Saturday, April 14, 2012

Progress

I did not progress on my Peasy sweater at all this week. In fact, after I finally reached the point where I had to start the lace, I made a mistake, and tink-ing it made it worse, and I am now not even there yet, and I have no idea on how to get the right amount of stitches per raglan section again. That was quite embarrassing, because I attended a knitting evening in Québec City this week (Tricothé, which can be translated as knitea) with a group a found on Ravelry. The members are quite the knitters, and I was looking forward to knit with people who are interested in different designers, yarns and who understood the social aspect of knitting...unfortunately, I made my mistake on my way to the coffee-place where we met, and spent my whole evening tinking...So between that, and the socks that I didn't even try to start again this week, let's just say it was another poor knitting week for me. I think I need to work on projects at the same time, so I always have something to get to in these situations.

Fortunately, I was able to finish my latest item on the loom, and to start another one. I'm very lucky to have a man who helps me a lot with my bobbins (actually, he pretty much did all of them, so far...). I think it might have more to do with the fact that he is getting more and more stressed about soon having to either move a warped loom, or face a completely hysterical girlfriend who will not have finished to weave everything before the move than just being nice...but I might be wrong, because he is in fact very nice, supporting and interested in what I try to make.

So the new pattern looks like this:


The reason why the coloured rows are larger than the the ones that are warped is that I'm using a tread that is larger than the warped ones to weave. Why? hum, not really sure, that's what I was told to do by my weaving teacher, who came shopping with me. So everything has been weaved with a 2/8 tread on a 2/16 warp (I may sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I don't so I may well be doing the opposite...).
Anyway, because I only bought the thinnest coloured treads, I need to double them to weave with them. Not a big problem, I went to the Farmers' Circle Hall, where we have a few looms and some other equipment for weaving, and with the help of a more experienced weaver, I made a bobbin with 2 green treads.

That was last Sunday, right before we had a "brunch-o-puces" ("flea-market-brunch"). We invited all members to come for a brunch, and told them that if they wanted to clean their stash closet, it was the right time! So over a dozen of us showed us with treasures to be sold, given or exchanged.

I scored BIG!

First, right on time before a made too many bobbins, someone gave me that:
no need to double anything anymore!
and I also got this (so exciting!):
for future thrum objects...
I think I mentioned that I took a crochet course last month. I am not a fast learner, so at the end of the course, I did not feel very good, maybe just a little bit more comfortable with the crochet hook and a few basic stitches. But I've been wanting to practice with an easy project, and I've also realised this afternoon when I thought of writing here that I did not have much to present, so I looked for an easy pattern, and after a few tries, found one for a flower. And ta-da, here is my first crochet FO:

It's from this web site. I think I was able to make it because the pattern is not written in a very usual way...but it worked for me! Of course, I need to work on my tension, but given that the yarn had no elasticity at all, and that it was the first time I was making doubles (did not get there in my course), I'm pretty happy, and oh, the possibilities I can see ahead of me...

Have a great weekend!

Monday, April 9, 2012

Spring might be coming to 3R as well...

After a few surprisingly beautiful days in March, that made us believe spring would be early this year, the weather went back to its normal spring blah in the past few weeks. Spring is not a nice season in Québec. It's grey, dirty, and it takes forever to see anything green. I get really jealous to see pictures and updates from Facebook friends who have tulips in their garden, or who are posting beautiful pictures of fruits trees in flowers. The only reason we know it is spring is that it's past March 21.

When do we usually know that it is really spring, and that we can expect nice weather? When the geese come back from the south:


Pictures from April 2010, we did not have the time to go this year
In 3R, the geese started to arrive on March 18 this year, a few weeks after they arrived on the south shore, but still wayyyy earlier than usual. It was a beautiful day, and they obviously got confused about what date it was. I hope they are well, because we had snow and cold temperature since they made it here.

However, I think this weekend might be the real beginning of spring. Here are a few signs:

Costo mango, Asian pears and lettuce containers as mini greenhouses
 A new tenant! A chickadee made a nest in there this week, after it was left empty last year
Urban garden is ready to go (as soon as it stops freezing at night)
Another sign is that I'm getting productive again! I got a few weeks where I just wanted to go to bed as soon as I got home. Maybe it was just starting to work full time again that did that, or trying to get organised despite a schedule that changed every 2 days in the past 2 weeks. I was working for the chiro lab 3 days/week since September. I added 2 days/week in the cardio lab 2 weeks ago. A few days later, my chiro boss asked me if I would like to work a little less for him this summer, since he won't be too busy, and this would help stretch his budget to keep me longer. Super! Then, on Thursday, I was asked to work an extra day/week for the cardio lab. I'm going to try to only add half a day, since I already have a bunch of appointments and other things scheduled for may, such as getting a house, painting it, changing its windows and its floor, and moving into it! So hopefully the 4½ days/week will work, and that schedule will remain the same until the end of this contract (end of August).

So, I did not get much time to knit and weave since the last time I wrote. If you recall, nothing was quite working, and that's how it was until this weekend. I saw my mother on Saturday, and asked her about Peasy. She could not tell me anything new, except that what I had done was right, but in my head, it was still wrong. This morning, I woke up, having decided to just get through it, and yes, it was ok. I have no idea if it got fixed, or if I was wrong all along and it was ok, and I just realised this this morning, but it doesn't matter. I can now go ahead with it. I started the front lace, and I think it will be quite easy, it is very, very well written.

I had another nice surprise this weekend.
I realised that this weaving pattern, which I thought was boring because it was not colourful enough:

boring
looked like this underneath:

Colours!!!

So I am a happy crafter.

Today is the last day of my 4-day Easter weekend (good way to start working full time, no?). I think I'll use it to finish another woven piece.

Talk to you soon!