*knitknit*
Posts tagged geekness
Day two
Jul 4th
I find it very difficult to sit at home and work with fleece and yarn on beautifull days like these. I also noticed I really missed drawing.. I don’t know why but somewhere at some point I decided to split the knitting blog from the artstuff blog and then it all went down the drain. Since then I have not drawn a thing… which is a bad thing since I’m still not done with my brothers airbrush thingy… So now I’m having second thoughts about the second blog but I still don’t think the two subjects should be mixed… The blog started out as a place to organize all of my hobbies, but somewhere along the line my drawing got shoved out of the way by the knitting/ sewing and now I feel like I’ve lost an old friend…
I’m not sure what I’ll do yet but I’m thinking of returning the drawing stuff to the main blog because it’s not working out right now…
Talking about things creative – I’ve been nagging about how slow my bobbins are and that I’m annoying the living daylight out of myself treadling so fast I can’t even hear the tv anymore, but now I’ve come up with a solution. It’s still an experimental sollution but if this works out I’ll take the whole thing to the next level.
I spent a whole day searching the internet for a bobbin that will work out for me, and then came to the conclusion that I’m not willing to spend so much money on something I can make myself (funny, that’s what I said when I started knitting/ sewing/ spinning), so I grabbed my jig saw and the sander, and then the gluegun and I was a happy little girl 
Obviously this is an experiment, but it’s already a huge success, so the next step is to get me some plywood and making some good calculations to get me a 1:10 ratio
This end was twice as big and completely useless, the bigger side (now) gave me a 1:5,5 ratio, the new part gives a 1:7 ratio. Not a huge improvement but I can definately feel (and hear) the difference!
I know how it really looks very crappy but it’s totally worth it! This little experiment will allow me to actually do something else while spinning, like watching tv or a movie without the need for heavy headphones 
A total success if you ask me. So for the next step I think I’ll create some custom bobbins with different sets of plywood (recreating the original side). I’ll keep you guys updated
I had mentioned spinning a little today, but I paused because of the greyish color. It’s the first time I ever washed and carded fleece so obviously there’s a million things I could’ve done wrong with this, but the most obvious thing is that it isn’t clean. The fleece is a white alpaca, and not grey… but the singles are very very grey… It feels rather dry and gross on my fingers after a while but that’s not the biggest of my problems, right now I’m wondering if the color will ever go back to ‘white’ after spinning and plying….. 
Besides the new singles on the mutilated bobbin I spent some time trying to get the overtwisted Dandelion straight again… I was so afraid of undertwist I really really overtwisted the whole thing in the end. The beginning isn’t even that bad, but the last 50 meters are horrible… It’s 178 grams of a total of 300 grams and I’m really sure I can make something quite large with this…
I was going for malabrigo sock and tho it’s not 400 meters per 100g it’s close enough for a first attempt Here, have some pix 
Tour de Fleece :)
Jul 3rd
I’ll be honest, I’m really not a fan of the Tour at all… I don’t like watching it and I really think its quite boring.. I do however respect the athletes and I think it’s an awesome achievement but still it’s just not for me.. however.. this does not mean I don’t like to use this as an excuse to spin The plan was that I’d be done with the washing and carding so I could start spinning immediately when the Tour started, but unfortunately, because of the extreme heat, I haven’t been able to finish. It was simply too hot to touch any fibre so I haven’t knit or spun at all for a while. This meant that I had to finish plying the BFL before I can do any other spinning, so that’s what I did.
