Early April Knitting Update
Apr. 8th, 2024 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brideoffrankensteinHey, Tank here.
I'm going to do a table of contents and some cuts because this is probably going to be a long one. I'm fronting but some of these talking points are Bow's; I'll do my best to be fair to his points/ideas/so on.
1. Scheduling, format changes, thoughts on videos.
2. Thoughts on different kinds of projects re: mental health needs.
3. An actual knitting update.
1. Schedules and possible format changes
Bow has been watching a lot of knitting vlogs recently [they call them podcasts, but I and Book are united in thinking that's horseshit. Bow is on the fence]. He's also a person who finds it easier to talk about projects than write about them, so he's been tempted recently to have a go at videoing himself. This is also partly because we tend to get into a designing headspace pretty easily when we do a lot of knitting, and video content is a fairly good way to make headway into the knitting social space. It's not necessarily that video content is definitely going to be his new thing, or that he's going to do youtube videos with a very firm eye to the design business, but that all his feelings are clustering around videos and instagram reels and it's also a good, but low stakes, business decision.
He's not sure we're actually going to do it, because there's a lot of extraneous stuff like editing and hearing the sound of your own voice that he's nervous about, but it's a possible option.
That doesn't necessarily mean stopping posting here by any means. First of all, the video stuff would be connected to our instagram account, which would mean that we wouldn't be out there, in any sense other than the bisexual. I might try to strip this blog somewhat to increase my privacy, and we might stop posting if he gets along with videos, but there's no plan in place to stop posting here.
In fact, the plan, such as there is one, is to increase posting here before attempting youtube videos. The idea is to try to establish a consistency in reflecting and posting on what we're doing, to get an idea of the mental effort involved but also to establish habits and see how sustainable or otherwise they are. That basically means that we're going to try and post twice a month, with an early-month update and a late-month update.
2. Thoughts on mental health needs.
One reason that knitting has stuck fairly well is that, more than any other creative hobby that we do, it's both portable and, by and large, restful. Because we [Book included] do very little on the weekend by design, Bow decided to use the weekends as focused time to knit, with a view to being able to hyperfixate safely, being able to decompress from the workweek [particularly necessary now that we're increasing our hours], and emotionally regulate. The past few weekends, we've been noticing that the emotional regulation part has been lacking, and that lack has been leading to a sense of emotional pressure, overwhelm, etc. It didn't help that last week we had a weeklong migraine that's only starting to lift now, but regardless.
Part of the issue is that we've had a couple of busier than average weekends, but another part of the issue is that Bow has been using Sunday as a space to do all of the complex, high-focus stages of projects, and so isn't really leaving a lot of mindlessness time on Sunday. We think this is meaning that the body [most precise phrasing we can think of] is having a sense of building resentment about the pace and intensity and lack of restfulness, particularly right before the start of the workweek.
To handle this, we've decided that there are "Saturday projects" and "Sunday projects". Sunday projects are low-key and require minimal sustaining of focus, whereas Saturday projects are the ones that are more complex or require more forethought. Saturday projects would include sewing as well as knitting. Obviously a project might cover both categories, but the point is having a simple project available for Sunday, whether it's a simple project all the way through or whether it has complicated parts that can be tackled on other days.
3. The actual update
Here's a picture of the Strata from last time:
[A picture of a blue v-neck vest top]
I also finished the Hands Cardigan:
[Tank, who is identical to Bow except he isn't making a facial expression, is wearing a green cardigan with a white hands motif; the fingers travel around the edge of the cardigan.]
I did finish it in time for the food festival, but it was tight because I ended up having to lengthen the sleeves - that I then didn't Really have to lengthen because they grew in blocking. The fit of it is not great; there's a lot of extra fabric in the back and under the arms. I suspect that I could have just followed the raglan increases as written, rather than trying to increase to the number of stitches given in pattern [although I also now know a better technique for that]. It's fun to wear and I like it a lot despite its flaws.
I didn't end up casting on the Souffle when the Hands was done. Instead I cast on a Rebecca Clow Tolsta Tee, partly because I wanted to be able to post about it a lot on instagram and through that maybe get on her Tolsta camisole test, which I really want to do. Partly I want to have the experience of testing, but mainly I want the camisole. I don't wear them much but have felt the need for one recently and I have a lovely pink silk that I think would be great. However, after fighting with the Tolsta for two days (I kept twisting the cast on) Rebecca announced that she's releasing a bust shaping update, which I'm interested in, so the Tolsta is on hold until the update.
To tide me over, I cast on my Dad's socks:
[The start of a dark grey sock, with light grey stripes and the upper third of a rhino]
But these ended up more complex than expected because I did the colourwork too tight and I'm now not sure of my technique. It was pulled back after this picture and I started again.
Book and I recieved from my Mum this week a metric fucktonne of mainly cotton yarn, the colours of which inspired a cardigan design involving stripes and nupps/bobbles; I sampled that this month as well:
[A striped swatch in pink, red, green and peach, with a pattern of bobbles all over it]
It's going to go slow because there's a lot of work involved, but it's begun, which is nice. I'm going to go with wider stripes for the actual design.
My mum's stash of yarn also involved some yarn that I decided to use to make Dad's sweater, which is a different colour combination than I expected but will look good I think. The darker is going to be the main colour and the lighter the contrast. The lighter will also be held with a fluffy alpaca yarn to give a fuzzy airiness to the colourwork.
[A ball of light grey Drops Alpaca with a ball of dark grey-brown Drops Karisma]
I'm going to do a table of contents and some cuts because this is probably going to be a long one. I'm fronting but some of these talking points are Bow's; I'll do my best to be fair to his points/ideas/so on.
