I think this week has been the worst week I have ever had at work. ( Read more... )

I think I've just convinced myself to actually give my notice on January 31 as I was planning to do but had chickened out of. It's not ideal but not catastrophic. My notice period is two whole months so that still means I'll have to stay until March 31 which is AGES and I wish I'd quit back in October.

2015 continues to be the best year of my life (so far). All my hard work at the beginning of the year paid off; I got the coolest, most me job ever, and the mental health benefits I get from not being a student have left me with more energy and inspiration to Do Stuff than I've ever had before. (And I've impressed a lot of people at work, so I'm half expecting a permanent job offer so I don't have to go back to school. Or at least maybe the possibility of getting to work there again next summer.)

This post will be photo free because I really don't enjoy the photographing, editing, and other faff that goes into illustrated posts. Some of the things I'm going to write about have been badly photographed and posted to Instagram (petra_4_8) but the things I've made are invariably far prettier in real life than in pictures, so.

Knitting: Finished a purple laceweight alpaca cardigan that was going to be waist-length but fortunately ended up hip-length by complete accident. Currently working on a two-colour fair isle baby vest in a cotton/bamboo/merino blend that will be a display item in mum's brand new yarn shop that opened about three weeks ago. I unfortunately hate the yarn -- there's no give in it, which hurts my hands a lot! But it's very pretty and soft so it should be a great choice for anyone who knows they like to work with cotton.

Spinning: Hardly anything. Finished a Navajo-plied reddish alpaca and started a (hopefully) laceweight merino/silk blend on the wheel. Spun a tiny hank of laceweight angora on a drop spindle at the Renaissance market a few weeks ago. I hadn't tried to spin angora since last summer, and it was quite a revelation to see how much better my spinning is! I also think angora is very well suited for a super light spindle, because it gives you the time to draft it.

Historical sewing: I did finish a forehead cloth with rolled hems, a coif, and an apron. They are super duper awesome, and the apron especially makes the outfit come together. I've bought some linen fabric at fleamarkets, which I think may be appropriate for a dress/kirtle type thing, but I haven't had the time to think much about it, and I still don't know where to start!

Modern sewing: I bought a sewing machine in May! So far I've made a pleated skirt out of an Ikea fabric that has blue flowers on white, and a jersey dress with blue Dala horses on cream. The jersey dress has a circle skirt (the hem is 6 metres!), the bodice pattern was made using a tank top, and I drafted sleeves (!!) using an online tutorial. It's almost perfect in terms of fit (thanks to being in a stretchy material?!), and I learned so much about sewing jersey that the final seam (at the neckband) is really kind of perfect. Before I started sewing this summer, my entire sewing experience was a skirt in 2008 and a whole lot of mending the thighs of jeans, so I'm very happy with my adventurousness and progress.

(My work is related to education, and I sure do get a stab of envy every time I come across someone who is studying at one of the well-known textiles/tailoring/design schools. I have to keep telling myself that the hobby level is enough for me!)

1. School: Once we only had a few short weeks left until deadline on our humongous group project, I was able to face reducing my personal life to just eating and sleeping for a while in favour of FINISHING. And we did. The coming four days include: one exam, a few hours to proofread our thesis, two days to produce a presentation of our thesis and a critique/opposition type thing on another thesis (don't know what it's called in English?!), the start of our next module and the thesis defence. Today I sit around, revise for tomorrow's exam (it's a novel feeling to have had zero hours left over to care about it until literally the day before; usually I revise a little here and a little there but it has just not been POSSIBLE this time?! Fortunately my brain is awesome and I'm a pro at exam taking), take a walk, and maybe wind yarn (ON MY SHINY NEW NIDDY-NODDY) or start a pair of awesome feminist mittens or something. Whatever I feel like. I'm also NOT going to talk to anybody because I've been around people most of my waking hours every.single.day for like three weeks. Did I mention we FINISHED our thesis though? (Also I expect there will be a price to pay for having over-exerted myself, along the lines of not doing a lot in April, but it feels worth it because I know I have the resources to cope.)

2. Awesomeness: Last weekend I took a much-anticipated trip to the Edinburgh Yarn Festival with one of my dearest friends. It was awesome. I bought a niddy-noddy, a drop spindle, and tatting shuttles; also 800 g of yarn for a pair of mittens and a CABLED ALPACA SWEATER; and 700 g of fibre from various species and breeds and of various shades. I haven't been home enough in the last week to unpack it properly so it's all still lying in a pile on my floor next to my bed where I dumped it because I needed to fill my backpack with a laptop and textbooks instead. (I'm still impressed that I could fit 1.5 kg of fibre things into my hand luggage.) I also got to spend time with friends and new people, "meet" knitting world celebrities, and visit some of my favourite places in Edinburgh.

3. Personal progress: I'm working hard to conquer some of my deepest fears. And I'm actually making really good progress, in spite of how stressful school has been for the past ten weeks. I feel like I've joined the Renaissance Guild "properly" now, and I'm on my way to making knitting groups at least a semi-regular thing in my life. I've applied for summer jobs. These are all things I've been unable to even try to do in the past because I've had so many more urgent issues to work on, but after several years of sorting through all that other stuff I'm finally here and it's super hard but also kind of glorious. (I didn't realise until recently that I didn't even know what not being depressed for long stretches of time in one go looked like before. For me it's all about not automatically going "can I really be bothered to [do a thing]? Nope, sigh" all the damn time. I go on walks just because I love going for walks, and I do four loads of laundry in one go. I haven't found a way to keep on top of the dishes yet but other than that I'm keeping my flat reasonably clean in a sustainable way. It's not about constant rainbows and unicorns and sparkle, but less thick black mud to fight against.)

