knitting for others

I've been thinking a bit about knitting for others... as in, someone comes up to me and asks me to knit something for them. I've hardly had people ask me to knit them things, but when they do, my normal reaction is ok, sure.

scenario number one: my cook. She asked me the other day for me to make her MIL a hat, she saw the crochet hat that Hermione Bagnold made me in round 1 of the duel, and thought a warm hat like that for her MIL would be good since where she's from, it gets rather cold.

I said ok... she offered to buy me new yarn, but i just said, i'll see if i have something suitable in my stash, i'll just make it from that. I think in the end I'm going to give the hat that Hermione made to the cook's MIL because I can only wear one hat at a time, and honestly hats make me itch... so if said hat wants to go with the MIL, then go with the MIL it shall. Plus I hated making that hat.

Scenario number two: the other day, I was sporting my toast at work, and the "other mary" came by my desk and asked me to make a pair for her. I said that she should just make a pair her self, and that it would be easy. I didn't offer to knit a pair for her... She had said she was going to buy me some yarn and to knit it... I just said, she can knit them herself, even though she doesn't know how to knit.

i think the thing is that i only like to knit things when i want to knit them. I don't want to feel like i'm on a deadline so much... it takes all the fun out of knitting really... like when my mother had asked me to knit her a phone cozy. I did so because she's my mother, and she even helped me wind the skein into a center pull ball, but it did take me a real long time, like a whole month to finish a tiny phone cozy... it's not that i didn't want to knit for her, it's just... i didn't want to because she had asked.

Knitting for money: At the craft store last week, I saw some scarves that the store was selling for around $299-399 a scarf... yes it was on what seems like larger needles and such, but it's really still not enough money in my opinion... What would I charge for the Malabrigo scarf that I made? the yarn was $18 bucks x 3(labour) = $57 USD. Ok, maybe i'll dumb it down to two times the cost of the yarn, $36 USD since it was a fast crochet... but what amount of people do you think would pay for that?*

I should really not devalue my own valuable time.

*V just told me that Nords had a similiar scarf for $34 USD... interesting...

we've moved!!

dear blog readers of yarmmy.blogspot.com,

please redirect your bookmark/google reader over to maryknits.com

I've been repeat blogger here and there for about a month now, but starting the new year, I shall be over there entirely. Please make sure you update your bookmark.

thank you!

m.

P.S. Happy New Year

100 books

at the end of this year... I am giving myself the day off and just posting a meme... in which i hope to use this list as a means of reading next year. Perhaps next year, I shall have more books crossed off the list.

1) Look at the list and cross out those you have read.
2) Bold those you intend to read.
3) Place ** after the books you LOVE.
4) Post your list so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

(it took me awhile, but I've searched for books that are available on LibriVox and have linked them. I might have missed some, since the list is sooo long, and I've only looked at what seems like classics. I've also have wiki linked the books title to which I have no idea what it might have been.)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen librivox link
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte librivox link
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling ** i especially love book1, 3, 6
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte librivox link
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott LibriVox
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare librivox links
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger I did not get this book...
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot librivox link
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens librivox link
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy librivox links
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky libriVox
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll libriVox
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame **I love this story!!
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy librivox link
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens LibriVox
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen librivox link
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Did i read this... it's been sooo long ago.
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery librivox link
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood I thought this story was really sexy for its time.
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (i listened to this story about half way thru...maybe I will audio it!)
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen LibriVox
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas librivox link
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding (i didn't read this one, but the next in the series, the one they made 2 into, and well this as a novel does not read well.)
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville LibriVox
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens librivox link
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker LibriVox
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (thanks to librivox & kayray)
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce LibriVox
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens LibriVox
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker ** this was a good story.
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert librivox link
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (all the adventures of just one adventure?) LibriVox
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas LibriVox
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ** I also enjoyed this book.
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

10 memorable knitting memories of the year

in no particular order

1. when i've finished up my central park hoodie!


2. getting both V & E semi interested in knitting/crochet


3. finally figuring out this whole entrelac thing works!!


4. Yarn buying in New York!!


5. getting a swift & ball winder


6. the terrific package from Henry Longstaff ( my swap partner in hsks6)


7. making what seemed like an impossible yoyo blanket


8. procuring my itouch. i heart that thing, i don't know how i lived without it before. (this is knitting related I swear!!)


9. giving knitted gifts to family and friends


10. Finding a LYS in Taichung!!!

Panic! at the Knittery

in order to solve my Chinese New Year gift giving panic, I have laid it out on a chart and have listed all the possible people I might want to knit/crochet gifts for. To break things down simpler, I've removed my immediately family members (dad, mom, sunny, helen, abraham, issac and aaron) and have put their gifts into the Xmas09 since I've already given them knits for Christmas this year, no need to do knitted gifts for Chinese New Year as well.

