Incarceration history for kids

This essay made me cry: https://lithub.com/japanese-american-incarceration-for-children-brandon-shimoda-on-reading-with-his-daughter/

I own a lot of those books. They’re mostly too long and serious for my kid still. He prefers books about dogs and animals and science and silliness. And that’s ok. The books will wait. So many of the books about people we get from in the library “mystery bags” are also about pain, about history, about overcoming. It’s no wonder he only wants to read things with dogs in them.

“I did not grow up with children’s books about Japanese American incarceration. There were not many.”

Brandon Shimoda

But this pull quote got me. I was… Maybe 7 the first time I remember being told about the Japanese interment in Canada? I asked my mom why dad didn’t want to come to a remembrance day ceremony at my school and she gave me some age appropriate answer about how dad didn’t really want to remember being locked up by the Canadian government.

I remember reading Obasan as an older kid on a road trip to Fundy National Park. I think maybe that was the youngest book available at the time, other than the history books. I read Sadako and the Thousand Paper cranes and folded a thousand with a friend in high school.

I’m glad that there’s a lot more stories available now, and gutted that so many of them are being “challenged” in the US because so many people don’t know about the internment camps or really a lot of the less savory parts of history. And it matters to what we do now to understand at least some of it.

Since I’ve got a PhD in computer security, I spend a lot of time talking with colleagues about privacy, and there’s a pervasive “I don’t have anything to hide so privacy isn’t a big deal” attitude in many places. People are appalled when I explain that privacy concerns sound a lot more reasonable when you consider the history the US government has of, for example, using census data to destroy minority communities or incarcerate them. This isn’t just a thought exercise for ethical technical folk to consider when setting up privacy, this is a lived experience for many people — just not always the people in the room. And not teaching that experience is having real word consequences right now.

Anyhow, I don’t really know what I’m saying except that books matter, which you all know. And I don’t know how I’m going to explain internment more deeply to my kid either. But I will have to, one day soon. And I’m glad I have more books, more stories to help us get there.

Remembering my Grandma, Lorna Smith

I lost my grandmother last week. When she was starting to get dementia, one of her persistent fears was about being forgotten. I don’t know if that’s just the way her brain reacted to the things she was forgetting herself, or if it was from her own experiences working as a nurse in a seniors home, but I feel like I should honour her memory by writing something even though I’m honestly not ready to do this yet. But I’m starting now anyhow.

Long point lighthouse at sunset. Picture from https://www.norfolktourism.ca/long-point-a-magical-place/

She grew up in southern Ontario, and her dad was the lighthouse keeper in Long Point, Lake Erie. This left her with a lifelong fondness for lighthouses, so when I started traveling on my own as a young adult I would often find postcards of lighthouses or other nature photography to send her. I used to budget some time in every trip to find and write a postcard to her.

She made lifelong friends in nursing school, lived in France and the US as a military wife before coming back to Canada, and raised my mom and uncle in all those places.

A few of her colourful crochet blankets.

Obviously, I mostly remember her as a grandma. She was a talented crocheter and used to make new hats and scarves and mitts for us grandkids every year to match our snowsuits. I should get you all a picture of the crocheted blanket she made for me, an impressive rainbow unicorn blanket that honestly still fits my aesthetic although my bed’s gotten bigger! The picture above is of a rainbow one she made for herself. She also made me So Many Crocheted Toys. She had a gift for designing things herself and did things like make me a Muffy the Mouse stuffy from Today’s Special when I was obsessed and they didn’t merchandise every single Canadian kids show. She collected dolls, from mint-in-box Barbies to random garage sale finds that sometimes she had to clean up and make clothes for.

Nepean Concert Band at Andrew Haydon Park. Photo from https://nepeanconcertband.com

When I was close to finishing high school I joined a concert band that met not too far from where my grandparents lived, and thus started a tradition of visiting every week for hot chocolate and cookies and playing with the dog. My grandparents came to nearly every concert, which was a *lot* of them because the band played free concerts in the park every other week all summer and I was part of the band for more than a decade (up until I moved to the US in my 30s). Thankfully park concerts aren’t formal affairs (see photo above) so you can talk and listen. As I got older, our chats after band practice included more adult topics like investments or politics (a favourite of many folk in Ottawa), or what it’s like to have a miscarriage, or the challenges of living in other countries, or the cold war or what it was like to organize a dinner party in the 50s and 60s. (It sounded SO much more stressful than the regular D&D + dinner nights I hosted with my friends!)

