Oogyknitter

We received a (non-yarn) delivery yesterday, and when I went outside to get it from the front walk, I saw a couple of these along the edge of the house: I thought - what silly little hand prints!  There must have been a raccoon wandering around last night! I got out the footprints book that Oogyhubby gave me, and I looked through it.  Nope!  Both raccoon and possum prints have long, skinny fingers - not paw pads like these.  Cat, dog, and foxie all have roundish prints and short little pawpads, not toes like these.  So I've narrowed these down to two things:  1) skunk; and 2) mini Sasquatch.  The skunk is the closest match in the prints book, but I haven't seen or smelled any skunks around since we moved here, so... In yarn news - work continues on all items in the queue, but I don't have anything interesting to show you today.  I'm about to block Version 2 of Goat Hat, and I don't like it as much as I thought I would.  I made it d...

As eagerly anticipated, the emergency Goat Milk yarn arrived yesterday: I'm already halfway through the next section, and hope to have some preliminary pics to show you soon! You can see a bit of the CWA in the background.  After I finished the required daily 1/11 of Phase III last evening, I kept the blanket on my lap whilst talking on the phone to Oogyparents.  It was very warm and soft!  I always enjoy taking the afghans I make for a "test nap" or similar (before washing/blocking, don't worry - LOL). I made the decision that the Plum Cozy Gussets will be fingerless; I've completed the first one and the second is well underway.  More to come on those! So - we live in a wood house; a log home, to be more specific (I find that if I say "log cabin", some people immediately think of one small room with a wood stove, and an outhouse, and then fret about visiting.  Not only do we have indoor plumbing, but some of our floors are heated!).  As such,...

Literally. This is two face cord.  Which is technical country-speak for two stacks of wood that are each 4 feet tall, 8 feet long, and about 16 inches (one log) deep.  (A full cord is the same height and length, but is 4 feet deep.)  In essence, a measure of volume. It's funny how two seemingly smallish stacks of wood can make one giant pile.  You might recall when we got four face cord back in September - it seemed like we were stacking that for a week!  This particular pile got covered, since it was a rainy and muddy mess yesterday, and Oogyhubby was determined to stack a bunch of it last evening whilst I completed the next 1/11 of the CWA (Who got the better deal there?  I did offer to help him, but there's surprisingly limited space in there, and he's very particular about how his wood is stacked).  I realize this isn't very green of us, but we need to burn wood or oil in our boiler to make heat and hot water.  We try to compensate for ...

I've been (ironically) thinking a lot about cognitive load the last couple of days - mostly because I have, more frequently lately, these ideas blasting through my head that won't go away; nothing dramatic, just things like tasks to do around the house, notes to send, knitting ideas, etc.  I've taken to carrying around a to-do list, as well as my "ideas and projects" notebook, so that I can jot these things down and not continue to obsess about them (or, worse, forget them!), thereby decreasing cognitive load and allowing room for other thoughts or learning. Some of these ideas are pretty good, or at least fairly helpful - and, to be honest, a lot of them tend to happen when I'm mindlessly knitting and not doing much of anything else (this includes watching a movie, listening to a podcast, or reading).  Which I've actually been doing a lot more lately.  This makes me wonder how many good ideas I've displaced while engaging in these other activities!...

I'm not about showing you pictures of my food here, but I thought I'd share a couple of non-yarn things I made yesterday - especially since you probably would not be interested in seeing yet another pic of the CWA incremental progress (BTW - Phase III is now 4/11 complete!!). Since the inputs are way more exciting than the output (which is just brown, LOL), here is the beginning of the chili I made in the crock pot: (Yes, those are raisins - and there's coffee in the measuring cup.  This recipe is mostly savory, with a bit of sweetness and some smoky bitterness in the background.  No beans.) Then I made a double batch of these, most of which will go in the mail to Oogydad: I did a bunch of yarn stuff between batches, mostly starting the latest Cut The Scrap cowl and completing the knitting on the green mittens.  I started the next pair of mittens as well, but I hate them and will be starting over.  I tried to get fancy with two-color cuffs, but the yar...

The next pair of mitts to emerge from the pile of damaged socks is complete and awaiting its destiny: Long-time readers of this blog might recall when I first made these socks.  At the time, I should have asked myself - what was I thinking???  This yarn is great, but look at the pooling.  This often happens when a skein of hand-painted yarn is combined with a pattern that is close enough to the size of the skein that the colors don't distribute - they stick together like they were on the original skein.  There are some ways to minimize or even avoid this by disrupting the pattern somehow, either through the use of slipped stitches or other techniques that mess with the diameter of the row.  I should have chosen a different pattern for this yarn.  It wouldn't necessarily have changed their outcome - the heel still had a giant blow-out - but I think this yarn deserved better somehow. That being said - these will make fine mitts.  The yarn is soft ...

One of the most important and enduring things I learned in business school was that the answer to ANY question in business is - IT DEPENDS.  What is your objective?  How much do you want to spend?  What are the other factors that need to be considered?  Etc. Evidently the same holds true for some knitting questions.  Take the one I posed recently: which is preferable for a thumb gusset - KFB, or M1R/M1L?  Guess what - it depends.  Take a look at a side-by-side comparison: This is really a terrible example.  If I'd used KFB for the green mitten, the increases would be a lot more obvious.  The KFB increase creates a small horizontal bar - which is barely visible in the brown mitten due to its patterning and slight fuzziness (both yarns are Wool-Ease, go figure). So, the answer to which increase is preferable is - IT DEPENDS.  If using a solid color and/or a yarn with high stitch definition (smoother), then you may want to use the ...