domingo, 29 de abril de 2012

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week - Day 7 3KCBWDAY7 "Balanced Crafting?"



Hullo! I'm back... Shit rained on me (not litterally, thank god) during this week, its a shame I couldn't participate in all the days :/
But fuck it, lets not focus on the negative and lets talk about this day's topic: 



Crafting Balance Are you a knitter or a crocheter, or are you a bit of both? If you are monogamous in your yarn-based crafting, is it because you do not enjoy the other craft or have you simply never given yourself the push to learn it? Is it because the items that you best enjoy crafting are more suited to the needles or the hook? Do you plan on ever trying to take up and fully learn the other craft? If you are equally comfortable knitting as you are crocheting, how do you balance both crafts? Do you always have projects of each on the go, or do you go through periods of favouring one over the other? How did you come to learn and love your craft(s)?



I can both knit and crochet, and I tend to have at least one project of each going on. However I find really hard to "read" my crochet or, the yarn gods help me, follow a crochet pattern. A peek at my projects will probably tell you that I seem to have a little problem when it comes to using equally both crafts...
For me crochet its only for doing toys and for doing small lace pieces, like doilies, even though I've seen all those beautiful crocheted garments, I can't seem to wrap my head in the idea that you can actually make clothes with a hook. In the other hand I tend to use knitting for making all the other stuff that aren't toys or  doilies...

Want Evidence?

Exhibit A- Crocheted doilies








Exhibit B - Amigurumi = crocheted  toys


















Ignore his lack of eyes, I'm a very lazy person...

I should rename him to Pascal xD




















Crocheted clothes/gloves/hats/dead raccoons:




Now, what If we look into my knitted projects?
Hats






a cardi



A few pairs of socks



















shitloads of scarves


With a cameo apeareance of Momo the cat...



See???

Well dear readers ( you guys exist right?) This marks the end of my first KniCroBlo, it was fun,and I would've liked to participate more, next year I'll try not to be a slacker and get things done before hand... Now I need to start catching up with all the blogs that participated....
If you want to read more posts about balanced crafting (or the lack of it) click the first pic  of the post...

miércoles, 25 de abril de 2012

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2012 - 3KCBWDAY2 "Photography Challenge"


Today's topic was actually a sort of challenge, we're suppossed to take creative and inspirational pics, related to our crafts... Technique wasn't important here, creativity and imagination where supossed to guide our mighty camera lens into epicness...

Now, yours trully, even thought likes to boast about having a great creativity, was baffled by this challenge (I'm gonna stop talking in 3rd person now, I'm already doing my best writing in crappy english). In had absolutely now fucking idea of what to do... Maybe something related to the evil and scratchy scarf of doom? or maybe something involving my cats? What, in the name of everything wooly, could I do for todays challenge???

The Inspiration came, once again from the water... Specifically from this cute yarn...





I had this awesome visions about water lilies and ponds made of yarn... I was a genius! This would work perfectly!!

Sadly, my mind is able to create really intricated things... Things that my clumsy hands not always can mimic... Before showing the pics, I'll say that in their original form, they are really crappy... After almost an hour of sheer frustration, because I couldn't put together what I had in mind, I decided that Photoshop would make up for my clumsyness... After all, everything looks better woth photoshop right?

The waterlilly, came up looking like this


And after playing with it in photoshop, it came looking like this:



It still looks like crap...
After the waterlilly fiasco, I tried again... The original pics are still crappy, but the photoshoped version, don't look THAT bad... 

From, this

To this:


And from this





To this:




They kinda look like children's drawings... And I kinda love/hate them...


Wanna see more blogposts with awesome and kickass pictures that put mine on shame? click the first image of the post :D



lunes, 23 de abril de 2012

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2012 - Day 1 3KCBWDAY1 "A Colorful Mind"



 "Colour is one of our greatest expressions of ourselves when we choose to knit or crochet, so how do you choose what colours you buy and crochet or knit with. Have a look through your stash and see if there is a predominance of one colour. Do the same with your finished projects - do they match? Do you love a rainbow of bright hues, or more subdued tones. How much attention do you pay to the original colour that a garment is knit in when you see a pattern? Tell readers about your love or confusion over colour."

Its the first day of this year's Knitting and Crochet Blog Week... And I'm bouncing of excitement! This will be my first time taking part in it... I hope to somehow manage to get all the posts ready in time -I had this unrealistic vision of myself having all the week's posts done by last saturday-. Now, lets get this done :D

Today's topic was about color, how we relate to color, and how we use it in our knitting (or crocheting)... We were encouraged to look into our knitter-ish soul (our stash)  and our projects, to see if there was a predominating color...  
So, how about if we ask to my stash, and projects, about my favorite color?

this is the first picture I take to my stash... Its bigger than I thought,
but still,  small in comparison to others I've seen


Its pretty balanced right? There is a lot of blues and greens...




And a fair amount of reds, pinks and such.... 



