The Sick Chick

OK, only hotspots.  But still, that hated Bernat Soft Boucle is such a pain to work with, the nubby bits just get caught on each other and so trying to do a K2P2 ribbing (which I am doing for t’s wristwarmers — sadly, he liked the first one so I am having to do another) is nightmarish.  Hoping to make it end quicker, I worked for 2-3 hrs on them yesterday and got *hotspots * (pre-blisters/swollen hot areas) on my thumb and forefinger from constantly yanking at the yarn to close the loops properly.  I think it might be easier with needles but the way that you do a purl on the loom involves lifting it off the loom, putting the new loop on and then tightening, so that’s a lot of manipulating the yarn.  Owwie!

Yesterday my Colinette order came through so I am taking a day off the blasted boucle and making a neck warmer to match my Ragdoll hat.  I’ve yet to figure out how much “fringe” I want, but I have plenty of yarn this time!

Pictures are a bit of a problem with the utter lack of light in London at the moment, but we’re building a light tent this weekend so hopefully I’ll be able to take decent photos whatever the weather.  Blistery fingers crossed!

Wordpress.com has spam filtering by Akismet, and I think it has eaten every comment made on this blog since 13 January.  I can’t find a way to turn Akismet off, and it is malfunctioning — it is supposed to save the “spam” for me to look at first, but instead it just deletes them.  The problem is that every comment that it has let me see was *not* spam, so I think it’s eating legitimate comments too So if you have left a comment here in the past four days, please email me instead. My email is thesickchick at gmail dot com.  Sorry for the trouble!!!

I’ve not been posting because I feel so bad about not having any pictures to show. I want my packages to arrive from the US *NOW*!  (Not the least because I have 18 gallons of yarn on its way…whiiiiiine. But the camera to computer cable is in there too…)

 On the 2nd, t and I went to the I Knit London’s New Years event at the Royal Festival Hall.  We both were taught how to needle knit by Yvonne but as anticipated, t did great with it and I just wound up with a mess.  Oh well!  I now know that I want to use circular needles for everything and that years of attempting (and failing) to crochet has warped my brain so that I really want to hold the yarn in my left hand.  So sometime I shall get some circs and have another go!  We met quite a few other people there, such as GhostKnitter and PixelDiva and many others whose names escape me now. (I’m horrid with names/usernames, please forgive!) The yarn we had to play with was very yummy, Sublime which has lots of cashmere and silk and other fantastic things.  I will definitely be getting some of that in its chunky range.

  Speaking of getting yarn, I went to Loop in Islington for the first time yesterday and managed to score some yarn at the sale price even though the sale doesn’t officially start until Saturday (I think, I only overheard that). Must try to go back on Saturday although I’m already pretty booked for that day :/  So I got 6 skeins of Colinette Prism (not sure if that link will work) at 40% off and it’s already all spoken for with projects!  Only problem is two of my long looms have gone on walkabout and those are the two I need most so I’m having a good clean today to find them.

 I keep wondering if it is worth it to add projects to my queue on Ravelry when few of the loom patterns are on there anyway.  I haven’t made anything out of Isela’s book yet and that’s the only loom book on there so far, I don’t know about individual patterns.  I guess I should post on the Loom Knitters and Knitting Without Needles groups, eh?

 I’ve been spending a fair amount of time lately reading more sick chicks who craft and blog, deciding what my criteria is for writing about them here.  I think I’m only going to talk about blogs that are primarily upbeat, because that’s the kind of person and blog I want to have. While I *totally* understand the need to kvetch about ill health, if that’s the primary purpose of the blog and crafting is only a minor element, I won’t list them here.  I’ll probably still read it but….well, you get the idea, I hope. 

Just a quick note to keep myself in the habit of posting.  We’re in Newcastle now for the holidays but knitting isn’t going as quickly as planned. I made another magic scarf, this time out of the Sirdar Frenzy, started a rib stitch sampler/wrist warmer on the train up and am about 6 inches into the first (of two) panels of my children’s afghan.  So not much accomplished yet I’m afraid  My hands have really been hurting which has made me slow down.  However, our hosts do have micro USB cables so if I remember I can take some pix of my works in progress and actually get them uploaded. I’ll do my best to remember!

While listening to Episode 62 of the Craft Sanity podcast (my favourite crafting ‘cast!), the guest, Kristin Roach. mentioned that she bought undyed yarn and colours it herself.  It sounded like she said she bought it from “Sick Chick Designs.”  Oh no, I thought!  I had been so careful to pick a name not used in the craft world but I seem to have failed!  Would I need to change my blog name??

