This week I...

... went to a Social Sketch meetup! I wasn't sure if everyone else would be drawing from memory, or if we were meant to be drawing other people in the pub (which I wouldn't be up for, they are not there for staring at), so I brought my little carved tree spirit to have something unobtrusive to draw. I was happy enough with some of the drawings, though handing around sketch pads at the end made me want to crawl into a hole. I wanted to look at other people's though, so it would have been unsporting not to though mine onto the pile, though I couldn't refrain from pointing out that I had only restarted drawing again three weeks ago, after five years of next to nothing.

I have a knee-jerk aversion to the word 'sketch'. When I was in fifth year, my art teacher told the class that from now on, nothing we did would be a 'sketch'. Sketches are rough, incomplete, not a full piece in themselves, and if that is the mindset with which you're approaching your work, you're not putting in the effort which will make you better. From now on, we would only draw. While I've drawn very irregularly since then, I've held onto that lesson. I draw roughly, lazily, badly, but I don't sketch.

... drew some other things with which I was varying degrees of happy! These were on the middle to upper end of the scale.

Reference was this illustration, but a decent-sized version in a book.

"It's what people do, isn't  it? Leave a note?"
Reference

Reference

 ... made Oreo truffles from this recipe! I can make tasty food, but I cannot make pretty food, and while looks aren't everything, I see something like this and feel shoddy by comparison. (I want nothing like I want to friendship-court that person.) On the plus side, they were delicious.

... took part in the Colour Dash! (More great photos here.) I had been under the impression that we'd be running through a constant barrage of paint dust, but I suppose in retrospect that would be terrible for people's breathing. There was a paint-throwing station at the 500m mark of each kilometre. (The figure I heard floating around as to the amount of paint was nine hundred tonnes, so perhaps my way was logistically impractical as well as unsafe.) It was only five kilometres, but I was trying to match pace with my far more athletic sister for the first two and a half, and even though she slowed down on my behalf my legs are feeling it today! The photos don't really convey the full extent of the colourful paintiness.

 ... finished another pair of Ailbhe gloves! This pair are in a DK yarn rather than aran, so the fabric isn't so stiff, with a seersucker stitch pattern.

... saw Dylan Moran at the Comedy Festival in the Iveagh Gardens! Life goal accomplished, though I'd still love to see him perform a full set. By the time the opening act had been on for a minute I was cringing inwardly and knotting my hands around each other in sympathetic embarrassment (Also, if your shtick or sense of humour revolves around making fun of people who aren't you, I don't trust you. If you think jokes about driving while high are a big lol, ha ha ha you might hit someone or injure them for life and that's so edgy), but by the time Dylan Moran had been on for a minute my face hurt from laughing. It was all new material as well, and really top-notch.

"The truth is, we are all going to die. We are all going to die. And people hate when you say that. Especially if you say it during sex."

... started my October birthday knitting! Will this be the year I'm finally organised for all of the gift-giving occasions in the latter quarter of the year? Hahaha no, Jen, that was a stupid question. But a girl can hope!

A productive week, all told!

FO Friday: Custom gloves

A friend of mine doesn't have full fingers on her right hand, so she asked me to make a set of gloves with one fingerless glove and one shortened mitten.

I used Rico Essentials Soft Merino Aran on 2.75 needles, so while the fabric is very cosy, it doesn't have a great deal of give. I'll err on the side of bigger needles or finer yarn in future.

I borrowed the cable pattern from Spruce Tree Mittens, and I think it looks quite well. I wanted something which would suit both the gloves and the mitten, which effectively limited my choices to simple cable designs.

It's always a little disappointing to finish a project in what feels like the wrong season - we've had whole days of Summer in the last week - but when I started them less than a fortnight ago it was still scarf weather, and probably will be again within the week. I finished reading The Witches of Eastwick yesterday (I realised too far in that I wasn't really enjoying it, and then had to finish it), and there's an exchange where two characters are trying to work out whether another character's paleness means she's sick. One of them says something like, "But it's May, everyone should have a little colour by now," and ahahaha, hahaha, hahahahaha. Aha. Heh. Imagine living in a place where you know day-to-day whether you will need Summer or Winter clothes. Fiction certainly transports one to fantastic realms.

A week (and a bit) of firsts and new things

I started in a new lab this week. I had to scramble a bit for a placement after Christmas, when the position I was meant to have fell through. For some reason I opted to learn Western Blot, about which I've heard nothing but bad things, over carrying out PCR, which I can already do and quite like. The appeal of doing something new was just too great, even if it makes me want to stab myself in the face.

As well as wet lab work, I'll be learning a bit of programming and helping out on a bioinformatics project. I've not done any of either before, so I'm looking forward to getting started on that!

