Uli's Creative Corner

2008 was a busy year.  Work and the kids are sure keeping me busy.  My kids, especially JR, are not the kind that slow down often.  We've had some ups and downs.  If you look back to the middle of April, you'll find my blog entries about JR's surgery and that difficult time.  I'm sure glad that he came out of it well, after the huge scare he gave us.  It seems that with the surgery, they also turned the "go go" switch on.

2008 was also the year of spinning for me.  First, I went back to my spindle and started practicing like crazy for a few weeks and then I went to the Victoria Fibre Fest as a vendor where my first spinning wheel came home with me.  Just look at my first skein vs. one of my most recent skeins:
 

I'm very much enjoying the spinning and improving.  The finished yarn on the right is from some lovely merino roving from a lovely lady who runs Fat Cat Knits on Etsy.

What else happened?  Well, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Sivia Harding to design a shawl pin to go with her Harbour Lights Shawl.  The pattern was to be revealed at the Victoria Fibre Fest.  It was great fun to come up with a pin and then also to sell said pin and many other knitting and spinning goodies such as my bookmarks and cell phone charms and stitch markers at the market.

I also was published in a jewelry magazine.  I was flabbergasted when I was first contacted to present several chainmaille projects incorporating colour into chainmaille.  I wrote and did step-by-step pictures and instructions for 3 or 4 projects.  It was very cool to see my name in print.  I may try again in 2009 to submit another design to see if I can get it accepted for publication.  We'll see.  The submission deadlines always seem to sneak up really quickly.

I started a 2nd Etsy shop, Knitters' Nook.  I have migrated all my fibre related endeavours, including stitch markers and shawl pins and my cell phone charms as well as knitted items and handspun y arn over there.  The store hasn't taken off in a big way but I haven't spent a huge amount of time on promoting and updating it.  I don't know if I'm going to be successful.  It's difficult to maintain and stay on top of 2 stores and pay them both equal attention.  I just thought that the product line was getting too scattered in Creations by Uli especially since that store is going to one day be only filled with chainmaille.  I'm beginning to mark all the non-chainmaille jewelry down by 50%.  There are some good buys to be found in the "HALF Price Section"

The big thing that I didn't really succeed on was the fitness/weight loss goal.  Although I tried all year long, I didn't really make any progress.  I just didn't try hard enough.

For 2009, I will, once again, make that commitment to fitness and Weight Watchers.  Something, somewhere has to give........ I want to be around for my kids for a long time.  After all, 2008 was the year I turned 40.

I will continue with both my Etsy shops and hope to have another successful year even if we're looking at uncertain economic times.  I would also like to thank any an all of my customers in 2008.  Each and everyone is so much appreciated.

The other thing, as far as knitting goes......... I want to start out the year with some small new projects but work on some of the UFOs that are sitting there.  Some of that will mean continuing on them to bring them to completion and others may be frogged.  As for socks........... one pair a month would be nice (and yes, Lara, I will use some of my STR.....).

As for spinning....... well, I'll just keep going, working on getting better and enjoying the process.  I have accumulated quite a lot of fibre.  I can get a bit obsessive.  It's something I really love.  But..... there comes a point.  I have a lot to spin now........... the stash is about 5 big rubbermaid bins big and I will really curb my spending on fibre and yarn.  Let's knit from the stash.....  For now, I'm calling it a fibre diet.... no shopping for a while.  Tha's probably not realistic but I will really think hard about any purchases and would like to try to not shop for any fibre for January and February.  If I get some birthday money.... well, then maybe I can add a bit more fibre.  if I spin up a whole bin's worth, I will also be allowed to shop a bit.  Of course, some of my favourite Etsy roving dyers come out with all this great stuff..... it's a bit hard to resist.  But I will try.

So, have an awesome New Year's Eve and New Year's Day and have a fun filled 2009.  I'll be here, blogging, creating and doing all that stuff, trying not to overwhelm myself with all the demands that I'm very good at placing on myself.

It's late on Christmas Eve and I just wanted to stop by and wish all my friends and readers a very Merry Christmas!!!!  We already had some Christmas Eve gift opening in my family's German tradition tonight at Oma and Opa's house but we almost didn't make it because of the weather.  Take a peek........ that's taken looking out up our street:


Safe and sound at Oma and Opa's house we all had some fun!!!



Time for Santa to land on our roof and tip toe down the chimney at our house............ psssst, if you listen closely you might hear him and Rudolph and the gang fly of wishing you all a "Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night".

I've got some handspun drying today:















From left to right there is: a lovely black and green sport or so weight merino from Copperpot Woolies.  This spun up beautifully and I love the colours.  The second one is a lovely, lovely merino that I received as part of a spin-along hosted by Allspunup on her Ravelry group.  This is just so soft and gorgeous.  I think this is definitely fingering weight so I think socks are in order.  On the right are 2 hanks ofr thick and thick bulky merino that I spun from some roving from Forest Fiber Works.  I love the colours.  It is plied with this amazing variegated cotton quilting thread that actually matches all the colours in the roving.  It's great.  This will become a hat or something like that for me.  Have a happy Sunday.  We had snow last night.  I'm going to head down to the basement now to see if this stuff is dry!!!

