Champagne and Socks

One of the first projects I had to finish off when I started working though my knitting WIPs were these mug hugs. I’d had the idea to make them for the end of year Galactic Suburbia Papyrus readers soon after we started our Patreon.

Listeners to Galactic Suburbia Podcast can support us through our Patreon page which we started late in 2014. The podcast is free to download for everyone but those who choose to can nominate a per podcast amount they’d like to contribute through Patreon. Basically offering a tip jar for those who wish we had one. We have several levels of perks and all the contributions go towards covering our running costs. We have some milestones which would enable us to grow the podcast (making regular spoilerific episodes a thing, voting on what those episodes will be about, maybe one day doing more live recordings) and the top level supporters get an actual paper fanzine – Galactic Suburbia Papyrus – in which we each write stuff and publish irregularly.

I knew I wanted to include something handmade for our end of year/new year packet. Just to show how much I appreciate the support for what we do. It blows my mind that people are willing to pay for each podcast – thank you to all our amazing patrons, at every level!

I made two separate patterns of mug hugs. And used very cherished leftovers from (mostly) my mini skeins I’ve been collecting all year. I didn’t really know what to do with the extra length after crocheting one granny square out of each mini skein but the yarn is too lovely to not save for something special. And I worked out, by the end of knitting these, how much fun it is to make a completely new colour way by mixing a bunch of colours. The ones with buttons ended up being knit double stranded with three stripes (of the double strands) at a time til I ran out of yarn and then subbed in a new double strand. That made the edges a bit rough, so I knit I-cord edging (I free formed that myself). And the buttons are from my precious button stash. The other three mug hugs were knit in the round. The patterns are in my Ravelry if you’re after those. I modified the striped ones knit in the round for the yarn I was using.

When I started, I only had to make 5 but by the time the end of the year came round that ballooned out to a wow of 8! And I’d like to think that they might be wrapped and keeping warm a nice cuppa, sitting next to some GS inspired cake, out there in the galactic suburbs during 2015.
Alex puts together the mail outs and she used her discretion for the colours and owners. It was lovely to see the pics on Instagram and Twitter this week as they finally got to where they were going.

Today’s drink: Latte dot art!
Today’s total word count: 1068
Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 25 579
Progress on: Year’s Best YA 2013, Garden Project (Operation Cobra) has commenced!!! backyard has been stripped off weed grass and is prepped for patio construction next week, bathroom cabinet culled and organised, pantry culled and tidied, handbag cleaned out. Baby meals and snacks cooked and baked and frozen in the oven.

Related blog posts:

Craft Space Organised
First Finished Object
Finished Object Scarf Gift
Finished Object Hoek Shawl

Here is a recently finished object. It wasn’t the next thing finished in order for my Resolutions list because the next one cannot be spoken about yet!

The Hoek Shawl. Sigh. The Hoek Shawl. This is actually my second knitted Hoek Shawl – pattern by Stephen West. The pattern is a lovely one, complicated enough to keep you interested but straightforward enough so that you can relax and do something else at the same time. I actually cast on two at once, one for me using All for the Love of Yarn Luminosity in Fingering which came in a KnitCrate last year, and one for my sister in law in 4 colours of Blue Moon Fibre Arts sock yarn from a Winter Wonder grab bag I grabbed in Plum during some random sale.

Different yarns, different stickiness. The BMFA knitted up a dream and was a very quick knit. The All for Love Yarn was slippery on my wooden needles which made knitting fast a problem – every now and then I’d push the stitches up the needle and they’d slide off the end. Sometimes I could pick them up. Sometimes not. I ended up ripping or carefully tinking back several times before I ended up having to start over again because I lost my place or stitch count. I finished the second Hoek easily and sent it off to my SIL for her birthday. And then I just couldn’t face fighting with the slippery All for Love Yarn so it sat, WIP ing, in my stash for a while.

And then I was looking for something completely selfish to knit at Christmas. I’d been working to finish off all kinds of commitments and things in time for Christmas and wanted to spend Christmas Eve on the couch, with a nice hot chocolate, something nice on the TV and just knit quietly on something for me. And when Christmas Eve came around, I pulled out a project and it was a scarf! After I’d just finished that black scarf. And I thought, “Come on! MORE plain knitting? Hell no!” and pulled out the lace knitting to be a bit more complicated for a cozy night in. And then I just knit on it til it was done. And it took maybe a fortnight of solid knitting and it was done.

If I were to ever run into this problem again, I would switch to a different kind of needle that would play more nicely with the yarn (though you’d have to think wood would be the best option, which was what I was using).

I hate the colour. But after fighting so hard with this yarn, and the pattern, I feel like I conquered and tamed this beast of a project and I intend to wear it on my back as though I hunted and slayed the dragon. I’d mount its head on my wall if I could.