She loved kids and was thrilled to meet her two great-grandchildren (my cousin’s kid and my own), and even though we both live far away, I was able to send my mom pictures and videos to take over to show her so she got to see my part of the family grow in between visits.

I’m lucky to have gotten so many years with her, and there’s probably more stories to tell about her rescue dog that only decided I was ok after we shook hands, and her dolls, and that time she called my mom to tell her she’d been lying about her wedding anniversary date for 50 years. But I don’t think I have it in me to tell those or dig through photos today, so we’ll leave those for another time. She’d had declining health for some years so her passing isn’t exactly a surprise, but it’s still fresh and sad and she’ll be very missed.

Moving my speaking list from terri.toybox.ca

My website hosting changed on the backend quite a while ago, and I decided to redirect terri.toybox.ca to here rather than continue to maintain it. I have all the data, but the site was written in the age of php when I was a web dev and not a security professional. It was time to let it go. For the most part, I’m ok with letting some old content disappear, but one thing that was useful was my (mildly incomplete) list of presentations, teaching and speaking engagements.  So that’s been moved to the new site now.

It looks like it’ll need some formatting fixes and I haven’t figured out how I’m going to handle storage of old papers and talk recordings so some of the old links won’t work, but it’s a start.

It really strikes me how much I’ve left academia when I can leave my publication list offline for months and it’s no big deal. Okay, not really offline, it’s still on Google Scholar and LinkedIn, but publishing used to be such a huge part of what I did and it’s weird that it’s not? I’d never intended to stay in academia, but I do miss research and publishing even as much as it is a lot of work. I guess I need to spend some time trying to find research and publication opportunities as part of my day job, but honestly I haven’t even had the energy to do more than one talk this year (thank you pandemic, thank you lack of childcare, but also thank you incredibly ridiculous series of hoops I have to jump through at work to talk about security publicly). But I’m listening to industry security talks today and feeding my brain with other ways of doing things, so it’s not like I feel like I’m stagnating, just that I spend more time incrementally improving on best practices and security communication and less time on “novel solutions to novel problems.”

Huh, maybe that’s where I need to go next: research into security communication and practices? There’s so much to do in here but actually getting data that you can track, let alone publish, is an issue. Oh well, things to noodle on for now.

Algorithms Cheat (PyCon India 2020 Keynote)

Pycon US 2021 starts tomorrow and I’ll be talking about knitting!

In honour of that, I wanted to share a link to the video of “Algorithms Cheat,” my Pycon India 2020 Keynote.

They kindly let me talk about anything I wanted, so I decided to give a little master class on machine learning as an excuse to tell some of my favourite stories about machine learning and artificial intelligence gone wrong in funny ways.

Enjoy!

PS – I do intend to get a transcript and the slides up sometime for folks who don’t love video; if that would be helpful to you I’d love it if you let me know!

Half the Knit Sky

Pattern: Half the Knit Sky by @pdxknitterati inspired by photgraphic star trails. It’s such a great concept!

Yarn: Gold cache gradient in “Bleeding Heart” from @fiercefibers (bought at @pearlfiberarts) and silver twist in “Good Silence” from @madelinetosh (bought at @foryarnssake)

I always enjoy Michele’s patterns. They’re clever and often have stunningly beautiful results with easy to memorize patterns.

This one I stuggled with a bit not because it was hard but because I was so bad at counting anything over 9 stitches for some reason! Thankfully some stitch markers helped keep me on track without to many further incidents.

That gradient from Fierce Fibers nearly steals the show. I really loved that there were instructions and tips for using as much of the main colour as you could. I don’t usually mind some yarn leftovers, but splitting up a gradient this gorgeous was just not going to happen!

