Draft Dodger, an apolitical post

Whenever I think about the fact that I am knitting a "draft dodger" it makes me think about burning cards and bras in the 60s. But no, this is an apolitical post, and I am making a "draft dodger" for my windowsill. I decided that I am using up whatever scraps I can find on it, and if I need to add a smidge of yarn from something larger, I will. But I hope not to have to.

I started it and some of the yarn was slightly thinner than the other yarn, which was pretty much your regulation worsted weight yarn. The thinner yarn came from a project that someone had started in a weaving loom that I bought second-hand. I wasn't a fan of the project and wouldn't have had the yarn to finish it if I had liked it, so I merely ripped it out and decided to use the yarn for something, though I didn't want to throw it out. I had little snippets of the yarn in different colors, so I thought that this draft dodger would be a good project for it, especially because no one would see the inside strands hanging out. I contemplated doing stripes, but quickly gave up that idea. Too annoying to carry the balls of yarn and not get them tangled. If I had just two colors, I might have done that, but I decided to go with the randomness approach.

So the problem with the slightly thinner yarn is that, well, the worsted weight yarn was the end and the slightly thinner yarn then is the next part of the dodger. Pictures would probably help, but I am not so fond of the idea of posting what greatly resembles a brightly colored and sometimes striped portion of the male anatomy.

I am hopeful that when I stuff the draft dodger, it will fill out in all the right places and will resemble a dodger and not the male anatomy...

Living Up to Expectation

So my friend got married, in a small, private ceremony with just family. Her mother decided that she wanted to have a party for her for her family and friends. So on Saturday, my mother said that she thought I should make my friend a blanket. I looked at her and said, "Are you kidding? I can't finish a whole blanket in a week!" But then, well, I did... Granted, I had off for Veteran's Day, but I managed to finish the blanket. I'm pretty excited that I was able to make it on such short notice. AND, I got rid of 8 skeins of yarn doing it! It's just basic -- just a plain single crochet with a size P hook (the big honkin' blue one). But I think I'm sort of happy with it. If I had more time, I probably would have ripped it and made it a little longer and narrower. As it happens, I kind of worked around my mistakes...

I hung it on my couch to take pictures -- I wasn't sure how else to do it...

Knitting Resolutions

In moving, I have learned that I have too much yarn. And yes, sadly, it is possible to have too much yarn. In particular, it is possible to have too much acrylic yarn. Acrylic yarn is the staple of my stash because I don't have a lot of money. I was also never really all that good at knitting, so I didn't know what I was buying. Or I would buy bulk instead of quality. Now that I have gotten better at knitting, I know I want to start using better yarns, and I want to treat myself to the experience. I am still a little nervous about screwing up more expensive yarn, but I know I would like to use better yarn more often.

So my knitting resolutions:

1. Make at least one charity project per month. This can be as small as a chemo hat or a square for a blanket that will be joined together by others.
   
2. Work down the stash before buying new yarn. I know that this is a pipe dream, but I am going to make an effort not to just keep buying yarn. So I am going to try to make at least two projects for any one project's worth of yarn that I buy.
   
3. Make scrapghans out of whatever leftovers I have that aren't really enough for anything else.
4. Finish UFOs.

Anyone else have any other suggestions of knitting resolutions?

Oddities of moving

A few things that I have discovered in moving:

I have too much scotch tape. I understand why this has happened. Whenever I go to wrap a present or something, I invariably cannot find my tape and I have to buy new tape. So I understand why I have more scotch tape than I could possibly use in my life.

I have about a dozen sets of tweezers. Unlike the scotch tape, I don't know where these all came from. I don't use tweezers -- I get my eyebrows waxed. I don't buy tweezers -- or at least I don't ever remember buying tweezers. And yet, there they were. In my medicine cabinet, the drawer of my night-table, one in my sock drawer. I don't know who is hiding tweezers among my possessions, but I don't particularly appreciate it.

And other than that, my big problem is that I just have too much stuff and not enough motivation. I feel like I'm not going to get everything done before Thursday, when the moving people are coming... I am definitely taking Thursday off so I can be here when they move us -- I may have to take Wednesday off, too, if I can't get everything done tomorrow. It's a little intimidating. I mostly worked all day today and got through a lot of crap. I'm taking a little break to watch the Penn State/Ohio State football game (Go Nittany Lions). And then tomorrow, I have to really do the rest of it.

What I Have Learned From Moving: A List in Three Acts

Prelude: The packing began in earnest today. The countdown is 13 days until I have to be completely ready to move.

Act I: Morning

• I have too many papers.
• I have too many books.
• I have too many candles.
  
• I have too much yarn.

