Thursday, September 18, 2008

Appreciating my crafting

When I first started knitting 5 years ago, when people complimented my projects, I usually would respond saying that it's really not that hard and I wasn't doing anything special and anyone could do it if they tried.

Even when I started making more complex things, I still maintained that my knitting was nothing to write home about. My stitches were even, but aren't everyone's stitches even? (Apparently not.) I'm knitting on 4 needles? Really, it's not that hard. "Ooh, that's such pretty yarn!" I have good taste in yarn. But really, how much creativity do you need?

(The exception to all of this is compliments from the people I made things for. Of course I'm going to be happy that they liked whatever I made them, and I'm glad they appreciate)

I think I got better about accepting knitting compliments when I started spinning, since spinning is less common than knitting (though in my opinion it's not harder.) And I think at this point I'm okay with people admiring my knitting. The Celtic cable scarf I'm currently working on is the nicest thing I've ever made. And it's relatively complex.

It's about halfway done. Here's a more recent photo:



I'm really proud of it. And the person who it's for has seen me working on it, and really likes it. And he's impressed by my spinning, even though it's far from even.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Spun alpaca

Remember thatmass of alpaca I got? I spent the past few weeks spinning it up, though a lot of this was done on Wednesday night, since I was desperately trying to finish it before I went away for the weekend (and would meet the person who owns the alpaca farm and would have something to show him besides just a bobbin of yarn).

I ended up with two skeins and a bit extra, though I have no clue what the yardage is...



Also, this is the other yarn, from the same alpaca, but spun by a professional:


So here's the scarf as of last evening. The bottom part is the yarn I bought, the top is the yarn I spun. I'll probably take more pictures when it gets bigger, but I wanted to post it now.



And the pattern is the Celtic Cable Neckwarmer from here. (I slightly modified it to make it wider and added a cable on each side). I was a bit intimidated at first, but it's actually a really easy chart to follow. At this point I don't even need to look at the chart that often, though it's quicker if I have it on hand to look at it rather than to figure out what cables I'm doing in a given row. But maybe eventually I'll ahev the whole thing memorized.