1. Scheduling, format changes, thoughts on videos.
2. Thoughts on different kinds of projects re: mental health needs.
3. An actual knitting update.
1. Schedules and possible format changes
Bow has been watching a lot of knitting vlogs recently [they call them podcasts, but I and Book are united in thinking that's horseshit. Bow is on the fence]. He's also a person who finds it easier to talk about projects than write about them, so he's been tempted recently to have a go at videoing himself. This is also partly because we tend to get into a designing headspace pretty easily when we do a lot of knitting, and video content is a fairly good way to make headway into the knitting social space. It's not necessarily that video content is definitely going to be his new thing, or that he's going to do youtube videos with a very firm eye to the design business, but that all his feelings are clustering around videos and instagram reels and it's also a good, but low stakes, business decision.
He's not sure we're actually going to do it, because there's a lot of extraneous stuff like editing and hearing the sound of your own voice that he's nervous about, but it's a possible option.
That doesn't necessarily mean stopping posting here by any means. First of all, the video stuff would be connected to our instagram account, which would mean that we wouldn't be out there, in any sense other than the bisexual. I might try to strip this blog somewhat to increase my privacy, and we might stop posting if he gets along with videos, but there's no plan in place to stop posting here.
In fact, the plan, such as there is one, is to increase posting here before attempting youtube videos. The idea is to try to establish a consistency in reflecting and posting on what we're doing, to get an idea of the mental effort involved but also to establish habits and see how sustainable or otherwise they are. That basically means that we're going to try and post twice a month, with an early-month update and a late-month update.
2. Thoughts on mental health needs.
One reason that knitting has stuck fairly well is that, more than any other creative hobby that we do, it's both portable and, by and large, restful. Because we [Book included] do very little on the weekend by design, Bow decided to use the weekends as focused time to knit, with a view to being able to hyperfixate safely, being able to decompress from the workweek [particularly necessary now that we're increasing our hours], and emotionally regulate. The past few weekends, we've been noticing that the emotional regulation part has been lacking, and that lack has been leading to a sense of emotional pressure, overwhelm, etc. It didn't help that last week we had a weeklong migraine that's only starting to lift now, but regardless.
Part of the issue is that we've had a couple of busier than average weekends, but another part of the issue is that Bow has been using Sunday as a space to do all of the complex, high-focus stages of projects, and so isn't really leaving a lot of mindlessness time on Sunday. We think this is meaning that the body [most precise phrasing we can think of] is having a sense of building resentment about the pace and intensity and lack of restfulness, particularly right before the start of the workweek.
To handle this, we've decided that there are "Saturday projects" and "Sunday projects". Sunday projects are low-key and require minimal sustaining of focus, whereas Saturday projects are the ones that are more complex or require more forethought. Saturday projects would include sewing as well as knitting. Obviously a project might cover both categories, but the point is having a simple project available for Sunday, whether it's a simple project all the way through or whether it has complicated parts that can be tackled on other days.
3. The actual update
Here's a picture of the Strata from last time:
[A picture of a blue v-neck vest top]
I also finished the Hands Cardigan:
[Tank, who is identical to Bow except he isn't making a facial expression, is wearing a green cardigan with a white hands motif; the fingers travel around the edge of the cardigan.]
I did finish it in time for the food festival, but it was tight because I ended up having to lengthen the sleeves - that I then didn't Really have to lengthen because they grew in blocking. The fit of it is not great; there's a lot of extra fabric in the back and under the arms. I suspect that I could have just followed the raglan increases as written, rather than trying to increase to the number of stitches given in pattern [although I also now know a better technique for that]. It's fun to wear and I like it a lot despite its flaws.
I didn't end up casting on the Souffle when the Hands was done. Instead I cast on a Rebecca Clow Tolsta Tee, partly because I wanted to be able to post about it a lot on instagram and through that maybe get on her Tolsta camisole test, which I really want to do. Partly I want to have the experience of testing, but mainly I want the camisole. I don't wear them much but have felt the need for one recently and I have a lovely pink silk that I think would be great. However, after fighting with the Tolsta for two days (I kept twisting the cast on) Rebecca announced that she's releasing a bust shaping update, which I'm interested in, so the Tolsta is on hold until the update.
To tide me over, I cast on my Dad's socks:
[The start of a dark grey sock, with light grey stripes and the upper third of a rhino]
But these ended up more complex than expected because I did the colourwork too tight and I'm now not sure of my technique. It was pulled back after this picture and I started again.
Book and I recieved from my Mum this week a metric fucktonne of mainly cotton yarn, the colours of which inspired a cardigan design involving stripes and nupps/bobbles; I sampled that this month as well:
[A striped swatch in pink, red, green and peach, with a pattern of bobbles all over it]
It's going to go slow because there's a lot of work involved, but it's begun, which is nice. I'm going to go with wider stripes for the actual design.
My mum's stash of yarn also involved some yarn that I decided to use to make Dad's sweater, which is a different colour combination than I expected but will look good I think. The darker is going to be the main colour and the lighter the contrast. The lighter will also be held with a fluffy alpaca yarn to give a fuzzy airiness to the colourwork.
[A ball of light grey Drops Alpaca with a ball of dark grey-brown Drops Karisma]
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Date: 2024-04-08 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-09 08:08 pm (UTC)Those socks look great; the color contrast is good and the stitches look very even. We've been trying to knit and crochet more ourselves; this is definitely helping inspire us!
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