Crafting funk and failures

I've been in a bit of a crafting funk recently, I haven't really had the motivation to sew or knit.  You know it's bad when I lose the will to knit, I think of knitting as like rumination in cows, once they stop ruminating its a serious situation that all too often leads to an intra-cranial lead injection.  Or something like that.  There's a reason I didn't go into farm medicine.

Here are a few recent failures that have brought my knitting to a standstill.  Sewing, on the other hand, has halted almost entirely since moving to York and only having access to my sewing machine and stash 2 weekends a month.  I had a grand plan to do loads of sewing this weekend past but ended up in the pub for lunch both days and going for a late afternoon/early evening nap so most of the day was wasted in a drunken, sleepy stupor.  I'm not going to lie, it was most pleasant, curled up in bed with the dog in my nook and Outnumbered on catch up.  Not terribly productive though.

This is a lovely pattern, Oaked by Alicia Plummer.  The plan was to use up a gorgeous ball of alpaca silk DK by Debbie Bliss that has been languishing in my stash for years (the only posh ball of yarn in my stash right now).  Unfortunately I ran out halfway through, as you can see in the photo.  The maths was just too hard for me, having to look up the yardage requirement in the pattern and then compare it to the yardage of the skein.  No wonder I got confused.



That blue yarn is another one from my stash, not as nice but not bad and should be soft enough for a hat without being itchy.  I'm going to frog the first one and try again with the second.  I'm just worried the alpaca silk will fall to pieces as it unravels.  I'm also at a bit of a loss to know what to do with it if there's not enough for a hat.  It'll probably end up as a baby cardigan to be honest.



This next one is the Still Light Tunic that I started...lets see now...before finals so probably this time last year or thereabouts.  I've got as far as splitting for the front pleats and realised that this pattern is going to look ridiculous on my short-and-slightly-dumpy frame, it's going to drown what little figure I have and make me look like I'm wearing a sack.  Since the yarn is 4ply and so the thought of pulling it out is enough to make me want to give up knitting altogether and go back to World of Warcraft, I've decided instead to turn the nicely fitted bust I've knitted into a basic pullover.  I need more of these in my wardrobe anyway, since all my jumpers seem to have comedy animals or wacky fairisle patterns.  It'll involve a certain amount of winging it when it comes to increases/decreases around the hips and waist but I'm sure I'll muddle through somehow.  The great thing about top-down knitting is I can try on as I go, then get too excited to put my clothes back on and end up knitting topless, standing up in my lounge.  Which is what happened on Valentine's night.



This isn't knitting (obviously) but a rather frustrating lesson in WASHING TROUSERS BEFORE TURNING THEM UP.  Turned them up, washed them, they shrank, turned them down, turned them back up again.  Or at least I've done that with one pair, the second has been languishing on my coffee table for 2 weeks now.

So, between these 3 failures, I've not been feeling much like crafting recently.  I've even hit a roadbump on my new running regime, sore legs.  I'm taking this week off to ease back into it and I'm going to start interspersing swimming with running.  I feel like I'm failing at life at the moment, I can't even put one foot in front of the other successfully!

Last of the Christmas presents

Here we are finally, the last of the Christmas presents.  This one was embarrassingly late because I ordered the second pair of needles (with plenty of time to spare, might I add)...then got them sent to Edinburgh instead of York.  Suffice to say, by the time the needles arrived in the correct city Christmas had passed and since it was going to be late anyway, I figured I might as well go whole hog and keep it until my next Edinburgh weekend (when I have access to my sewing machine and fabric hoard stash) and sew up a lining.  I'm getting really annoyed with this whole to-ing and fro-ing between Edinburgh and York, never having what I need where I need it.

The skirt in all its bad-winter-light-photo-hurry-up-and-take-a-picture-so-you-can-wrap-it-and-post-it glory



The back.  Very dull to knit but actually a nice relief from the 'WTF...I swear I've already done this row...wait a second...shit...if only I wasn't watching New Girl drinking wine whilst knitting this very complicated pattern' of the front panel

Partly this is why it's taken me 2 weeks to blog again, I'm now officially job hunting back up north.  Job applications take ages don't they?  Even when you're sending pretty much the same letter to everyone.  I've had one interview so far, which was a nice confidence boost, but in the wrong part of Scotland to be feasible with commuting so a no-go.

The lining was made from some red satin-stuff lurking in my stash.  Ideally I wanted a pretty printed cotton to please small-child-Amy but then sensible-adult-Amy decided to go for something slippery to make the skirt easier to wear with tights.  Because lets face it, if its cold enough for a wool skirt, its cold enough for tights, right?  Cotton sitcks and catches on tights, satin slips on and off easily.  Not that I'm implying that I designed this skirt to be easy to slip off...wait...hang on...I'm coming across all wrong....

I'm not much of a note-maker, but if you want to see my Ravelry post about this skirt, my username is Second Fiddle.

For some reason Flickr or Blogger has seen fit to alter the size of some of these photos, even though I altered them to be the correct size.  If anyone knows why this might be, please feel free to drop me a line!