Hey, long time no see! At least not here on HFD - I've been really busy over on Scarfaday lately. Turns out it's really hard to keep two busy blogs up to date all the time - who knew!? (Well, okay, I should have expected it and yet, I'm still kinda surprised. Colour me naive.)
I'm anxious to tell you about all kinds of stuff but I'm not gonna - not yet, anyway. "Why is this?" you may ask, and I shall tell you: it has to do with my new theme for the... month? Maybe a month, maybe a little less, maybe a whole lot longer. My theme for the time being, let's call it.
The theme is "Little by little," and my reasons for it are many. Mostly, I was trying to think of ways to make Scarfaday and all the other stuff I've got on my plate easier to do and more fun, but I also thought choosing a theme for a duration of time would be inspiring and helpful when it comes to making decisions - about design, about ways to spend my time and energy, about what to write on the blogs, ekcetera.
This particular idea for a theme suggested itself when I was starting to feel a bit burnt out on Knit-a-thon and Scarfaday stuff. I've always been a binger (as in"one who binges", tho' I am known to bing happily from time to time :) - I tend to do a whole lot of something for a while and then burn out and go do something else. One of the things "little by little" means to me is working on things incrementally - work a bit on a project, take a break. Work some more, take a break. Don't rush, don't burn out, get the job done all in good time.
"Little by little" is suggesting lots of design ideas, too. Things like working on items of a smaller scale, working on pairs of things that go side by side, working more slowly (something I've been thinking about a lot this year already), working in finer threads... It's going to be fun to see where all it takes me. :)
And so, although I'm dying to tell you all about tons of different things, I'm going to curb my inclination to write pages and pages about them all and just hit you with one thing at a time. I'll work through my list little by little, and maybe it'll be more fun to read about them that way, too. :) First up, the thing I've been meaning to talk about the longest: the joy of sock...amonth!
I was poking around online to see if anyone else had *aday blogs or something along those lines and somehow stumbled across a Sockamonth blog. People all over the world have signed up to knit a pair of socks every month and then post 'em when they're done. How cool is that!? I'm sure it will come as no shock at all that, since I'm a sucker for *aday (and, evidently, *amonth) projects and I've been loving the whole sock knitting thing since Mom got me hooked up with some needles and yarn at Christmas, I promptly signed up to participate.
My first pair of socks was due at the end of February but, happily, I actually already had them done. You remember those blue and green and yellow ones I'd been working on? When they last appeared on HFD, I'd just frogged the toe of the first one I'd finished in order to reknit it. I finished that up, Kitchenered the toes one both socks and was all set for Sockamonth! Easy peasey. :) Of course, since I didn't have to worry about getting them done in time, I promptly forgot all about posting them at all, and only barely remembered before the March 1 deadline. D'oh!
This is the picture I posted to the blog, mere hours before the end of the month. It's a bit cheesey, as we had friends coming over At Any Moment and plans for the evening, so I just bunged 'em on my feet, slapped some white paper down on the kitchen floor and tried to find some pleasing arrangement for mes pieds. It's kinda hard to get a good angle at your own feet without blocking the light coming from overhead, letmetellyou. Also: it's impossible (at least for me) to work your feet into a heart shape. This is probably for the best.
The socks way up at the top of this post ^^^ are the ones I've started for March. I quite like the colour and the railroad rib but I'm a bit worried that they're going to be way too big, 'cause this is stretchy yarn with some elastic in. Plus, I have no pattern for these in hand yet - I just cast on Some Stitches and am hoping that a pattern will miraculously appear in my inbox with the particulars sometime before I hit the heel. Also, I'm really anxious to knit a pair of toe-up socks and try out a really cool, really easy provisional cast on method I found on YouTube, so I might change gears and work on another pair for a while. A friend of mine gave me a toe-up pattern for fingering weight yarn at our last Unspun Heroes gathering that I might use, or I might use this pattern from Ravelry.1
Fortunately, the Sockamonth rules just say that you've got to finish the socks in the given month - doesn't matter a whit when you start them. Which makes it perfect for my little by little theme!
Hmm. My text to photo ratio is pretty high for this post. Oh well, what can you do? I'll try to talk less and pic more next time!
1. Yes, it's true: I've joined Ravelry. Ravelry, Twitter, Flickr, WeaveZine, I even rejoined Yahoo (gack!) and some obscure machine knitting thing... I've turned into such a joiner! I used to avoid all this stuff like the plague but now I can't seem to stop! Might have to apply The Theme(tm) to online groups as well. Ooo-arrr.
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2 comments:
I think that doing things a little at a time is a good idea. I get burnt out every year in the making for Christmas sales rush.
I could join a "sock a year" group if anyone is interested in forming one. But even one a month is too much for me!
My FIL tells a story of two of his aunts coming to Sunday dinner when he was a child. They would sit down with needles and yarn and start knitting and talking. He said that they MIGHT look down to turn the heel, and within about 30 seconds of each other , lay down the finished sock.
Hey, I love this! Did your aunts each knit one of a pair, or did it take them two weeks to finish a pair apiece?
Now I'm envisioning sock exchanges where you'd send a ball of yarn and a pattern off to two different knitters and get two finished socks back - each with their own quirks and personality. Yeah, so they wouldn't be quite the same size, but would that matter so much? When I knit a pair of socks they're not the same size anyway!
I'd be up for an annual sock exchange with you and anyone else who wants to participate - but wouldn't want to make it a calendar year and so have to finish yet one more thing during the Christmas rush. Maybe a June to June exchange? Whatcha think?
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