I finished the plying and I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out. It’s become a bit thicker than I planned it, but on hindsight I’m very pleased with that fact. It’s rather difficult to only knit very thin materials, sometimes it’s pleasant to have some heavier yarns to play with
This is what it looks like right now, it’s about the same size as malabrigo sock yarn (sometimes thicker sometimes thinner) and so far it measures 406 meters. At first it was a lot of fun to spin this but at the end it was a real pain. I will definately not start the other half before I have a faster bobbin because trying to spin light fingering 3-ply yarn with a 1:5,5 ratio really really sucks if you ask me…. Not only does my foot not like the fast treadling, but I’ve managed to unscrew the wheels main bolt….. I also noticed my hands start working faster and faster and my foot keeps the same pace so when at a certain point the singles break I can’t manage to continue because there’s not enough spin, causing the yarn to keep breaking and breaking every time I try to restart…. very very frustrating.
Another rather funny point is that it took a long time for me to spin the singles and then to ply them, so the end of the plying process was rather annoying because the singles were allmost ‘stuck’ to the bobbin. They were a bit curly and I had trouble getting them off in one piece. Also the plying went too slow because of my recent trauma concering underspun singles.. so while trying to correct this I overspun the yarn a bit causing this pretty mess. At the moment it’s hanging out to dry, hopefully tomorrow the curly mess will have subdued
Besides the Tour and the WC there’s been a birthday to celebrate My dad has become a year older and for us kids it’s the time to bake a cake. Why you ask? Well for as long as I can remember my birthdays have been marked by my dads ridiculously cool birthday cakes. My second birthday I had a barbie cake, with a real barbie doll on top wearing a pricess candy dress, for my third birthday it was a grass field with a house and 3 bear candles and the years after that I always had some fun cake. Later on my brother got the awesome cakes (kirby, mario..). So now (since last year) we bake him cakes and try to decorate them creatively. We just started out so we still suck but I think this one is another little success
My dads birthday was the same day we won with 2-1 from Brazil, and we didn’t want to show his age on the cake so we made the soccer field and the teams Like I said, we really suck (and Brazil didn’t play in yellow, and we didn’t have blue!), but I think my dad liked it anyway
Here’s my dad stabbing cake…:)
cleanup
Aug 15th
I feel like a good and thorough de-stashing At the moment I have a huge stash, the only problem is that a lot of this stash is either unusable (and I really don’t like throwing away good but unmatching yarn), or just not enough to become something very nice… Most of it is acrylic (and cheap!) yarn so in a way I don’t mind not using it because it’s good enough for experiments or ovenmitts…
Anyway, I’ve already made a small start on finishing the last three wip’s I have in my ‘under construction’ list. The Shipwreck, Arisaig and the Print O the wave stole which has been lying around since april….
In an attempt to organize the daily knitting a little I got me a little basket where I can put all things for my daily knitting in. Everything I need is in there and the three projects I’ll be working on most are in there as well.
Here’s a little update on Sackboy 2.0 as well. I’m still looking for some better buttons for the eyes but this’ll have to do for now Also I made the little guy a little hat but I think it’s not so visible on the picture. I’ll make sure to take some better pics once the stitching is all done
I’ve also been working on the Shipwreck for a little while and I’ve made some nice progress I left out the smaller beads tho because it was taking a lot of time to keep sliding them over my yarn. The other problem was that the sliding made the yarn all worn and messy. I’m not sure if I’ll still need all the beads because obviously I’ll have much much less beads than called for in the pattern, but I guess I can fix that in the last three rounds as well. If I see it’s getting too light I’ll just add another few rounds with a lot of beads
o hai.. i haz returned :)
Aug 11th
so I’m back with some nice stories and a (very) little bit of knitting. This holiday I’ve taken a big decision that will affect my hobbies greatly. I dropped one of my master studies and will now only focus on urbanism. I guess sometimes we make decisions we think are best for us only to find out that it’s hasn’t turned out that way, and it’s not making us happy. I guess the more I thought about it the more I realized I enjoyed urbanism much more than architecture, and tho I’m interested in the subject, I’m not willing to commit to it as much as the discipline requires. My intrests and hobbies are far too widespread to be focussed on just one thing. I guess in a way I like architecture because it’s the mother of all other arts, but I’m interested in the childeren more than the mom…hehe.. I’m a little kid
Urbanism on the other had has much more to offer (imo). Urbanism is all about the city and how people move through it.. how it becomes a living and breathing thing with it’s own character and identity. Urbanism is like playing Sim City on a huge scale Ofcourse I COULD’ve known… I completely missed the signs one of my all-time fave games is Age of Empires (or Starcraft… or Halo Wars… or theme park…. aaaargh). Whatever it was it’s always been about creating some sort of village or park or hospital (remember theme hospital? ). About organizing spaces and flows and movement on the larger scale rather than the facades and ornaments of one piece of the puzzle .
