Fibre as a drug?

I've been thinking more and more that fibre really is a drug. I know there are lots of 'crack silk haze' jokes around the blogosphere, but I've begun to seriously think that this is certainly, at some level, true for me.

For a start - fibre really f***s my body up. I would not have had such bad RSI in 2006 to the extent that I was essentially crippled for most of the year without fibre, and would not now be in a state of 'pain management' if I gave it up totally.

I'm trying not to think of what my joints will be like in the future - I think I'm depending on scientific breakthroughs occurring within my lifetime (and sooner rather than later ;) ).

And I certainly have the addiction that obsession brings. Thankfully I've learnt my lession over SABLE (Stash Acquirement Beyond Life Expectancy) in the past with a different obsession (which proved to be a rather nice money-spinner on ebay over the past couple of years as I got rid ;) ), so I do deliberately attempt to not go overboard with fibre purchases.

But I do think I get withdrawal symptoms. Or rather, that working with fibre relaxes me to the extent that most other things don't tend to. Case in point: I have been working 7 days a week, all hours that I'm not sleeping (yes; I've been overdoing it), over the past month or so. I admit, I have been a tad stressed. The closest I've got to knitting was looking at buttons for my Fairly Easy, and taking my Swallowtail to university on Friday, knitting 8 stitches, then tinking them and putting it away as although my 'free time' is Friday afternoon when I help run a common room, there's slightly too much chatting going on to be in the complicated P5tog lace knitting mindset.

This week has been less stressful: importantly, I realised that I can't do everything, that I'm trying to do way too much, and to cut down. And I also made time (admittedly at the expense of other things which I hope won't turn round and bite me) for spinning. I spun 3 bobbins up over the weekend - one on Friday, one on Saturday and one yesterday.

I feel so relaxed! Importantly - although I let things slide over the weekend to spin instead, I don't feel ridiculously worried now that I 'wasted' that time and will never catch up (which I did last weekend when we went to the cinema and I cried on the way there that I was wasting valuable reading time and the world was quite clearly going to end).

I've been working with some fibre from Woolfest, it's very pretty:



I don't know what it's going to be. I made absolutely no attempt to pay much attention to my spinning - as long as it wasn't too thick or too thin and was holding together. It's definitely got a loooooot of slubs in, but I wasn't aiming for consistency. I initially thought it could be singles, but after filling one bobbin I realised I still had about 75g left (out of about 100g), so I'm going to go for two skeins of 2 ply I think.

Let's just say, I'm aiming for a surprise ;)

Yet more blithering

It's not a good week to not have the camera! Luckily I've remembered that I have photos from an old secret project which has finally been sent to its recipient, so I can post those soon.

Today has been a fun fibre day. Let me put it this way: my fingers are blue.

And no, I don't mean with RSI numbness. I forgot to wear gloves during some very hands-on Kool Aid dyeing ;)

Today I went to my first Guild meeting. There is a little bit of a story to this, which I think I have previously been too embarrassed to write about. There was a summer fete style event back in June, which I went to, because my friend had been the year before & said there had been spinners. So I packed up my [empty] spindle (at this point I didn't have the Bosworth, and had only spindle spun about 15 yards altogether!) and some merino top, and went to find the spinners. Well, it was a hot day, I was nervous, I was babbling... and I was completely incompetent at spinning! I hadn't pre-drafted, my hands were sweaty, I was being watched by lots of people, I kept dropping my spindle (as in, drop it and it rolls under a table, kind of dropping it). And my babbling was about how good at spinning I was, so I really was setting myself up for humiliation. Uh-huh. It was one of those days.

(This is why I was so thrilled that I didn't suck at spinning in front of the Majacraft designer and the spindling tutors at Woolfest! I had previous form for looking like a prat).

What I should've done was taken a pre-spun spindle or my Ella shawl, rather than trying to join in.

Anyway, today was a lot more relaxed. It was the first session after a summer break, so it was just a 'bring a craft & show'n'tell' type event. Seeing as I am not very good at meeting new people, it went well! (I think I brought the average age of the room down to about 79 ;) ). I got some spindling done on my Bosworth (my spindles tend to get neglected), showed off my half-completed Swallowtail, and got to see an Inkle loom in action.

When I got home I ended up knitting more of my cardie. I'd been talking about dyeing earlier, and all my yarn has arrived, so all that was left to do was guess-timate how much yarn I'd need to dye. I did this by knotting a marker onto the live yarn at yard points, and seeing how much I was using for each row.

