to fudge the knit mid-project realizing you have no idea whats going to happen to the yarn when it’s being washed… that is the question.

I’ve been jumping into projects too hasty and have had to either accept the fact that the wash might stretch the knit to the extent that I won’t be able to wear it and will have to either frog the thing or give it to someone else.. or accept that I have to frog a great part and redo the knit. This last part has happened to the CPH and to be very honest I’m not intending to let that happen again.

I’m not really a slow knitter, I have much knitting-time on my hands since I’m getting better and better at reading while knitting, or actually knitting while reading, and continental knitting helps since the yarn basically feeds itself and I don’t have to do any kind of thinking but to read my book and let my hands run on autopilot.  This does not mean, however, that I like wasting my time or that it doesn’t take some concentration.. and I’ve been a bit careless about the paying attention part of the whole process.

If I were to thoroughly think a pattern through and do some actual swatching and some good calculations and I would be able to finish my knits much faster and there probably wouldn’t be so many ‘oopsies’ in the process. Unfortunately tho, I’m a very chaotic person.. a lot of people have told me so, so I can basically just accept this as a fact. *sigh*

It’s not fun to realize something like this because this chaos has taken over my life and I have no idea where it begins and where  it ends. One of the reasons I started this blog was to keep track of what I do and to keep me organized, but I can’t really say it’s worked all the time. I do feel guilty when I’m not updating my blog on a regular basis when I’m busy doing schoolstuff, but I can’t seem to find a way to organize my life in a way that I can do school work AND knit AND blog in one week. And it doesn’t end here. I’m chaotic with everything, when I do my schoolwork, when I do the cleaning in the house, or when I do my sewing or knitting… I just can’t seem to find a way to organize my life.

So here’s my first new years resolution. I want to organize my life and I want to start working with timetables. Every day from monday – friday between 9.00 – 14.00 should be an active working day. I’m a student so I don’t need to work until 17.00 😀 and I want to be working on at least one of the following hobbies at least once a week.
– drawing
– knitting
– sewing

The knitting part has taken over completely while I also love sewing and drawing and want to get better at those hobbies of mine as well. I want to try to choose one day a week for each of these hobbies so at least on these days I can work on them, so I might just have a friday cartoon day or something like that 🙂

My second new years resolution is sports. I’ve always wanted to have somebody to play tennis or squash with and now I’ve finally found some one 🙂 So the plan is to have one day a week to play squash together and just have some fun 😀 and I’m all for fun 🙂

It may sound like a lot but all it takes is some concentration on my part during the ‘work-time’, since I tend to forget about that the most… 😛

Anyways, since we’re not quite there yet I’m still obsessing about knitting 😛 I really don’t want to make the same mistake I usually make so I’ve made a few swatches for the following projects. Camden and the French press felted slippers.

I’m intendin to use Drops Silke-Tweed for Camden because I wanted to try it out and it seems like such pretty yarn for something like this pattern. I’m not a big fan of the bobbles so I’m still thinking on patterns or maybe cables, but I’m not really sure yet. Meanwhile I’ve made a swatch in 3.0mm needles (left) and 2,5mm needles (right). I really love the right swatch, but it’s going to be a pain in the behind to make. I also have to calculate and see if I have enough yarn to make it in 2.5 and how much I’d have to buy in case it’s not enough. I don’t mind buying another 2 balls but that’s just about as far as I’ll go… the darn things don’t come cheap… 😐

I’ve also made a swatch for the French felted slippers. The thing is though that I don’t have 10mm needles and had to swatch with 9.0mm. The gauge varies but I’m sure I can manage the calculations. The only problem is the felting. I made a swatch and tried to felt it by hand, since I don’t plan to use the washing machine for a little 10x10cm square. But the felting was taking quite a long while and I could see that doing the whole thing by hand would not be an option. So tomorrow morning I’ll try the machine and see what happens. I’ve already read on the interwebs that a top loader is better for felting than a front loader but I only have one machine and I’ll have to try it out anyway. If it’s successfull I’ll knit 5 pairs before felting them 😀