For a while there it matched my much beloved Hydrangea.

I was worried about the single ply (off-white) because I don’t always love it especially with colourwork, but it actually worked quite well in this pattern.

Of course the Dread Pirate wanted to get involved when I started taking pictures. He actually is getting some skills at styling and taking photos. But this time he just wanted to squish that beautiful yarn and who could blame him?

And I even won a finisher prize: a beautiful bee themed needle minder and a lanyard holder that says “vote” in beads.

This one’s going to get a lot of wearing as the weather cools down. Those dreams of clear skies and summer colours are a must for our rainy winters!

Made BySarahS Camping MSKAL

In September, I did another sock knit a long.

This time, I dragged my friend M into it. We’d been talking about doing something a little more epic together for her birthday this year, but then covid-19 hit and birthday in person had to be postponed. A sock knit a long is not at all the same, but at least it was something we could do together safely?

This time was a choose your own adventure sock on a camping theme: the pattern came with a little story about what you did, so you’d choose to, say, eat or swim, and open that package. Plus the colours weren’t the same between kits, so we didn’t have to worry about spoilers.

Possibly the cutest thing in the whole kit was the stitch marker from WeeOnes. I got a squirrel! ?️

We had huge wildfires with smoke during the first week of September, so it was maybe a bit too campfire-y. But with us all trapped in our houses and even mail delivery largely suspended due to unsafe conditions outside, it was really nice to have some tiny packages to open. I let the Dread Pirate open most of mine, though that did often mean I had to share my treats.

Sock 2 pictures below.

Lots of things around me weren’t working out, but this pair of socks was a bit of joy in a hard month in a hard year.

I suspect these socks may remind me of all the politics, the disease, the wildfires…

But also all the extra time with my kid, playing with all the tissue paper and shaking all the tiny yarn.

And also how even in the midst of awful, we found out we were prepared for a lot. We owned bedroom air filters (for my husband’s allergies), we had plenty of food on hand for a week of not going out, and I was doing a knit a long that helped us add some new treats and play to our routine while trapped.

So yeah, another successful pair of socks, but one with so many stories attached. Here’s to resilience and socks!

Made BySarahS Mystery Sock Knit a Long

As I’ve mentioned before, I love advent Calendars but not so much the fact that they happen in December. But by chance I heard about the Made BySarahS MSKAL in time to join in for a nice May mystery (This post was written at the end of May right after I finished, but it’s been queued for a few weeks.)

All the packages!

This mkal was even more fun than I’d hoped, because it turned out I’d also accidentally joined a mostly Rhode Island-area knitting group full of lovely people. My own Saturday knit group has been out of commission since the pandemic, and I don’t even have contact info for most of them to set up an online thing. I hadn’t realized how nice it would be to have a regular group again, even if I was a weird odd one out on the other coast.

The pattern was a simple cuff down sock (look, another check mark on my 2020 fiber bucket list!) with stripes so there was an excuse to have yarn every other day. The socks matched the beautiful succulent/cactus project bag.

The non yarn days had a variety of teas, sweets, stitch markers… the usual small stuff you can fit in a yarn related advent. The Dread Pirate helped me open some packages and shared some sweets and shook a lot of yarn. One big treat for me: the kitchener stitch keychain, which is definitely a useful tool and one I’d coveted but hadn’t bought for myself.

This kit was exactly what I needed as I was starting to get my feet under me again: Cute little packages, a friendly community, and a simple project that I’ll definitely wear. I’m so glad I did it, and glad I managed to go to many of the happy hour calls even though I didn’t know everyone. It was really lovely.

I’m already intrigued by this hint about the next kit. August!

Bit of Brioche

In this year’s fiber goals, I decided I wanted to give brioche another go. So when one of my favourite designers mentioned that she’d be doing a course via Zoom, it seemed like a perfect opportunity. So I signed up for PDXKnitterari’s course on May 2nd as soon as I could make sure my husband was good to be on toddler duty then.

