What a Life!

Well, I finished the back of St. Brigid. [Pictures later.] The Charcoal Slogalong is done about up to the armholes in front. And because I’m tired of working on those two projects for now [I will be happy doing them when I come back to them…you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder sorta thing…], they shall be on hiatus for a while. [See, I’m not even interested in them enough at the moment to take pictures for you.]

What I am interested in, at the moment, is a cute little felted tote I want to use for my knitting projects. I’m using yarn from my stash – mostly. I had bought some Cascade 220 in these beautiful, bold, autumn colors to make some kind of tote but hadn’t decided exactly how to knit it up yet. I had four colors and I needed two more. I went to Threads to see what they had. Since I only had one skein of each color, theoretically any color could be the main color (which I needed two of). I ended up going with black, the white part in the picture will be a nice gold, and then the squares will be black, chocolate brown, maroon, dark teal blue, and hunter green. It will be so pretty! I love the colors they show the bag in too, so if it’s a fun project, I may make a second one at some point, though I have no idea what I would use it for now.

Then I have baby gifts to make. A little hat – the vine lace one from Knitting Daily. I think I have some pretty leftover yarn in my stash that would be perfect for that. I also have a sweater design in my head that I want to try out with some wool-cotton yarn also in my stash. And I have my second Monkey sock to make.

Such fun projects!

But, before I start any of them, I must finish up those UFO’s that have been sitting on my living room shelves for forever. I thought that leaving them out where I would see them and they would annoy me would motivate me to get them done. Then my plan was to finish one per week. To no avail. Part of why they were sitting there was because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to finish them. But the little sweater in yesterday’s post is probably the most difficult one, and all I have to do on it now is bury the ends, if indeed I decide I like it.

Then I have a felted tote I need to re-do the I-cord for because it didn’t felt nicely when I did it originally (it got knotted or something and was thick and thin instead of all one size). I have a little back-pack which needs straps and buttons sewn on. [I hate sewing buttons, remember?.] And I have more buttons and loops (or a zipper) to sew on that I-cord jacket I made for myself.

I decided I needed to block the I-cord jacket for myself since I really would prefer a zipper over buttons but I’m afraid the zipper would be too long or short once the thing stretched out from wearing and it would look funny. I soaked it in water and then spun it out in the washer, but the washer spun it out so much that it was no longer damp enough for me to shape it. The sweater rack I have is worthless – it is a piece of netted fabric on a frame – the netting does not keep its shape at all, so there is no hope for shaping a sweater on it. I should just trash the thing. My other method is to use the top of the dryer which gets used often and creates a nice warm place for knitted items to dry, and I guess I will be going back to that until I find a better contraption. Messing around…messing around. [Why do I hate finishing projects?]

The i-cord for the knitted bag is 36″ long at the moment – it needs to be 60″. Then I will wash it in a pillowcase with a pair of Steve’s old jeans. And I have the needle and thread out to sew the buttons and straps on that little back-pack. So really, I am making progress.

The moral of the story is that punishment – leaving things out where they will annoy me because I see them all the time – is clearly not as effective as rewards – getting to work on new fun projects once the old ones are complete. There are people these days who think you shouldn’t use either with your children – children should want to do things for the right reason (like bettering society) rather than avoiding punishment or earning reward. Personally, I think such ideas are hogwash, especially since I used rewards for myself a lot. Trully, the punishment or reward needs to match the desired action or it will not be effective…and it’s difficult enough making good choices for myself, much less for someone else (like my kids). Really, I would like to do good things just because I should, but more often than not, I need a bit more of an incentive than that, quite frankly. So I roll my eyes when people try to argue that you shouldn’t punish or reward your children. I mean, it works so well with me…

Okay. Enough ranting. On with my knitting. I really will post pictures soon. Promise.