Well, I guess I'm a bahumbugger this year in terms of the gift knitting.  I'm not doing any.  I did toy with the idea on whether I could whip up quick moebius scarves for each of the Moms and maybe a pair of socks to go in hubby's stocking and one for Opa (aka my Dad) but I swooshed that thought out of the way really fast. I guess the thing is that my Etsy shops and all my craft fairs keep me busy, especially this time of the year and I don't want to lose momentum.  So, in all ways, my personal and gift knitting has been pushed to the back burner. 

Always the entrepreneur (and I got that from my Dad), I'm constantly looking for opportunities to make things for my shops so that I can keep things fresh and interesting and draw customers into my store.  And even with that drive, the craft show business has taken a real toll on me this past month.  I haven't had the motivation to take pictures of the many lovely pieces of jewelry I have nor have I made any more things to put in the "other" store such as stitch markers, shawl pins or my fun cell phone charms.  I'm tired.  And of course, I still have some custom orders to make as well. So, when you take all of that into consideration, it would be silly to think I could do gift knitting. 

The other thing that slowed down my personal knitting has been that spinning wheel that followed me home last June.  It's a viscious circle. So, no gifts this year.  But really, as I'm writing this, my brain keeps telling me that I should just quickly cast on for that pair of husband socks anyways.  No, I won't.  There is one thing I will do but I'll tell you about that later.  What I will probably cast on for is a pair of socks for my Dad for his birthday which is in January.  I'm always at a loss for birthday gifts for him so this year, he's getting a pair of socks.  Oh, but I think I gave him 2 pair for his birthday last year.

So, what is this about UFOs?  Well, I have too many of them so this season, I will not cast on for too much new except for some intermittent small projects with handspun.  I really want to tackle the UFO pile and that will be accomplished in a couple of ways and one is of course, to just finish kitting the darn project or the second one involves assessing the project and deciding whether I want to continue. So here's what I'll be working on:

1. Norwegian Woods Shawl - I'm within 12 rows of finishing it so this is my first focus.  It will be finished soon.  Before Christmas.

2. Kauni Cardie - I'm about 3/4 of the way to the armholes for my Kauni cardie using the EQ colourway.  Well, this is definitely not one to put away so I will plug away on this project this winter.

3. Reptilian Socks by Sivia Harding - sock one is done, 3/4 of the beads for sock #2 are strung.  Those will be my next finished sock project.

4. Marble Bolero - for that little number, I have the back and 2 fronts and almost one sleeve done so I need to just get on with it.

5. Here it gets trickier - I have a sweater on the needles for JR also using some of the Kertzer Marble yarn.  I finished the back, I think.  I'm not sure that I want to continue that.  I'm thinking I should maybe rip it back and turn it into something else.  I possible have a top down in mind that might work well with that yarn.

6. Hanging Vines - this is a sweater from some Elann Sonata cotton and an Elann free pattern.  I started this years ago and I keep picking it up and making a few rows progress.  I'm thinking that I might be better off putting the knitting onto 2 circs and checking that it actually is even fitting.  I'm big but something in the back of my head is telling me that the actually sweater is huge.  So, here is a project I will do some assessing with.  Put it on two big neecles and slip it over me to see whether it's really as huge as I am thinking it might be.  If it's big, I will rip and not try to re-knit.  I'll re-purpose the yarn.  If the size looks about right, then I'm not quite sure yet about whether I'll try to finish or whether I'll just leave it and still re-purpose the cotton yarn.

7.  There are some lone socks hanging out in my room as well and one other project that I love but am not sure what to do about.  It's a sweater for the Little Miss and a lot of work has gone into it already but I think she may be outgrowing it faster than I can knit it 

So, what's the point? I won't promise that I'll bust all of those UFOs before starting something totally new but I'd like to at least deal with #1, 3 and 4 before starting anything else.  #2 is a work in progress and I'll let that come along as it wants to. It's not that I don't have lots of other new things in my queue and favourites that I'd love to work on.

Back in the summer, on my part family vacation, part fibre tourism, I bought lots of fibre.  Among that fibre was a top knot from Aurelia Fibre Works.  This one in particular:

This was such a fast knit.  It took me a couple of tries to get the right number of stitches cast on but once I got going, it was fun.  After all was said and done, although I love this hat, I listed it for sale with the intent that I will make myself one in "my" colours like purples or something.  But then, we have cold weather and even snow in the forecast so if it doesn't get snapped up by then, I might just have to pull the listing and call it mine after all.  Maybe I can spin and knit one up in my colours before the cold weather arrives?

