HPKCHC: Spring Break at Hogwarts

That's the combined output of three months at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup. My individual output, I should say; the Quidditch basket came together quite nicely, though my teammates had to suffer through some badly written, untested patterns from me.

During March, I focused on finishing two big projects. First, DADA:



The Vigilante cardi, which taught me the value of Constant Vigilance. Somewhat shockingly, it's only my second finished sweater. It is a vast improvement over the first (which was so bad I wore it once or twice, couldn't overcome the shame, and destroyed all evidence of its existence). Somewhere in those five or six sweaters I cast on in the middle, I became a much better knitter.



It's not fully blocked yet, so it will probably change appearance slightly. For the amount of trouble this sweater gave me, I'm pretty pleased with it. Something funky is going on with the armscye, which is sort of inflexible and a little too tight, but on the whole, this is a wearable sweater that fits well, is reasonably flattering, and will not need to be buried at midnight under a new moon. I was so thrilled when I finished it, I sat in the coffee shop with my fists in the air, basking in my knitterly glory. I think the guys talking Star Wars in the corner were a little freaked out.

The other big FO is, of course, the Huepow's Garden shawl:



I just don't have words for how happy this shawl makes me. It's a bit itchy, but I don't care. It's not as big as I thought it would be, and I still don't care. It doesn't have the second row of beads I was planning, I didn't block in the texture in the blue stripes the way I wanted, some of the darned-in ends are more visible than I'd like: don't care, don't care, don't care. I love this shawl. This is one of those projects that makes me feel like a genius. Seriously, look at those beads:



I can't get enough of them. This shawl has been very good for my self-esteem.

HPKCHC isn't quite over; the teachers are still totting up the points. The last time I looked, Ravenclaw was ahead of Slytherin by three measly points, so we're all biting our nails up in Ravenclaw Tower. But whatever the outcome is, I'm feeling really good about my participation in the game these past three months. I finished quite a few projects, accomplished some real feats of fiber manipulation, and had fun doing it together with people I like.

One of these things is not like the other

Let's play a little game, shall we?

One half of this sleeve was knit at my local stitch and bitch. One half was knitted at home, parked on the couch watching TV.



Any guesses which is which?

This sleeve, by the way, was taken from my hands to show a new knitter an example of stockinette stitch. The one doing the demonstrated said, "See how this is smoother?" and then charitably added, "Of course, this hasn't been blocked yet." Obviously not. I don't know how much blocking can remedy that sort of knitting. And it was a dry meetup, too.

The cardigan that once had it in for me has decided to trade its orneryness in for the most powerful demotivator: monotony. After the lace pattern on the body combined with the shaping, the sleeve is really pretty boring. I now have this much sweater done:



...and it looks like I'm on track to finish well within my deadline of the end of the month.

More challenging is going to be the Huepow's Garden shawl. Last time you saw it, it looked like this:



And now it looks like this:



This is the hardest thing about knitting triangle shawls from the center neck out. You start with rows that are four stitches wide and sail gaily along as the rows get wider and wider. Then you get to a point where you are pretty comfortable with the row length, which for me is at about half the finished width, and realize it's just going to keep growing. But by the magic of geometry, when you reach half the finished width... you're only a quarter of the way done knitting. You're feeling maxed out on the rows, and you have to do what you did three more times.

And then, of course, you have the pleasure of casting off something like two thousand stitches, being very, very careful to do it loosely enough that it will stretch during blocking, because heaven help you if you have to unpick those two thousand cast off stitches to redo them. It's enough to drive a woman to the bottle, but apparently that also has a detrimental effect on the average knitter's ability to execute a simple bindoff with accuracy (although the tension might no longer be an issue).

Right now, I am about two third of the way done with this shawl, and I can only knit a row or two at a time without feeling ready to burst into tears, eat a lot of chocolate, or throw the shawl into the street to be dragged away for nesting material by squirrels and raccoons. So far, only the promise I made to show it off at my LYS has stopped me. But will this one be done by the end of March? ...I might have to cheat and bind off early, if I care about my sanity or the health of my liver.

