A Little Neater

I suppose I can cross off organizing my knitting things from my things to do list! This weekend, I went to Michaels and bought this:

It's three shelves that can be stacked neatly on top of each other. I'm pretty sure everyone has seen these types of storage units somewhere before. Although it's not anything fancy, I think it looks quite nice. It's also easy to move around and sort of just blends in with whichever room I put them in.

 

My last two shelves are filled with all my yarn. Originally, I only bought two shelves, but I vastly underestimated how much yarn I have when first buying them. With two shelves, some of my yarn would have to be squeezed into the same space as my needles, which I didn't like the idea of because it would just seem like a hassle that I'd have to remove all the yarn from the shelf before I can sift around for my needles, so that's when I decided I'd go back and get another third shelf so that I can separate them. Plus, it just looks neater that way.

 

The top shelf is filled with all things non-yarn. My needles, and other various knitting equipment are all put here. As you can see, it still looks messy in there, mostly because my size 50 needles only fit in there when put diagonally, so that throws arranging everything in some sort of proper order out the window.

 

Anyway, I'm sure there are neater ways to organize knitting material, but with my current funding, I think this is the best I can do. At the very least, things aren't shoved into random go-green bags anymore. Everything is in one place, nothing just falls out easily, and I can figure out a neater way to specifically organize my needles later. Furthermore, if/when my yarn collection grows, I can easily just keep adding more shelves And, maybe if I have enough yarn in the future, it'll be worth it to organize my yarn by its weight and colour or something. Until then, I think this will work out just fine for now!

                                                              


Updated List

So, last month or so I made a list with all the stuff I wanted to learn with knitting.
 Luckily, I get to cross some things out now!
1. Socks: My sweetheart socks I made which were amazing, and a proud moment for me when I finished!
2. Cable: I first practiced on a little swatch of yarn, but my sweetheart socks again, were my first projects that helped me cross cabling off the list! 
3. Knit a doll: Lumpy the bear helped me to accomplish this goal!

Since then (I know it hasn't been too long but...) I've come up with new things I want to learn!

1. Sweater: This still hasn't changed from last time, I actually looked at a few patterns, but I'm not sure I'm at the level yet ... there were many things in the pattern I didn't understand, and I tried searching up the most basic looking sweater too.
2. Bag: This was also a leftover from the last list. I haven't made any plans about this yet.
3. Organize: All I can tell you is... nope, still messy!
4. Mistake-less Project: Wondering if I should just cross this out; is a project with no mistakes even achievable? The scarf I'm currently making has mistakes in it, but they're not noticeable at all..  Has anybody ever made anything with zero faults? Not even a little one?
5. Brioche: This is the first new one added to the list! I think it is double knitting. I saw projects with it, and they look beautiful! But wow, it looks so complicated
6. Design my own pattern: Can be with anything, but I just think it would be cool to make something entirely my own. But I doubt this one will be crossed out anytime soon.
7. Vest: Thought maybe it'd be better if I made a vest or something before a sweater, since it seems easier (no sleeves)! So, it'd be a good stepping stone towards my top goal.
8. Blanket: I originally didn't put this on my list because I thought knitting a blanket is easy, like a scarf is. But then the more I read, the more complicated it seemed, and I never considered how hard it must be to knit when the blanket starts getting really heavy.
9. Headband: I tried making one with leftover yarn, but overestimated how much yarn I had. It bugs me I never finished one, so this is making the list.
10. Dish towel: The last one to make the list is a dishtowel. Mostly because I've been itching to use my cool dishie yarn I bought from knitpicks!

Unfortunately, my current project won't be able to cross anything off the list, but hopefully I'll continue knitting until everything is crossed out!

Ravelling

Oh my goodness! For my scarf I finally finished knitting the first hank (that just took about forever)... now its time to knit the second one! But first....

 That's right... first I must deal with the mess of an unravelled hank, and then ravel it back again. Why why why why why!? I hope it'll be clean with no knots!

P.s. in a previous post I talked about how I kept my yarn in a bowl... and wow, I found out everybody does do this! They even have special bowls made just for this task! .... And now I really want one!