Here are some pics of it, anyhow.

Today’s drink: Pinot Grigio – Boy Meets Girl
Today’s total word count: 3115
Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 25 511
Progress on: Garden project, shawl knitting, Phd writing, Phd data collation, work planning, email organisation, reading.

Related posts:

Craft Space Organised
First Finished Object
Finished Object Scarf Gift

Over the weekend I was gifted the task to build Alex’s yarn stash. Apparently this is a very real problem for some people – no stash – and it turns out, this is in fact my dream job. I’m seriously thinking of starting a freelance business for it. Well, not that seriously. Anyway, Alex is bad at yarn stashing. She is also bad at buying books at a faster rate than she can read – but you know that if you listen to Galactic Suburbia. I was given a budget and free range by basically the best husband in the entire world. Saturday night, I poured over online yarn stores, browsed through yarn company catalogues, debriefed with Deb, discussed the limiting factors of postage and conversion fees with Chris. And basically had a mini freak out.

My mini freak out basically was – look how big *my* stash is, look how much money I must have invested in it over the last ten years, *what* am I going to be get for Alex? But beyond that, it finally dawned on my that a yarn stash (any stash) requires time, curating and investment. If you only buy craft supplies for the project at hand, you’re subject to the price of the product on the day you need it. When you curate a stash (ok, fine, collection) you take the opportunity to buy things when they are on sale, or in bulk, or when there is free postage. You grab limited editions and one of a kind supplies that may never be available again (I have a thing for indie hand dyed sock yarn, you might have noticed). And if you decide on a whim on a rainy Sunday that you want to take part in a KnitALong that’s starting that day or the next, you can stash dive and find something that will work – or you can play around with various choices, even cast on and unpick, before committing to your colour or yarn weight choice. And truthfully, I’m mostly a spontaneous crafter.

These thoughts made me second guess my 2015 Resolutions list – why was I aiming to Reduce This Stash then as though it was a bad thing to have? And what would happen when I did start working through the stash and ran out of things – like, mostly recently, anything neutral grey? Would buying yarn unattached to a specific project be bad? Be undoing the goal? Was I saying I’d never buy yarn without an already specified purpose? What was my intended outcome?

And, in a similar, but not immediately obvious, story, yesterday I procrastinating an hour and half by organising my tea stash. As you do. I went looking for a different tea for my tea pic of the day and discovered I had a bunch of really interesting and different teas that I’d completely forgotten about and therefore, was not drinking. Cue impromtu tea organisation which even involved David Allen style labelling, and decluttering of Other Alisa’s tea stash (She drinks chai. I can’t stand it. She bought like 5 different kinds). Now I can see what I have and am excited to try a few of these too:

This is my tea chest wedding gift from Helen and Stewart (I left her really cute post it note on it). All kinds of interesting teas had been neatly filed away by Past!Me.

I realised whilst labelling and decluttering my teas that I’m actually a tea drinker. Or, that I am a tea drinker  (again) *now* after spending the last month or so getting back into the habit of drinking tea everyday (and cutting back on instant coffee). At one point in the tidying, I accidentally upended one canister of loose leaf tea and spilled it on the floor (my hands still not fully recovered post pregnancy *glares at the liars*) and C said, “Well that’s one way to use up the tea stash faster”, and that comment made me a bit annoyed. I realised I didn’t want to “use up the stash” ie to get rid of it so we didn’t have it anymore. I realised that I didn’t want to then feel bad about buying more tea when I empty out of some of those drawers. I didn’t want the idea of “stash” to constantly have a negative implication; I wanted to continue being a tea drinker with a nice range of teas in the cupboard (or in pretty canisters across my kitchen bench *pokes out tongue*).

Both these incidents reminded me of a thought I’d started in a comment on Ben’s blog last week about how New Years Resolutions shouldn’t feel, or be about, a goal that only when you reach it you will be happy. That if you want them to stick, they should be about the journey and that the taking of this journey is what will make you happy. And less focus on the destination. You know, habit changes, where the goal/destination redirects the journey but otherwise is more or less irrelevant by the time you get there. The resolution should be about helping get you to that change in lifestyle, not about some thing that you can only tick off at the end of the year.

But where does this leave me????

“Reducing my tea stash” was about drinking a cup of tea every day to get me back into enjoying tea drinking again. Taking a photo every day of the cup was to make that goal accountable, and it’s helped me learn a bit about taking photos.

“Reducing my yarn stash/WIPs” was about kickstarting me back into loving knitting again, finishing off stale projects so I had things to enjoy from what I’d spent my time working on made. And to reduce guilt about buying more yarn – if the stash turns over (even on a 5 year turnaround), then I’m a knitter and have supplies. If it just continues to grow over time (as it has done in the last year to 3), then I have a yarn shopping addiction problem. But at the same time, I should not feel like I’m eyeing off a mountain of already assigned future time and project debt aka burden. My yarn stash is not a To Do List I am a behind on.