HPKCHC: February Wrap-Up

February went fast. I suppose that shouldn't come as much of a surprise, since it's the shortest month of the year, but it gets me every year.

On the knitting front, progress was somewhat slow. I accomplished three knit projects for HPKCHC, but nothing nearly as monumental as last month's stash cleanup project. Still, I can add this little guy to my list of achievements:



He's an Ood, and I'm enormously proud of him because I knit the whole thing without referring to any kind of pattern at all. That little brain is even crochet, and I figured the whole thing out on my own. It turns out that if you understand how to knit a garment to fit a part of the human body, you also have a pretty good idea of how to knit something that looks like that part of the body. Go figure.

I feel the need to address one point of last month's HPKCHC accomplishments: the 12-month plan. Now, I knew full well that I was never going to follow that plan. I am just not that kind of knitter. I get distracted. I am unfaithful. There's a reason I never posted that plan here, and that reason is that I only ever half-heartedly (maybe only quarter-heartedly) intended to follow it.

With that disclaimer, I think I can feel pretty good that I even picked up something off the list at all: those pink cable socks that I was going to knit while I was in North Dakota. I did in fact start them while there, but size 0 needles and splitty Tofutsies got old after a while. This month I did actually pull them out of hibernation, finish up those blasted cables on the ankle, and turn the second heel. Currently, these socks are the purse socks, and they are roughly mid-gusset. That is much more progress than I made on them in the last several months, so I'm giving myself a (small) pat on the back.

As far as HPKCHC goes, the secret project will remain secret from the blog for the time being, as will the song I wrote for History of Magic, because I'm totally embarrassed to be one of those people who writes filk and then posts it on the internet. Also, mine is nowhere near as cool or funny as Tom Smith's, so if you want to listen to filk from an Ann Arborite, go listen to his.

I don't know what next month will bring, knitting-wise. I'm hoping to do some knitting to sell on Etsy, as a small financial experiment, and I have a commission to finish up. But I won't know what the HPKCHC assignments will be until the month actually begins, so I've lined up a few interesting things in my Ravelry queue, just in case they happen to fit the assignments... stay tuned.

DADA: Pimp my Bible

It just struck me how appropriate this particular project is for a class called Defense Against the Dark Arts. Bible accessories vs. Dark Arts. Nice.

The February assignment for DADA was:

Expecto Patronem: Make something having to do with your patronus. Extra points for explanations of what your patronus is, and why.

I was a bit slow to figure out what my Patronus would be. Last month's Charms assignment also had to do with Patronuses (Patroni? Sounds like a really tasty pasta), but I never made it past the association with purple. For this month, though, I wanted to work on developing the idea of my Patronus a little bit, since this assignment focused more on the Patronus itself, rather than its effects.

I went back to a name I'd been given previously. There's a whole story about fire names, rooted in the tradition of summer camp, and it feels a little silly to talk about it outside the circle, as it were. Essentially a fire name is a descriptive name that represents something about your character.

I was given the fire name "Unyielding Granite", which I have since decided is something like calling once-Cardinal Ratzinger the "papal bulldog" (only a bit more Protestant). I like having conversations about religion and matters of doctrine, but I'm also pretty unmovable on the things I'm convinced of. Luther said- reportedly- "Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders," and I'm of much the same mind.

So I got to thinking about what animal might best represent this aspect of my nature, and I arrived at the obvious answer: the Ox.

Well, it was obvious to me.

I have other associations with the Ox, too: I was born in the year of the Ox according to the Chinese zodiac. Also, the ox, in the Bible, is associated with those who teach the Bible- fitting, I think, for someone who wants to work in Bible translation.

Having settled on the identity of my Patronus, I took a longer time trying to figure out what project I could possibly knit to tie in all those meanings. The ox is not the animal most likely to be represented in knitted form. Cue inspiration number one: The oxo cable.

I knew that the project had to be small, because I wanted to knit it from the leftovers from last month's Charms project, which was two-thirds of a skein or less. And it had to look good in purple.

