FO: Branching Out

Continuing my finished object reports, here's Branching Out!

This was my first lace project, and I'm really pleased with how it worked out. And it taught me the best thing about lace - it groooooooooooooows. This scarf got about 6 inches longer during the blocking process. This was fantastic not only because it meant I got 6 inches worth of scarf for the price of no hand movements, but it also made a slightly too-short scarf just right for a neck warmer.



I had been slightly concerned that the varigated-ness was totally hiding the laciness, and vice versa, but it actually works very well when on (I don't normally wear it quite like this obviously!).



I got this yarn for 1 euro (about 70p!) in the Wolle Rödel store in Hildersheim, Germany (I was at the M'Era Luna festival). They only had the one ball in their sale basket, but how could I resist? I was never quite sure what to make with it, until I saw a girl really working the non-winter-scarf look at a friend's wedding (and it helped that she was amazingly beautiful with wonderful dress sense).




(The book is 'Ancient Greek Love Magic', and the apple just sets everything off).

Pattern: Branching Out
Yarn: Superwash merino from Germany - I'll edit this post with the details when I find the band.
Needles: Erm... let's say I edit this part in too when I find my notes!
Modifications: different yarn, different needles, totally different gauge. I just knitted until I ran out of yarn.

Pin after Pin after Pin...

In the lack of more fun photos, I thought I could give a little teaser photo of the blocking of Branching Out, demonstrating just what a ridiculous number of pins I used. I had planned to use the string I use as a drive band, but when it came down to it I realised that that string would be far too thick to fit through either a darning needle or the stitches... Of course, only after the pinning did I realise I had some thin crochet cotton. I think I could probably have stretched the lace out more, but I had no wish to move all those pins.



(yes; one of those pins is a needle. I always remember my mum being shocked when she asked for a needle and I said to check the pin box - doesn't everyone else get needles mixed in with their pins?)

We move in 2 days. One day? In two sleeps. (So Thursday morning). I am incredibly worried that the movers have no idea how much stuff we have. Luckily we have this place until next week and we're hiring a car, so will be able to drive back and forth numerous times if they really can't fit everything in (and since we only have a 2-bed flat they really should!). In our new house I shall have a corner of the solar ('sun room' just didn't sound like a me-type-word) as my sewing place. With a dedicated table and everything (for the past 18 months any dressmaking has been done on a coffee table. This is why there has been very little dressmaking).

A little update & a new plan

I was recently asked if I thought I could ever go back to normal, that is to be able to use the computer and knit and write and type and -- well, be normal. To be honest I don't know, I doubt it. This past week I've had quite a bit of pain, mainly the outer side of my right wrist and forearm. This is the pain that I'm not sure how is caused, and it's a bugger to get rid of. So this week I've been back to my old self -- that is, doing absolutely sod all and hoping that the pain will go away.

I think it may be possible for me to continue knitting, but I probably need to do a lot less than I have been. On Saturday I did the most amount of knitting that I've done so far -- about 600 stitches (20 rows of 30 stitches each) over the course of A Knight's Tale. I haven't knit since then though, but I don't think that necessarily caused the pain. I was working on my Leaf Motif scarf -- since I finished Branching Out last week (photos shortly!) -- as I had planned to finish all my WIPs in order to free up all my Denise needles.

The problem is though, that the Leaf Motif scarf, well, it's just not doing anything for me. If knitting is going to break me again then dammit, it had better be for a good cause.

So I've decided that instead of finishing my WIPs just for the sake of it, I'm going to do something that I want to. Although ironically, I've decided to finish Tempting first. Tempting is, as far as I believe, using around 4 Denise cables, plus end buttons, connectors, and of course a pair of needles. As far as I can remember Tempting only has around 10 rounds left to go. Admittedly each round is 200 stitches, but I'll maybe go back to 20 stitches a day.

Once Tempting is done, I'm going to make a start on using my handspun. I think I may go with some skinny lace scarves.

Right then, I've been dictating this to Dragon for ages and it is beginning to do my head in! I just got a new microphone today, and maybe shouldn't have bought the cheapest on offer. Hopefully it will learn from all these corrections (!).

