Thursday, October 9, 2008

Getting Ready For Hollows

If you've never been to the AntiCraft, you should go. The new Samhain issue is up and while it only has one knit project his time it's a cool one. I mean who wouldn't want a scull project bag with a zippered pouch in the mouth. I'm going to make one. Complete with daisies growing out of the head and all.

The big thing I need to get done before Hallween is for my son James. He wants felted shrunken heads. Yes, more than one, in different colors. I got the pattern from, you guessed it, an issue of the AntiCraft. It's the Tsantsa pattern from the Beltane 2007 issue. If I knit fast I can get 3-4 of them done in time. Of course he will tie them to his backpack and carry them around all year. He's 16, I would expect nothing less.

Here are pictures from the pattern. Next week I'll put up pics of the finished heads I've done.


Enjoy the Holiday!

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Lots of socks - a cure for chronic depression?

So, I haven't blogged in a while. I'm sure I've been kicked off the Knitblogs netring by now, which makes me a dufus of the first degree.




So I knit some socks. 6 or 8 pairs of socks. Started a shawl, knit 4 bags, a sweater, a fish, 10 wash clothes, half a glove and got a 3 legged dog.




I now have warm feet, a warm husband (see above sweater), and my Mom has a ton of bags and uses the washrags as doilies because they are "to pretty".
So I'm starting over.

Knitting socks may not be the way to a healthy mind but it sure is nice to have warm feet.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

April Fools


James' says "All hail foolish people!"

Friday, March 28, 2008

How I Came to Knitting

This is an essay I wrote for something or other and felt it would be nice to print it here too. It's a bit long so go get some coffee.

How I Came to Knitting

An essay by Robin Jacobson


Every one learns in a different way. It’s what makes us unique.

Every one learns to knit in a different way. It’s what makes us unique knitters. There are even so many ways to knit that many of them have names. Pickers, Flingers, Combination Knitters, all unique a fabulous individuals that have found their perfect way to interact with yarn. I think that the way we knit is just as interesting as what we knit. But even more interesting than that is how we learned to knit.

Everyone has a story. Some are short, “My Mom taught me.” Some are long and take days or even whole books to tell. Mine is a short essay, not an epic saga, but hopefully interesting.

I first learned to knit from my Mom when I was in Jr. High. It was the ‘80’s and I had a very short attention span. The ‘80’s were not great for girls who were less superficial and liked to create things. If you liked to make stuff and sew and cook you were either Amish or super weird. I was a freak show, in a very punk, proto-goth kind of way. I even had purple hair. Well, knitting didn’t take and I ended up starting my love affair with sewing and painting, both of which have kept me fed and clothed at various points in my life. I think my knitting produced one 8” square for the whole decade.

The second time I learned to knit was in the ‘90’s, again from my Mom. This produced a second 8” square. I may have been trying to make a hat.

The third time I learned to knit was in 2002. My Mom had just made a batch of hats for the kids for Christmas the year before, 2001, and I wanted to make my daughter a matching scarf. It was January and she really needed it. My Mom gave me the leftover yarn from the hat; it was a horrible fluffy pink acrylic. I had never touched wool yarn. Mom always knit with acrylic. Cheap acrylic. Then Mom gave me the aluminum needles she had used. They were old and dinged all to hell, so the yarn kept snagging. She showed me how to do a long-tail cast-on. The only one she knew. I knit the whole 60” scarf in stockinette stitch. I had no idea it would curl up like that and end up looking like a plushy pink boa constrictor. I would not have wished this on some one I don’t like as a first knitting project. I would not wish this on an enemy as knitting penance.

My daughter loved it. She still wears it, with the hat.

After the big pink snake scarf I needed to feed my creative soul. I had stopped painting. I wasn’t currently sewing or designing so I needed an outlet. I got some acrylic eyelash yarn my daughter had picked out and made her another scarf. My friend, now adopted sister, Shelley took me under her wing. She helped me figure out the while my purl stitches were perfect and I had wonderful gauge every single one of my knit stitches were crossed.

And then she took me to a real yarn shop. Before that all my yarn had come from Rite-aid. She bought me my very first set of Denise needles. She bought me a $37.00 skein of hand painted rayon eyelash yarn in a deep chocolate/coffee because I liked it. I made a scarf, for myself, on size 17 Lantern Moon ebony needles. She thought I was nuts for knitting something so slippery, so easy to drop a stitch, on such big needles. But the needles were pretty and I didn’t know any better, and it was way easier than the squeaky acrylic on evil aluminum needles.