Finally, two weeks into the planning stage, I put together the meaning of my Patronus with its function, worked out the sum, and found its form: Bible accessories! (Is there anything more Sunday-school-Protestant than Bible accessories?)

Introducing the Purple Patronus Pen Pocket:



...modeled by the lovely ESV Journaling Bible (the best investment I ever made. Seriously. Dead useful). I had been keeping a pen tucked under the elastic strap that holds the book closed, but it kept falling off or poking me or flipping around at inconvenient times. I think the pocket will be much less likely to cause injury. (Plus it looks prettier. ^.^)

The PPPP is the latest upgrade in a series I'm making to this Bible. The very first thing I did was make more bookmark ribbons, because one bookmark isn't very useful at all. Next up, I think, will be adding a little accordion file-ish pocket for the scrap paper notes that are currently sitting free inside the front cover and fall out the instant they get a chance. We'll see.

HPKCHC: January Wrap-up

Whew!

January has been a flurry of knit-related activity, most of it for the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup.

I finished the Charms assignment and the Quidditch designs early, which was good, because I was going nuts trying to finish everything else by the deadline (midnight tonight). First up, Herbology.

The assignment, if you recall, was to clean up the greenhouse (that is, organize the stash). I can sum it up in two pictures.

Before...



...and after.



My needles are organized and entered into Ravelry. I wore out several sets of batteries taking pictures of yarn and projects to update my Rav notebook. Stash is entered. Projects are up-to-date. And I have a 12-month plan for my knitting.

I feel so... organized.

Next up: Defense Against the Dark Arts.



Eh. It's a mug cozy. I'm not a big fan of the design, but it was quick, I could knit it from stash, and it will keep my caffeinated beverages warm.

The project I'm most pleased about is this:



The Opposing Forces cap for Arithmancy. It's based on my character numbers (9, 2, and 7) and knit from some Manos Silk Blend.

OMFSM, I am in love with this yarn. It's soft. It's warm. Even when it pools, it pools in cool swishes that bring to mind comet trails and stardust. This hat may never come off my head.

In theory, according to my 12-month plan, I was supposed to finish up the Snowblowing Scarf tonight (which is just a really wide, thick version of the Noro Scarf in Taos), but I'm tired and I'm hungry and I don't want to knit when I'm in that kind of mood. Instead, I think I'm going to mess up the grand 12-month plan on the very first month and just put it off for a few days. Besides, the new assignments should be up tomorrow, and I want to be in good shape to decide which classes to take.

Herbology: Ollivander's Wands and Hand-held Labelling Machines

This Herbology Update is brought to you by our sponsors: Ziploc bags, Dymo labels, and Oxford notecards, the Holy Trinity of cheap organizational tools.

After the last update, this project languished for a bit as I realized the enormity of the task ahead of me. Finally, my fellow Ravenclaws provided me with the three things I needed most: gentle encouragement, sage advice, and a swift kick in the butt.

The most helpful counsel came from GazeboGal, who pointed out that I did not actually need to finish frogging everything in my frog pond in order to complete the assignment. This was the part I was stuck on, and the realization that I could shove it all in a basket, stick it on the top shelf, and deal with it later freed me up to worry about more important things: like whether I was going to run out of Dymo labels.

I was.

A Dymo labeller is like a Muggle's special organizational magic wand. I swear to you, if you print out a label, the stuff in the closet organizes itself. I set to work this month and used up an entire label cartridge.

I labelled my circs...



...and I labelled my Options.



I labelled my yarn...



...and by then I had discovered the secret of the well-organized greenhouse. It really doesn't matter how messy things are; if you shove them in a bag and label it, it's organized. It's kind of like how if you just make your bed, your mom thinks you cleaned your whole room. It's a spooky kind of magic. I am convinced that Ziploc bags and Dymo labels are the secret of Molly Weasley's success.

