No Progress

I have done no knitting. None, nein, nyet, nada. Now it's nearly Autumn and I need to get caught up. Big time. The kitchen renovation is in the last stages. That means that the kitchen is operating, but everything is disorganized, in the basement, scattered, lost, packed, or incomplete. Does not provide motivation to spend my free time either unpacking stuff and figuring out where it goes, or working around construction materials. Thankfully, the contractors showed up yesterday and put shelves in the cabinets, so I could actually load them with stuff. Only took say, 2-3 weeks.

The phot shows my latest acquisition. For months I have been ogling the Knitpicks website, looking at the lovely colors. I simply cannot justify buying more yarn. I have yarn all over. I haven't been knitting lately. So what! I promised to make a gift for a dear friend and ordered! It all laceweight yarn in lovely, heathered colors. Project is in the planning stages.

I am also planning a bead project. I mention it here because I plan on doing beadwork to emulate knitting. I saw a photo on Craftzine and just loved the project. It did not come with instructions, so I'm planning that, too. In this case, the planning is exactly like designing a knit project. Each bead equals one stitch. Instead of calculating yards of yard, I calculate quantities of beads. After that, we'll see. The beads are on order.

Bauhaus Inspired

I forgot to post my latest project in progress. This is my third woven piece. Nothing comes out quite like I had planned, yet. The design was inspired be photos of weavings done at the Bauhaus School. After that idea, nothing else worked as I had intended.
I bought the yarn on impulse. Foolish me. My son, Andrew is home form college for the summer. In theory, he is painting for his portfolio in the basement. This requires an outlay of money on my part for supplies of paint, canvas, and sundries. Andrew and I dutifully head out to shop. He goes to get canvas and I head for the yarn, thinking that I'll just take a look..... Add another $90.00 to the bill. I got yarn in beautiful teals and purples and grey and green. Very soft. I got a lot because I wanted to make a 20" wide long stole. I took a glance at the label and saw the word "wool" and did not read carefully. Besides, that, I was pressed for time.
Comes the time to weave...and "Oh noes"! The yarn was only 25% wool, mostly acrylic. I took a second look at the brand name and.....I should have known that this was a company that produced acrylic yarns. I took another look at the yarn- it is a cabled yarn. Oops. Anyway, I just kept making mistake after mistake and learned lesson after lesson. The final woven piece is about 20" by 45", so it is a reasonable size, but definitely not a stole. The cabled yarn looks OK, but the texture of the weave is different from what I had expected. This fabric has a loose, rather unstable weave. It's nice and soft, but it won't felt and I'd be a fool to cut it. I've been folding the fabric various ways (to hide mistakes) and I will eventually sew it up and line it to make a bag. I need a new knitting bag, anyway. The one that I have been using is getting worn. The current bag is a knitted project from August 2008, knit during the Olympics. It's seen daily use for three years. I can retire it.
In other news, I have not been working on much, lately. We are in the midst of a kitchen renovation and the entire house is unsettled and in an uproar. At the moment, we have had not kitchen for two weeks. Everything is packed up and distributed in the basement, in the dining room/staging area and in the living room. Chaos.