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Blog, General, My Designs

Alohura

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Alohura
Alohura – hand dyed Sheila’s Sparkle fingering

It’s been a long time since my last post here.  The reason is simple – I didn’t have much to say :P, but if you check me on Ravelry, you’ll find out that I released Alohura yesterday.
This is a crescent shawl knit from the neck down with a clever beginning that makes the edge of the shawl looks like it was pick up and knit after the shawl was done.
It’s a small shawl and can be done with only one skein of most fingering weight yarns.  The pattern has instructions for making it bigger and a photo-tutorial on how to cast on.

I still need to update the blog with links, pages and whatnot, but just don’t have the energy right now.

During my long silence, I’ve been trying to come up with new designs, with very little results to show for it.
Don’t get me wrong, the ideas are there, the execution, on the other hand…not doing so great.  Right now there are 6 different projects sitting in front of me and they all fall somewhere between meh and blah in my interest gauge.

I’m still experimenting with crescent-shaped shawls and keep on getting new ideas, pretty much every other day.  When it comes to putting those ideas into knitting, though, something happens and so far I haven’t found one that I like enough to pursue all the way to publication.

Blog, General

Random thoughts

I was reading a thread on Ravelry this morning and came across a link to a very interesting post about procrastination.  As I read the article, I realize that I do that – to some extent.  I don’t write the list the author suggests, but I do jump from one task to avoid doing another – like doing the dishes instead of working on the custom order I need to knit, for example.

Sometimes, I call it stepping away from the wall.  It’s something like this: when you have a problem, you tend to focus on it (and get too close to it).  By taking a few steps back from the problem (the wall), you can see the whole picture and find ways to get to the other side.

I bring this subject up today because I’ve been struggling with a design (and yes, I’ve knit it already and did work.  My problem began when I tried to make it better looking) and think I’ve reached this virtual wall, where I see no way out.
I usually work exclusively on one design, but this time I decided to try another idea…and hit yet another wall.  Sigh.  So now I’m stuck on two different designs (and counting).  My solution was to knit a little doily – which led me to yet another idea for another design.

I don’t want this year to be like the last one.  A series of shiny objects distracted me from designing and in the end I had only one new pattern to show for it.  This year started better and I already have one pattern being test knit.  Since the testing was going on so smoothly, I decided to work on the next one, but I’m beginning to wonder if I should put the new one in time-out and work on something else.
Sometimes, it feels like procrastination, but in reality, it’s a design road-block;  and the best way to deal with those (for me, at least) is to let them slip my mind for a few months.

One thing that I’ve done and seems to be helping me somewhat, is to write a list of ideas as they come to me.  You see, up until a few months ago the ideas would come to my head and I’d get so afraid of forgetting them before I was able to put them to yarn, that I rushed through other ideas already on the needles.  That led to designs that could be better, if only I came across that nifty solution before I pushed the publish button.
Now, with the list, I can start working on the idea and if it isn’t coming out exactly like I see in my head, I can stop it and keep on adding notes until I can come up with something that solves my design problem.

Some ideas, though, come so loud that I have to put everything else down and work on them already.  The idea I had while knitting the doily is beginning to sound like one of those.  As I write this post, I can see other parts of the shawl coming together in my head.  I’m afraid that as soon as I finish writing this entry, I’ll pick yarn and needles and try it out ;P.

Blog, General

I haven’t dealt with this blog for a while, as I had little to say and am still not pleased with this new blog.  There aren’t big issues, just got me going “Meh…I’ll deal with this later”.

Judith, if you come back to check the blog again, my answer is yes, go ahead and good luck.

Now, for a review of the year.  I feel like I haven’t done much, but in retrospect, I did do a lot!  We bought the house and spent most of the first semester making it inhabitable, then spent the second semester looking for good deals in furniture and slowly making the house into our home.
I’ve knit way less this year, but have released 3 times as many designs as in 2010 (granted, I only released one in 2010, but still).
Many reasons kept me from knitting/designing more, some of the things that kept me from doing more were unavoidable, others my own fault.  One of the reasons I couldn’t avoid, but can fix:  I found out that my eyesight is getting really bad when it comes to close up stuff, like reading, knitting and sewing.  I’ll have my eyes checked out ASAP and the glasses adjusted accordingly.
I’ve started sewing again (after a looooooooooong hiatus), am doing my first patchwork and tried my hand at quilting for the first time – not bad, but not good either. 😉
Because of my new-found interest in quilting (and thanks to Pinterest), I got a few new ideas and need to create a schedule so things can flow more easily next year.

Back to the knitting subject, I’ve been avoiding the new patterns page on Ravelry for a long time, because I know it’s a great motivator for me – design wise – and I didn’t quite want to go there.  Yesterday I was bored and having nothing to do, I checked it out (also my friends’ favorites) and the urge to try something new was too strong to resist.
I did a bit of self-analysis (armchair psychologist, you say?) and realized I was afraid to try something new and fail.  I guess the amount of unfinished swatches of half-baked ideas got to me…
Yesterday, though, I saw something that made me kick myself – I saw one of my “never pursued ideas that only got a few minutes of my attention” as a finished project – designed by someone else!  Then, I saw something I wish I had designed and something clicked inside of me.
I came to the realization that if I only do “theoretical” knitting (knit in my head), I won’t be satisfied.  Maybe I still need the approval of others, the thrill of having people marking my work as a favorite – yeah…I’m vain.
So, after coming to that conclusion, I picked up some yarn and needles and started on a design that worked in my head, but I was afraid wouldn’t work in real life.  To my surprise, it did and I’m now half way through it (well…right now I’m procrastinating here, since I ran out of yarn and will have to dye more for this one, and the dyeing technique I used for the first skein is such a PITA).