 As it turns out, though, I misheard.  She orders undyed yarn from STICK Chick Designs.  Whew!  And good to know, I may check them out sometime  

Wow, time escaped me without getting a post in edgewise. I guess that’s why I never told anyone about this blog before  I have started several posts but none were finished.  I thought about just posting them and backdating to when I started, but I decided to be honest instead.  The posts will appear in the order I *finish* writing them.

What happened?  Well, the Knitting & Stitching show was fantastic, despite the absence of knitting looms.  So great that I spent all day there and it triggered a flare that left me stuck in bed for two weeks.  I revived the day before my brother in law arrived and frantically cleaned.  Then he was with us for over a week (which turned out to be a total disaster and I am very angry at him now), and the day after he left I flew to America to spend some time with my parents.  While here I’ve been in a different state every week and when not sightseeing I’ve been collapsing to rest.

This brings us to today  I’m in the middle of the only week of my trip where we are just staying home (my parents’ house) and I am frantically trying to get all of my holiday presents and cards made before we leave for D.C. on Sunday.  Not sure it is going to happen!  At least my knitting (I did finally get looms and I love them!!!) can come with me in the car.

As I spend the next few days crafting I am going to try to catch up on my posts, photograph the many things I have done in the past few weeks and set up a Flickr account to go with this blog.  Meanwhile I shall finish the posts I have already started, but please bear with me as the order may be somewhat random just based on what I feel like writing.

Off we go!

I do a lot of crafts, but what has me fired up at the moment is the prospect of loom/frame knitting. Regular knitting I just can’t comprehend but I’ve been doing various types of frame and spool things since I was a child. I just have soooo many ideas and cravings for hats and can’t find anyone to make them for me so I have to figure out a way to do it myself. Not having hair is a huge motivation to have a huge supply of warm headgear!

Tomorrow I am going to the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace here in London. I may buy a knitting loom there if I find one at a reasonable price. If not, I am going to America to visit my parents in a few weeks (I am an expat American/naturalized Briton) and I know I can get the Knifty Knitter brand easily and cheaply while there. But I am really hoping to find one before then so I can be using it on the long flight over!

Also tomorrow I am taking classes in luceting, blackwork embroidery and batik. I know the basics in all of these but I am hoping to get a lot better.

I like to make a new item of jewelry for every major event that I attend (I am first and foremost a beader) and I’ve had some fiber that I bought to bead with some time ago and it only seemed fitting to use it for this event. Unfortunately, due to the difficulty of threading multi-ply yarn onto a suitably small (tapestry) needle, things just weren’t working out as I had planned. So I took one of the fuzzy yarns and fingerwove a bulky cord and then added glass beads using wool embroidery floss tucked and twisted around in the woven piece. The light has faded too much now for me to get a decent picture of it but I will try to get one tomorrow. I may not decide to keep the piece in my permanent collection, but I think it does a decent job of what I was going for and will hopefully make me look less of a total outsider

I have a ton to do and need to sleep early so I’d best get going! I just hope I can sleep despite my excitement. Several friends are going to be there so it should prove a very enjoyable day

I’ve blogged before, on different topics, in different communities.  Sometimes I post once in a blue moon, other times I post so much I bore myself.  My interaction with a community varies tremendously by how I am feeling — I don’t mean on a day to day basis, more like quarter by quarter. Given that none of my previous blogs have been what I would call a rousing success, why on earth am  I starting another one, on a new system, and with intentions to interact with a different community?  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a fader, and that chances are that I won’t keep up with this either.  But at least there are good reasons to try:

 1) Crafting is a big part of my life right now and I want to give it even more prominence.  I’m sick of talking about being sick, and tired of being too tired to do anything.  I want to try to push myself to do more creatively.

2) My writing needs work.  I think it’s a use it or lose it skill and over the years, especially the ones where I was unable to type much, I think I have lost a lot of it.  I want it back.  I also want bak the brainpower that comes with pondering issues, puzzling out problems and more importantly for this blog, explaining the end results.  I need to engage the verbal part of my brain on a regular basis and I think that tying it to another creative process (in this case, crafting) might help.

3) I want to give back to the community that inspires me and also to get to know more people.  This is probably the hardest for me to do as I go through long stretches of just not wanting to deal with people or having a hard time communicating.  I’m in the latter now but I want to see if I can inspire my way out of it.

I know that being accepted into a community requires a lot of reciprocation on my part — you have to write regularly and comment often to be in people’s field of vision.  I also know that I have failed in this numerous times. So right now I’m not going to really tell anyone about this blog or make my blogroll public until I am sure that I can keep things up.  There will always be some down/away periods and there’s nothing I can do about that.  But I don’t like raising people’s expectations and then being unable to deliver.