Crochet Woodstock

This in an old post........... I just published another one and noticed I had something in my drafts so I went to investigate and found this one. Wow was I terrible at blogging this year! This one has been waiting to be published since Christmas. I know I am not as conscious about blogging as I want to be, and this one just proved it Big Time!

I have been very diligent about updating my pattern notes on Ravelry, but clearly not here.

So, without further ado, my post from last Christmas, which was only waiting for me to give Woodstock to Craig before I published it.

When I was planning out Craig's Christmas stocking gifts, I knew I wanted to put as many hand-made items into it as possible. However a major allergic reaction to fish buggered up that plan and nothing was completed. I did manage to get one of the items finished a few days after Christmas. It was a crochet Woodstock character from Peanuts. I searched around for a while trying to find the best looking Woodstock and I settled on this one: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/woodstock-a-crochet-pattern.

I have to say, it was not very pleasant to make. The legs were so small that I had to go up hook sizes. Other than that, I am sure my displeasure stemmed mostly from the yarn I used.

I used up some acrylic yarn my budget forced me to purchase for other Christmas gifts. For the toques I made, I had very few problems, but for this toy, I was cursing it the whole way. It was very "splity" for lack of a better word. I constantly had to redo stitches because I had split the yarn and didn't notice.

Oh well, Woodstock was completed and my bf is very happy with him. It is so difficult finding anything "Woodstock", who is his favourite character, that it was worth the aggravation making this.

So I would like to introduce you to Woodstock!

Before his haircut.

Woodstock!

In profile...

Blessing Day

Today is a Blessing Day.

I try to make everyday a Blessing Day, but don't always succeed.

What is a Blessing Day you ask? Well, it is a day where I am mindful of all the blessings in my life. As I move into this new, more mindful way of life, I am trying to be more aware of everything joyful, peaceful and exciting about my life. I understand now that my thoughts have an enormous impact on my physical self. I try to acknowledge the negative, not to dwell on it, but to realize that it is there and figure out a way to release it and not let it control me. The better I get with this way of thinking, the more peaceful my life becomes, more positive people come into my life, and more enjoyable experiences come my way.

So with possibly loosing my keys at a big outdoor event on the weekend (I say possibly because I thought I had lost my work keys for almost two weeks only to find them hidden really well in my backpack), I find myself trapped in my apartment until my partner gets home. Before, this situation would have been upsetting. I was planning on going up to the library to look at knitting books and hopefully visit my friend who is completing an internship there for her BA in Library Sciences. Now I cannot do this without leaving the apartment unlocked and not being able to get back into the building unless I break into my apartment through the window.

However, being trapped in my apartment is really a blessing. I am always on the go. Always working, even though I am not salaried, or hunting down ingredients to pre-cook safe meals, etc. If I take time to sit down and knit, I always make sure I am doing something else at the same time - watching a movie off of my waiting list, or listening to an audio book. If I don't I tend to feel like I am being lazy or self indulgent, and for some reason still to be understood, that makes me feel incredibly guilty for taking time for myself.

Today however, by being trapped in my apartment, I am being forced to slow down. It is wonderful. I worked like mad on the weekend. My work place had a tent up at a big music festival, which meant I ended up working 12 hour days between being at the event, and then balancing out afterwords. I am physically drained from that. This is an imposed rest day and it was super nice being able to sleep in and not feel guilty about not getting the shopping done as soon as the grocery store opened so I could get the cooking done before taking time to blog, knit, watch tv/movies, watch online course, etc....

And it lets me think about all the things in my life to get grateful for:

My ability to knit, crochet and sew. I have the ability to clothe myself and others. As I learn more about each craft, I build confidence in myself and don't worry if others think I am asking for too much money to give up my free time to make or alter something for them. I don't rely on these skills for my living so I don't end up under-charging for my time and effort.

I am grateful for my food allergies. Yes, it is bothersome, and extremely scary, to eat out at a restaurant, but it is also wonderful that I have to build up my cooking and baking skills to a level that was considered normal only a generation or two ago. I can feed myself and my BF good food, that is often 100% organic since more certified gluten-free ingredients are also certified organic. Before I thought I just couldn't afford to go organic, and did not quite understand just how much healthier it really was until we had to make the switch. My fish allergies did not really have a big impact on our eating habits, but the gluten intolerance did, and led to this wonderful new aspect of my life.

I am grateful for being on a tight budget. Sure I would love to make more money so we could travel more, but my making one and a half times less money than my BF forced us to more into a more affordable apartment. The apartment we ended up in is a bit awkwardly spaced, because it is a basement suite in a 100 year old building where they clearly did not plan on putting suits in the basement, but we are living a little bit more in my budget, which helps me to have some play money after paying off bills and student loan payments.

It also let me finally get a cat! Since we are in the basement suite of a really old building, we had mice. They were non-existent while the neighbor had a cat, but when they moved, the mice showed up. Craig got fed up with fighting them, and wasting money on food, that he finally gave in to my wish for a cat. I sent him to look at an older black female cat that was "on sale" from the shelter because she was there for so long, but Craig fell in love with a different cat. He picked out a grey tabby male cat who was three years old. I got my older cat, and he got the cat he liked. By including Craig in the cat-buying process, he is much more attached to the cat than I expected. And we lucked out with Agent Coulson. His fur is so silky that it doesn't bother Craig's allergies.

Agent Coulson is an enormous blessing! Besides ridding the apartment of mice on day 1, he has such an interesting personality. He is not the "boring" or "annoying" kitty as Craig feared we would end up with. He is so funny and entertaining and brings a shared joy to our lives that I cannot imagine life without him now. I knew that would happen, but it is a new experience for Craig and I am grateful that he now understands just how much of a blessing being a pet owner can be.