After separating my immediately family and the relatives, I categorised the relatives even further. Male and Female. Most of the female relatives, whether an aunt or cousin is getting the i just look pretty scarf, from here on now will be shortened to "Pretty Scarf". It's a fast crochet, I can get one done per day, maybe 2 if I don't nap at lunch, plus it looks good.

the men, i've slated them for the one row handspun pattern from YH... but I'm thinking for the men, whether they be cousins or uncles I might not knit or crochet for them... I just don't think they'd like it very much.

I have a few relatives on the list that I'm slating the turn a square hat for them... of course there's always Melody's sock that I promised her... her sock will take about 4 days knitting with my allotted knitting time per day (something to keep in mind really)...

In conclusion::
Pretty Scarf : still need 1 (FO:5, WIP:1)
Turn a Square: still need 3
Owl Hat: Still need 1 (WIP:1)
DishCloth: still need zero (FO:1)
Sock: still need 1
One Row: still need 6
Aspen Scarf: still need zero (FO:1)

Is this all possible by Jan 25 maybe 26 at the latest? Stayed tuned to find out!!

i just look pretty FO x 2

While I was home last weekend, I went thru my crochet pattern a day calendar for the year 2007, and grabbed a few patterns that I thought would be good stash-busting scarves. I mean I can only make granny squares for so long. Scarves are useful after all.

one of the pattern was called, I just look pretty by Sara P Campbell. I tried to access her website, crochetallday.com, but it was unaccessable to me, so upon googling the website, I think I have located her new website and her ravelry SN... but she hasn't added that pattern so I'm not really sure it's her. Anyway...

I love the pattern so much that I've made 2 scarves already out of the Malabrigo Private seleccion, the weird purple yellow blue colored. One skein of it makes a sufficient length scarf, so I've made two.

I highly recommend the pattern for a quick one day scarf about 5-6 hours by my crochet time, if you need a quick gift this is definitely the way to go. this is my default gift scarf for the females of my family.

for some reason I'm having a panic about Chinese New Year gift knitting. I wasn't having the panic about Christmas knitting this year, since we're not a christmas celebrating family, but all of a sudden I was feeling that since I'm going to be seeing family members and I might want to give some knitted presents to some family member, so what about the ones that I haven't prepared for? Shouldn't I give them something too??

I was not even planning on making anyone anything for Chinese New Year... maybe i said I'd give a scarf for 2 of my cousin... and maybe Aunt May Lin, cuz I hang out with her a lot... and if I give something from Aunt May Lin, then I should give something to the youngest aunt, and then maybe her daughters might want ask for a yarn gift too, then i'm sure my aunt by marriage will be left out if i made everyone something and not her... so you see...

Chinese New Year Knitting panic... ergh. just breath... I am trying to not let it get to me... I'll just knit and get to it when I do. No guilty knitting. Yes, that is my motto, just repeat to self, and breath.

Breath.

Uno

Here is square number one of the lapghan. I'm undecided at how many squares I should have since the square is a bit bigger than I thought it would be, must be the large needles and all.

CO & FO: Dec 25 2008
Yarn: Nature Yarn: Gray, Cotton 45%, Merino 55%
Needle: US 9
Pattern: Hand Knitted Pattern Motif 100
Size: approximately 8x8" square

the bobbles gave me such an issue... apparently I can't follow picture directions all that well... it literally took until the last bobble for me to decide how I wanted to close off the top of the bobble, so each bobble in the square is a little bit different, but you won't tell right? I know I definitely need to block...

It takes me about 4-5 hours to do one square, so I can easily have it done in one day. I've already picked out the next square to knit... this time no bobble, just plenty of cables! I'm going to try to use the remaining ball to see if it's possible to get 2 squares out of one ball. I have 4 gray balls which I was going to use for tube socks, but since I started with this lapghan thing, I think I'm going to save them for the lapghan, and buy more when i go back next time, after I've figured out how many balls I need to complete my lapghan. Heaven forbid I run out of yarn!

I am continually working on the froot loop, there just hasn't been much progress to write home about... am still on the leg just chugging along... I'm thinking of making it to be around 8" on the leg, then start on the heel. Should I keep this pair for myself? or gift them?

P.s. the little reindeer is a courtesy shape of flickr's Picknik. It's super cute, I'm just sad I didn't see it earlier!! There are other shapes, which now that i know about them, I'm going to use them on my pictures!!