturday morning and looked out the window to see several inches of wet snow covering everything in sight.
It was decision time: spend two hours shoveling out the driveway and take my life into my hands to drive ten miles to the grocery store and back, just for stew beef that I already had in the freezer? Or stay in all weekend, rethink my philosophy life, and completely rearrange my bedroom and the dining room? Why, that's no decision at all! Challenge accepted.
I don't have any "before" pictures, because I never take "before" pictures. Maybe it's bad juju? But I can share some "after" pictures that hint at the good and the bad/ugly about yet another room transformation.
This is the good. It looks even better now.
This is the bad. It looks a little better now.
The point of this little exercise was to place the art-making areas within reach so that I would be able to go to them and actually make art. That meant clearing them off, which took some time — and re-orienting them, which took some thought.
Part of the re-orientation dealt with how I look at scraps from my craft projects. With regard to knitting projects, I have (finally) learned to throw away the small bits that are left over, and to reassign to new projects all of the long bits that are left over. I haven't been using the same thought process for other crafts. That might explain why I have half an attic filled with quilt fabrics and scraps when I haven't worked on a quilt in over a decade. Or why I keep scraps of cardstock in shoeboxes because I might need them for scrapbooking even though I haven't created a scrapbook page in...over a decade, is there a theme here?
ANYway, I set up the writing desk and the art desk so that I could walk right up, sit right down, and make myself a thing.
So I did. I had a tiny tiny task to do for my reading journal, which involved no more than finding the Paper Slicer and the Paper to be Sliced, and doing a slice. But there I was with two square scraps of paper, and two small rectangular scraps of paper.
It was at that point that I decided to change the Lamb family motto from "save that scrap in case you might be able to use it later" to "Use That Scrap Now." (How does that translate into Latin? I might want to design a new coat of arms.)
So I did. I made two tiny bookmarks with colored pencils, and then I stamped and decorated the square scraps in whatever way I wanted.
Mambo
It's time to get loose, to get relaxed, and to get creative. It might look a bit sillier around here for a while, but that's okay. There's nothing wrong with silly, especially if we're finally able to use up our scraps.
Knitwise, I did a couple of rather surprising things this week.
First, I wove in the four ends of the Vintage Packer Scarf. I'm still deciding whether or not I want to make fringe (which should be firmly attached before I wash and dry the scarf as a whole).
Second, I actually knitted a swatch. (Don't tell anyone.) If you're not a yarner, let me just call this a sample piece of knitted fabric that you make to decide if you're using the correct size needles for the next project. You might want the fabric to be dense or stiff: in that case, you need smaller needles than are usually called for. If you want a fabric that drapes well or is even airy, you use larger needles than the standard. And if you think of yourself as an experienced knitter, you oftentimes look upon swatch-making as a developing runner might look at five minutes of leg-stretching — a waste of time if you think you know what you're doing.
But in this case, for the Sketchbook Pouch, I wanted to know how many stitches I needed to cast on to make a sort of flat pocket that would be a snug fit on my sketchbook, which was about 13 inches in "circumference." If I just guessed, I would have to invest a lot of time in knitting something before I could find out whether or not it was the right size.
I asked another knitter (let's call her Miss L) for advice, then cast on to US 6 needles and knitted away in stockinette for a while. Usually swatches are approximately 4 by 4 inches unless you're testing a wider pattern, cables, or something out of the ordinary. The yarn's ball band will indicate the stitches per inch that you should be able to get with their recommended needle size.
After you have your sample size, you measure the fabric to see how many stitches you have per inch. In stockinette, stitches aren't square — so you may have a different number of stitches per inch when you're measuring the rows as opposed to when you measure the columns. For this project, the stitch width is the more important value.
I'm getting 5 stitches to the inch when measured side to side, so to make the fabric go 13 inches around I will need to cast on 55 stitches. Just to build in a tiny bit of ease, let's make that 60 stitches instead: 30 for the front and 30 for the back.
Now, I could have just cast on 60 stitches and knitted a tube in the round, then stitched the bottom part shut later. However, I wanted to start from the bottom up instead. This way, with the bottom already finished, I can better judge when the pocket is deep enough to hold the sketchbook. Then I can bind off half of the stitches (the "front") and then keep going, perhaps in a different pattern, to make a flap that will fold over from the top.
I wasn't exactly sure how to accomplish this, so I turned it around in my head for a few days before coming up with a plan.
Plan 1
The idea was to cast on 60 stitches, then knit the first stitch, slip the second stitch, and continue across in that way. Then I would turn the work and knit one, slip one across that side, passing the slipped stitches to the other needle. Then I would have 30 stitches on each needle and have formed the bottom of the pocket. I texted this plan to Miss L, who texted back "sounds like a good plan." Then I started to actually do this, and found out on about stitch 3 of the second needle that it works much better in theory than with actual needles. Knit one, FINE, slip one, FINE, then...what? Where do the stitches actually go, and how on earth do I get them there? I didn't see a way forward from here, so I ripped everything back and started over.
Plan 2
I cast on 60 stitches again. Instead of knitting them, I slipped them alternately onto the two double-pointed needles that I would use. To do this I held the needle with the cast-on stitches in my left hand. In my right hand I held two double-pointed needles as if they were a two-pronged fork, and turned my wrist to slip the first stitch onto the left needle, the second stitch onto the right needle, and so on. That made three live stitches close to the end of a needle at all times, so I had to go very slowly. But it did work, and after the stitches had all been transferred I was able to start working back and forth (well, "around") with the third needle.
The knitting was rather tight, but after four "rounds" or so of working on this narrow rectangle I was able to see the pocket start to develop. It was at this point that I remembered trying a technique like this once before, years ago, most likely for knitting socks from the toe up. The idea was that you would hold two double-pointed needles next to each other, wrap yarn around them in a series of figure 8s, then knit up from there. I was not able to make that technique work. I don't remember stabbing myself in the eye, but I may have said a few uncharitable words before untangling everything and going back to my usual cuff-down method.
But that's okay. There are many, many ways to cast on and to knit and to bind off. Some people learn a vast array of techniques, many know a few ways to do something, and some just do it the same way every time. The important thing is that they're just doing it. If it works for you and works for your project, it's usually the right way and there's no need to make yourself feel bad. And some days, techniques that didn't make sense in the past start to come more easily now that your brain can wrap itself better around the instructions.
I reported back to Miss L and sent her some photos; she responded with encouragement and hope. She also allowed as how she'd heard of that figure-8 technique but had never gotten her head wrapped around it. She's a more skilled knitter than I am, so I think I'm in good company. If you can do that figure-8 cast-on, please show your work in the comments and both Miss L and I will be suitably impressed!
It's pretty good TV knitting, which I tested by watching a couple of F1 sessions from last season before deleting them from the DVR. After a couple of stints of knitting, I had a 2-inch-deep pocket. Well, when the bottom of the pocket flattens out it will be a bit less than 2 inches.
So I'm probably about 20 percent of the way towards knitting the pocket section. The Malabrigo yarn is lovely to work with, and seems to have some amount of lanolin in it. It's not the same as getting my hands massaged by a professional at a spa, but it's soothing and gives me a little sensory treat.
As often said Elizabeth Zimmerman, patron saint of American knitting, keep calm and knit on.
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