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So far I have a lot of time at my desk reading papers and playing with Linux. I don't like being without something to do with my hands, so I've been getting some knitting done.

I finished my first pair of full-fingered gloves that I've been happy with. I've made one pair before, when I was starting off knitting, but they were a quite a poor fit, the gauge was wrong, and I wasn't happy with them. Worst, they were a present, and I'd told the person that part of their present would be late, so when they were finished it would have been awkward to opt not to give them. I suspect they have lived at the back of a shelf somewhere. I've avoided full-fingered gloves since then, but these ones turned out quite well, I think!

They are slightly too large for me, but they are for someone with larger hands than mine, so it should work out.  I used the Lace and Twist Gloves pattern (which is free if you click through the links and set up a Knitting Daily account), which is very straight-forward and gave me some new thoughts on thumb construction.  I used Debbie Bliss Rialto 4-Ply, which is quite perfect for this level of detail.

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Since finishing the gloves, I've been working on my first pair of toe-up socks, from a... book? book-box? a friend gave me last Christmas. I can be pretty lazy about fudging awkward techniques, so I'm proud of myself for actually taking the time to learn the magic cast-on. Most awkward thing in the world on DPNs, though.

Cables on variegated yarn - I am just a terrible person. I even have the temerity to quite like how it looks. These are going to be a birthday present for my mother. Her birthday is in April, but this is going to be my year of being disgustingly organised with my knitting.

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I started a climbing course this week, and really enjoyed it. It's quite different in terms of pay-off to everything else I do. If I want to be further along on a run, or on a piece of knitting, or while studying a topic, reaching that point requires sustained effort, passing through a number of other points on the way. If I want to be higher up on the wall, I put in a burst of effort, and then I'm higher up. I'm going again tomorrow, and really looking forward to it.

I'm also two weeks into a first aid course. The first week we learned to make normal and elevated slings, last week we learned CPR (which is some work, it must be said) and this week will be baby CPR and the Heimlich maneuvre. I'm doing it through St. John's ambulance, so I might look into volunteering with them afterwards, because free time is for losers and commies.

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This evening I started my first crochet project which isn't a rectangle - a teeny Cthulhu. I've finished the body, but the light was gone by that stage.

I'm using too small a crochet hook because Hickeys didn't have the one I needed, and I wanted to get started in case learning a slightly new technique took two weeks. The head is a little more finicky, and I ripped out my first one, but were I more adept I would have had it finished in a few hours.

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I'm only flying through my project list! I will think of new things and add to it soon.

FO Friday: Moone Boy hat, owl gloves, and a scarf

My favourite part of working for free is that they don't expect me to come in if there's nothing to do. I had a day off on Tuesday, so I got a commission started and finished while watching David Attenborough documentaries. A girl in the year below me in my department had asked me to make a hat for her boyfriend like the one the kid in Moone Boy wears. I couldn't find a pattern, so I kept this picture open to peer at and worked away. (Image is from this page.)

The bobble may be too big. It was hard to get no glare off it.

I used Katia Big Merino on 6mm needles for this. I could have made a more accurate hat with slightly finer yarn, but that wouldn't have been as warm, and also, ain't no-one got time for that much fair isle.

Sure it's a nice Christmassy hat, if nothing else. I haven't given it to her yet, so hopefully they both like it!

I can also post my last October birthday knit, since it's been unwrapped! I made a pair of Owlings gloves for a friend who's inexplicably enthusiastic about owls. I really like the subtlety of the pattern. (When I made it it was still free - given the reasons listed for it now being charged for, I'm not sure if I should donate. It was beautiful and I got use out of it!)

I knit these with Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton, as their person is vegan. (I need to stop getting close enough to people with wool aversions that they merited knitted gifts.) It took less than one skein to make the pair, and I knit them larger than the pattern recommended to fit man-hands.

A close-up of the owls. Hey, remember when there was sunshine and vegetation could grow?

I made this neckwarmer yesterday during my downtime at work and when I got home, to sell at a craft fair at the end of this month. I made my first trip to The Constant Knitter on Monday - one of them women recognised me by the scarf I was wearing, as we'd had a conversation about the yarn at the Knitting and Stitching Show the day before! - and bough a skein of King Cole Riot because I liked the colours and wanted to see how it knits and I'll hopefully be selling it at the end of the month anyway and it doesn't count as part of a stash and DON'T LOOK AT ME.

I'm getting a bit wary of how much Christmas knitting I have left to do, but it'll be grand so it will.