The dyeing has gone OK, I think. Not quite as consistent as I hoped, but that's my fault for using drink as a dye! I ended up with an ounce of each colour yarn (hot pink, yellow & 'camel') which I wanted to overdye with blue Kool Aid to get purple, green and blue. 12 sachets of Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade, and I think I've probably saturated it as much as it will go. The yarn is 50% acrylic, so I knew it was never going to be completely overdyed. I might reskein and use one further sachet on each to make sure I've got as complete coverage as possible. I've certainly got good coverage on my fingertips!

Guard Knitter in the Knitting Mobile

I've had a really busy, and sadly knit-free, few days!

Tuesday was a big knitting day though. A friend of a friend was moving house, into a flat on a really busy high street, and was worried that people would steal from her van while she was carrying things in. I offered my services as a carrier, but what with my reputation as a bit of a cripple I was enlisted as Van Guarder instead. They were very worried that I'd get bored, just stood by a van for hours.

How can a knitter who is not currently in the throes of RSI get bored while standing around for hours?!

So I got to spend lots of Tuesday lounging against a van, knitting. I decided not to take the shawl because I'd been a bit cocky the night before ("OMG I'm such a great lace knitter, I have this pattern completely memorised, I can totally watch TV at the same time... huh? Why I am missing a stitch?"), made a mistake, and realised that I do need to concentrate for shawl knitting! Likewise mini-hats would have been too awkward - I'm planning to knit those on looooooooooooooong metal straights held under the armpit, and thought that might attract undue attention from any passing police officer.

So cardigan it was. I got heaps knitted on the body (I think standing up was really good for my arms - must keep me in good posture!), and now I'm trawling ebay for suitable colours to do the colourwork in.

Sadly I just haven't had a chance to knit since then, but the weekend is a-coming :)

My pledge is going well! Innocent even mentioned it both on their knitter-natter page, and on their main blog too! I'm really hopeful that it will succeed, and maybe others will set up pledges too. More hats for Innocent!

Remember, if you're planning to knit a mini-hat, you can sign the pledge too :)

T-minus 15...

(what does that even mean?)

Today I took receipt of one batch of newly bought stitch-markers. They aren't the ones I'd planned to use for my shawl (yeah, yeah, excuses excuses), but it means that if the second batch don't turn up sharpish then technically I have no excuse not to cast on!

And talking of technical things - it has been brought to my attention that some of my old posts are turning up in RSS readers. I have no idea why this is happening, but I'm not editing old posts right now. I will be soon though - I plan to start using the label function in blogger - so that's a head's up.

Oh, and Gods of Knitting Fate strike again. In my Start-itis post I mentioned that the Corset Pullover is languishing in my unknitted pile, despite the fact that I have the yarn for it and I even swatched (though it was so long ago I'll have to do it again). I've just found out that this week on Knitting Daily it is the week of the Corset Pullover. Think someone's trying to tell me something?

Start-itis

This weekend I may not have posted any more FO reports - but I have finished two more items! Yesterday I finally finished my Alien Illusion scarf! It's been on the needles since 2005 - so I've finally freed up my US5 Denises (I realise that they're Denises so I could just change the tips, but this is an achievement ;) ) ready for my Forest Sun shawl.

And then today I sewed up my new mittens. With the current weather, I may need them sooner rather than later!

I've noticed that I've got start-itis at the moment. I have start-itis for pretty much anything that isn't the Swallowtail Shawl knit with my Forest Sun skein. I find that I tend to do this whenever I'm gearing up to knit a major project. I did it the other year with the Corset Pullover (which is still not started). I think I'm just trying to put off the major thing, because I'm worried it'll end up all rubbish :-/

I mean, it's summer, I've just spun some delightful fibre to make a shawl... so why was I knitting mittens out of acrylic oddments?!

Last night I cast on for the Fairly-Easy Fair Isle cardigan from Stitch'n'Bitch Nation. I spent about an hour swatching and calculating, then cast on. After 5 rows, when I realised that what I'd knit so far was long enough to wrap around my body twice, I realised I may have made a teeny mistake in the figures, and decided to go to bed. This morning I recalculated, and it's looking a lot better. At least, a lot smaller.

The cardigan can be my brainless stockinette project (now I understand why people have these!), while I start on my lace shawl. Which I will do.

When the stitch markers I ordered from the US turn up.

Definitely. I'll start it then.

Honest.