Don’t get me wrong tho, I like the detailed work… after all.. I did spend 5 years studying building technology……… 
talk about details….LOL (for the people who don’t know what building technology is: it’s all about the phase between the architects design and the contractor who builds it. Here’s where design work is being transformed into technical blue-prints so the contractor can start building.
Anyway, this means I’ll have a significant amount LESS stress than before, which means I have more TIME to spend on my hobbies, and this means I’ll FINALLY have time to add drawing, journaling and art back into my life
So let me tell you what I’ve been doing this last week
We went to france and stopped by in Paris
The view from the hotel was weird… but who cares! We had a blast Anyway ofcourse I’ve also been knitting and being productive I’ve been working on the arisaig a little but I’m still not done with the back.. I had to use straight needles on this one because I don’t own a set of circular 2,5mm ones, but it’s terrible.. I HATE straight needles.. they’re too heavy…
I’ve also been working on the Shipwreck a little but because of the small beads it’s almost as if there’s no progress at all…. I think I’ll skip the beads for a few rounds and start adding them again after 10 rounds, creating a gradient in between.. I really do need the beads for the weight of the whole thing.. but this way it’s just not going anywhere…
You might also remember little Sackboy 1.0 from the previous post. But now it’s time to meet sackboy 2.0! At least… he’s still in progress so you can’t really meet him/ or her yet but anyway here’s his little legs, body and his huge head… I’m working on the first arm right now, and I must say it’s getting better than the first one already.. There’s a whoooole lot of sackboys on rav so you might want to check those out :D:D
And last but not least: I dug up an old project which I want to finish this holiday
Total geekness!! (no seriously)
Jul 30th
Here’s my first post on my revived macbook!
WARNING!: the next part contains my geekiness about my Macbook.. plz skip the next part if you don’t like geeks.
Somewhere between three and four years ago I bought me one of those pretty white *new* Macbooks to play study with. I took it with me wherever I went and we became real close friends ^__^
Everything was well in liliville untill the university stuff became more and more serious.. each year there would be a new software version which would be bigger and heavier than the previous version and so the macbook got tired and said: “leave me alone!” *sad face*
Ok that’s not exactly how it went.. it was more like this: it’s getting old.. and well.. the HDD had a max. capacity of 60Gb.. which is.. well.. NOTHING… apple… WTF!
Anyway, I guess that was normal in those days… *gets flashbacks of prehistoric people with rocks and stuff* (I should make drawings LOL). Anyway.. so I bought me a new 250Gb hard drive and replacd the old one.. and for the first time in 3-4 years I’m working on a clean Macbook again.. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! düde… I should’ve done this earlier…
Ok I’m done
I’ve been doing some thinking about the ways that I can incorporate my geekness into my knitting… and then I found the answer: Amigurumiiii! I’ve seen them on the interwebs for a very long time but I’ve never really felt the urge to actually knit/ crochet but ever since I’ve played Little Big Planet I’m addicted So much even that I’ve actually knit my very own Sackboy
Isn’t he the cutest thing ever?? <3
I’ve already heard The Man say he wants one a few for the workplace so I’ll have enough to do this summer
Now that it’s done I can see a lot of things than could’ve been done better but I’m very happy with the way this one turned out I’ve actually already knit him a little sunflower ‘hat’ but it’s not done yet so we’ll have to wait for another post
