2011 Knits

Every year I post a list of the projects I completed the previous year. I'm a little late on this one, but I think it might still be relevant sometime. A goal of mine this year is to post a bit more. I haven't been writing much recently, and I'm thinking that's a skill that falls under that "use it or lose it" deal.

2011 Knits

1. Day Glow Robot
2. Baby Bobbi Bear for Colin
3. Silver Ishbel for me to wear at my brother's wedding
4. Lobster Pot Red Livias
5. Star Tank
6. Hurricane Irene V-Neck
7. 2 minna key covers
8. Mini Sock for Maude
9. Whale Watch Hat
10. Silver Beaded Ishbel for Aunt Pat

There was a rather large project I was working on that took up quite a bit of time. I just finished that, so it'll be on the 2012 list next January. The strange thing to me is that there's only one pair of socks here. I think that's largely due to the fact that I could knit bigger things on my commutes to work from Staten Island. I'm hoping that I can fix the sock situation this year. Some of my older ones are starting to get holes in them.

The big epic project this year is going to be a Christmas Tree Skirt for our Christmas tree this year. I'm hoping to knit a few Christmas Balls too. I just got 55 Christmas Balls to Knit and it looks like a fun time.

Also, I signed up for some classes this year already. A sewing basics course at The Sewing Studio in an effort to figure out how to do that kind of craft.

My grandmother gave me one of her old 8 shaft table looms for Christmas and a Warping Wheel. I'm insanely excited about weaving, and signed up for a class at the Textile Arts Center. My classes start in february!

Preparing for Yarn Disasters

This is probably something I should have posted before the hurricane, but there were a few other things I was a little concerned about. I live in a basement apartment, and it was entirely possible during the storm that we would get a little to a lot of flooding. I also knew there would a LOT of time spent with my boyfriend's family and that knitting might prevent me from harming any of them. Here's what I did to prepare:

When I moved to this apartment, I was worried about what could happen to my yarn, and I needed an easy way to transport it as well. I put it all in clear plastic bins from The Container Store. Amusingly, these boxes were called Sweater Boxes (and they stack on top of each other!). The plastic proved to be a good move, as there were a few boxes on the floor that ended up getting wet, but the yarn inside them is totally fine.

I have a box of pretty yarn that I usually keep on the floor next to the TV. It's in a fabric box because the fabric box is pretty, and it's open. I simply moved this onto a TV table, which kept it above the water and fine.

You may have seen my blog Yarn365. I love taking photos for artistic reasons. However, one of the things I did before I moved last year was take photos of all the yarn I had and document which box it was in. I wanted to make sure that when I got to the new place, I knew that I had all my yarn. This proved to be useful in that, if anything bad did happened to my yarn, I had proof of my collection and how much it was worth in case I needed to file an insurance claim.

I was also worried about being bored, so figuring out what my next pattern would be was instrumental. The project for my brother's wedding is too warm to work on should the power go out and the AC fail. I was going to finish a shawl, but I was running out of yarn and I lost the bead needle I needed to string the beads onto a new ball. If I finished the sock I was working on, that'd be bad. So I started swatching. I settled on knitting a Cosy V Neck Pullover (Ravlink) from Fitted Knits: 25 Designs for the Fashionable Knitter (AMZ Link). It's top down and I finished the V-neck part and was ready to join for the round when I realized that I'd omitted the neckline shaping. So I ripped it all out Sunday night.

However, my issues with the pattern were all mental. I could read the pattern, despite the fact that the lights were out and our transformer exploded because I had a Neck Light. My SNB went in on this. I think we got something like 20 lights alltogether so we got them cheaply. It was pretty awesome to be able to continue to knit despite the dark.

Overall, we weathered through ok. We had a transformer explode on our block and we had to leave our house because of a possible gas leak whose origin they still don't quite know. But everyone here was safe, and I hope you were too.

(photo: Decadent Fibers Creme Brulee from Rhinebeck last year, the yarn of my hurricane project)