FO: Llama hat

I broke my rule about posting every two weeks again. In my defence, we are getting work done on the house, and had to move everything from the front to the back, and have been without internet for a week. (Our first night sleeping in the back of the house someone broke in. I got out of bed and meandered into the room he was in because I thought the noise might be my brother in need of a torch. It's sort of funny, because the last time someone broke in, I also encountered them, so while twice in six years isn't highly frequent, it's two for two. And by "funny", I mean "Stop breaking into my house." My other useful skills in the whole house-moving endeavour include "Not being afraid of spiders" and "Owning a torch." They make up for my inability to reach high shelves, or lift very heavy things.)

A friend I used to work with requested a hat for the harsh Winter months. When I asked him if he had anything in mind, he said he used to have a llama hat that he loved and lost. I searched Ravelry and showed him this pattern, and he said that it was perfect, but then said to disregard that part and just take whatever creative license I could come up with myself.

NOPE. LLAMA HAT.

I made a few modifications to the pattern. I didn't include the earflaps, because the recipient didn't want them. I knit the brim in five rows of p1k1 rib, to avoid stockinette curl. I knit the orange bands above and below the llama pattern with an extra row, because I thought the hat was going to turn out short. I was wrong, but wasn't going to rip out all that fair-isle to correct that mistake, so I went with it. (Pro-tip: Don't space out while knitting fair-isle in the round, or ever. It will not end well.) I also left out the 'Pattern No.1' from the pattern, as the crown decrease began five rows before the end and I didn't want it to be point, so I started it ten rows from the end, decreasing eight stitches per row, and left a plain knit row between each.

I knit this with Rico Design Essentials Soft Merino Aran. I generally much prefer bulky yarn for hats, because I'm suspicious of aran yarn's ability to be properly warm, but this does the job very well. This opens up worlds of yarn-related possibilities!

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I sold at my second craft fair yesterday, and it went very well! (I got the first sale of the day, not that it's a competition or anything.) Two of my friends dropped by with their four-year-old, and he had great fun trying things on and admiring himself in the mirror I had the presence of mind to bring. Far and away the most adorable of customers. I misidentified his face-paint as Spiderman, when in fact it was Rocket Boy from Eddie Rocket's (it was mostly blue with only a little red and no black, so that counts against me, but I was thrown by his Spiderman hoodie). I'm pretty sure this means that I'm old and no longer with it. On the plus side, embracing being an old woman means it is socially acceptable for me to force-feed people.

FO: Child-gloves

You know how children will colour in clothes or a house or whatever they're drawing in all the colours they'd like it to be, without regard for the colour boundaries drawn on the page? I stopped doing that when I was reasonably young, because I wanted my drawings to be realistic, and real clothes/houses/misc. didn't look like that.

HOW WRONG YOU WERE, SEVEN-YEAR-OLD JEN!

Backstory: My sister's friend's mother fell and shattered her hip recently. My sister asked if I would make her a pair of gloves and a scarf, because sitting around gets cold. (The photos make the weather look lovely, but this is the first bit of sun in quite some time. Oh Ireland.)  She also asked that they be multi-coloured and mismatched, for added fun! I think she thought she was helping me use up yarn ends, but really what it meant was weaving in a million yarn tails. It did get rid of some of the contents of my bag of tiny little balls of yarn I might use up in something someday, sure there's a bit too much left to just throw them out, though, so there's that.

I think I heard somewhere that red and pink clash, but I elected to ignore that advice. I clearly don't know what colours go together, but I think the one on the right works well with itself!

I can't splay the fingers on my left hand without bending them back, I don't know what that's about.

I'm really happy with how they turned out, they're awfully fun gloves. I put off my other wips to get them done, because I thought it would be fiddly and tedious, but I got them done in two evenings of knitting and watching Dylan Moran shows. I might make more!

Space oddity and lace gloves

My boyfriend's uncle had a new baby recently, so my boyfriend commissioned toys for him and the existing toddler.  The two(?)-year-old likes playing with machines and gadgets, and I couldn't find a nice robot pattern, so I made him a spaceship.

The pattern is Orbiting Oddity from Knitting Mochimochi.  I used DK yarn instead of worsted, and accordingly smaller needles, so I hope a discrepancy in size between the toys won't be a cause of contention. I think I should have used a more muted colour to stitch the eyes. The pattern used yellow, and I thought white might look less glowing and sinister.  Boy was I wrong. Still, the kid has to learn fear of aliens sometime.

The new baby is only a few weeks old, so doesn't have discernable interests yet. I'm taking the opportunity to make... something I'm quite excited about. Because I'm a child.

It's probably pretty obvious. But I don't want to say until it's finished for reasons of eeeeeh.

I made this gloves to sell at the craft fair, but I left them blocking on Friday night and they weren't dry by Sunday morning.

