Whims and Plans

     At the last handspinners guild meeting, I asked a couple of people if they had yarn resolutions for the new year.  One said, to finish unfinished projects.  The other said, to make things for herself, since the Christmas gift knitting would be over.
     I consider these to be excellent resolutions.
     The trouble is, unfinished projects usually sit unfinished for a reason.  Some problem holds you up from finishing.  Moreover, I find it hard to resist the lure of knitting small gifts and charity donations.  It is fun to delight other people.  It's only when I get to the end of the year and reflect that I want to give myself a shake and tell myself to snap out of it.
     I am glad I made the things I did this year, even though they fell short of my ideal of "clothing, for me, in undyed or naturally-dyed colours."  The knitted pieces were made for other people to use as accessories or for dishwashing.  The yarn was in synthetically-dyed colours.  I prefer undyed or natural colours because they are beautiful and eco-friendly, but am willing to use synthetic for other people.
     Looking back over the amount of knitting I did this year, I probably put in as many stitches as go into two or three sweaters.  The stitches just went into different things.  I find that garter dish cloths are easy mindless things to make while talking with someone or watching TV.  I can sometimes knit a dozen stitches in a row on a dish cloth without looking.  Sweaters, not so much.
     For those of you who have been keeping half an eye on my progress, let me remind you of the story so far.  I have made a handspun, handwoven vest and I have made a språng vest.  I have yet to make a complete handknit sweater.  This despite having started two and despite having been a knitter for eleven years.  In contrast I have made enough dish cloths that friends have urged me to start keeping a tally for their amusement.
     You might remember the Scraptastic hat I mentioned in the last post.  I finally got it knitted in the correct size after four attempts.
     In light of my ideal of clothes for me and in light of the obstacles in the way, I have made some moves forward.  This has been in the areas of my purchases and the way I use Ravelry.  They are preliminary steps merely.  I still need to do the work.
     I purchased four online knitting classes on Bluprint (formerly Craftsy).  One of the classes is Button bands and Buttonholes by Anne Hanson.  I have no skills or experience in this area, and the lack has held me up from finishing the Cullercoats sweater.  The other classes are by Amy Herzog, and I'm hoping they will give me the skill of altering a sweater neckline, the problem holding me up from finishing the pullover in dark brown Rambouillet.
     I enhanced my stash of commercial yarn this year with a couple of sweater quantities of undyed wool.  If you haven't heard the term before, sweater quantity (SQ) is a term for enough of the same yarn to make a sweater.  One SQ is dark brown Rambouillet sourced from a single flock direct from the shepherd and the other SQ is a dark grey in wool pool fiber from a large knitting company.  Both are worsted weight.
     It is sort of a push pull feeling, owning an SQ.  I want the SQ to fulfill its destiny and be a sweater.  Having an SQ in the stash is like having money burning a hole in my pocket.  On the other hand, a sweater project feels like a lot of responsibility with many factors that could go wrong.  So I hang back.
     As I hang back, I have been looking at the Ravelry pattern database for worsted weight sweaters.  Have not yet found a design I like.
     Besides a sweater, I could use a SQ to make a shawl.  I feel ambivalent about a shawl.  I expect I would feel like a weirdo wearing one, beyond my comfort level with weirdness.  It is an appealing prospect to have a shawl to drape over a chair at the guild's annual sheep to shawl educational demonstration.  A number of handspinners I know do this or wear their shawl at the event.  However, my goal is to own a wardrobe, not educational props.  I can afford to indulge a whim, but I don't know if I can bring myself to do it.  Possibly the book I ordered, with a Faroese shawl pattern in it, will be as far as I go.
     I have felt, in the past month, that I need to focus my mind on finishing works-in-progress.  To that end, I have changed my view of my project records on Ravelry.  I used to have an Internet browser tab open to show the default view of thumbnail photos and captions for all the project records in chronological order.  I now have a view of only the thumbnails for current projects I've marked as works-in-progress (WIPs) and the thumbnails for old unfinished projects I've marked as hibernating, the ones that have a little ZZZ marked on them.  I now see a to-do list, whereas before I saw a jumble.
     The change is good.  But I find myself working on my Ravelry queue, lining up the next several projects to do, rather than actually doing projects and getting them done.
     I really only started using the queue feature this year.  I enjoy planning and it is nice to see a plan written down.
     This month I updated my Ravelry stash record for the first time in ages.  I played with the default settings on the stash section, to my benefit.  I found that with the list view I could see the names of the colours of each yarn stashed.  With this, I avoid the necessity of having to take photos of each ball to indicate colour on the thumbnail view.  This only works because the amount of yarn is small, the colour ways are solid not multi-coloured, and the colour names are basic and factual, mostly, not fanciful and vague.  Black, not Cosmic Night and such.
     I filled in my Ravelry library section for the first time ever.  I limited it to knitting books and handspinning magazines only.  I don't see any point in adding weaving and språng books.  Those books' drafts and patterns won't become searchable in the pattern database like the knitting books' patterns do.
     Finally, I discovered that I can use Ravelry's search function to find commercial yarns that are undyed or naturally dyed.  The details include where to buy the yarn.  This should prove useful.
     My Kanban board for fibre projects remains useful and up-to-date.  It shows me my options, tasks I've committed myself to do, and works-in-progress ranked by level of service (fixed due date, first in first out, etc.).  The board duplicates the basic information on the Ravelry project records, queue, and stash record.  It is just a different way of arranging it.  I don't look at it enough, though, I look at my main Kanban board.
     I created one thing this year that I'm proud of.  I made it after a lot of experimentation with a new material.  It was a shawl pin made with lost wax casting, using a matt wax gun to extrude hot wax and create the model.  It is a circle of bronze, textured, with a pin of textured bronze to match.  The texture was derived from extruding wax onto a bed of coarse salt, the kind you top pretzels with.  The idea for the texture came from a direct casting technique, hot metal poured onto rock salt, the kind you spread on icy walkways.  I'd either read about that or seen it done on YouTube, I can't remember which.  It wasn't anything taught by my metal instructor.  The texture reminds me of the rocky slope of the beaches on Protection Island and Newcastle Island back home, pitted.
     So that's how things are here in my wool room.  All the best to you in the new year, with your own whims and plans.