How can you resist this smile?  At almost 3, JR is as cute as I could have ever imagined but he's also more thatn what I ever bargained for in the troublemaker department.  Yikes.... what am I in for in the coming years?

We took the kids to the Santa Parade in our little suburban town square on Sunday night and they loved it.  JR particularly loved all the semi trucks fully decked out in lights and decorations.  They were pretty fun to see.

We stayed for the tree lighting ceremony afterwards and JR and I lined up for a visit with Santa and a candy cane but as usual Little Miss wouldn't have anything to do with a visit with Santa.

When santa asked JR what he wanted from Santa, JR saw the candy cane in his hand and promptly said "candy cane, please".

The moments are precious and it's great experiencing them through the eyes of the little ones.  That magic is still all around us if we watch it through the eyes of the children.

I lost a post about my little man just now so I decided to go play with templates since I just upgraded to the paid mo-time (although I didn't think I had done that because it didn't appear to work but apparently it did work even though I got errors).  Hmmm.......

Anyways, bear with me as I edit this template to make it mine.  I'll probably be finished with that process just in time to change it after the holidays.

Look at this stack of lovely, lovely fibre:

Isn't it just fab? Always the entrepreneur, this is my wholesale stash of fibre and will be used for bulky hats and mitts and other stuff like that. Each knot is good for a bulky spun hat or something similar. I haven't figure out if I can get mittens out of one yet but that's probably my next attempt.

As well, my UFO busting has begun.  My first and very dear UFO that will be stash busted is the Norwegian Woods shawl by Sivia Harding.  I abondened this lovely project last summer when somehow I got a knot in the yarn and got pulled away by other things such as making jewelry.  Oh, the other thing that slowed me down is that when it came to joining the second ball of lace weight, I decided it was time to string the beads and now I`m way slowed down by slowly pushing them along as I knit.  But I pulled it out Friday and I have about 2 more rows left on one repeat and then it`s down to the two last, fairly short edge pattern charts.  I`ll have this one stash busted before the holidays.

Shop News

Until tonight, Sunday December 7, I`m having a big 25% off shop sale on anything at Creations by Uli and Knitter`s Nook.  This is an awesome deal.  Not something I`m going to do but I figured I might as well do something fun this weekend.  All you have to do is to shop and not pay until I send you a paypal address or complete the purchase and pay and I can send you a paypal refund. 

New things will be added to both shops over next week as well.  As soon as I get new pictures taken.  I would say that as far as it comes to running this on-line Etsy shop, the picture taking is the greatest challenge and my picture taking mojo has run away.  I need to find it again because I have lots of lovely new things to list.

 

Show season was great this year.  It got off to a slow start with my first two shows but the altter half of shows was fabulous.  My last show, 3 days worth, was last weekend in Abbotsford and I had a blast.  It was tiring as I got very little breaks.  The first day I arrived at approx 10 am and didn't leave until after 9 pm and didn't get one potty break.  I met a lot of fabulous people and was very much encouraged about my chainmaille work and other things.  I even brought some stitch markers and, of course, many shoppers have no idea but in the end, I almost sold out of my markers and I almost didn't put them out in the first place.  The few shawl pins I had with me were often mistaken as stitch holders.  Ah well, can't win them all....

Famous last words were that once this show was done, I'd take a bit of a break from jewelry making and focus a bit on my spinning and knitting but I've had a bunch of orders in the past few days and a couple of custom requests that see me getting out my pliers most evenings.

I'm not even going to try and catch up on my spinning and knitting news as really, in the past month nothing really happened.  There are 2 new things though and one of them is my garter stitch moebius.  I used Cat Bordhi's wonderful You Tube Video on how to do the cast on.  I guesstimated a cast on # of stitches and just started knitting.  One row knit, one row purl.  It took me a while to really see what was happening but it all came together beautifully in the end.   I used one of my early handspuns, a lovely BFL that I purchased from Three by Hand.

 

It's not close to the neck like a fluffy neck warmer might be so I've been wearing it like a decorative neck embellishment.

And for spinning, after I spent all this time trying to get my singles to be as skinny as possible, someone suggested to me trying for a bulky single, plied with something thinner like some thread.  And here are my first results:

Although there is lots of room for improvement, I like the overall result and effect.  It was a challenge to do though.  I kept drafting thin and when I remembered, I'd have a big blotch of underspun fibery goodness.  On my 2nd time sitting down and spinning this, I also put my drive band onto the faster groove of the whorl and I couldn't figure out why it so quickly overspun.  So, a few lessons learned.  I will try again soon.  I might cast on a little, warm hat with this tonight.

'Tis the season........... this year, I'm behind on my Christmas shopping and there are many, many social activities lined up.  Tomorrow night is Little Miss' daycare Christmas play and they've been working on it very, very hard.  I'm really looking forward to it.