Persistently Talented

The other day I was painting with a friend and I was given a compliment: I was told I was "talented." It's funny, because I didn't think so. Besides being far from where I would like to be, I knew that the way I paint now is because of the amount of time I've spent on it. I've poured over books on lighting and composition, I've invested in good materials, and I have put the brush to paper many times over. I know that with art, it is really easy to believe that someone is inherently good at it and overlook the amount of time spent on the craft. It is my belief that no one is really talented, people are just persistent... although there may be those who's fine motor skills develop a little faster. After thinking on the idea of talent, I wanted to find a way to prove that it is persistence and not talent that creates great works of art.

I've devised a little experiment to prove my hypothesis which is to learn to write with a non-dominant hand. The idea behind it was to get good at something no one starts off proficient at but everyone is capable of with practice. I know that no one ever really says, "You can write? You are so talented." But if we can get our non-dominate hand to write, it means we can get it to draw. To start off Connor and I are now both writing out the alphabet once each day with our non-dominant hand.  It has already been quite interesting. Both of us found that we were trying to use our whole arm to move the pen rather than the wrist at first. I also noticed that the muscles in my non-dominate hand are not nearly as strong as my dominant hand. I'm not sure where the experiment will end, but I think it will be interesting to see if we can eventually write with both hands.

My letters are on the left, Connor's are on the right. The first alphabet on the page was done with our dominant hand as a control.

I told my Mum what we were up to and she laughed. Something about, "As if you didn't have enough projects going on." Mum might be right. I'm working on my second skein for Tour de Fleece. I'm entirely sure I won't finish this one by the end of it, but I'll be close. I've finished the first bobbin and am a third of the way through the second.

Wonderland Dyeworks 80/20 Merino/Tussah Silk in Coral Reef

I was so excited by my first skein for this year's Tour de Fleece that I already cast on. The pattern is called Primavera. It was written for a 66 stitch sock, but is easily adapted to the 54 stitch sock I am making.

I'm achingly close to finishing my Dad's Peeta Socks. I just have weave in ends and block them. It will happen, I'm just a bit more enthralled with the Primavera socks at the moment.

The Dude Sweater is also growing quite a bit. I am at the point where I need to join the sleeves to the body. It is going to require some concentration that I just haven't had for the last few days, so it will sit a wee bit longer.

So what do you all think? Is talent something you just have or is it something you develop?

Tour De Fun

Hello friends! It has been a rather productive week here at the Bear Ears house, but maybe more importantly, it was a fun week. I finished up my skein of Cider House from Greenwood Fiberworks. It came out to 250 yards, which is the same as the last time I spun a braid of Greenwood Fiberworks. I remember wanting that skein to have more yardage just like I wish this skein had a bit more yardage. Maybe it is the fiber and not me? It sure is pretty, though.

I didn't expect to finish the braid of Cider House before the end of Tour De Fleece, so it was a great surprise that I might be able to spin something else. I've pulled out two braids of Wonderland Dyeworks' 80/20 Merino/Tussah Silk in the Coral Reef color way. 

This time around I'm aiming for a DK/Worsted weight two ply. I've made a great start. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll have a second skein by the end of the tour.

Meanwhile, I've kept up on my knitting. Connor and I have been watching Vikings. It is interesting enough that I can't work on anything that requires looking down, but my hands were getting itchy so I found that the many rounds of stockinette in the Dude Sweater kept them happy. I'm at the next stretch of color work though, and I'm a little intimidated. It took me a few days to get though the color work when I was doing it on the sleeves. The sweater body is three times the size of a sleeve... 

Dad's Peeta Sock is also growing. I have found myself in the car pretty often. Although the car rides aren't very long, a few rounds here and there really add up.

Connor and I have also been playing the odd round of Scrabble. I think I mentioned last time that turns can last a while, so it didn't take many games to finish the latest lavender sachet embroidery. I've now got three embroideries waiting to be sewn up. I think I might wait until I finish the sweater body that will need to be steeked before dragging the sewing machine out.

Is anyone else joining in on the fun with Tour De Fleece? Leave a link, I'd love to see your lovely skeins.

Sucking The Fun Out Of Fun

Has anyone else had a time in their life where they forgot how to have fun? I feel like that has been me lately. Since the last week of April, I've been staying disciplined by working on getting The Comic up and running. Every day I edit at least two pages and after I get a pile edited, I (digitally) cut them up and Connor posts them. The thing is, I had gotten so efficient that even when I left room for myself to do something fun, like knit, it wasn't fun anymore. My efficiency spilled over into my hobbies. I'd tell myself, "The faster you finish this knit, the sooner you can finish the next one." I made myself into a machine. This isn't any way to live. 

