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This is the first completed knitting project, the weirdness is the yarn itself, not my terrible knitting, because, really, I’m not too bad at that, heh. It’s a little scarf for my niece Madalayna using Red Heart’s Baby Clouds yarn.

This is my new (as of yesterday) Poang chair and foot stool from Ikea. Unfortunately, it’s much larger than I expected it to be. Now, granted, it is smaller than the original chair I’d tried in the room, I’m worried that I just don’t have room for the foot stool. Unfortunately, again, I feel the foot stool is essential to proper lounging, heh. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do at this point, but there’s pretty much zero room to move around with the foot stool and coffee table… unless I move the chair back across the bedroom/lounge barrier. The chair on its own fits decently well, it’s just that foot stool… though I suppose it’s light enough to move out of the way whenever necessary.

I have given some thought to getting a little square cushion foot stool sort of thing, ala a padded box. I could stash that inside the side table, but… I just don’t know. This needs much more evaluation.

Now, this is the bar cabinet that I’d mentioned previously. I do have a bit of junk on the top, but… you have to keep in mind that Ikea packaging exploded lastnight all around the room. It’s utterly perfect for the location and storage/organization goals.

I’ve been chugging along with my knitting and actually have a little bit of sewing madness to throw in for good measure.

I went to Joann Fabrics yesterday to search out an alternative to walmart for knitting supplies. Now, granted… I’m not a huge fan of walmart, but there is that little fact of being the only place open at 2AM that really appeals to me. Anyway, as would make sense, I suppose, they don’t really sell any Boye knitting needles… since Walmart does. Unfortunately walmart doesn’t sell short (10″) needles any smaller than say size 9 or 10. They do sell the long (14″) needles in just about every size imaginable, but… that extra four inches seems like too much extra for scarves and such. Maybe I’m wrong, but… it just seems the extra weight and length would get in the way.

When I discovered, much to my horror, that little thing about not having the needles I wanted, I bought a size 7 circular needle and decided, as mentioned previously, to knit the scarf lengthwise, and just wait on getting the size 8 straight needle at Joann’s, but they don’t carry them.

I like Boye needles, if for no other reason than I like the visual appearance of the little metal cap at the end. The Susan Bates needles have this giant pencil eraser style end, and, well, I just think it’s hideous.

There is something about bamboo needles that holds this amazing allure… perhaps it’s something about getting closer to nature… using a tool that could have been created without the need of machines. Unfortunately, I tend to be an incredibly tight knitter and I believe that the bamboo needles (that Joann’s does have a decently nice selection of) would become increasingly annoying. I’m working on loosening up, having discovered that I add a fifth step to every stitch, so perhaps things will improve toward the direction of being able to use them… eventually.

I also noticed yesterday, while spending a good hour eyeing up all the various needles, that not all are created equal. Two packages out of ten, of the Susan Bate’s circular needles, had extremely smooth transitions, while the rest had this little machining bump/ridge. I remembered the annoyance on the Boye needle with that little ridge… it seemed like every single one of my stitches would catch on it. Almost needless to say, I bought one of those very smooth size 7 needles and quickly upon returning home transferred my current project.

Oh, such a joy not having that little bump is! Unfortunately either the smoothness is a defect, or the bump is a very common defect, completely eliminating the ability to purchase such needles online. Joann’s doesn’t carry a good enough selection, locally, so I will need to find some place to procure these for the future. One of my upcoming, someday, projects is to make a Hogwart’s wizard scarf (yes, I know.. but I have an affinity for Harry Potter, lol… my cat was even named that prior to his unexplainable disappearance). This particular scarf is knitted in the round as a tube and then joined at the ends, thus I’ll need a 16″ circular needle, of which Joann’s has none smaller than 9 — I’ll probably need a 7 or maybe even a 6, depending on final yarn choice.

This all makes me think it’d be wise to just buy a set of interchangable needles, either the Boye Needlemaster set (ouch on the wallet) or the Denise set… I just don’t think I’d like the Denise ones that much, given that they’re plastic/resin or whatever… they’re just not metal.

I’ve also discovered that knitting up 72″ (in theory) of a scarf lengthwise on 29″ circular needles is a bit of a pain. I just can’t find any, thus far, any longer. The knitting becomes terribly bunched up, but… at least the Susan Bates needles make the whole process smoother.

In the land of sewing news, and yes it has been a very long time since I’ve pulled out the sewing machine, I’ve decided to make new pillows for my lounge. I’ve had those purple polar fur pillows for well over a year now and I’m just completely sick of them. This also comes along with a general changing of how the lounge appears thanks to my most recent furniture addition. I’m through with the sort of overly modern silver and blue look. I feel the overall feel is just too bland and stark, just sort of bleh.