Zoom is an interesting tool for this. I really liked the “debugging” part in this format: normally a teacher will bend over the work with a student to fix things and the rest of the class works on their own pieces, but because we were all sharing video, we could *all* see what the problem looked like and watch as Michele figured it out. This was super helpful to me for later, because there was so much more for my brain to latch onto since I’d watched and tried to guess myself as we did the class. And it’s always fun to watch a master at work.

I really appreciated the bit of advice that it looks like of like a mess for the first few rows. I definitely would have assumed I screwed something up and probably ripped it back a few times without that hint!

This was also a much better experience for me than my previous foray into online fiber learning because I set aside time during the day instead of trying to fit in a video in my toddler-free evening. That’s on me as much as the format, but it’s good to get a sense of how much of a difference it makes.

And, of course, it helps to have a great instructor who’d put a lot of detail into the pattern *and* had videos for us to watch later if we got stuck. I didn’t need them for the brioche for this piece, but I really appreciated the one on the Russian bind off.

Of course, now that I’ve gotten a little taste, I’m already trying to figure out what brioche thing to make next! And maybe what class to take next?

First finishes for 2020: winter embroidery and walking into winter socks!

Two finishes to share!

Kiriki winter embroidery kit

First off, surprisingly, isn’t knitting! I started and finished this Kiriki Press embroidery kit in 2020 after I got back from Ottawa. This one was a lot faster than the spring one because there was no time-consuming satin stitch. I’m still having fun learning new stitches and also giving my hands a break. I’ve got one more sampler, but I’m finally feeling confident enough to try some of my more free-form embroidery panels. I’ve been collecting some from the Fireside textiles kickstarter for ages now and I’m so excited to start them!

Walking into Winter socks, in A Very Hobbit Christmas colourway

Second, my advent socks! These clever colours are from Must Stash Yarn which is kind of the worst because they drop new colours every Tuesday and you usually have only a few days to buy them before they sell out. It’s… Much too addictive. They do matching pairs which is nice because I’ve lately been enjoying having half skeins in my little purse, and this way I don’t have to break out the scales. And it’s cute if they match, but I’m weirdly more excited about not having to split the yarn cakes myself!

Yarn cakes

Anyhow, the Hobbit Christmas colours are 24 stripes and if I’d been doing it right I’d have been doing a few per day every day before Christmas to get them done in time. I aimed for only one sock, because who needs deadlines, and finished that one on time!

Sock #1, complete!

The yarn does most of the work for you and the pattern, “Walking into Winter” by Sivia Harding, does the rest with an alternating knit/purl per stripe, and some cute garland-stylings at the top. I love the photography in this one.

Yarn on the go

The one thing I might change if I do this pattern again is the toe. My toes are definitely not that pointy! Socks are stretchy so it’s no big deal when I wear them but hey, what’s the fun in slow fashion if you can’t custom fit stuff?

Up next: I’m still working on my other advent project, the Craftvent project from Jimmy Beans. I had to swap out the needles because the full sized metal ones that came with the kit were giving me wrist twinges, but swapping to my favorite short wood seems to have eased my ergonomic problem and I knit on and off today while taking my turns with a very sick toddler. (Don’t worry, his fever seems to have broken now, but we watched a lot of tv today.)

I’ve also got a necklace as a purse project. But it’s nearly done! I don’t have another small project on the go and I’ve been debating what’s next: cast on a small shawl or top down sock for my 2020 fiber goals, or size up my purse and go to town on a few more works in progress that got too big for the small one? Or start my new year-long project and do the first colour? I’ve been loving going through my queue and making plans.

Toddler Sweater!

While I was sick over Thanksgiving, I suddenly thought it would be a good idea to knit a toddler sweater. I had a grand idea of doing it in a weekend, which wasn’t very likely, but a fun thing to try. It might have been doable if not for the toddler himself!

Yarn: Bumblebirch worsted in Paprika

The yarn is glorious. Thank you past me for indulging — this was probably bought on yarn crawl with some vague idea of future toddler in mind, but I think it’s maybe the last batch I have prepared so I guess it’s shopping spree time again this year?

