It feels pretty good right now to not have a work project.  Don’t get me wrong, I love knitting for KnitPicks and I always enjoy what I do, but sometimes I need a break so I can make some things that I want to make.  And I’m doing that, right now.  First on my list is this scarf.  This is my woven shibori experiment, still in the weaving stage.  I think I’m about three quarters of the way through it so I should be able to dye it next week, sometime.  If you’re curious about how this will work, there’s an article on WeaveZine, but the short of what you do is weave the scarf with some thread, I’m using cotton, to make a pattern on the surface of the scarf and when the weaving is done, you use the thread to bunch the scarf up, tie it off, and dye it kind of like tie dye.  I haven’t decided what color I’m going to dye it yet, I’m trying to decide between the traditional route of blue (to make it look like indigo) or something nontraditional like a chartreuse or hot pink or purple. 

I didn’t realize how much I missed weaving until I started this project, I really need to weave more.  And I think I’m going to start saving up some money for a floor loom, something small, though, like a Baby Wolf.  I don’t have room for a floor loom, at all, but since it folds up and doesn’t take up a huge amount of room even when it’s unfolded, I think I could squeeze on in.  The looms are expensive, between $1600 and $2000 is what I’m finding but I’ll probably try to find one used, so it will be a while before I can afford one.  I talked to my mom about it and it looked like her eyes were going to pop out of her head when I told her how much they cost.  Apparently she didn’t even realize that my rigid heddle loom was almost $200, I thought I told her when I bought it but I guess she forgot.  Fiber arts are expensive hobbies.

Back to the projects.  I started Heroine Wednesday night.  This is an old picture, I’ve finished the back and started the front already.  This is made with worsted weight yarn held double and US13/9mm needles, so it goes pretty fast.  I’m trying to knit slower than my breakneck work knitting speed so I can actually sit back and enjoy the process of making it, rather than just speeding through.  It’s tough, though, I’m so used to having to knit as fast as I can that to purposefully slow down is killing me.  Besides, I kind of need a coat.

Other than weaving and knitting as fast as I can, I’ve been devouring books.  Last week I read The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles that was a bleak, psychological book that I would love to read again in a year or so and see how I feel about it then.  I wish I was a better writer so I could really express how the book made me feel, the reviews at Amazon are pretty good.  After a book that heady, I wanted something light and fluffy that I could plow through in a couple hours.  I figured what’s lighter and fluffier than a Dan Brown novel, so I read The Lost Symbol.  I know it’s cool to criticize Dan Brown because his writing is technically crap (and it is, but so is mine) but his books are fun little page turners, even if most of the plot twists are easy to figure out and his supposedly super hard to solve puzzles aren’t, but The Lost Symbol accomplished what I wanted it to, it gave me something entertaining to do for about six hours.  There is one thing about his stories, they’re fun.  And they’re supposed to be.  And after I was done reading it I spent some time reading about the US Capitol and all the things in his book about the buildings and the architecture.  I wanted something fun to do and that did it.  And still on the light and fluffy kick, today I read the new Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse book, A Touch of Dead.  The book is a collection of her Sookie Stackhouse short stories, it only took about two hours to read and I’m pretty sure I had read one of the stories before.  It was pretty good but I would have liked for there to be more of it, it seemed awfully short.

I’ve been checking out craft books from the library, too.  I just returned Time to Weave which has small projects that require either no loom at all or a simple peg loom.  The book had some good ideas, like a braided rope trivet and some coasters made out of sticks woven with string, but it’s not a book I would rush out and buy.  Right now I have Dyeing to Knit and Mastering Weave Structures: Transforming Ideas into Great Cloth but I’ve only just skimmed them.  Dyeing to Knit looks pretty good, though.  It is another book about color theory and the process of dyeing but it goes more in to playing around with using different techniques to get different effects on yarn.  I have a cone of undyed sock yarn that I think I’ll play with in the next couple weeks.  I’ve barely opened the weaving book, I read online somewhere that it had good information for weaving on any type of loom so I thought I’d check it out.  I might just do that right now.