I bought a lot of Louisa Harding Willow Tweed on sale before Christmas, intending to make a tank top. Then I realised I wouldn't wear it. Now one skein of it is gloves! It knits very nicely, and I'll probably use the rest for similar projects. The pattern is taken from a stitchionary and plugged into my own glove pattern. (I have patterns and tutorials to write up, but I'm too busy being an unemployed wastrel and working through the 'To Read' pile that has been building over the course of my degree.) It took me a while to settle on one, but the yarn is so lovely and light that I couldn't but knit something lacy with it.

There were bees buzzing around while I was taking photos of the gloves. I thought they were aesthetically pleasing.

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I turned twenty-two yesterday! It came with conflicting sentiments based on the facts that 1. I haven't been on any adventures or done anything noteworthy I'm never going to do anything I'm boring. 2. Literally my entire career is ahead of me I am ridiculously young.

When I walk around a house where everyone else is in bed or in their rooms, my heart still sometimes speeds up when I open a door to somewhere empty for fear that there will be something on the other side waiting to rip out my throat and/or eyes. But now in my imagination it's a person, rather than some manner of zombie or hatred-fueled ghoul or Lovecraftian monster. I believe that's what they call growing up.

Some current favourite things.

1.

BOOM.

Thesis is in!  I have to give a presentation on it in two weeks, which is worth five percent, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

2.

Being offensive and "edgy" is so lazy. Making people feel safe is what takes the real work.
— Holly Pervocracy (@pervocracy) March 10, 2012

Best sentiment?  Best sentiment.

3.  I saw The Muppet Movie.  I was going to link the trailer , but it contains spoilers.  How can a trailer spoil a film with so little plot?  It's heart-warming anyway.  Full of joy.  This much joy.  You should go see it.

4.  I finished the gloves I've been working on for a million years.

Tomorrow I will post them off to America!  Getting commissions from 1. people I don't know, even by proxy 2. who live in different countries is a pretty cool feeling.

5.  Yo, Is This Racist? is my new go-to site for a few minutes of dossing.  Do recommend.

FO: TARDIS: I couldn't choose a witty title.

Do I make a joke about how it took way more stuffing than I thought it would, because it's bigger on the inside? Or the fact that it took way longer than it should have, and something something time?  Do I go with a quote?  I don't know how I'm expected to make that kind of decision.

Pattern

The thumbnails on my camera led me to believe this wasn't so blurry, and I've already given it away.  Oh well!

Blurrier and before I managed to punch it into some sort of rectangular shape.  Wibbly-wobbly etc.

This taken a ridiculous and kind of shameful length of time to finish.  The extent to which I was relieved when I sewed up the last seam is kind of silly.  Mostly Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted, and the white is Cygnet DK, which is probably why the light is a bit small.

But it's done, and now I can get back to gloves!  I've also been making speedy neckwarmers in lectures and while out and about, but I don't have the light in my room in college to take nice photos, or the confidence to stand around campus taking photos of myself.

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Dublin Zoo's youngest elephant learning not to grab.  But she got bored
and left to eat different food and probably did not benefit from the lesson.

In unrelated news, on Thursday I got to go to the zoo, and go into the elephant house, nominally as part of my course.  (I don't do the module to which the trip was connected, but the lecturer got tickets for everyone in the class anyway.)  I think zoos are ethically problematic, and their nature puts them in a bind (have to have animals that'll draw people so they can fund breeding and conservation programmes for the animals in need of them, even if there's no conservational merit to holding them), but I do like the route that Dublin Zoo is taking with the new elephant enclosure, and now the new gorilla area.

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Also also, my thesis is due in less than a month.  Um.

Back to work amárach.

A few weeks ago I stocked up on relatively cheap yarn. I used the Noro Aya to make a few circle scarves.

This colourway reminds me of the sea.

It's hard to describe just how much I like this yarn.

This one reminds me of the seashore, which is slightly different.

Just... learn to knit if you don't know how, and then make something with it, and you will understand. I've held on to one skein for myself. I don't know what I'll make with it, but it would have made me sad to give it all away if it won't be on sale in Dublin in the future.

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I am making another pair of flip-top fingerless gloves

but this time I'm writing down the pattern. Foresight!

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A Christmas present! Going to own so many socks.  The box includes trilobite socks - my loves of knitting and long-extinct animals can be combined at last! (Or "again", but in a practical way this time!)

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Meeting a PI tomorrow to discuss possibilities ("job"?  Did he mean to type "job"? I hope so.  Those letters are very close together.) for next year. Only three of his papers are available for free on PubMed, and they're rather old ones. Hopefully he's more interested in what use I can be than what I already know about a field I haven't worked in.