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I worked on it for months – on and off, granted, but months, nonetheless – usually while sitting in doctors’ waiting rooms and things like that.  When the scarf was finally finished, and I proudly presented it to the boyfriend, he… didn’t like it.  Said it was too scratchy for his sensitive neck.  I could have cried.  I mean, he was with me the entire time I was working on this scarf, more or less… why didn’t he voice his concerns before I invested so much time and energy into making it?

When things went south, I took the scarf back.  (I mean, it’s not like it was really his anyway – he never wore it!)  But I’m really not a heavy-bulky-scarf person;  I get the tail ends of scarves caught in car doors, or they drag on the ground, or get forgotten in the trunk of my car when I throw it there out of frustration.  So I started to think about embellishing the scarf and selling it.

There were a few miscues, but at long last, the scarf is finished.  And I think that my idea of embellishing it was a good one, because the scarf sold (to a high school classmate, granted, but still! it sold!) within 5 minutes of listing it.

I don’t talk about it much, but I have a lot of problems selling my handknits.  I mean, not selling them, per se, but pricing them to sell.  I know damn well that I’m asking prices that are ridiculously cheap for items that take me weeks, sometimes months, to make.  On the other hand, I look at my stuff as “nothing special”, something that the average Joe or Jane could easily make for themselves for about $5 if they took the time to learn a couple basic stitches.

This scarf sold for $35 – less than the cost of the yarn used to make it, and never mind the investment of time to crochet it, or the fact that those appliques took me about 5 hours to make and apply.  But at this point, in this case, I’m just happy to have found her a good home.

Phoebe:  When you circle my office chair, meowing and pawing at my leg, for well over half an hour, and make a couple halfhearted attempts to jump up into the chair, I am naturally going to assume that you want to be in my lap, and I’m going to help haul your 20lb tuchas in that direction.  Spraying me and rendering my office chair unusable for most of the day is NOT the way to thank me for this effort.

Phaedra:  I know darn well that YOU know darn well that I tend to wander around the house during dark hours.  So, please stop sleeping in random locations on the stairs.  I know you’re trying to kill me, but trust me, all I’m going to do if I fall down the stairs is break a few bones at most… and then, dude, you’re on your own with the whole “food” and “clean litterbox” thing.

Phoebe:  We (ok, Woody) just spent $80 on a jungle gym thingy for you to scratch on.  Please use it.

Phaedra: Just a reminder, poop goes IN the litterbox, and your dirty little paws stay OUT of dinner plates.  Thank you.

Both of you:  Picking up knitting needles, needle and thread, or, especially, a tray of beads, is really NOT your cue to climb into my lap.  And by the way, if I remove you from my lap, this doesn’t mean that I want to play the “see how quickly kitty can get back on the lap” or “see how many times kitty will get back on the lap before the human gives up and leaves her there” games.  Truly.

And while we’re at it:  Phaedra, please stop trying to steal Woody’s soul while he sleeps. That really isn’t very nice.

Anyway, I’m glad we could have this talk, even if it really meant the two of you falling asleep on my knitting 30 seconds into this.

Love,
me

I’ve had a hell of a time with my knitting the past couple weeks, and I’m not sure why.  My math’s been worse than usual. Converting lace patterns from flat to round has resulted in disaster.  Yarn choices have turned out to be… terrible… and a lot of the designs that made sense in my head were less than pleasing when I actually materialized them.

My goal was to put up a larger update all at once tomorrow, but with the way my luck has been going in that department,  I figured I’d better not tempt fate, and just put the 3 items I had finished on there, as soon as I finished them… so there they are.

Zibbet shop: http://www.zibbet.com/atomicknits

Etsy shop: http://atomiccreations.etsy.com

I’ll have another few items tomorrow or Saturday morning, including a scarf that I really AM going to be very pleased about, if I can get the embellishment to transfer properly from my brain to the wool… attempt #1 really didn’t go all that well.

Sigh. 

One such person was Wolf, a talented bead- and fiber-artist in the Roanoke area. But despite the fact that they even had lived in the same state for a few years, they never met.

Sunday, after knowing each other online for over a decade, that all changed.

photo courtesy of wolfsilveroak.insanejournal.com

Meeting people you’ve only known in a virtual realm is not the novelty that it was back in 1997, so it’s highly unlikely that anyone reading this right now HASN’T, at one time or another, met someone that they first encountered online. I’ve been doing it since… shoot, 1998. Heh. But you know, it’s still just as cool as it was back then. And when it turns out that you really do click, and it really IS like you’ve hung out with each other for years? Priceless.

Wolf was up from Roanoke, visiting her folks in Battle Creek… which is only about 1 1/2 hours from where I am now. Her parents hosted a hell of a barbecue, the weather was absolutely perfect, and it seriously couldn’t have been a better day – unless, of course, it was twice as long.

We had so much fun that I drove back to Battle Creek on Thursday to go to the zoo with her, her husband, and her niece and nephew.

(Be sure to check out the other pictures in the set, too!)

Once again, a fantastic time was had by all: a day full of giggles, goofiness, and all-around good times (sometimes at the expense of other zoo-goers, but hey, it’s not our fault if you’re an idiot who can’t tell a kangaroo from a deer, a’right?). (And yes, that totally really happened!)