After making myself miserable for the last two plus months, I heard a sermon that snapped me out of it. The sermon itself was about envy, but in it the preacher talked about the movie Chariots of Fire. (A quick aside, I've never seen all of Chariots of Fire. I watched about 10 minutes at which point I realized there weren't going to be any chariots, so I stopped watching.) The plot follows two runners. One is always worried about who is catching up to him and who might beat him while the other throws his head back and enjoys the act of running. I realized I was the worried runner when really I'd rather be the happy one, so I've been practicing mindfulness. When I catch myself strategizing what I need to do next, I write it on the list, then promptly think about what I am enjoying about my current activity... even the ones that aren't really that fun on paper. I'm happy to report that it has been working. I feel like I'm having fun again. An added bonus has been that I've found myself more productive while I've been having fun.

What are those things, you might wonder? Wonder no more! First off, I am happy to say that I have finally finished editing Book 1. Connor and I need to still put the latter half of book 1 on the website, but we have made that a more pleasant experience by listing to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. (We have especially enjoyed episodes 303, 305, and 310.)

I've continued to make great progress on my father's second Peeta Sock and Connor's Dude Sweater. In typing this, I realized that there is nothing on the needles for me. Gasp! Actually, I'm having a great time knitting both projects and I look forward to giving them away when they are done.

I also started work on the next lavender sachet. I have embroidered several now, but had put them aside to stay true to the comic. I pulled it out again while Connor and I were playing Scrabble. We both can take a long time to come up with a word, so I've been able to make good progress on the new one.

And last, but certainly not least, I've been putting time aside at night to work on my Tour de Fleece project. I entirely forgot Tour de Fleece was coming up until a day or so before it started. In an effort to stay in the moment and not suck the fun out of it with too many goals, I only have the modest goal of spinning a three ply sock yarn out of my braid of Greenwood Fiberworks 80/20 Merino/Nylon in the Cider House color way. It's been on my mind for a while, but like the embroidery, I wasn't going to work on it until I had "earned" it by doing enough of the comic.

It seems so silly now that I was punishing myself by not working what I really wanted to. Connor reminded me that everything will eventually get done, and I suppose that is true. And if it doesn't get done, maybe it never really needed to anyways.

Has anyone else had the problem of sucking the fun out of their hobbies?

Sheep May Finally Safely Graze

What's this? Miracle of miracles, the Sheep May Safely Graze Socks are finally all knit up. And they fit!!! The white Cheeky Merino Joy matched perfectly with my handspun. The handspun is the sock roving blend by Greenwood Fiberworks in the Enchanted color way for those who may wonder.

I'm really happy with how they turned out. All the ripping paid off and I'm certain that they are going to be a favorite pair just as soon as we hit sock weather again.

As for the pictures, Connor and I went out for an evening hike and I thought I'd bring along the camera and the socks to see if we could find a good place for pictures. At the top of the hill is a bench, which was the only place where I could put the socks on and not immediately get them dirty.

Not pictured: The swarm of bugs that immediately landed on us as soon as we stopped moving

We waited for everyone to leave so we could take the pictures. It's always a little hard to do sock pictures in public if I'm the model. I feel weird and people always stare. I mean, I would too if someone was taking socks pictures. But probably because I'd want to know what pattern they had knit.

White, White, Sheep!

So.... I've ordered different white yarn for my Sheep May Safety Graze socks. I eventually decided that I liked the Koigu better than the Madelinetosh. The camera doesn't seem to like to pick up how orange the Tosh is, but if it looked like it did in this picture, I would have gone with the Tosh instead. However, like Alicia very cleverly pointed out, the Koigu is a little thin against my handspun. I wasn't so clever as to heed her kind advice, so I knit a whole leg of a sock before ordering some Baah! La Jolla in La Perla in the great hopes that it will be the white I want in a slightly heavier fingering weight.

That's right. I've now bought 3 different whites for this 1 project.

Part of me wonders if I'm being too picky, but I have good reasons to buy different yarn.
1. It took forever to spin the Enchanted and I will wear the socks for much longer than the 4 days I spent on knitting it.
2. I just don't like how clearly the handspun shows through the white when I put on the sock.
3. I can get the sock on, but it is just a touch too tight.

I've decided that all the knitting wasn't a waste because helped me to decide how I might want to spin my next Greenwood Fiberworks project: Cider House. With the Enchanted, I spun a 3-ply where two of the plies were the full length of the roving while the third ply was separated further to give the yarn a subtle fractal look. I liked how I spun it, but I want to spin a 3-ply that is not spun as a fractal this time around.

Meanwhile, because I still only have one project on the needles and it is the rather complicated Onopordum, I cast on a new sock out of White Birch Fiber Arts in the Sugarbush color way. Of course I'm undecided on what pattern to do. I'm between doing a pair of Monkey socks or Groovy Socks. The cuff will work for both. I think it will be easier to have the two socks match in stripes with Groovy Socks since it is a 2 round repeat, but really, I want to knit Monkeys.