Anyway. I should have photos for tomorrow of Branching Out and/or a lovely gift I received. I'm off to go and skein up my latest spinnings (and if Dragon doesn't stop putting the fricking caps lock key on I swear I'm going to cry).

Is this thing on?

I am writing -- well actually, speaking! -- this post with the aid of my new voice recognition software! I am attempting to do the whole thing only correcting it vocally, so please ignore all the wacky extra spaces and stuff.

This is relatively old software, Dragon 6 (they are up to 9 or 10 now), but it still works with me using the in-built microphone on the keyboard. It is not that great for my posture, and it doesn't like working when the fan is on - and the fact I'm hunched over and speaking a tad too loudly is not good for the vocal cords - so I will have to get a proper mike ASAP. However, it is pretty impressive. (Thanks again Hope :) )

Actually what would be more interesting would be if I left it without the corrections (it thought 'impressive' above was actually 'Guinness'). I remember being at University in a computer science lecture, with a lecturer talking about voice recognition; she forgot to turn it off after the demo and so it wrote a lovely story during the rest of the lecture.

But hopefully - the threat of voice nodules not withstanding - using it will mean that I shouldn't have to pick and choose so much between computer use and fibre arts. I don't intend to use it all the time (certainly not without a proper microphone), but it will be great for taking notes (so that I can just talk, and then correct it afterwards from the text I'm reading. If I try to just talk while dictating I have to keep stopping all the time to correct it, otherwise I have no idea what I was trying to say).

And in knitting news... Ta-da! I've finished Branching Out. It is incredibly short, so I think the combination of short, varigated yarn, and lace, might be a bit too much, but I got the yarn in a sale in Germany 2 years ago, and so I'm unlikely to be able to procure any more!

Photos will follow shortly...

Whaddid I miss?

Poor November. Poor December. Poor January. I can't believe I let them go by unposted. I'll have to fake something so they don't feel left out. I didn't realise that I hadn't posted in such a long time.

So, news.

I finally finished my MPhil, and handed it in in December. That end-of-September-2006 deadline? Turns out that it was actually end-of-September-2007. I kid you not. The MA students had a September 2006 deadline, but the MPhil students are supposed to spend a year researching, and then have up to a year to write up the thesis. I only discovered this when I asked for an extension and discovered that technically my course hadn't ended.

However, since I'd been under the impression I had to be finished my September, I'd applied to start my PhD from October... So I had to finish my MPhil relatively quickly to fulfill the conditions of the PhD.

As I was finishing my MPhil I realised that the 'only' pain I was getting was a constant burning in my right wrist. The reason why it took me about a month to realise that my elbows and forearms were feeling better was because this burning pain has no cause that I can divine, and no cure. Ice doesn't help it; anti-inflammatories don't help it. All I could do was go to bed and hope it had gone in the morning.

After I handed in my thesis we went away for a week, so I did no intense hand-movements at all. When I came back I was relatively pain free! Then I only had a couple of days at home before we went to see our parents for Christmas - so again, no hand movements. By the time we came back I'd been pretty much pain free for most of December, BUT I hadn't been doing anything.

So I was pretty much too scared to start doing things again, because being pain free, finally, after over a year, was too nice a state to be in. So now I'm just taking things slowly, trying not to overdo things. I've been attending an exercise class in the physiotherapy department of the general hospital, working on strengthening my body (I've become very weak this past year), and I've also restarted yoga. But - as the weekly physio lectures stress - I also have to pace myself, and not overdo things. Now I've been relatively painfree for two months I probably underdo things too much, since I'm so wary of setting off the pain again.

I have been knitting and spinning, and - tada! - I've finished one of my WIPs. I've finished the Lace-Up Opera Gloves, but need to get ribbons for them. It took about 2 months to finish them (I'd already knit one last year) - I did a maximum of about 4 rows a day, and I didn't knit daily. I keep a note of what I do each day, partly so I don't overdo it, and partly so that I'm always sure where I'm up to - when you can only knit about 100 stitches a day, you don't want to waste hand movements unknitting!