Pattern: Antler by Tincanknits

This is the 2-4 year size, and it’s a bit long on him but considering that he keeps saying his “tummy hurts” when his clothes ride up and he gets a cold back, a little length is good. Plus maybe it’ll last to the 4 year mark?

Close up of the Antler cables.

Like all the the Tincanknits patterns, this is well-written and easy to follow. This one is bottom up and seamless (well, if you don’t count the underarms!) I didn’t get it done in the one long weekend, but it only took another couple of days later in the month to finish it up.


The Dread Pirate toddler in question is very pleased with his new sweater, since he likes cardigans. (And his previous ones are all pullovers — even with wide necks he’s suspicious that his head might not fit.)

We haven’t tried to get much of a photo shoot going (too much more fun stuff to do over the holidays!) but here he is in the Ottawa airport trying to reach his favourite airport feature, the courtesy telephone.

Hibisco Necklace

Although I was terribly restrained in buying kits from Laura Nelkin, I did pick up two (plus her perfect little beading tin) so here’s the second!

This is called Hibisco, and it’s another beaded jewelry kit. I’m not normally a fan of pre-strung beads for bigger knits, but they’re not too annoying for a smaller kit and I do love the way they float in the fabric.

I should have gotten a circular, but I didn’t have any in size 2.75mm or whatever this was, so I made do. I may have to expand my small needle collection in the future, though!

Blocking was a challenge. A helpful person on the forum suggested a paper plate to get the curve consistent, which proved hard with the ruffles.

I’m super happy with the way it turned out! And it’s proved toddler-resistant, so unlike my more delicate chains, I can wear this at home! Yay!

I’ve already earmarked the next kits I want, but I’m going to try and hold off until I’m finished a few of my works in progress. They’re getting a bit out of control again!

How do you use your Ravelry queue?

The Ravelry queue system seems pretty simple: if you see something you’d like to make, you put it in your queue. Then later, when you’re ready to make a new thing, you look through the queue, choose something, and away you go.

But… how do you decide what goes in? Do you ever take stuff out without making it? How often do you change the order? How do you find things? One of the knitting photo challenges reminded me recently that everyone does it differently.

I joined Ravelry in 2011. When I first joined, I didn’t know how to knit (only crochet) and was doing a lot of amigurumi toys and baby presents, so I used my favourites for stuff I’d made and wanted to make again, and used my queue for everything else. I’d get an idea in my head and queue 15 similar patterns while I decided on one. I’d queue piles of free-this-week patterns in case I saw the perfect yarn. I’d queue stuff for technique ideas. I’d queue stuff because I liked the photography. And I never-hardly-ever triaged the queue.

My crafting has changed a lot since 2011: I learned to knit and I started mostly making stuff for myself to wear and hardly ever repeat a pattern. (It’s not that I have a problem with doing that;’it’s just that there are so many beautiful things and so little time!) My skills have changed, my stash has changed, I’ve changed climates twice… Plus Ravelry has added features and I’ve learned to use more of them, so I have a different toolbox than I started with.

[Picture: climate change. This is what passes for a cold winter here. Hah! ??]

I don’t want to say that I’ve been using my queue incorrectly, I can definitely say that the way I’d been using it wasn’t working well for me anymore. It was time to clean up. But there were probably 600 things in there! It was daunting.

Since I’ve been in “finish all the stuff in progress” mode for months, though, I decided it was time. I could redirect my urge to start new things by instead planning out some stuff for the year, and clean things up before the yarn crawl so I had an idea of what I needed to buy. It’s been weirdly but pleasantlty cathartic.

It’s still a work in progress, but I’ve gone from 600ish down to well under 200, and I’m expecting to make it down under 100. That’s still probably 10 years of knitting at my current rate, so I’ll likely never finish even my shortened queue. But that’s never bothered me; what bothered me was not being able to find things quickly (when I was trying to justify my yarn purchases or figure out if I needed more of something).

You made it this far; have a peek at my new queue:

I’ve got a mix of old and new, but heavy on the new. That’s expected with all those changes in tastes and skills, and the pure excitement of new pattern releases. I haven’t bothered with precise ordering, but stuff on the first page is stuff I’ve been finding yarn for and stuff I could cast on any time.

