Omorka's Lair

Okay, I have several knitted hat patterns here, and some of the sizing is just not making any sense. I have a couple of patterns for which their women's size (or medium) is clearly larger than the men's size (large) for other patterns, and the stretchiness of the knit (or lack thereof) doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.

Flist, if you would please do me a favor, could you:

(a) post your hat size, if you know it (I have enough friends who wear fedoras or panamas that this should be a simple matter of checking inside the crown)

(b) if you don't know it and you have a tape measure around, could you measure your head circumference (parallel to the floor, just above the eyebrows) for me?

I'm a 21 1/4" circumference, which puts me somewhere between a 6 3/4 and a 6 7/8 hat size. I vaguely remember my MOB fedora being a 6 7/8, so that sounds right.

Let me here stop and say, just for the record, that I'm a product fibercrafter.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this particular dichotomy, a product knitter (or crocheter, or weaver, or . . . ) is one who pursues her or his fibercraft so that they can have the finished objects produced by the craft. You look at a pattern for a particularly clever hat, you say "hey, my MIL needs a hat, and that's pretty," and off you go, with the end result being a nice warm fuzzy thing you can hand to her in the hospital. (For instance.)

The other type is the process knitter (crocheter, etc.), who pursues her or his fibercraft for the sheer joy of knitting/crocheting/whatever. A process knitter will look at a particular skein of yarn and need to know what it feels like around the needles, or pick up a new technique for the sake of trying it out. They find the feel of the craft itself soothing, or even meditative.

Now, very few people are pure examples of either type. Someone who was purely a product crafter would take little or no joy in the feel of the yarn and the needles, and in the long run would probably be better off getting someone else to do it and paying them for it. Someone who was purely a process crafter would become bored with each project as s/he mastered the technique, got used to the yarn, etc., and thus would leave pile after pile of unfinished projects behind hir, never completing anything. (For those of you who are Myers-Briggs fans, yes, there's a little bit of the J/P distinction here.)

I am a bit of a process crafter in that I like learning new techniques, like felting, filet crochet, and lace. I also hate waiting for things, so having a fibercraft project as something to occupy time that would otherwise dribble away is a good idea for me, and that's sort of a process thing, too. But what I really do this for are the FOs, the things coming off the needles. Even if I'm not going to be using them, even if they're gifts for someone else, it's the thing done that pleases me, and the sense of competency of having done it, rather than the quiet joy of each stitch as it slides past.

And I am in the midst of a flurry of FOs. Getting Cobweb off the needles is one of the best things that's ever happened to me - I've gotten a Foliage and an Urchin done, and now I'm finishing up a crocheted tote bag that has been languishing in the corner for the better part of a year.

I also am realizing just how many FOs I actually have. It's not a trivial number. Granted, they're almost all either hats, bags, or shawls, but still.

Finished Urchin last night. The grafting wasn't a big deal, except that in the Twirl it's difficult to tell whether you're doing it too loose or too tight, so the stitches on that row are even less even than anywhere else. I did it on 10.5 needles, not having the 7mms called for by the pattern, and made the Large size to try to compensate, which was probably a mistake, although not a huge one - it's a skosh too large, but I think I'll live. I'll do the next one in the Medium size instead. Also did an i-cord stem, which I think I made too long but eh.

Too lazy to put photos in here, so here's two links to my LJ Scrapbook instead.

Free to good home: a whole bunch of acrylic yarn.

Story: back in the long ago and far away, I participated in a yarn swap with a lady in Canada. Due to a miscommunication (which I am not entirely sure was completely unintentional on her part) I ended up paying about $20 extra for the shipping on her package - which was quite large, but completely full of cheap acrylic yarn from the Canuck equivalent of JoAnns, rather than the 50/50 cotton/acrylic blend I was promised. (This is one reason I have not participated in any crafting swaps since.) Being a packrat, and not wanting to feel completely ripped off, I have kept the yarn around for many, many years. In the process of going through my stash to catalog it for Ravelry, having become even more of a yarn snob in my old age, and with a new yarn shipment coming in, I have come to the decision that this stuff Needs To Go. There's also some old acrylic stuff I picked up when it was being clearanced out at Michaels, back when I worked there ($1.00/skein - 30% employee discount = really cheap yarn).

( Here's what's up for grabs: )

The catch: whoever wants it has to take the whole bag. No fair asking for just one kind, unless you agree with someone else to split it and I don't have to worry about it. And I'm not shipping this anywhere. You come pick it up, or we arrange to meet somewhere and I hand it off.

Any takers?

Knit Picks is clearancing all their Twirl yarn out. It's a boucle-style alpaca-and-wool bulky-weight mix, with a nylon binder thread. Basically, it's Lion Brand Homespun done right, except in solid colors, not their sorta-kinda-marled look. Unlike Homespun, I can knit with it and not split the yarn constantly. Like Homespun, it's hard to make even stitches in, but in this case, it doesn't really matter that much.

I got two balls of their Fog colorway to do Urchin from the Fall '07 Knitty. I'm almost done, and it's shaping up beautifully. Just my luck to fall in love with a yarn that's being clearanced out. So I did what any sane girl would do and bought more so I can make several more of these hats in the same yarn (different colorways this time). Also picked up some undyed wool worsted weight to try Kool-Aid dying with (hopefully that'll become something interesting) and some interesting-looking tweedy stuff.

