Five Things About Me

Once again, the fabulous Allyson comes to my aid and posted her 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 things about me blog today, on a day when I had no idea what I was going to write about. So I’m being a big fat copycat.

The original idea comes from Craft Zine, which is an amazingly wonderful zine, if you’ve never seen it.

One Project You Are Particularly Proud Of

I’m really proud of my sweaterdress, even if I’m sort of angry at it right now. First attempts are always shaky, and if you tell me otherwise I may punch you, but even better than having a perfect finished object on the first try is the learning process of where I went wrong and knowing how to fix it. Even if I’m not (and never will be) a perfect knitter, at least this is showing me that I’m a relatively smart knitter. And a knitter who is ridiculous enough to hold a grudge against yarn.

Two Mistakes You’ve Made in the Past

Both are related to swatching. Not swatching is a big mistake. I’m terribly sorry to say that.
1. The first is the aforementioned sweaterdress, and my using the wrong measurements from my swatch to start my knitting. Don’t do that, self.
2. The second is the sleeves of my Vivian. Had I dutifully swatched and washed and blocked and measured the hell out of the yarn, I would not have ended up with sleeves that are roughly 6″ too long.

Please, people, learn from my mistakes, and just suck it up and do the damned swatch.

Three Things That Make Your Work Unique

1. I think my color choices for most of my projects are “unique.” Sometimes I think they border on “crazy.” But “unique” sounds better. Take my all purple Bandelier Socks or my Slanted Peerie Mitts. I love color, I love colorwork, and I love coming up with potentially unexpected colors for my projcts.

2. I’m both a process and a project knitter. I’m all for the process of knitting, the sitting, the susurrus of the needles and yarn, but dammit, if I also don’t have something at the end that I can show off, I’m not happy. (That may not be unique, but I’ve heard so many people describe themselves as one or the other that I feel it’s somewhat unique to see yourself in both camps.)
3. I can memorize charts like nobody’s business, and modify them on the fly if I have to. I scare myself sometimes.

Four Tools You Love to Use

1. Uhm. Yarn. I like yarn a lot.
2. I’m a big fan of tape measures as well. I’ve got a good number of them. I know where I can find at least 2 of them, possibly a third.
3. Since I generally knit socks when I’m on the go, and I find that DPNs, for me, are better suited for at home knitting, I have to say circular needles. Whether I’m using them for magic loop or even knitting flat, they’re definitely my go-tos.
4. My blocking mats, though I have heard of this blocking mat that has grid lines and may be bigger than the overall square footage of my mats, so I may look into those.

Look, it’s a swatch! And we’ve come full circle.

Five Inspirations

1. My mom and my grandmother. My grandmother first taught me to knit many moons ago. It didn’t stick, but whatever, the seed was planted. My mom also attempted to teach me crochet, but that didn’t stick either. However, when I was young, my mom did sew many dresses for me and encouraged me to be creative and crafty (by “encouraged,” I may mean “shoved her half-finished cross-stitch projects onto a dorky kid who thought it was cool,” but I can’t confirm that and encouraged sounds better).
2. My fellow crafters! Seeing the projects and talking about crafting with folks here on the blog, on the Twitters, on Ravelry, wherever, inspires me to keep going, because I’m not crafting in a vacuum.
3. Pinterest. It has to be said.
4. Movies and music. Lots of folks have been inspired by knitwear in movies, and I try to name all of my projects in Ravelry with song titles, so clearly these forms of entertainment have some impact on my crafting life.
5. Making stuff in general. Making one thing leads me to want to make something else, which leads me to wanting to try another craft, etc. It’s a self-sustaining cycle. While I may stick mostly to knitting, there are tons of ideas floating around inside my brain for other things I want to make and do.

Be sure to check out Allyson’s post, and if you’ve recently done your own 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 post, please link to it in the comments!