Funniest find: I queued a hat pattern back in 2015 that gave me a jolt when I found it because I recognised the name… A colleague from work who I only met last year! I’ll have to tell her. I might even still knit it!

Most popular designer in my queue: pdxknitterati has the most patterns on my first page but a lot of tincanknits sweaters survived the cull and are hiding in the later pages because I’m still choosing next winter’s toddler sweater. I probably won’t knit them all, although toddler sweaters *are* addictively fast compare to adult ones.

Here’s the yarn that I’m currently planning for pdxknitterati’s Lucky Star design:

But I also have yarn ordered for her Oregon Sky design in Knitted Wit’s Glow Up collection *and* I have yarn (but not yet beads) for her Garland Shawl. That one actually *wasn’t* in my queue — I thought it had been for years, but apparently I’d queued a pile of her other designs but that one was stored only in my head. I hadn’t even bought the pattern though I could have sworn I had. Weird! It’s in the queue now. Her similarly-shaped Fern Lace Shawelette remains the piece I wear the most out of everything I’ve knit. If you met me at a conference in the past however many years since I knit it, there’s a good chance you’ve seen me in it. It’s even in many of the videos of me speaking, beause it’s *perfect* for holding the mic in the right position for me. I think it’s even in the clip of me in the Google Summer of Code video!

Stash diving win: I’ve had this stunner from Fierce Fibers since last year’s yarn crawl. It’s got yak in it, it’s a beautiful subtle shift and I wanted a pattern that would make it sing. I think I’ve finally got one: the Whakairo Cowl. I’m a bit worried about the (super soft, amazing) halo messing with the stitch definition so I might not make it past the first 20 rows, but I’m hopeful!

Most technical? It might be Toph or Dreamcatcher, both of which use some short row stuff i haven’t done before. But I have a feeling that I haven’t found the most technical one yet in my queue triage, because I haven’t found that time I tried to find the most fancy plant-inspired brioche I could.

Most excited about? Seriously, it’s just about everything on that first page. Spilling into the second. This has been a great diversion from casting on All The Things, but it certainly hasn’t lessened the urge at all!

Biggest lie? I keep saying I’m not casting on right now, but two of those things on the first page have knit a longs starting this week, so I’m probably going to cast *something* on by this weekend and wind yarn for a second. Good thing that just like with my queue, I get to change the rules of what I’m doing when I think it suits me better.

Rose City Yarn Crawl 2019

This year’s Rose City Yarn Crawl was something of a disappointment to me. Not because it wasn’t a good weekend, but my husband booked a conference on top of the crawl (after promising not to do that, he looked at the website before it was updated properly and got the wrong dates, so it was as disappointing to him as to me), my friend who usually visits for the crawl couldn’t make it this year, and while I had two most excellent friends visit from Seattle and help with the toddler-wrangling, the Dread Pirate was not really interested in letting me look at more than one or two displays before he wanted my full attention. I didn’t even manage to finish my mystery knit-a-long in time to wear it on the crawl!

In the end, I hit three stores and got some pretties and escaped with a slightly miffed baby and bemused friends, and all in all it went well, it just wasn’t what I wanted. I feel kind of weird feeling dissatisfied about what was frankly a pretty nice weekend with friends visiting, but I guess sometimes you just feel the way you feel. Anyhow, here’s my pretties:

My three stores were Twisted, where I got the Hazel Knits yarn (intended for one of the Elemental hats, probably Toph); Knotty Lamb, where I got the little Sweet Georgia rainbow cube and the Twill & Print progress keeper/stitch marker “yarn bomb”; and For Yarn’s Sake where I picked up a Knitted Wit gradient sixlet to make pdxknitterati’s Lucky Star Shawl pattern (which I’ve wanted to do since I saw it).

I also hit up Black Sheep for my usual knitting group, and they’re having a 30% off store closing sale (I’m so sad, but they’ll stay open online) and picked up skein of Teresa Ruch tencel that… I’m not sure what it’ll be but I need another summer shawl and I wear my other tencel stuff All The Time once it gets warm. I picked up a few skeins of Scrumptious the week before, and I’ll pick up a few more things this weekend I imagine.