These three scarves are the only scarves I have ever knit. My next project was a queen sized afghan knit in the round, and then came socks.

I learned some very interesting things from Shelley, my second knitting teacher. I learned that Mom was left handed and therefore knit weird. She had never really learned a standard way and no one could show her how to knit left handed. She would hold her working needle between her knees and then her other needle in her left hand and only ever worked on straits. Long straits. She was also a flinger.

This seemed like a lot of extra arm movement to me. I’m ambidextrous so I figured I could figure out a way to use both hands. I became a picker completely by accident. That’s not how the 1953 book my Mom gave me showed to do it. Shelley’s a flinger. I just grabbed the needles on that first scarf and went about knitting continental. I still have no idea why my hands thought that was just the proper way. Thank goodness no one was there to stop me.

Every single person I have taught to knit since I have taught English. That’s just the way they liked to learn. It felt right in their hands.

That is the best gift I can think of to give to some one.

The gift of knitting.

To make it feel right.

In there hands.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

So this is my life...

After the Holidays I had to move. And then I got pneumonia. And then I had to move while I had pneumonia. From this I learned 2 really amazing things. Hiring movers is very smart. Not having health insurance is very scary when you have a life threatening illness.

Did I mention that I had to pack my whole house, that's husband, 3 kids and 4 cats, unpack my whole house and coordinate the move with pneumonia!

I love my husband but he so screwed the pooch on helping with the move. I still have boxes of stuff in the garage, and I'm the kind of person who as everything unpacked and put away in less than a week. Two weeks at the most. The thing they don't tell you about pneumonia is it takes forever to get better. Even after the antibiotics are done it was still 2 weeks before stairs weren't a big obstacle.

While I was sick I knit socks.
One pair of ankle socks in Collinette Jitterbug - Tapis. Which reaffirms why I love Jitterbug.

I also read.

And then I went back to work and have been running ever since. Which is still not a very good excuse to stop blogging but there it is.



Bowling birthday party's have also become very popular with the 8 year old set. I started a new sock pattern (I write patterns in my spare time. Stop that laughing!) and the whole experience was so novel that I have to take some sock pictures of it.




Then it all goes Disco.













At least my cats like my new room.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Robin's Holiday Survival Guide

Merry New Year!

Wow was 2007 a fun ride. It's always nice to ring in the new year with a bang but I find having all the holidays piled up at the end to be a bit stressful, like finals. So here are few things I do to get me through with all my hair still on my head.

1. Drink responsibly. Take time to sit down with a cuppa with friends and family. There's nothing more sad than having a cup of hot cocoa alone at 1 am to take the edge off.

2. Decorating is a team sport. Have the kids help out, they like it, and when you go to put everything away after the holidays they can help with that too.

3. Wrapping gifts is a team sport too. I like wrapping presents, really I do. But when you haven't gotten anything wrapped at all and it's 2 days til Christmas Eve it's time to call in the troops. Thank you Shelley!

4. It's not all about the food. I love to cook. I love to feed people. I love baking for the holidays. I had no time this year. Believe it or not this is the first year I have ever worked full time for the holidays. I didn't do any baking this year and I felt deprived until I realized I also did not gain any weight either. That's 5 less pounds to shed this year. Go me.

5. Knit responsibly. Never take on more knitting projects than you can finish.

6. Be careful what you promise to knit when giving knit certificates. On the card I said hat, mittens or a scarf. Len wants a hat, no problem. Lisa wants a Doctor Who scarf. Have you seen how long those things are? Next year it's going to be a one skein limit.

7. Pick a day to just sleep in. This one is a life saver. You will have to do some pre-planning to make sure you get your day but it's so worth it.

8. Christmas ornaments are not eternal. You are going to lose or break at least one every year. This year Jarret broke one of the good blown glass ones and the kitten got a pear, a teddy bear, a fish and an apple. At least I can fix the kitten's ornamental depredations.

9. Play games. This one is self explanatory. We really like Munchkin Blender.

And I finished Quinn's sweater in time for it to be a Christmas present. Mom's sending me a picture of it soon.