I even have a bunch of whites, beiges and nudes or whatever they're called now...



The browns and yellows seem to be the minority here... probably because I'm not very fond of those colors...
Now, if we look into my projects, you'll see a bunch of toys, freeform blobs, and mostly stuff I've made either to sell or to give as gifts... yeah, I'm not much of a selfish knitter... There isn't a lot of "me" in there...

Now, what if I look into my wardrobe?


Shitloads of T shirts, either black, or in dark emo colors... I don't pay a lot of attention to my clothes, I guess I should, but meh...

Lets take a look to my archaeological records, the skein of memories... Mostly pinks and reds



with splashes of the other colors




According to my stash and projects I'm a fairly balanced person in terms of colors right?

LIES!!

The truth is that I'm pretty obssesed with two colors, although, properly speaking, its actually a whole family of colors, that I've started to arbitrarily call Oceania family (teal, aqua green, and blues) and the absense of light (black). Acording with some theories about color, black isn't actually a color, but the absense of light, and white its actually the absense of color... Cool isn't it?
The black its a reminiscense of my teen years as a pseudo goth... And the "oceania family" its my new found love, ever since I joined Ravelry I've been obsessed with them... A quick google search about these colors, will tell you about healing, fertility, elegance and other stuff, that while might be true in some level, I don't think it applies to me, at least not entirely... The reason why I love all these colors it because they remind me to ponds and seas. These are bodies of water... Acording to Jungian Psycology, the water its the representation of our subconscious mind... There you have it, my love for these colors talks about a reconnection with my subconscious mind...
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On a less intense and existentialist tone, I think my usage of color in my knitting has to do a lot with both the fact that  in my country there isn't a lot of choices in terms of colors, so until I can afford to buy things online, I have to settle with what I find around. A trip to a LYS can be pretty frustrating: 
-Me: Excuse me, do you have any tonal yarn?
-Tonal yarns? whats that? Here, have some variegated acrilyc yarn
-Me: hhhmmm, okay, how abou Self-Stripping yarns?
- Self-Stripping? How do you eat that shiet?Why don't you buy some variegated yarn?
-Me: and Self-patterning sock yarn?
-Self-patterning sock yarn? Stop fucking around and buy moar VARIEGATED YARN!!
-Me: No ma'am I don't want anymore fucking variegated yarn!!, if I ever buy more variegated yarn I'll simultaneously explode and implode creating a black hole of variegated doom!! Stop offering it to me!!!!!

But, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention... I've managed to succesfully create a somewhat crappy self-stripping yarn, all by myself...

kiss my ass Kauni!



It looks pretty cool right? Once I get the hang of the trick I think I'll make one with really long color repeats...


Ok, I'm gonna stop now... I gotta save a bit of inpiration for the rest of the week! Click the first pic of the post for more colorful blogs, You're a Genius Eskimimi!!

jueves, 19 de abril de 2012

Enchanting your projects - Part II, a cardigan, Gauge and Stress

uuhhmm, yeah... College keeps taking more time than it should.... Here we go, from where we left it last time....


One of my aunts, an elderly lady, asked me to knit her a sweater ... TO ME ... I had never done anything like this in terms of complexity, or size, a sweater for me was one of those titanic projects that took months and miles of yarn to finish... Scared shitless as I was I didn't dare to say no, instead smiled and said "sure it'll be easy!" ... I spent hours looking for patterns in Ravelry, until I finally decided on Astral, mainly because it didn't seem particularly difficult, didn't had raglan sleeves - I find those horribly intimidating -  and used cotton, which is particularly easy to get here ...
Making this sweater, and doing it right,  was so important that I even did something that I almost never do: I knitted a swatch even though we all know that swatches are fucking liers, I was careful to maintain a good tension and to carefully wash and count the stitches... With yarn and needles in hand I started knitting. 


I did the back first, because I figured it would be the most annoying thing to do ..With each stitch I knitted, I kept thinking "she'll love it, she'll like it a lot, it'll look great, she won't stop smiling".






Now, I can boast of being a patient and persistent person - I mean, I'm a fucking knitter, you must have at least an ounce of patience in you to learn something like that, but as most people, I tend to get frustrated, I am also a bit cynical, and very foul-mouthed, in case you haven't noticed already... However with this project I really tried to keep my frustration levels to a minimum, and keeping that sort of mantra in mind when working on the sweater ...
All went well, I finished the back and the left front without many problems... When something terrible happened, a fucking college report, it was imminent and I freaked out completely, this essay sucked the light out of my soul -along with several days of sleep, thank you very much- but I kept knitting, like nothing happened, until it was time to make the armhole decreases, where for mystical and random reasons I compared the left front that was already finished and that fitted perfectly with the back, with the one I was knitting.


It was something like this...