So much food for thought. I’m going to look at reworking/redefining/repositioning my 2015 list.

Thanks James for the new perspective!

Note: For those wondering BUT WHAT ABOUT ALEX’S STASH? On the Sunday, I got an email about a closeout yarn sale at a discount supplier and I managed to get her a pretty good start on a few of her colours and some neutrals in fingering weight. I also managed to save her some postage by getting myself some of that neutral greys I was needing (I got it on sale for me, and also reduced postage as I shared it with her stash) – total WIN WIN and the trigger for the above blog post. Now the Aussie dollar is at an all time low so I am going to need to be smart and stealthy with how I spend the rest. And whether I post it to her one skein at a time (fun, but obviously $$) or give it to her as one big bulk stash (would her brain explode?).

Today’s drink: Black tea (pic here using a Noir filter because pretending you are a private detective in a noir novel is more fun that first Monday back at work at your regular day job)

Today’s total word count: 3535

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 22 396

Progress on: Wrote 2000 word piece for the Galactic Suburbia Papyrus fanzine, signed off on final edits for Years Best YA 2013 proofs, quote sorted for Garden Project, recast on Catkin shawl, knit the first clue on Edith’s Secret, cast on for Quicksilver shawl.

Some time in the middle of working on Kaleidoscope, Julia and I started discussing and then exchanging chocolates and biscuits. We call it our cultural exchange and through it I’ve got to try all kinds of goodies that I’ve only read about in American books. Junior minds, candy corn, Pepperidge farm cookies, even girls scouts cookies! I’ve sent Julia a few of our much loved goodies (Tim Tams, Kingstons) and some things that are disgusting too (what the hell is Cadbury doing to chocolates? Seriously.), so she can try em out.

At Worldcon, when we met up in London, we did an exchange in person. I believe my stash accompanied them across Scotland. My stash came back home with me. And here, conveniently for this photo, is what I still had left from the ingredients for S’mores. Yes, that’s right. She gave me the ingredients to make my very own, genuine, s’mores. So exciting! And we did make them. And can tell you, with the backing of science, that they are OMG sweet! We could each only eat one and then … did not manage to ever get a hankering for a second one. (She did especially give me HUGE American size marshmallows, mostly for amusement)

And so. Now I am at home a lot, and have a baby, I have become that stereotype and hang out a lot on Pinterest. Whereupon the other day I came across this recipe for S’more cups. Since I had all the ingredients …

Obviously, less tidy and need than the recipe photos – I suspect our mini muffin tins are more mini in Oz. The ones that worked the best were from my friands tin instead. But the marshmallows are still jumbo, even when cut in thirds.

Report card: very delicious. Much smaller S’mores, much less sugar (though, still 100 calories a serve)

Today’s drink: Grand Yunnan black tea from T2

Today’s total word count: 341

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 18 861

Progress on: Yoga practise, baking, project planning/beginning of weekly review

When we were in Sydney last June, I spotted a ball of yarn in Morris & Sons that I thought looked exactly like my brother-in-law and grabbed it to make him a scarf for Christmas. See that? That’s a 6 month lead time. Guess when I cast on for it? I really need to get better at pacing gift knitting.

I cast on at the beginning of December and managed to finish it a day or two in time for Christmas lunch. It’s a Schoppel-Wolle Crazy Zauberball – this yarn is so interesting. It’s balled in a way that you can see when the next colour change is coming. And none of the patterns were repeated so you didn’t quite know how it was going to knit up. It made for an interesting knit. This is a sock yarn and I knit it on 3.5mm needles. And my BIL was pleased with it, even if it came a year after he was in Paris (this would totally suit him in Paris).

I had a lot of fun taking pictures of this finished project – how do you make a scarf look interesting? I’m subscribed to a bunch of knitting/yarn related newsletters a) because, hello! and b) I think there are some really creatively presented newsletters and I’m always keen to learn stuff about marketing and promotion. One that I’m finding especially interesting is Space Cadet Creations – her yarn is just gorgeous. She has a very active and appealling Pinterest page where she pairs up patterns with her yarn. Additionally, she’s been doing a series of articles in her newsletter about how to take better photos for your Ravelry projects page. I’ve been trying out some of her ideas …

Today’s drink: Mango and chilli black tea from Pine Tea and Coffee by way of Monstrositea (pic here)

Today’s total word count: 346

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 18 520

Progress on: Completed and passed mandatory uni online course by deadline, cast on Catkin, blocked finished shawl. Read Sex Criminals Vol 1

Yarn Stash Reduction related posts:

Craft Space Organised
First Finished Object