Back From Stitches West '09
Chicago... I can't believe I'm still in Chicago...
I haven't posted in awhile? Pssht. Suck it up, yeh pansies. You know where to find me if you desperately need to know my opinion about something. Some poor woman on ravelry just got a piece of my mind when she asked me about CAD software for us regular-type, boots on the ground designers, or the lack thereof. I told her 1) knit visualizer for the charts, 2) good luck. All my designs are done the old fashioned way; getting a table of standard measurements, adding a set amount of ease, and asking various women around my workplace what they like in a sweater. Easy? No. Foolproof? Hell no. But it's the only game in town, so I'll play it.
Anyway, it's been a balls-to-the-wall show. The midwest really came out in full, norwegian-accented force this weekend, and I dare say that I'm proud to be from around these parts. They rocked us like a hurricane, poured some sugar on us, and gave us all sorts of hair metal type ballads. My feet are little, stumpy "ow" machines and all I want to do is curl up in my own bed with my pet Kyle to fetch me tea and prattle on about nerdy things until I fall asleep. But I'm seven times seven impressed with the venue. Imagine Austin Powers were Swedish and had a penchant for sticking a TV on every flat, vertical surface. If that man designed a hotel, it would look like this, though he wouldn't care enough about the environment to put a "natural, native wetland" in the front of it. It just looks like weeds and a wet ditch at this point, but they'll get the hang of it. I used to manage a 2 or 3 acre patch of prairie when I was a little one, so I know how it goes. If they don't have the balls to burn it all in spring, they'll get all sorts of European invader types and tree saplings. But they won't have the guts, so they'll probably use herbicides and migrant workers. For shame. Rambling? Again, I exhort you to suck it up, you were so desperate for my candid opinions, so now you're going to get them, stream-of-consciousness, notes-from-underground style.
Speaking of which, I had no idea that KT was a Russian major. That girl is chock goddamn full of surprises. She's lived, like, 3 or 4 lives in one, so I'm pretty envious. But I guess I still have enough life left to figure out who the crap I am, at least according to Andra, who insists that you don't nail things down until you're 30, and then when you're 40, it's all gravy. I imagine she says these things because she has no kids, which strengthens my resolve to pass on my genetic heritage in the form of memes rather than hateful spawn who will resent their nerdy names, go off to a mid-list, but expensive college and never talk to me again (just like me with my parents!).
So now I've done my responsible blogger diary-entry thing. Reviews are coming up soon, so if Kathy or Linda, or to some extent Steve take exception to this post, it'll be deleted. I love truth and all, but not to the point that I'm willing to take a dive in pay, thankyoukindly. So enjoy it while it lasts!
As a wiser man than me once said...
I've gotten the most of my ranting out, and I promised myself not to write a crazy screed here. Lets just say that Sock Wars was... very disappointing. Now I pride myself on being buoyant and optimistic. It takes a lot to burst my bubble. This ranks somewhere between paying full theater ticket price for a three hour movie that turns out to suck and getting stood up for the prom. Many, many thanks to Joe from SWTC for staying up all night Friday trying desperately to field questions, contact the (only) person in charge, who, despite being compensated with over $2,500, apparently couldn't be bothered for the first 36 hours of her own event involving over 1200 people and a pattern she wrote and didn't edit, and to keep us from burning our prom dresses and storming the party with a GnR tape and some fifths of Popov's. Right... no screed...
Anyway! The socks are done. There are lots of things I would have changed about them were it allowed, but they're socks and generally sock-shaped. I should take pictures and post them, but I'm still a bit too sore to show them off. Maybe I'll snap a pic before I send them tomorrow.
The silver lining is that I've made some combat buddies who were in the same, stood up boat as I. And I think I have a really fun, exciting idea for my own knitting war. A stash-busting scarf in garter stitch knit length-wise with any combination of yarns from your stash, the more variety the better. But I'll wait for sweet sock death to take me and see how I feel about it. Now, to do some yoga and try to get to sleep.
On this, St. Crispin's Day
edit: false alarm. darn netflix. =P
Here's a picture of my weapon, pre-assembled:
Dr. Livingston, I presume?
But now, thank dog, spring has finally broken winter's siege. I've cleaned the house from top to bottom and decided to revivify my blog (along with my plants, whose leaves haven't been drooping, but I can't remember the last time I watered them, either). Unfortunately, I haven't finished too many big projects to show you, though I have managed to weave a few scarves out of 2/14 hand dyed. So much knitting's getting done at work that I get home with tired hands, happy to just spin or stare at stitch libraries and dream of future sweaters.