My Self-Control is better than I thought

So, yesterday while casually browsing the net, I found out that webs and yarn paradise are having these humongous sales. I'm low on money, but not low on yarn, but wow, I really wanted to buy so much yarn! I even picked out a few, and was ready to check-out. What stopped me was when they asked for my credit card information. You see, I just paid off my bills, and I kept thinking to myself to not spend so much money when it felt like I just emptied my bank account. And then I told myself that some of the yarn I didn't want anyway but only wanted just because they're insanely cheap (sort of the same mantra I repeat to myself when Steam has their sales haha). I couldn't even just buy one ball of yarn because shipping prices wouldn't make it worth it. So I froze there and stared at the checkout page for so so so long, until I took a deep breath, and just closed all my windows.

But one day, when I get a big place of my own, I'm going to have a wall of shelves dedicated to yarn. And there will be so many colours, and yarns of different weights, and it'll make people think they stepped into a yarn store. Can't stop dreaming!!

In a Bowl

So I really doubt I'm the first one to think of this, but I've started knitting my new project, and I'm using hanks. And for some reason, apparently you have to unravel those (who thought that was a good idea?!) and then roll the yarn back into a neat little ball before you begin knitting or else you'll have a huge jumbled mess. So, I used an empty toilet paper tube and just wrapped my yarn around that because I saw online someone do it, and then they just hang it somewhere and the yarn doesn't roll around all over the floor like mine always does (which is why dog hair usually gets knitted into the project too! Haha.). So, that sounded brilliant, only problem was, I had no where to hang my roll of yarn except for the bathroom and I wasn't about to spend hours knitting in there. Then it came to me that maybe I should stick it in a box or some other container and let it roll around in that little area instead of the entire floor. So, in the end, I used a bowl! Smart eh? (Don't tell me that's what everybody already does... I was pretty proud of my little revelation).

Sweetheart Socks

I did it, I did it!! I finally finished my very first pair of socks! Not just any socks, but cabled socks. That also makes it my first cabled project! And wow, I am so proud of it! It turned out so well! Feast your eyes....

I promised my dear friend I wouldn't show anybody else before giving this to her as a gift, but I just couldn't keep it from my blog because I am so excited about it! Hope she won't mind... but just look at it! The heart really shows, and the cables stand out and they look like how they're supposed to. That's not to say there aren't mistakes. For example, I knitted this with dpn, and I keep getting ladders between where the needles overlap, but only when I purl -when I knit, there doesn't seem to be any problem. Also I have itty bitty holes where the heel gusset starts, and on one of the socks where I attach the new ball of yarn was not done very properly .... but I think these are all small mistakes. The important thing is. the socks are wearable! They were the right socks, they look like socks and I made the right pattern!

I learned so much as well! Besides the most obvious being that I learned the ins and outs of how to make a sock, I think the favourite thing  learned was doing the Twisted German cast-on method. It's so stretchy! In the past for gloves/mitts and hats, I just used the standard cast-on method unless the pattern specifically specified otherwise, and I found it to be really loose and doesn't stretch, so that when you wear whatever with it, it doesn't really 'hold' on. After some careful snooping around, the general consensus of knitters online is that this new cast-on method that I learned is the opposite of all that. Other things I learned was learning what TW2R means and how to do it (I absolutely love the ribbing pattern it creates), learning to read cabling instructions in a pattern and grafting.

The first sock took me a whole week to finish knitting because I kept on having to look this and that up, but the second sock took only 3 days. I hope this means future socks that I will knit won't take as long!

Anyway, to wrap things up, if anybody is interested in giving this pattern a go, here is the link! Ah, I can't wait to see my friend's reaction when she gets the gift!

Thinking Pink

More yarn! My sister bought this baby pink worsted Red Heart yarn for me because I helped her do a favour and I'm in love with the color! I have no idea what I want to do with it yet, but I'm thinking maybe a shawl or a regular scarf. I haven't made scarves for so long since I've moved towards the more 'complicated' stuff. But now that I think about it, I think a scarf would be a perfect next project because I think the first several scarves I made weren't that good-looking. So, I could make a really beautiful scarf and compare it to the ones I first made to really visibly showcase my improvements in knitting skill!

Anyway, I'm also loving all the bright coloured yarn I'm using lately. Many projects I made for people requested dark or dull colours and I just want to make something with a sharper colour.

It's so cool how my yarn collection has grown since I began. I remember first complaining about how it was so small and how it needed to grow! I hope my collection continues to get bigger though! I feel like I'll never have enough! I'm addicted!