Enchanted Yarn And The Mysteries Of Twist Angle Revealed

It is done! The long awaited Greenwood Fiberworks sock roving in the Enchanted color way has been finished. I am pleased, but the yarn isn't as springy as I was hoping for sock yarn. I did some investigating on what it takes to spin better sock yarn and learned a thing or two.

I'm not sure why I believed this, but whenever I read about the angle of twist on yarn, I just assumed you held the yarn at a certain angle to the wheel when spinning it. (i.e., you spin the yarn off to one side) After reading an article on Spinning Great Sock Yarn and the additional article on Twist Angle by HJS Studio, it finally clicked: the angle of twist is literally what angle the twist appears to be in the yarn, not the angle you hold it to your spinning apparatus. Color me enlightened. The article also mentioned something about how more fiber can get used up with a higher angle of twist (more twist = more fiber used) This explained the great mystery to me on why my yardage kept ending so low compared to other people's sock yarn. The next time I spin, I will pay much more attention to the amount and resulting angle of twist I put into a yarn. I'm excited!

Bigger Mistakes Faster or 2014 Ravellenic finisher in 2015

I've been struggling to finish projects recently. What's unusual is that I don't have any startitus. I have stuckitus. At the moment I have two socks on the needles and that one stubborn spinning project from the 2014 Ravellenics. (I feel like there is a joke related to slow Ravellenic finishers... but I can't remember the word. But that would describe me and this project.) In order to combat this mysterious stuckitus, I've dutifully spun the last of the singles every Friday knit night. And last Friday I finally finished! I even waited a whole 24 hours to let it rest before removing it from the spindle. Then I recruited some help from Connor to wind off the yarn. 

Note how he didn't even have to leave the couch in order to help

I was so excited to finally get a project done. But Connor and I have been housesitting for my parents which means that it was necessary for me to forget the doodad that attaches the mother-of-all to the rest of the wheel. After stomping and angsting for 2 minutes I came up with a solution. It's not perfect, but using two of those rubber bands you find on broccoli works quite well.

Finally. Finally I was going to have my glorious yarn. So I sat down Sunday afternoon and started plying. I hadn't touched my wheel in quite some time and I've never done a true 3 ply yarn, so I was struggling. I figured it was because of inexperience.

As it turns out, I was struggling because I am an idiot I plied the wrong way. I don't know if I've ever done that. As an aside, when beginners knitters have told me that they wished they didn't make so many mistakes, I tell them that the only difference is that the experienced crafter makes bigger mistakes faster. Case in point. I plied all 256 yards of the three-ply and tried to wind it off before I realized my mistake. What's funny is that I still didn't know what was wrong until I let go of the end of the yarn and saw it un-plying itself. (Also, the whole time I was struggling, I made angry noises about how I thought I'd spun lace weight when my swatch said I was spinning fingering weight.)

Here is what yarn plied the wrong way looks like when you try to take it off the wheel

I wasn't sure how big a mess I made. I wasn't sure I could fix it. I wasn't sure I wanted to as I didn't want a lace weight. But I gave it a go. Pro tip: it takes twice as long to ply yarn the right direction if you plied it the wrong direction first. It took forever and two runs through the wheel, but I did eventually get the yarn plied correctly. 

The strand above my finger is plied correctly while the strand below is still going the wrong way

As it turns out, I did make a fingering weight yarn. Once the yarn was able to relax a bit rather than be spun within an inch of its life, it was what I had intended. 

The yarn on the left is what it looked like plied wrong while the yarn on the bobbin is plied in the correct direction, but has only gone through the wheel once

I hope I don't ruin the yarn some more before setting the twist and knitting it.

Anyone else have a face-palm moment and make a large crafting mistake recently?

Spinning All The Things

My Ravellenic project this year was going to be spinning a 3 ply sock yarn on my spindle. I was making really good time on it, but after having a bit of a design emergency, the project sat. I just wasn't motivated to finish once the Olympics had ended. However, my desire for the yarn grew, so yesterday I finished off the second bump of wool. I only have one more to go before plying! 

Greenwood Fiberworks sock roving in the Enchanted colorway

Unfortunately, after finishing the second bump I tried to slip it off the spindle onto a knitting needle and it didn't go well. I had no problem the first time. I'm not sure what changed. Tyler suggested I wind off all the yarn with my ball winder. It took a couple hours, but I was able to rescue the yarn without having to cut any of it. (I won't lie... I did get close to making fiber confetti.) Now the singles live on toilette paper tubes... because that is all I could think of putting them on after winding them.

I hadn't spun yarn on my wheel in quite some time because I don't feel like I should start another project for the wheel without finishing the epic blanket project I've been working on for the last few years. But you know how that goes: no spinning of any kind has gotten done. I'm too stubborn to break the arbitrary no-new-wheel-projects rule I've made for myself. Having such a big project still sit around really started to bother me, so I spun the singles and plied this beast of a skein in one day.

And now that it is done, I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I think I have one more skein beast and one slightly smaller skein to go before I am done with the spinning!