A "Why me" sort of day

Sometimes when things go wrong, everything goes wrong. 

I guess that's what I get for buying cheap needles. Luckily, I had one of the same size that I didn't throw out yet, so I'm using that one to finish my project. 

But on top of this, my tablet is starting to break down, and I'm feeling sick on a long weekend. On the bright side... (because I'm trying my best to be optimistic here), my project is coming along quite well. No stitches dropped when transferring from one broken needle to the next! 

New Equipment!

It came!! I was beginning to think it was lost in the mail because I ordered new knitting needles and crochet hooks from online one month ago!

Here are my new hooks! Made out of bamboo!

                                  

I'm pretty sure I have all the sizes that I'd need ever (there's 11 hooks in that pile)! It's so light though compared to my aluminum ones, that I'm worried how easy it would be to snap one of them (especially for the extremely thin hooks)!

I worry about the snapping for my new bamboo knitting needles too.

I have 18 new needles here! I am planning on giving away my old doubles to whoever wants them, but I think I will wait and see how sturdy they are first. The entire package (both hooks and needles) was only $12.00 from Amazon! The cheap price makes me additionally suspicious about its quality though, but I looove the colours!!

                              

I can't wait until I start a new project with one of them!!!

Buy ALL the Needles!

Yesterday my aunt came over and told me she went to a dollar store and saw knitting needles there! I was so excited when I heard that! Only two dollars for one pair of knitting needles?? I needed to go check it out, so this afternoon I hurried over to said dollar store and saw that it was true! At Michaels or Wal-Mart, they are selling needles for $5 to $8 for one pair, and here I was, buying 5 pairs for $10 total. I'm not going to lie to myself, the quality is probably not very good, but what do I know about needle quality anyway? As long as it works, I can't really tell the difference. I mean, it would be nice to have those gorgeous wood or bamboo hand crafted needles I sometimes see others have on YouTube, instead of they gray ones I always seem to end up with ..but hey, maybe I'll get those nice ones when I am wealthier.

Anyway, this is what I bought:

There's a size 11, size 7, and a size 0 (I didn't even know they came in size 0!) I also bought two dpn that are size 8 & size 1. Overall, today was a good day!

The Other Craft

So, it all started when my sister said she wanted me to knit her a Pikachu doll. Mind you, I actually do have all the right colors of yarn already, yellow, brown, black and red. However, I told her I thought knitting a Pikachu doll won't look very good because those kinds of things are more often a crochet project. At least, I think crochet dolls look way better than knitted dolls even though I am obviously biased towards knitting. So.... my sister goes out shopping and comes back with this ...

 

That's right! A set of crochet hooks! (Apparently this whole set was only $10 at Wal-Mart... are crochet hooks always this much cheaper than knitting needles??) I've thought about learning the other craft before, but always thought I was still such a newbie to knitting that I shouldn't think about learning an entirely new craft suddenly. But since I have these now.. well, frankly I'm a little excited to begin learning! I suppose after my current project, I'll give it a go!

 

P.s. Yes, I've dived into a new knitting project already! It's my most ambitious project yet. a real big step for me, but I think I can do it! It'll probably take me forever though, but I'm going to be optimistic that it'll turn out well!

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!

                                                              


My Proud Collection

I decided to make a post show-casing my humble collection. I'm not sure if this knitting equipment is considered a lot, or embarrassingly inadequate, so if anybody knows, please tell me what I'm missing .. or if you're jealous of the amount I have haha. Anyway, starting off, this is where I keep my knitting stuff and yarn:

 

 

You'll see my knitting stuff is kept in a beautiful Lulu Lemon bag, but not as beautiful as the Staples bag my yarn is kept in. I know I've mentioned this before, but I'm definitely trying to find a way to organize this better, so it looks pro. And yeah, my yarn collection is so small! That bag needs to be filled up somehow.

 

Onto my proud collection:

 

Starting from above is the cute little pouch I got for Christmas last year that I keep the small stuff in, like my stitch markers, knit tally, needle tip protector, cable needle & yarn needle that you see underneath. Those were also given to me for Christmas by my lovely sister, along with the stitch holder and knit gauge you see at the very bottom. As for my needles, most of the gray were inherited from my aunt who used to knit but then later got bored of it (something I pray will never happen to me). Most of the colored ones I bought for myself. I try to buy unique looking needles like the really cool or elegant looking ones I see on Youtube, but too bad they are pretty expensive.

 

Starting from the left is the giant behemoth of knitting needles that I'm tempted to keep under my pillow to attack intruders. I'm not even sure what size it is (clue that it was a gift). It's too big for my knit gauge, but I'm guessing its approximately US 18? I haven't used it yet, and not sure what sort of pattern it can be used for. The blue is US 8 and the yellow is US 6. Beside it is needles that only say 4.0 mm, so I think that's around US 5.5. Next is needles that only say 3.25, which I think is around US 3. My two double pointed needles are US 10 and US 6. Finally, next to those, are my circular needles. You'll see the fat gray US 13, the blue US 10.5, the yellow US 8, and the skinny gray US 6 & US 3.

 

I always thought my collection was big, but I often wish for even more because on some of my projects I didn't have the right knitting needles and had to settle for the closest size one. But hey, I came a long way from back then with my first 4 projects where I only used my US 8 straight knitting needles and US 6 circular knitting needles even when I should have used a way different size because that was all I had. Anyway, I'll continue to post new knitting gear I get so you can watch my collection grow!