However, I did finish the MKAL after the fact, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out! You’ve already seen clue 1, so here’s the rest.

Clue 2 (now we change directions):

Clue 3 (omg, a new colour appears!):

Clue 4 (ooh, lace time):

Clue 5: finished! I added a contrast bind-off because I didn’t feel like playing yarn chicken. I probably would have been fine, but I knew I was tight on yarn so I’d been planning to do it anyhow, and after seeing some finished shawls on the crawl and on social media, I was convinced it was the way to go. And it was! It really kicks the lace up a notch, I think, especially while worn:

And here’s a more full-shawl shot so you can see the glory that is the full design. This was a Romi Hill design and I hear she does some other fun mystery knits, so I might have to see about taking part in another of hers. But not any time soon! I’m still digging out from my half-finished projects.

It would have been nice to have it done to wear on the crawl, but this is definitely going to get plenty of wear anyhow. And it was fun to knit!

So, despite my personal disappointment, I had a good time and … well, at least I didn’t spend too much money on yarn this year?

2018 fiber goals: how did I do?

Last year, I set myself some fiber goals for 2018. So, how did I do?

2018 goals:

  1. Use more of my project kits
  2. More amigurumi!
  3. Spin the neat fiber kit Kathy got me
  4. Organize the stash

2018 Results:

1. Project kit success! I made up a beanie bag, started a cowl kit (but haven’t finished that one), and bought and started a Cascadial Wrap kit. Plus I mostly kept up with my Shawl Club subscription. I guess new kits don’t solve my pileup problem, but they make me happy and it’s nice to see that investing in pretty kits is a good thing to keep doing.

Cascadial Wrap:

Shawl club:

2. Amigurumi success! I made the baby Dread Pirate Potato an elephant that lives in his travel toy bag, a dino that lives at home, a pumpkin, and started an amigurumi advent calendar that will be my decorations next year.

Elephant:

Dinosaur:

Pumpkin:

Advent:

3. Fiber fail? I didn’t touch the kit, but I *did* do some pretty spinning and dyeing so I don’t feel so bad about it. Turns out the Dread Pirate loves my spinning wheel, which is great because I can leave it set up and he’ll touch it and enjoy it, but it’s hard to get time to use it myself. I’m going to have to work on a habit for next year.

Dye and spin experiment:

4. Stash success! I got most of the yarn into organized boxes other than the worsted and sock yarn I peruse regularly for inspiration. I managed to use more older yarn this year because it turns out I select based on squishing and comparing. So the stash has become better inspiration — something I really thought deeply about because I read A Stash of One’s Own this year. Total win!

Partway through organization:

There’s a row on the bottom that’s fabric boxes full of fabric, kits, and some recent purchases.

Appropriate current state:

More baby proof! It needs smaller labels.

Decoration/closeup:

Summary:

3/4 clear wins isn’t bad and I think my dye and spin experiment filled a similar niche to the fiber kit I didn’t touch, so I feel like I kept some spinning up even if I did it a different way. I think the yarn kits were a good fit for me, and the stash re-org got me in shape so that my office in nearly toddler friendly, and it helped me find treasures.

I’m still figuring out what I’ll strive for in 2019. Maybe this year is the year of the fingering weight sweater? Try the spinning set again? I’ve already got plans to take a steeking class so maybe that’s the easy goal #1!

Craftvent 2017

Advent calendars aren’t a big part of my childhood, but I liked the idea of getting little presents all through December, and since I’d intentionally cut back on gift knitting, I had time to do a mystery-a-long, so I bought into Jimmy Beans’ Craftvent.

It’s a nice kit, filled with knitting tools (including needles and everything else in the photo above) and enough yarn for the mystery shawl. Well, MAYBE enough yarn for the shawl; a lot of people ran out of yarn #2.

