Handknit Body Technology Interface

Little Red Sweater + Matching Socks

I finally finished the sweater I was making for Justine's baby. I just sewed the buttons on it last weekend, and made a pair of matching pointy-toe socks.

For Sensitive Skin

via facebook

Local Yarn Shop Map Facebook App

I turned the yarn shop map I use in my side bar into a Facebook app the other day and it's been approved for the directory, so if you are a knitter on Facebook, you should check out my new app and maybe install it.

Spamera

This is good inspiration.

Projects

End of August update. I made it through a lot of these things!

I always have more projects going on or in my mind than I can reasonably finish. I used to feel awful about that and hate myself for not following through on all my ideas. I thought of myself as someone who never finished anything. Luckily, at some point, I realized that the finished thing is not always the point. In fact, most of the time the finished thing is just a by-product of the really interesting part of work, which is the getting from idea to object and all which that entails.

Another idea that helps me cope with dead projects is that in some way, I haven't got 10 projects, or 20, or whatever. Really I only have one project, which is to make things, and all of these other subtasks are just part of that big project, which has no end and can't be finished. If I get half way through a project and then lose interest, that project can be considered finished. Whatever I've learned in getting that far is part of the bigger task.

Losing interest in a project is a good sign that it's not an interesting thing to be doing and deserves to be ditched.

Sometimes a project will stay on my imaginary to-do list for years before I do anything about it. For example, this year I learned how to make a kaleidoscope, something I had been thinking about for a long, long time. I just took a pinhole camera workshop. I've been thinking about pinhole photography and even researching it for at least two or three years.

Here is my current list of projects. It'll be interesting in six months to see which, if any, have been done.

* Convert my Brownie into a pinhole camera done
* Build a stereoscopic pinhole camera that can use 120 film
* Make + send out kaleidoscope-making kits done
* Learn how to knit toe-up socks done (+ firestarters)
* Fix and funkify my noise-cancelling headphones
* Illustrate Stooger (friend's children's book)
* Make a lego movie with Vigo
* Build a robot
* Set up a website for Vigo to help him keep in touch with his friends
* Help improve the Rolling Family website done
* Improve this blog (own domain, make it look better, structure it better to share with Justine and maybe other people)
* Finish the two sweaters I've started knitting
* Finish sewing together the shirts I printed and cut two years ago done

I know there are other projects out there I'm forgetting, which is a good sign that they aren't going to happen in the next six months. I'm teaching a screenprinting workshop at the end of April at Willoughby & Baltic. That's a project in itself.

It would be nice to have an art vacation. Maybe a month in a studio space with somebody bringing you food a couple times a day. Someplace with a view. Someplace where you cook dinner at night over an open fire on the beach.

Local Yarn Shops

Finding a perfect yarn shop is like finding a perfect lover. It's almost impossible, but even getting pretty close is damn exciting. In my neighborhood I am blessed with two yarn shops, but both of them are disappointing.

One of them is a perfectly good yarn shop, but just not on the same wavelength as I am. We're mildly incompatible, but since she's the best I've got, I do buy things there. She's into bamboo needles, I like addi turbos. She's into certain colors, I'm into others. She's deeply into spinning and I really am not interested.

The other place is really not a very good yarn shop at all. They have some cheap yarn that is only fit for felting and they have very pricey Debbi Bliss yarn and nothing in between. They're an all-around crafts store and not just a local yarn shop and I have nothing but contempt for crafts like scrapbooking and rubber stamping. I sort of hate to even be in the same room with rubber stamping supplies.

All of this is actually good for me. I have enough yarn in my stash to keep me knitting for many, many months and as I'm planning a cross-Atlantic move this summer, I shouldn't be buying any yarn, period. So it's good having these two options, where most of the time I walk in, look around, and walk out frustrated.

The best yarn shop I have been to so far in my knitting career is Knit Knot in Portland, OR. They have a big shop and a very wide range of yarn and equipment. They have a little section of tiny skeins of crazy yarns made out of things like paper. Fortunately or unfortunately, they don't seem to have an online store.

I'm excited to discover what Berlin will have to offer. A lot of the yarn and knitting equipment I buy is made in Germany, so I'm hoping for some good shops.