I'm currently working on Branching Out. This is the piece that gave me tennis elbow back in the summer, so I'm taking it really carefully. And I only knit if I've been painfree that day, and I try not to knit too much on days that I type a lot. I'm doing around a maximum of 10 rows a day (ie., a full pattern repeat), but these are spaced out throughout the day. I'm a little concerned I may run out of yarn, but since it's a scarf that shouldn't be too dreadful - it's already neck warmer length.

Spinning wise, I dyed my final 100g of white Cheviot top with Kool Aid - I went with some of my blue and some of my yellow, mixing them in the middle to get green. One of the reasons why I prefer my Chapter Two yarn over my Chapter Three yarn is that it has more colours and shades mixing together. The Chapter Three yarn is basically blue and pink, whereas Chapter Two has pink, purple, blue, white, red... Each inch is a new delight of colour combination, and so this is why I used three colours this time. I spun the singles last weekend, and will probably ply them this weekend. It may be garish, and heavens know what I'll do with it, but it's all fun.

I also spun back in December, when we got back from our trip. I spun and plied all in one evening - I'd stop every now and then and think 'No pain! Keep going!' That's my secret spinning, from my secret dyeing, and so won't be revealed just yet.

In non-fibrey-new, our landlord has said that he is going to sell the flat, so now we're in the process of moving and will be out by the end of the month. We'll be moving to the city that I go to university in (right now I have a 45 minute train ride), and we've found a lovely house. Unfortunately, it's also for sale so I have a horrid feeling we're going to have to move again in 6 months. But 6 months in that house should be nice, I hope. Now I'm just spending most of the time sorting and packing and clearing, and trying not to overdo things!

And finally, today my postman delivered some voice recognition software, courtesy of Tauret (Hope - thank you so much :) I'm so sorry I haven't sent my half of the swap out yet). I haven't tried it out yet (this post has used up most of my typing time for the day!), but I'm hopeful that it will allow me to do a great deal more in future. We'll see :)

So. The Pain

I think typing causes a great deal of my pain. In the last post I attributed the pain to weaving. So I stopped weaving on Tuesday 22nd August. However, this Monday, 28th August - a whole week later, I was in excruciating pain. I took painkillers (which I never normally do) and applied the anti-inflammatory gel twice... eventually I managed to fall asleep after being in floods of tears for about 2-3 hours.

I was so upset partly because it bloody well hurt, and partly because I'm scared for the future. If I'm like this at 25 what will I be like at 30? 40? What on earth will my career be? Part of the reason for applying for a part time PhD is because I know that I can't work fulltime right now, unless I'm working fulltime in say a clothes shop. Before I started my MPhil I was a successful college administrator running a department. I always thought I'd maybe go back to that but I can't - it involved far too much computer use. And really, most jobs nowadays do.

I'm also worried because I'm in a much worse state now than I was a year ago, and I hardly *do* anything now. My arms are just degenerating, despite all the rest and exercises that I do.

And what caused all that pain? Well, put it this way: I finished my first 5000 word chapter on Sunday evening, and spent Monday painstakingly looking up references for footnotes. I had been doing my exercises every 45 minutes, and Mr Bee has posited that maybe the exercises could be causing the problem too. It is possible that the stretches I do for my forearms is impacting on my tennis elbow (which was the Monday night pain). I haven't done any exercises since then, didn't go to yoga today either :( but I will have to restart some general stretching tomorrow otherwise the forearm pain gets bad.

Since Monday I've had a break from the computer by doing a lot of reading in preparation for chapter two. Tonight I'm having a 'catch-up on email' session, and then tomorrow I'll start chapter two. And I have to keep telling myself that during my breaks I don't have to feel bad about not doing any fabric crafts or web-surfing: I have plenty of other things to be getting on with, like going through all my photos and putting them in albums.

And I'm worried about the degenerating thing. I'm going to stop using the anti-inflammatory gel unless it is *really* required: I'll go with 10minutes worth of ice-application first. I don't like using strong medicines, and I do tend to use a lot of the gel. I don't know whether it can cause problems, but I've been using it off and on for a year now.

As for knitting (you know, for when I finish the photo albums ;) ), I'm not doing any until I've finished my MPhil. And then I'm only going to do 20 stitches a day. I plan to put a load of stitch markers in every 20 stitches on Tempting, and work on that. If I can manage 20 a day with no probs I'll move onto do a row of Branching Out per day, which is about 25 stitches per row. Any pain and I'll stop.

