Confessions of Fidgety Fingers

It was about a week ago that I decided to look back and I realized that my last posting was in February 2012. Fiber I have knitted and crocheted many things in these missing years. Some of these were for myself, but most are for other people. I started working on a “marathon of fiber” project where I tried to knit or crochet 26.2 miles of yarn. This was good and bad for me. I had completed 44 items, the vast majority being hats and had used about 5.36 miles of yarn. The shear amount of time that I had spent on these projects burned me out. I have done little fiber work since December of 2014. Writing One of my avocations has been writing. I started a high fantasy novel years ago and I have been working on it more off than on since then. I have officially participated in one NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). That novel/novella of a little over 55,000 words is in its editing stage and may stay there for eternity. This last fall I entered a competition for a short ...

I was able to finish the last of the hand painted rovings that I did in class. I liked the way that most of them turned out, but i'm not 100% sure of what I'm going to do with the spun and plied yarn. I do know that one of my cats tried to eat/swallow the roving, so I really am thinking of turning them in to cat toys. I have been listening to the Iron Druid Chronicles on Audible.com. My wife first started listening to the series, and I picked it up on a lark. It it a very well written series, and the narrator is quite excellent. I still need to re-cast on the socks, as that is the next item that I want to knit.

Hey look it is February again and I'm doing a post. It seems odd that i feel the need to try to blog about the same time every year. I had another successful year knitting Christmas presents, but I believe that was the last year where I'm going to try to knit something for everyone.  There is just only so many hats, scarves, mittens, etc. that one group of people can have. I went to a winter retreat in Ashville, NC, and learned to hand pant roving.  It was a roving sampler with angora, llama, white wool, and brown wool.  I have spin up two of the samples, and I have started the third.  I also took a class on cardboard looms, and did a small sampler. I started my first pair of socks, and they failed.  I tried two at a time on two circulars, but my yarn ended up going in all of the wring directions and at least one of the socks was having some bad laddering.  I'm going to try them again soon, but I think I want to finish spinning up the hand panted roving...

Well it has been a year since i have posted. I would say that time flys, but I know that I could have made the time to be better about posting. As a quick catch-up, last spring I did some knitting, and freelance work. In June I got a contract job, which I’m still working. Starting in October I knitted my fingers off trying to get all of my holiday knitting done, and I was actually mostly successful. And now for more details. While I did enjoy some of the freelance work, there were many parts of it that were frustrating. I think one of my biggest problems was that I accepted too many projects, so I had to work longer hours than I wanted to make progress on the projects. Also I found out that communicating with international clients proved to be more challenging than I was initially expecting. The contract position that I got is working for A.D.A.M. I was initially brought in to finish out another person’s contract, which was supposed to expire at the end of June. The contracts a...

Well I have finished my first skein. I still have a lot of the roving to spin, but my first spindle got too full for me to spin any more. I Andean plied it. I think I may use it to knit a hot water bottle cozy. Before I get to the ugly pictures, I was out walking around the house and saw these crocuses. They are about a week and a half old now, but it has been really nice outside lately, and I couldn't resist the picture. So earlier this week I tried to step over a chair and struck my toe in it. I got a nasty bruise, but my wife and I don't think I broke it, it was still rather sore for that day. The first picture is what it looked like a few hours after I hit it, and the second picture is what it looked like the next day. We have five cats, so I figured I would introduce some of them. First is Dewi. She is the smallest of our cats, weighing in at only twelve pounds. Next is Hammie. He is the youngest of our fur-kids and quite often hyper. Pala is our fat kitty. She l...

My knitting has been progressing.  I have finished the red band that was in my last post, as well as the white band and I'm starting on a black band.  As I get further along  will take another picture.  I am about halfway through the broken rib scarf.  I have started another scarf, a 3x3 rib, that will be a Christmas present for a another extended family member. I was putting away some of my Christmas presents and found a book on spinning yarn that my wife gave me.  This got me to want to try my hand at spinning again.  I have taken a few classes in the past, so I grabbed one of my spindals and some roving that I bought many years back.  I'm still having some issues with a consistant thickness, but it should be some interesting yarn when I'm done.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with the yarn, but practice isn't a bad thing. I got my first freelance project done.  I was having trouble maing sure that I was working on the project effectively, so I started moving...