Act II: Noon

• I have too many pictures.
• I have too many clothes.
• I have too many pillows (odd, right?)
• I have too much yarn.
  

Act III: Night

• I have too many shoes.
• I have too many dishes.
  
• I have too many CDs
  
• I have too much yarn.

Epilogue: In my next life, I want to be a minimalist. And only to buy the yarn I'm going to use.

New Digs

I put a deposit down on a new place to live today. It's great. I think it will be a really good place for me. It was time for me to leave this apartment, and the new one is in Hoboken. The good news is that it is about a half a mile from the PATH and the better/more dangerous news is that it is about half a mile from Patricia's Yarns. Hopefully, I can go and get lots of ideas for working down my stash before I go and spend lots of money on new yarn. But I'm excited about living in Hoboken. For many people from my area, it is sort of the pinnacle of destinations before you buy a house. It's where all of the bars are, where all of the young people are, it's not NYC (which turns a lot of people off) and it's close to public transportation. So we shall see. All I know is that I am hoping that everything goes smoothly and that I can pack up all of my garbage. I'm trying to throw away as much as I can and get rid of whatever I can...

Falling off the Face of the Earth

Oh, I had no idea it had been so long since I last posted. Whoops. Life is what happens when you're making other plans, right?

I started taking a baby sweater class with Patricia at Patricia's Yarns. During one session, these two women walked by and we overheard one of them say, "I'd like to take classes there but they're so expensive." Patricia and I had a good laugh over that one. For the three sessions, Patricia's class was $45. At three sessions, an hour and a half per session, that's $10 an hour. Minimum wage in NJ is $7.15 an hour. Yeah. She's barely breaking even on these classes! And I've learned a few new techniques that I can take into other projects, and I'm almost finished with the baby jacket (pictures soon).

I'm also making a shawl. I was looking for something fast and easy to remember. I started making one but it was much too difficult to remember how to do. But then I found the Crescendo Shawl, http://www.freevintageknitting.com/shawls/crescendo-shawl-pattern.html which I like because it is easy (cables on rows 3 & 7 but the rest is just knit and purl) and I don't have to keep looking at a pattern. As long as I remember to knit 2 before and after the cables on the 3rd row and knit 5 before and after the cables on the 7th row, I'm good. And I messed up on one row (I didn't discover it until much later) but you can't actually see it unless you know what to look for (I've asked non-knitting friends to find the mistake row and they couldn't). So I think I'm leaving it rather than knitting all the way back.

ScrapGhan, or The Garrett, reincarnated

I started another "Garrett." In some circles this afghan is called a scrapghan. Which is cute. But in my world, it will always be the Garrett. I'm not sure how I feel about this one, but it's a good way to work down the stash. There were a few balls, colors, etc. which were just too small to make it worth selling. And I started this before I knew that I had to sell all of my stash, so maybe some of it would have been worth selling.

But I'm finding that evidently, people don't want my yarn as much as I would have liked them to have wanted my yarn. Although I've raised about $100, it is nowhere near the $2000 that I need by the end of the month. Some friends have said that they would all kind of chip in and help me scrape the money together, and I will have to do that and pay them back as I get my paychecks. It's not how I wanted to progress, not how I wanted to enter my new job, but I suppose it is what it is... Not much I can do about it now.

Back to the Garrett Scrapghan, though. I may be donating it somewhere if I can find a good place, someone who will appreciate it. I may see how I feel about it when I'm done. Right now, I can't imagine it having a home in my home.

Sold some more yarn...

I am putting the thermometer on the right side of the blog, and will keep a running total for it there.

I'm not deducting my shipping costs, though to be truly accurate, I really should. It's too much math, though. As my law school friends all know me to say, "I went to law school because there was no math on the LSAT." So, you know, it will have to be an approximate.

Edited by a Moderator

Whoops. I got edited by the moderator of the Destashing group on Ravelry for saying that in addition to trying to sell my stash, I would also welcome any donations. Apparently, many people complained that I had put the donation part on. Who knew? I, of course, thanked her for her moderating, because I understand that one needs to keep the groups orderly and serving the purposes for which they were created, but I looked at the group's main page, and it says *nothing* about donations in any way. I am pretty good at reading into things, but I can't tell from that main page what would upset people enough to complain, or how putting the donation part would go against what the group was created to do.

In con law parlance, we would call that vague and overbroad. It regulates speech that the individual has no way of knowing would be regulated. I don't have a problem with a group being against a particular action. But please, let us know what that action is! Or give us some hint, at least.

Oh well. In any case, to keep the donation button present on the blog as I post more, I have made it a button on the right. Everything is very much appreciated.