(My spinning wheel isn't cured of its bug problem yet. However, I have been spinning on it anyway, and I'm going to try a new thing today. The 12kg of fleece have been sorted and washed, mostly by my wonderful mother, and I have carded and spun some of it already. I Have Learned To Make Rolags!!! V. exciting. There are photos so maybe there'll be a blog post too.)

But today's topic: remember this fibre? It's yarn now.

( Six photos )

I am probably making a hat from it. Or mittens. But most likely a hat. :D

In the last hour I've had to realise just how many similarities my spinning wheel has to a Swiss cheese.

A couple of days ago, as I was wiping bird droppings* off it, I noticed tiny white bugs and completely panicked. Dad reassured me that it wasn't that big an issue and that there was a fairly easy way to treat it. So today I went and bought a kind of solvent, covered my balcony in newspaper, and brushed solvent over every inch of my wheel, taking particular care to get the stuff in all the insect holes. And there were so many. /o\

I don't know when I'll be able to spin again, or even how I'll know if the beasts are gone. However, the silver lining? I no longer need to feel like I shouldn't be dreaming of and looking for a more modern wheel. I definitely don't want to be wheel-less and I definitely love spinning enough.

________

* Funny story: a great tit has fallen in love with my flat. It's come in through my ever-so-slightly open window REALLY early in the morning TWICE. (The window in question is now closed until I construct a net thingy.) The first time it woke me up by flying repeatedly into the glass on my balcony door, and having a perch on my spinning wheel in between; the second it was doing something noisy on my kitchen table when I woke up (I thought it was pecking at something at the time but I wasn't really awake). The first time it got very stressed by my getting out of bed to open the door; the second time it just went and sat calmly on the wheel while I was stumbling over to the door. A few days before that second time it came and perched on my laptop screen when I was sitting out on the balcony, and I saw it just now flying dangerously close to my open balcony door, clearly on its way in until it noticed me. Of course I can't know it's the same bird but I really think it is. And while it's kind of cute and funny, it's also annoying because if I wanted bird droppings all over my flat I'd get a budgie or something. But I don't! Especially not on my wheel.

She's a bit of a fixer-upper...



At Easter I found a proper, lovely Scanian bobbin lace pillow at a fleamarket. This weekend I found an amazing spinning wheel! Never been as fond of fleamarkets as I am right now. :D

I think her name is going to be Margaretha.

( Three more wheel pics plus a cute surprise )


So yesterday I ordered 800g of sheep's wool, from a few different breeds, as well as pinkish red dye. I also went digging for the lots of angora wool I sheared off the one we had in about 2003-2007. I knew we'd had to throw away a lot of it because of moths a few years ago, and there had been a bit more of that since then, but I've got three good bags of it in the freezer now! Such a luxury to be able to spin such fibres as a beginner.

My next finished tatting project is this bookmark.

( One image )

The lip balm is for size comparison; I think this is the first thing I've made that doesn't scream "Tiny! TINY!" whenever I look at it. It's also not completely finished because my parents picked up an iron that they will bring when they visit at the end of May. So the smoothing out and the starching will have to wait until then. (I'm actually excited about getting an iron. I've been getting by without ironing any of my clothes ever since I moved away from home (cheers for student life), but I'm living in a more grown-up way now, and I do have an ironing board, so maybe it's time to level up in this area. But mostly the iron is for my lace.)

I think this bookmark was a little too far beyond my skill level to be fun right now. It was quite fiddly and I actually had to force myself to finish it, which is no good! Now I've gone back to great grandma's book and have done a couple of small pieces in my "rainbow taffy" coloured thread and it's hard to keep from working on it ALL the time. (Okay so maybe the colour plays in as well. I dislike the lime green so much and adore the rainbowy one.)

In Swedish, tatted lace is called "frivolitet", as in frivolty. And since I seem to have made a habit of tatting on Fridays, and alliteration is awesome, I shall henceforth be making Frivolty Friday posts.

( Two Fridays' worth of tatting; two photos )


I still think this is the bestest, funnest, excitingest thing. So exciting even that I created a Pinterest account just because it seems like a lot of people are sharing patterns and tutorials that way. (I'm finding that less interesting than the tatting, though, so I don't quite know how it works yet.)

I've had a rough couple of months as far as mental health goes, so today when I finally made a start on my plan to learn how to tat, it made me feel like an absolute genius for the first time in forever. I followed this set of tutorials and made this:



Tatting has been my favourite type of lace for a long time (in terms of aesthetics) but for some reason I've kept learning about other types instead.

These three loops took me two and a half hours to make and I've concluded that I need bigger thread to practice with, as well as a better shuttle (I had no idea there were different types, nor that I'd need two).

As an experienced knitter, I find that I have both advantages and disadvantages when moving to tatting. For example, my ability to read knitting really helps a lot in reading the lace, but my knitter's index finger (I knit continental style) is really keen to hold out the working thread even though that's not its job here. I keep realising it's moved again without my noticing because muscle memory is just that strong.

Very excited to keep exploring this.

When I found out this summer that I'd be moving into a flat with a balcony, my first thought was that I wanted to put up a birdfeeder. I finally got around to doing so yesterday, and it was the best thing I've done for myself in quite a while!

( 5 small photos of tiny birds! )

All so cute!