The difference was simply abysmal, the right side that didn't passed from the armhole decreases was bigger than the entire left front... There was no way to solve this by blocking and stretching the left side, plus the resulting fabric on the right front was visibly softer and open. There was no other solution, I had to frog it.






While I groaned and ripped the evil front, I couldn't stop wondering "What the hell did I do? Where did I went wrong?" Until I remembered, I had been quite upset and worried last week while writting that essay... That was the only unusual thing that I could remember and that could've had an impact on my knitting. Stunned, and with a new respect - and hate- for the gauge I started again.


 I managed to finish the left front without much trouble - just a hand cramp that left me out of action for a week, but that's material for another post. I started the sleeves, 2AAT to keep my tension even from one piece to another.






I was done with all  the pieces, I blocked, seamed and ironed the cardigan, always trying to keep the mantra in mind...


When I gave it to my aunt, her reaction was something unbeatable. She had been depressed for some time for an injury she had, we were even beginning to fear the worst, but while seeing the cardigan her eyes lit up, and a huge smile crossed her face ... Its most likely that her joy was due to the fact that that cardigan was one of the few good things that had happened in a while, or simply was due to the surprise of a new gift, but I couldn't help thinking that wanting to do something nice for her, all the time, dedication and good mojo I tried to convey to the garment had really reached her... The idea that maybe something I had done, which was imbued with my feelings and good wishes, could give so much happiness to another person, really justified all the work and all the time I spent working on it...






I guess that a more experienced knitter, who read this will probably think "yes cutie pie, you just discovered the warm water"... But for me, this was the first project that rather than making me proud to say "I did this, bow down and worship me", it gave me the chance to say "I made someone else happy"...


In the next post -wich I'll do my best to get ready faster- I'll try to talk about the most "technical" part of the magical cardigan, my struggle with setting in sleeves and some awfull thing that happened while blocking the garment...


Btw- Don't miss the Knitting and Crochet Blog Week... It starts on Monday...If you have a blog, and are a knitter or crocheter, give it a ry, it looks fucking cool :D

miércoles, 4 de abril de 2012

Digital Archaeology. Rescuing the Past - "Enchanting your projects"




Ladies and gentlemen I'm back, after the Bloh Hub Swap week, I decided to take a little break - wich is an euphemism for: I had to write a million of papers for college, and also, I had to help Burrito Bison to  escape CandyLand- Now, while I enjoy my Easters holiday, I think its the most appropriate time to start blogging again ...


This will be the first of those posts that I should have uploaded last year ... This one corresponds to the dates between late October and early / mid November ...


Warning!! Slightly Sappy post Ahead!! 




Introducing (finally) The blog's pet: Tako-chan

No, I'm not talking about sacrificing a virgin on the full moon to your WIP, nor to knit voodoo dolls to fuck with other people's life ... What I mean, or at least would like to, is to try to direct your emotions, to give them a purpose, a sense, while you're knitting ... I guess one way or another all the knitters, crocheters and spinners do, since as we knit a piece, the more we love it - no matter how much we want to burn it at times- and if we know who will be the recipient in advance, and that person has a special place in our lives, it'll be more easy to "inject" our feelings to the knitting...


Don't get me wrong, I 'm not saying that if you curse a few times to your knitting and start having delusions in which you hang from the ceiling with your yarn while you poke your eyes with the needles the resulting product will come alive and start to ravish inocent bystanders ...I think there is a difference - small, yes- between these completely normal, healthy feelings and a lot of "bad mojo" or negative emotions and how they can affect what we create...


Gee, A photoless post is kinda har to read isn't it?
 Here, more random kappa love

Time of a random story: One of my teachers in college always talks about the power of emotions, the miracles, quantum physics and neuroscience, all in the same discourse ... Somehow she always manages to make everything "click", forcing you to say "doh, that's obvious! How come I didn't see it before.". In a class she talked about the studies of a Japanese scientist called Emoto... The scientist conducted studies on how human emotions can affect water molecules giving them one shape or another.


If we take this for true -I'm not saying that it is, but lets say it is- and think about it, if your emotions can affect the shape of a water molecule wouldn't be possible that they were also able to affect what knit/crochet? I don't mean it just in terms of particles or emotions, but also in more "tangible" terms, I mean of course to gauge, that evil whore that has forced most of us to frog almost a whole fucking sweater sleeve, or the whole body of a shawl for not paying attention to her ... If you are upset or stressed, or just sad, it is very likely that your gauge will vary greatly from the gauge would get on a good day ...

I think thar the point where I'm trying to go (at least I think I have a point) is that in one way or another what we think and how we feel may affect what we do and what we knit...


Continuing the theme of emotions and the mojo and all that crap, in the next post I'll talk about how I "enchanted" the first sweater that I knitted, and how the gauge played with my feelings and my heart...



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As an aside:


The Blogging Topics for the Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2012 are up at Eskimimi's Blog... Go read if you haven't.... NOW




Edited Because My head was inside my ass, and forgot to add the first paragraph ¬¬