It's been an amazing process at work since I've started designing full time. I feel myself growing in bounds with every sweater, like I can practically feel the wrinkles in my brain forming. “Ooohhh, so THAT'S how you shape a sleeve cap” and so on and so forth. I owe so much to Linda for sitting by and answering all my nagging questions. I kind of regard her as my technical advisor, though I'm sure that's not part of her official job description. Kathy's been wonderful at keeping me inspired, giving me neat things she finds in magazines, since I'm way too butch (and poor) to consider getting a subscription to Vogue, though I do admit that I secretly like to peruse them when I get the chance, I just have to make sure no one's watching =). And Mary, dear Mary, is the marketing coordinator and the all-important no-ma'am. Essential for keeping my head somewhere beneath cloud-level . “Hey , Mary! I was thinking about making a big, ol' batwing-sleeve sweater out of tencel with intarsia hieroglyphs going all around it. Think I should go for it?” “Mmm... no.” “...nuts.” At first, it got me a littl e nervous and down on myself, but now I can't imagine designing without her input somewhere along the line. And my test knitters! O! I would be a woman dead from exhaustion and bloody stumps for fingers were it not for the noble efforts of Barbara, Marion, and the many others who've given up their spare time to help me crank out the ever-increasing number of designs. I can't do it without them. I've tried, and it ain't pretty.
So I'm getting the hang of things and I think the next catalog is going to be really, really stellar. It took the combined weight of Kathy, Linda, Mary, and even the store manager Karen, but they've finally gotten me to design sweaters that are bottom-up and in pieces, at least for this catalog. The reasoning that finally cowed me is that they need equal representation for all different kinds of construction methods, and we already have a ton of top-down, so it's time to even the scales. It still smarted a bit, and there was a lot I had to learn and re-learn, but I think the results are very nice and I'm actually pretty proud of the designs. Stay tuned for the Valley Yarns catalog!
On the home front, I've been doing a lot of spinning. Gail's dyed up some gorgeous merino roving that makes a self-striping sport-fingering weight yarn that looks like it's out of a dream.
I just don't feel right keeping it under a bushel. I'm going to try to sell it on etsy when I get a little more inventory, but it's slow going. It can take all weekend to do a single 340-ish yd skein, and I'm already getting a little fatigued. Not a good sign. But I'll keep at it! And if it doesn't sell, maybe I'll try knitting shawls out of it and selling those. Up up and away! And here's hoping I can remember to put more in this blog.
Sometimes inspiration like cave man...
I was knitting this all evening, up to and including conking out at about 11:30. It's all I can do to resist knitting it RIGHT NOW.I've known about two-ended knitting for awhile, you know, that old tale about husband and wife sitting opposite eachother, knitting a sweater in the round and their work kind of swirls around each other's. It's in some book about Scandinavian knitting, I swear, not just a kooky dream. I even tried to rope my guy into it, but not even the '76 lineup of the Philadelphia Fliers could threaten him to knit. But anyway, I think it was the last Interweave Knits that had a section about 2-ended knitting in the round for socks. And it just occurred to me how neat it would be for a sweater! A circular-yoke, scrap-busting sweater! I just cast on 100 sts (which, at 4 sts to the inch, is a very convenient number for raglans and any other boat-neck-ish sweater I make), do a bit of ribbing, then knit 4 equal sections in 4 different yarns. Since a raglan increases 8 times every other round, that's the same as 4 times every round, and since I have 4 distinct sections of the knitting, I just increase at a random place in each yarn section. Easy peasy!
And here are the other yarns that will get incorporated:
So exciting! Aah!
Two point five skeins, suckah!
And at only about 100 yds per skein! I can't believe that's all it took to make this sweater. Alright, so it's more like a sweater in just the academic sense, but that's my favorite kind of sense! I'm so wearing it to work tomorrow with a black tank top and jeans, I think, and I'll get there a little early to pick out a properly large and funky button for it.Now what to do with the 4 and a half "left over" skeins. Heh. Well, I could make the sleeves longer here. That shouldn't be a problem. I can probably make them reasonably 3/4 length with the remaining half a skein. But otherwise, um. Well, I think this looks "different" enough without being some kind of floor-length cardigan thing, which it could easily achieve with the remaining yardage. Yeah, that might be a bit too... video game heroine. And I really just don't dig the matching twinset look for some reason. Oh well, I'll think of something some day.