The small WIPs got bagged, too:



These required a little more detailed label than I was willing to print on a Dymo labeller- after all, those cartridges ain't free. Instead, I went for a lower-tech solution:



3x5 notecards, recording the project name, design sources, yarns, needle size, and any other pertinent information that I am likely to forget if I put the project down for a few months. (Almost every project gets put down for a few months, so this seemed prudent.) Every project has one now, and I think I have drastically reduced my chances of getting to the second sock and forgetting where I found that strange and beautiful toe construction. (Answer: Bosnian Garter Stitch square toe, Lucy Neatby, Cool Socks, Warm Feet. It's awesome; check it out.)

Had I quit here, it would have been an amazing improvement. But I'm a Ravenclaw and therefore stubborn with a perfectionistic streak, and I was determined that I would not quit. My total lack of sewing knowledge or an unbent needle in my sewing machine did not stop me from whipping up these:



Needle rolls, rudimentary but effective, thrown together from sheets of felt and scrap ribbon. The stitching wouldn't pass muster with a four-year-old, but once they're rolled up, you really can't see the stitches (which is good, because they bring to mind the words "drunken monkey", and not in a positive context). I'm planning to work up two more rolls, one for DPNs and one for crochet hooks, and then plunk all of them into a vase to look somewhat decorative.

Less crafty but somewhat neater is this:



14" straights in an organizer. My goal is to clean out the extra needles, pair up needles where I'm missing some, and turn this into a full set of 14" aluminum needles. Just in case I need to travel somewhere where space is limited and I don't know what projects I'll have with me. What kind of emergency this would be I don't know, but it can't hurt to be prepared, right?

Even my knitting bookcase has gotten in on the organizing action:



Design notebooks and knit lit on top, pattern and instructional books on the bottom. Simply lovely.

With less than a week to go until this assignment is due, I've made excellent progress, I think:



...and now it's time to start updating my Ravelry notebook with stash counts and photos, updated WIP pictures, and needle info. This assignment has been hard work, but I think I'll be very pleased with the results when the month is over- and ready to tackle a Venomous Tentacula, just for a change of pace...

Herbology: Live from Filch's office

Today I rounded up all the yarn, needles, patterns, labels, and projects in various states of completion and chucked them into yarn jail. I dumped things out of bins and bags and threw them all into detention together, where I've half a mind to make them knit themselves as punishment. I sorted them into large categories.



Looks pretty under control, doesn't it?

Pfft. That's the picture I took before I cleared the bed, took a break, took a nap, started my DADA homework, and put away more laundry so that I could have more storage. This is what it looks like now:



As far as I can tell without shifting too many piles, this is all the knitting stuff. (Still haven't found the rogue ball of alpaca, so watch your back in the corridors.) With everything now safely imprisoned, I am left with this:



It looks so nice and neat and clean and full of potential, doesn't it? And I didn't even take a picture of the clear plastic drawers and non-Ziploc Ziploc bags I have to organize it all.

So.

Now what?

I'm not at all sure how to go about organizing this stuff. I'm going to have to work up a plan before I even begin to tackle it, because there's too much that needs to be done. And preferably get it all done before I absolutely have to crawl into bed again. Is there some kind of spell that will sort and update my stash for me? Stashinem Ravelo?

Charms: It makes me smile

My Charms assignment went more quickly than I thought; taking out the laundry and dishes and midnight snacks in between, it was probably two, or at most three, hours from casting on to taking coy half-self-portraits.

The January Charms assignment:

This month you will be learning The Patronus Charm.

Expecto Patronum

Knitting or crocheting as a cure for seasonal depression. Self explanatory. Pretty much knit anything that will make YOU happy. May not be a gift for someone else. No matter how much you NEED to get a beret made by the 9th for your best friends birthday.

And the finished assignment:


And it worked; I am feeling relaxed and happy after knitting this in a way I haven't felt in quite a while, and here are seven reasons why:

1. The yarn. It's Manos Silk Blend. It feels like clouds and baby skin on my head.
   
2. It was instant gratification knitting. I don't do a lot of instant gratification knitting. But this? This is like record time for a project. I have knit dishcloths that took longer than this. Accomplishing goals improves my mood.
   