I'm sure I must sound like a boring stuck record (which is why I don't post on the Knitty forums anymore, LOL!), but if you do have pain you need to STOP. If you can catch it early then you won't be in such an unbelievable mess like me.

Ah... A Knitting Blog.

I thought this was the ideal way to log my current obsession. Hopefully I can keep track - and on top of! - my wool* stash, and not start too many works in progess!

I have suddenly become obsessed with knitting. Every few years since the age of six or so I've picked up needles for a while, but quickly tire of knitting without a purpose. All I could do was rectangles in garter stitch, knit incredibly slowly, incredibly tightly, with very wobbly edges... A dear friend has been knitting for some time, and then a month or so ago, on the day of Live 8, Mr Bee finally let me go to Hobby Craft. Within those hallowed walls I was like a kid in a sweetshop. At first I managed to limit myself to a couple of packs of buttons, but then my eyes set upon the mezzanine floor... the knitting floor.

I decided upon an electric blue ball, and a dove blue Sirdar snowflake ball. I got the cheapest needles there - children's 4mm Pony needles, one red one yellow - with smiley faces on the ends. We went home and watched the concerts, and I began to knit an electric blue rectangle, knitting little ghost shaped buttons into it. I decided that this wasn't knitting without a purpose, this would be the front panel of a skirt.

When I finished this panel I moved onto the snowflake wool. Another rectangle... this would become an armwarmer. Unfortunately I ran out of wool before I finished the second armwarmer. On a hunt for more wool I found a giant cone of 'twizzle' wool for only 99p in blue hues. I thought the funnest thing to do with this wool would be to knit it on big needles, so I picked up a pair of 10mm. I began knitting another rectangle: this would be the front panel of a jumper - big, holey and webby from the thick needles and thin wool.

I finished this rectangle and made a further 3 - a back panel and sleeves. Currently they're hanging up awaiting seaming - the loose gauge means there's a lot of stretch and sag in the rectangles, so they need to hang fully before they're stitched together.

Then my friend visited and showed me how to purl, and her Stitch'n'Bitch book. I discovered that I do actually knit right-handed after all - as a lefty I've often turned down the help of others thinking that they can't help me properly. I was quite upset to discover I was knitting right-handed all this time. But I was thrilled to learn how to knit properly. I bought my own copy of S'n'B, and due to a mix up ended up with Stitch'n'Bitch Nation as well. Both books have nice patterns I hope to try soon.

I've bought more wool since. Two more cones of the blue hued twizzle (partly because it's cheap but partly as I'd like to make a blanket), a skein of Wendy shimmer in a similar colour combination to the twizzle, and some blue and grey Wendy Pampas along with my first pair of bamboo needles.

Then there was the holiday to a German Goth festival... The festival and band t-shirts were so expensive I decided to spend my money on... yeah, you guessed it! I did buy some actual wool this time. I was surprised to find out the 'wool' I'd bought from Hobby Craft was either 100% polyester or acrylic. In Germany I was surprised at how cheap the wool was - as cheap as cheapy acrylic in the UK. I bought 4 balls (actual balls) of beautiful pearlescent turquoise yarn - about 55% Merino wool, the rest is synthetic. I also picked out a ball of white/grey/black-hued pure Merino from the bargain bin. I have to say, I much prefer the feel of the mix, it's so soft.

My friend thought I was bonkers when I went back and bought a further 6 balls of the turquoise... But I wanted to make sure I definitely had enough to finish a project. All in all I spent 20EURO/ £14 on 11 balls of wool that would cost me about £33 in the UK.

I've also pulled out everything I've knit in the past and balled it up. This wool doesn't amount to much, but can be used for accenting - at the moment I'm using it to practise on. I have all the needles from my grandmothers - though I do need to get a needle gauge and sort out what I have and haven't got.

I knit when I travel. I knit when I watch TV... I guess this may all have been triggered by the need to procrastinate, but ultimately I do enjoy it, and I have a feeling that this time, I won't be putting those needles down any time soon...

* Yeah. I'm English. I mean yarn.
** Yes, I mean skein.