There are so many more things I am grateful for, but today these are the ones that keep popping into my thoughts. I will take the time to acknowledge them, to contemplate them and to really appreciate them as I rest up from a physically and emotionally taxing weekend.

With Peace and Love,
Heather

Double Scoop Shawl

Sometime last summer, my LYS had a design contest for the up-coming fiber show. After choosing the winning design, the Double Scoop Shawl (found here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/double-scoop-3), they held a KAL that would lead up to the FiberFest.

© thinkharder
( image taken from designer  ash alberg)

I probably would have been able to finish it for that event if I had chosen to do the small version, but I wanted the big one. And some health issues contributed to slowing my knitting down. Food allergies suck, and being force to prove the allergy with the allergist was the problem that time....but I digress.

Anyway, I didn't finish on time, but I kept working on it, and as stated before in a previous blog, I almost finished it on my VKL Chicago trip, but ran short of the orange yarn. Since a picot bind-off was new to me, I did not know at that time if it would be difficult to work around the shortage or not. But after doing a bit of YouTube research (love YouTube for knitting tutorials!) I discovered it shouldn't be a problem to work around that shortage. 

So, when the new year came around, and my favourite designer announced a contest to get WIP's of her design off the needles, I thought I would take the day or two to finish this shawl up before going back to the two WIP's of her designs since they would definitely take longer than a day or two. 

I can say the "instant gratification" of finishing up a WIP in a day was amazing! 

 At first, I was going to try re-writing the picot bind-off, but a few rows in to the set-up row, I realized that I was only 8 stitches short, and with 4 rows of set-up to knit, it would be super easy to just add 2 stitches to each row.

This was my first attempt at adding 2 stitches. My favourite way to add is to M1L and M1R - picking up from the underneath the stitch to bring it up and make a stitch leaning in a certain direction. But after seeing this, I realized that that did not look nice, so I tried again.

 My second attempt was to KFBF. I also did not like the way this looked. I think it would have been fine after one row of knitting, since the set-up rows were garter stitch, but then I would have had to re work my distribution plan.

So my last attempt, which was to KFB on either side of the middle stitch. I wasn't as happy with that as I would have liked, but it blended the best. 

In hindsight, I think it would have been better to do the increase 1/3rd's and 2/3rd's along the rows, instead of in the middle, but I was not about to go back again. If I had had a lifeline just before the set-up row, I probably would have, but I decided to just live with it.

I had a "perfectionist" issue with the picot bind-off. It was the first time doing that bind-off and it took me a while to realize that I had to pull up on the needle after doing the k2tog to tighten the yarn up, otherwise I would have had so many of those loose loops along the edge and that would have driven me crazy.....

Blocking it was a new challenge for me. The shawl ended up being a bit larger than I anticipated and I would have liked another foam block to work with. 

But I love the idea I had to use my crock pot dish for the soaking part. I still don't have 

anything specific to use. I was using a large 

Rubbermaid bin, but the bottom got cracked in 

the cold weather (I'm assuming anyway) when 

I lent the bin out, so liquid doesn't stay 

in it anymore. 

The only real disappointment I have with my shawl is that it did not stay in the shape I had blocked it in. I guess I didn't leave enough extra yarn between changing colours in the multi-coloured rows because it doesn't fan out nicely. It looks like a crescent shape and actually wears better as a scarf. For now, because it is winter, I don't mind at all. I'm all bundled up in layers anyway, but I was hoping to use it in the summer as well as an actual shawl. I'll have to try steam blocking it to see if that makes a difference.

A New Year, A new Goal!

Hello All,

It is shortly into the new year, and I have decided that I am already slacking in my new goals for this year. So the solution is to get off my duff and start being more disciplined.

The new goals I have set for myself are quite simple really. Most importantly, being more disciplined in working toward my goals. The ones I have set for myself all revolve around finally starting my own business, and improving my health.

So, in order to achieve the business goal, I need to work on my blog more, learn about and start using Instagram, take a business prep course, and start designing my own knit patterns.

I also need to ask for advise from people I know who are small business owners. I have a few lined up already. One lady who does a lot of her business online, since I will probably end up going that route for the first few years, and another lady who bought into a small business in the industry I would be drawing from. I have a few other friends who sell through Etsy so I plan to pick their brains, and I have been paying attention to what my current boss does with his small businesses, and asking questions and reading the books he brings through the store.

I've already taking one small workshop about starting a small business, through the Women's Enterprise Center in Winnipeg. It was very helpful. My "fear factor" with starting a business is the business plan, and the market research. Thanks to that little workshop, I now have a better idea of how to go about doing that, and I sorely wish I could afford the 6 week course starting next week. But I can't, so I am saving up for the one that starts right after that one finishes.

And I have a better, but still pretty vague, idea of how to gather my market research. That is the next major step I hope to accomplish before taking the course. And of course having some product ready.

And for improving my health, again, that goal is very simple. Now that I know I am gluten-intolerant, but still waiting on the formal diagnoses, I want to improve my gardening skills. I would love to get to the point where I produce as much, if not all, the food I need.

I already have a friend's yard to garden in. Last year I started quite late in the season so I only used containers, but I prepped the yard for some in-ground plots in the fall. I'd love to produce a lot of potatoes, and my own corn for milling and popping. It would also be neat to grow enough tomatoes to turn into sauce. I probably could have gotten a few cans of sauce last year, but I did not take the time to learn how to can, so I need to get on that.

Anyway, that's my set of goals for 2015. Thanks for reading!