3. I have a deep and abiding love for purple. If I could produce a corporeal Patronus, it might just turn out to be a hyperintelligent shade of lavender. I saw this yarn and had. to. have. it. I identify with purple, and have since I was writing intensely serious poems on the back of my science papers in middle school. This is my color.
   
4. I have more of this yarn left over. I could make another one if I wanted. I could make matching wristlets or something. I could keep the leftovers as a pet. Point is, the fun's not over yet.
   
5. It's reversible- it looks just as cute with the purl side out. Maybe cuter.
   
6. Successful pattern adaptation. This thing is a Calorimetry, except it's nothing like a Calorimetry. Nicer rib. More delicate yarn. Less winter necessity, more hair accessory. And dudes...
   
   It has ties. Oh yeah. I kicked this pattern's butt.
   
7. I lied. There is no seven. This makes me happy too, somehow.

One assignment down. If I can knock out the DADA assignment (a tiny little mug cozy) tomorrow, that leaves me the rest of the month for Herbology and Quidditch. It might even leave me time to try my hand at some of the other courses...

Soar on, Ravenclaw!

(Oh, that polka-dot blanket that the teddy bear is lying on? That's what you got me for Christmas, Nana.)

Herbology: The Great Stash Hunt

The first Herbology assignment is straightening up the greenhouse, documenting the process with before and after photos. Most students were able to sum it up in one or two pictures.

Me, I had to go on a Stash Hunt.

If I were a Slytherin and had a somewhat more casual relationship with the truth, I would just post these two pictures, which is where all the stash is *supposed* to live:





This is messy enough to get me booted out of Ravenclaw, I'm sure. But see those big empty places on the shelf? Places where you could fit a whole lot of yarn? Think of them less as being empty and more... mobile.

Some of it had only got a few feet outside the closet, probably just for some fresh air.


Some of it travelled with me for Christmas and was therefore above suspicion.


Some of it was near enough to make its protests that it got lost among the empty soda bottles plausible.


But some of it? Some of my stash clearly has plans of its own. I found some of it looking for dark corners under furniture from which to breed, plot world domination, or both.



(That's a box of vintage sock yarn and a case that should be full of stitch markers and pins. I think the Wintuk has evil designs.)

Worse, this book was getting ready to extend my stash's dominion back to North Dakota:


And some of the stash I simply haven't unearthed yet.

Hogwarts Castle, beware. There's something dangerous and unnatural roaming the corridors, preparing to turn us all into its slaves (or its dinner). And I rather think it's a rogue ball of alpaca.

Unresolved

Every year I agonize over whether I should make a New Year's Resolution. I know they're not effective for me; I know that as soon as I miss a day, I'm done for the year. But it seems like such a nice thing, to set a big goal at the beginning of a new year. I like challenges. (I just don't always like following through on them.)

I'm not feeling guilty about it this year: I'm not bothering with any resolutions. There's too much to do already, and it would feel stupid and self-centered for me to try to toss some vanity weight or spend my energies on something that just doesn't matter. Besides, diet food is expensive and doesn't taste good.

I am, however, capable of committing to impossible goals if the goal itself is completely inconsequential and also involves yarn. I know this because I signed myself up for the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup, and I'm totally psyched.

The HPKCHC is a Ravelry-only affair (so stop slacking and make it your New Year's Resolution to get on Ravelry! The wait list is only a few days now) in which you get points for homework assignments in various Hogwartian classes. (That word? I hate that word. It showed up in the most tense moments of HP7 and I spent a full minute stumbling over that word. "Hogwartians?" Seriously? I wonder how long poor JK agonized over that word choice before she decided nothing else would work.)

Anyway, as I say, you attempt various homework assignments, earning points for your house. It's totally awesome. And if you didn't sign up yet... you're too late. Sorry. Next term. For now you get to wait while we have all the fun without you, haha.

I'll put a box up in the sidebar with my HPKCHC progress soon, and I may even get back to actual knitblogging. But I won't promise anything, because that would be too much like a New Year's Resolution- and that would pretty well guarantee that this blog would be dead for good in about a week.