My three skeins of Brown Sheep Prairie Silks came in, too - I'm going to try the Pick-Up Diamonds Tam from the Winter '04 Knitter's Magazine. I tried that once back in '05, but made an inappropriate yarn substitution without sufficient body to hold the hat's shape, and a shapeless tam is a berry-picking bag that happens to be sitting on your head - it looks ridiculous.

I'm kind of on a hat kick right now. After spending what feels like eons on Cobweb, and with another long-term project (the Rona lace shawl) on needles, it feels really good to do small, week-or-less projects and just have them there to use or give away. (I also didn't get a photograph of my crocheted firecracker-red shawl for wren_chan before she skedaddled off to Colorado, which I feel stupid about.)

But - I'm spending too much on my hobbies right now; between yarn, needles and hooks, perfume oils, and beads, I have plenty to keep me busy and I need to stop buying new stuff. If nothing else, I don't have room for another stash box, either beads or yarn. I think what I've got will hold me until I start ordering stuff for holiday presents in September. I might pick up the Options set in the nickel-plate when I do that, so I can use them for two-circular-needle stuff, but honestly, I've been cataloguing my tools on Ravelry and trying to get my stuff organized and I have plenty of needles. The only things I'm missing, except for DPNs which I'm trying to avoid for the most part, are an L hook (although I need to find my E hook; I can't imagine where it's gotten to unless it's hiding in my stash boxes somewhere) and circulars in some of the smaller sizes (I have 4s and 5s but nothing smaller right now, and if I'm seriously going to do lace - or socks - I need to pick some up at some point).

The new umbrella swift and ball winder came in today, along with the nostepinne. I'm going to have to take a picture of the latter - if I ever do proper Harry Potter cosplay, this thing will make a wonderful wand.

So now, after a veritable orgy of winding, I have all my hank yarn in flat balls. This will make working on the laceweight shawl much easier. Of course, now that I've wound everyhitng up and put the swift and winder away, I have one more skein of a different laceweight yarn coming in. But I'll deal with that when I get to it.

Glad something nice happened today.

Finally broke down and ordered a ball winder and a swift (along with a proper nostepinne) rather than face winding two more 440-yard skeins of lace-weight yarn by hand on a dowel. Hopefully, these will arrive early next week, before I exhaust the current ball. I feel a little embarrassed making such an extravagant purchase, but on the other hand, it's coming out of my birthday check from my mother, and I suspect that she would approve of fiber-based purchases.

In the course of hunting for the nostepinne, I ended up looking at several spindles and spinning wheels on the same website. Now, I'm not a spinner; my mother owned a wheel, and I played with it a few times, and I've toyed with a drop spindle a couple of times. The number of times I've muttered about the colors and types of yarn available for what I wanted to do, and wished I could spin and dye my own yarn to exactly match what I had in my head, can be counted on the fingers of one hand without even using the thumb. But I looked over the less expensive wheels anyway. I know better; I know I would never actually use one enough to justify the expense. But it would be awesome to have one, to have the option of spinning my own yarn if I wanted to.

I have, in my possession, at this moment:

- A large plastic crochet hook about 11 mm in diameter, which I think is a size O or P, unlabeled
- An H hook, aluminum, in the style that I like
- H, I, and J hooks, matching, aluminum, in the style that I can't stand
- 5 G hooks, aluminum, only one of which is in the style that I like
- A J hook, bamboo
- A D hook, steel
- An N hook, in the style that I like
- An afghan hook, same diameter as a size 8 knitting needle, which would make it, what, another H?

I found all of these because I wanted the N hook and have been tearing through my crafting stuff looking for it. I note a disturbing absence of the F and E hooks, or my one thread hook. I also don't know why I have this many G hooks, since I use the H and J hooks a lot more.

Clearly I need to make myself a hook organizer of some sort. Failing that, I need a plastic tube to keep them all in in their current disorganized state.

I'd worry that my knitting needles were in the same state, but most of them currently have WIPs on them, and most of the ones that don't are in the same bag the afghan hook was in.

I made a crocheted purse with the leftover Lamb's Pride and Kureyon I've had lying around.

To felt or not to felt, that is the question . . .

I didn't even screw up my sleep schedule that badly, and I have a headache. One bad enough that I missed last night's show, for which I feel really bad. :( I've missed all of them since the beginning of Winter break. Hopefully, I'll feel well enough for the April one . . . it falls between UIL and CMA, at least.

Finished my fingerless gloves/gauntlets. Will post a picture when I think I can get the camera to behave. I have to admit, while the colors are gorgeous and they're certainly warm, I'm not thrilled with the Kureyon. It's scratchy and inconsistent in texture. I guess the next stop in the colored-wool experiment is Koigu, which I'll have to order - maybe I'll tackle Charlotte's Web when I finish Cobweb.

Also finished Vision of Escaflowne, which was wonderful up until disc 7. Disc 8 was highly disappointing. ( Complaints with possible spoilers )

More caffeine, I think. Cold. Non-fizzy.

( Ramble )