After the zoo, we hauled our tired butts back to Wolf’s parents’ house, where her mom made a delicious salisbury steak dinner, and we sat around the table talking about our day like a bunch of excited 12-year-olds. Haha. I hung out for a couple more hours, till it was just starting to get darker, and then figured I had to be on my way; I don’t see well to drive at night. Hugs all around and a long goodbye… again, I just want to say that it’s so (wonderfully!) unusual to find a bunch of people with whom you’re so darn comfortable. Wolf’s mom told me to “stop by anytime”, and I know she meant it.

Wolf, thank you for the fun & laughter, and I hope the rest of your trip is awesome!

Yep, that’s it… and I still have 2 classes (plus general supplies) to buy for, and all of this is out-of-pocket. That saran-wrapped book on the bottom? $120 alone. Say it with me: ouch!

I have lots, lots more to write about, but right this second, I have to go lay down and take a nap; spending that much money on stuff I’ll never use again after December has me feeling a little woozy. LOL

It’s free, of course.  All I ask is that you don’t sell the pattern or cowls made from the pattern… standard stuff.

Except that by the time I’d mentioned it on Twitter and Facebook, it was already gone.  Bam!  I like that!

The details, for anyone who cares:  One skein of Cascade Pastaza in an awesome shade of true red, size 8 16″ circular needle, my own simple 4-row lace pattern, and one evening spent with the director’s cut of “Watchmen” and my boyfriend.  Heh.

Naturally, the fact that it sold so quickly has me thinking that I need to make more – my posted pictures on Facebook created quite a stir amongst people I know, some of whom (I’m guessing) knew I was a craftsperson, but didn’t know I sold the stuff.  Honestly, I seriously doubt I’m ever going to make a living, or even THAT much of a profit, selling knitted goods, but I’d be pretty happy with a little textbook/spending money so I don’t have to get a “real job” while I’m in college, you know?

…Cascade Heritage Paints, which I bought back in May at a LYS, as a celebratory gift to myself for landing an (albeit ill-fated) job so quickly here, fully intending to make myself socks over the summer, as part of my Project Spectrum committment. Now, I’ve bitched plenty recently about how much I dislike hand-painted yarns now, and of course, this yarn IS hand-painted, but I figured that the subtlety of the color changes would make the yarn appropriate for at least some lace patterns. I was right about that, at least.

I cast on Bettie’s Lace Stockings – the dramatic pattern lured me in, and the promise of “easy lace” cinched the deal, because who wants to have to THINK for a nice relaxing summer knit? Well, by the time I finished the first lace repeat, I was cussing like a sailor. “Easy”, maybe, but also awkward as hell, and I was not amused. Woody, however, really liked the pattern, so I said, eh, I guess I’ll keep going. By the time I got to the heel-turn point, I was in the rhythm of the lace, but my row gauge was so effed that the sock only went just past the ball of my foot. Stretched. (I should add that my stitch gauge was right on.) At this point, I decided to bail on the pattern, only because the entire foot of the sock is lace, and the softness of the yarn had me concerned that it wouldn’t wear well… the last thing I wanted was to spend a month struggling with this lace only to have it fall apart after a couple wearings. So I frogged.

Then I cast on Snowflake Lace. Thinking about my gauge issue from Bettie’s Lace, I used the needle size recommended. After the ribbed cuff and one repeat, the socks were massive. I went down a needle size, which is typically what I do to get gauge with socks, and did a few more repeats. Still massive. Now I’m pissed. I frog the socks, roll up the yarn, and throw it in my basket.

Different yarn, maybe. I dig out my rainbow skein of Fleece Artist, which has been languishing in my stash for 4 years – ever since I discovered that pretty skeins of painted yarn don’t necessarily knit up as prettily as they should. I pick a pattern specifically for a busy painty yarn: Mad Color Weave. Ugh. I try one that’s similar but a little more subtle, Show-Off Stranded Socks. UGH. This is getting ridiculous!

Finally, I just give up and realize that I could do this all damn summer, or I could just cast on and make some plain socks.

…Not that “plain socks”, something I’ve made so many times before this, is necessarily a guarantee of problem-free knitting, because after getting an inch into the leg, with needles THREE SIZES SMALLER than the pattern called for, guess what? The socks were too big! Gah!! I decreased 4 stitches and that seems to have tightened them up sufficiently, but how much you wanna bet they’ll suddenly be too small when I get to the heel? because that seems to be how my luck is going.

And really, it’s not just the socks – this is how ALL of my knitting has been for the past few weeks, which is why there’s been little to no knitting content in these parts, and also why production for my etsy shop has screeched to a halt. Maybe the Universe is trying to tell me that knitting and summer don’t mix, I don’t know…

…your Friday night “plans” involve buying a new vacuum at Target.

…breakfast is oatmeal (the real old-fashioned kind) with fruit instead of Fruity Pebbles.

…Saturday morning consists of cleaning the house & planning dinners for the week, not watching cartoons and eating the aforementioned Fruity Pebbles.

…you actually get EXCITED about your new vacuum, and, like, admire how clean your carpets are afterwards.

…most of your friends have similar sad tales to share. (One of my classmates, on Facebook, noted that she was very happy about her new windows… and very sad that something like new windows makes her happy. Hah!)

…you realize that even though it’s kinda sad, you like it this way.