This new furniture addition is a Talbo kitchen cabinet from Ikea. I will eventually put up a photo of it in the lounge, but… like I said, eventually. My mother actually bought that as my Christmas present, heh. We originally went to Ikea to get a Poang chair, but saw the Talbo line was being discontinued and thus 50% off… so my $330 cabinet was… half that! Yay! It is utterly perfect, after a little hole-saw drilling for the mini-fridge’s power cord (it fits quite nicely in the cabinet area behind the door).

So, while looking for mysterious knitting needles yesterday I spyed some of this wonderful asian-inspired silky (meaning polyester/nylon) brocade. I just had to get a yard of it for new pillows… a sort of golden/brown toned fabric with these bamboo leaves on it (again, photo eventually).

I’m very inspired now with the new furniture and new fabric for pillows. I plan on getting some chocolate brown paint to do the closet doors… sort of warm up the room. The trick will be finding just the right shade of brown to coordinate with the steely blue, black, and other browns in the room, hah.

Anyway, eventually I’ll be off to Ikea with David today, must get that Poang chair for knitting, the couch is driving me to madness.

So, I’ve knitted a whole two inches of width on my current project, the 72″ (in theory) scarf. I do believe that my calculations were a bit off, because I believe I’m about halfway through that 210 yard ball of yarn, oops! Oh well, I suppose I can deal with a much more narrow scarf than originally planned. It’s a learning experience. ;)

Kate gave me a ball of yarn and a set/pair of Size 10 knitting needles for Christmas this year. I’ve been wanting to learn how to knit for quite a while, and actually had asked her (since she was the only person I knew who knitted that wouldn’t involve a plane ride to see) to show me how. I’d asked her to teach me back in perhaps July though, heh, but never quite coordinated a time and place, etc.

As it turns out I didn’t actually need her to teach me after all. I loaded up knittinghelp.com and just watched the videos. This was after, of course, going out and buying a ball of cheap yarn, because I didn’t want to turn the gift yarn into a mess on the floor. I picked this nice blue variegated stuff, only to discover as I knitted my first scarf — which turned into a dishcloth when I discovered the numerous dropped stitches and other mistakes — that this nice blue actually was more like an urban camouflage, hah! I know to be careful with variagated yarn now. ;) It’s a good thing I didn’t pick up the ‘nice woodland colours’ yarn I saw… because it’d look like I was getting ready for hunting season for sure.

Well, I finally finished that first scarf, after starting over. Unfortunately with starting over I lost a significant enough bit of yardage that the scarf is a tiny bit too short, not terrible, it’s certainly long enough, but it’s not really ‘manly’ long… ahem.

I wasn’t quite ready to start in on the yarn that Kate had given me, I wanted a bit more experience first… so I ended up knitting two scarves out of this Baby Clouds yarn on size 15 needles. One was narrow and relatively short for my niece, and oh so pretty was the pink, right? My mom wanted one, so I used the rest to knit up the same… just wider and longer. I’m so proud of myself though, zero mistakes… at least none that were obvious enough for my critical eyes to notice.

I decided to give circular needles a try, this time knitting the yarn that Kate gave me, but lengthwise. I just started about two hours ago, cast on 360 stitches… yikes. I’m almost done with the second row, heh… it will take forever, damn tiny (to me) size 7 needles! I figured though, that a lot of my time is ‘wasted’ by turning the needles around from hand to hand… so instead of doing 30 stitches or so, I’d do twelve times that many… much less flipping around. This is kind of a big ‘let’s hope I got this right’ sort of a thing… that scarf should end up being 6 feet long… Twenty stitches to make four inches… 72 inches, so I need 18 of those 4″ chunks, so… 18 x 20… 360 stitches to cast on. That’s on yarn that suggests, gives gauge, of 20 stitches to 4″ of knitting… on size 7, and that’s what I’m using. I guess we’ll see… whenever I finally get that huge thing finished, heh. I just hope I end up really having enough yarn to get it wide enough. I’m still a bit in the “uhh…” mentality when it comes to estimating yardage. I did find a chart/formula that helps determine yardage, but it’s for stockinette stitch and thus far I’ve been doing exclusively garter. Either way, I think with the 210 yards on the ball of yarn I should be able to get between six and eight inches of width. I can deal with it being a bit narrow, but too short makes it unwearable.

Yay, I can knit… ! :)