I didn’t run out, though it was close! Unfortunately, the upset over yarn shortages and the posting of spoilers made the Facebook group they made for the kal super angry and not fun until jbw realized they had a problem and laid out ground rules. I don’t think Facebook is really designed to deal with spoilers, and they should have stuck with Ravelry, which has tools and conventions about spoiler and no spoiler threads that would have really improved the experience.

I liked the pattern ok. There was not much mystery for the middle clues, but since the yarns were also part of the mystery that didn’t bother me as much as it might have. (Picture above in grey to show that there is a subtle difference between yarn 1 and 3)

It’s a lousy time of year for me to have a calendar based thing going, so I started opening boxes early, which made me more chill about spoilers at least.

I didn’t finish before Dec 25th rolled by, but that’s ok.

It was a pretty busy season!

And I did get it done before I left Ottawa and blocked after I got home.

It’s gotten me thinking a lot about designing a similar “Christmas in July” advent out of season, so it hits at a less busy time of year. It’d be a neat way to showcase some yarn from my local yarn store, but i think I’d want a lower price point so it’d have to be a bit lighter on the goodies. Maybe I’ll try to design a simple scarf and see if I could make it work!

As for doing the jbw Craftvent again, I’m not sure. It’s fun and I have no regrets (except maybe for joining the fb group) but I think i might try one that’s all yarn or use the same amount of money to get surprise yarns at a time of year when I can appreciate them more.

Still, it was a fun thing to do this year!

Works in progress: late 2017

Turns out, in a surprise to no one, it’s a lot harder to blog with a baby! I’ve traded my “real” SLR camera for my phone 99% of the time, and my laptop is sitting neglected and whining that it hasn’t had backups for 57 days, which would be scary if it actually had any new data on it…

I can knit and use my phone while breastfeeding, though, so let’s talk about what I can do rather than what I can’t!

.. Like take baby butt selfies. While knitting. Mad skillz, yo.

Here’s the projects I had on the needles before Yanksgiving (thanks to my sister for this terrible portmanteau for American Thanksgiving):

That upper left one is a baby sweater that thankfully was mostly finished before J put it in the wash (but thankfully not the dryer!) . Haven’t taken new pictures, but I will once the ends get woven in better and the buttons get put on. It’s too big, but I tell myself he’ll grow into it. Like the other 3 sweaters I’ve already made for him. This was a “practice your intarsia” plus a “learn to knit while breastfeeding” item. It worked!

Next up, some pretty lace I started in the summer before I decided to make my sister a birthday shawl as a joke. I’ll write about that later. This is from Kelli Slack’s shawl book, and it fits the niche of “tiny complex project” for when I’m going to be knitting for a while. This… was a more important niche when I was waiting for baby Potato to arrive. I’ll finish it eventually, but it tends to get sidelined by the new hotness a lot.

Speaking of new hotness… This is the unihorn magic KAL. It’s my new easy travel knit, since complexity wasn’t what I wanted while visiting my inlaws or paying attention to baby Potato on the plane.

The little bag is the new travel cube from Tom Bihn, and it fit the niche of “tiny bag that fits knitting, wallet, passport and can be stuffed in the diaper bag when needed” so I am very satisfied.

The Historic Portland MKAL is also from Kelli Slack. I’m behind: clue 4 came out on Saturday and I’m less than halfway through clue 3, but I’ll probably finish this one soon. If I were to knit it again, I’d swap colours for every repeat instead of per section as described in the KAL instructions — one of the gals in my Saturday knitting group is doing hers with more colours and that also looks great. But I love the yarn and it’s so nicely charted that it feels easy and relaxing even though there’s a lot going on in there.

And one more MKAL: this is an advent calendar from Jimmy Beans Wool. It was a splurge, but I like the little gift every day. I don’t like the new facebook group so much because it’s been really intense about spoilers, so I think I’ll just post progress elsewhere and not engage. There have been some super cute notions, and even the needles came on day 2! Love the colourful stitch markers and that border!

I also have one gift to knit, but I changed my plan for it once I saw the indie gift along patterns, so I’m currently waiting for my yarn to arrive. Wish me luck finishing on time with all these other lovelies to work on!