Category Archives: About the Blog

What’s on Your Needles?

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It’s that time again!  Time for me to be a nosey so-and-so, and for you to tell me what you’re working on.

But fair is fair, so here’s what I’ve been working on.  I’m on a bit of a sock kick these days.  I just finished blocking a pair of socks (made with KnitPick’s Stroll in Tree Fort).  I absolutely love the colorway when it is in a ball, but I don’t love how it knit up.  I definitely picked the wrong pattern for variegated yarn.  It’s all weird and pool-y, and the shell texture I knit in isn’t really visible when they’re worn.  Oh well.  At least they’re warm and cozy.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

And, yesterday I cast on for a belated birthday gift for my friend Shirley.  She wanted slipper-socks in grey.  Ask and ye shall receive!  These are knitting up thick and super-cozy looking with Patons Classic Wool DK Superwash in Dark Gray Heather on size 5 needles.  It’s weird, knitting socks for someone with little feet at such a big gauge.  My typical socks use 60 stitches, but these only use 40.  I’m flying through!OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ve shown you mine, so now you show me yours!  What do you have on your needles?  Send me a photo, and I’ll put it up on the blog next week!

A Call for Ideas

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As much as I try to be more, I am only one person, with one person’s ideas.  So, I wanted to ask you a favor.  It would be awesome if you could let me know if you have any questions, ideas, thoughts, or other knitting-related ramblings you want to hear about.

Do you have a project you want to make, but can’t find a pattern for?  Do you want to learn how to do a specific technique?  Did something weird happen to you the last time you worked on a pattern, and you want to share?

Or, do you have an itch to try writing yourself?  Do you want to contribute to an On the Needles guest post?  Did you write a pattern, that you want to get a little more exposure?

Email me (knittingontheneedles@gmail.com), tweet at me (@on_the_needles), or contact me through the blog if you have ideas/questions/submissions.  I’ll have my people talk to your people (in other words, we’ll chat).

Let’s make On the Needles bigger and better than ever!

Happy Birthday to On the Needles!

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It’s been a whole year since my first “Hello World” Post!  How about that?  I’m pretty pleased with how this blog’s grown, and I hope you are, too.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIn numbers (because I’m a nerd), here’s our year together:

I’ve published 156 posts.

We’ve chatted with 186 comments.

Almost 100 of you visit this site every day. (This blows my mind… I don’t think I even know 100 people in real life!)

I’ve written 17 patterns this year.

The most popular pattern is my Socks by the Numbers, which you have cast on 52 times (according to Ravelry).

Basically this means that I’m having a really great time working on this blog with you guys.  And, I hope you’re enjoying it, too.  I’ve got plans for more awesome next year (and the year after that, and the year after that), but let me know if there is anything else you’d be interested in seeing.

Here’s to another fantastic year of knitting and blogging!

 

Olympic Knitting and Social Media for Dummies

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When I first started this blog, one of the first things I did was get a Twitter account, and link it to the blog.  Then I immediately forgot about it.  My poor Twitter page has been sitting all alone and neglected for almost a whole year.

But no more!  I’m determined to learn about Twitter!

1249827-twitter-logo[1]You’d think that Twitter would be easy enough for someone raised on computers to figure out, but it’s rather more complicated than I expected.  Retweets, @’s, hashtags…  This might be the first time that I truly felt like an old Luddite.

But I will persevere!  And tweet about my Ravellenic Games sweater.  Twitter seems like the perfect venue to give you updates on my sweater progress.  Doesn’t it?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASo, if you tweet, follow me @on_the_needles.  Or, if you don’t have an account of your own, you can look at my tweets here.

Knitting Lessons

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I finally made it back to Seattle late (late late) last night, and I still have to unpack (and clean the house, and put away the Christmas decorations), so I don’t have time for a long, complicated post.

Instead, I have exciting news! Do you live in the Seattle area?  Do you want to learn to knit?  Are you having trouble with a particularly tricky pattern? Can’t make your sock’s heel turn?

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Then you’re in luck!  I am available to help with all your knitting conundrums!

Starting this spring, I will be giving private knitting lessons and group classes in the Seattle area.   I am happy to take you through a pre-designed course of lessons, or to help you with a new technique or tricky pattern you just can’t figure out.  Let me know what you want to do, and we’ll tailor a lesson just for you.  Individual lessons are $20 an hour, and groups of three or more are $15 per person.

Grab your yarn and needles, and a friend or two, and we’ll make it a party!

If you’re interested, please email me at knittingontheneedles@gmail.com

Happy Knitting!

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December is Gift-cember

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My porch was icy this morning when I went out to the car, and it’s dark by 3:30 in the afternoon.  That can mean only one thing:  Christmas is coming!

And, if Christmas is coming, then gifts are coming, too.  So, I’m going to dedicate the blog from now until Christmas to everything knitting and gift-related.

Here are a couple of topics we’re going to cover, just to get you excited:

-Gifts for people who knit (your mom, your nephew, your great-aunt Phyllis or that dude who knits socks on the train that you take in to work in the morning)

-Knitted gifts for people who don’t knit (but appreciate the work that goes into a pair of mittens.  If they won’t appreciate your mittens, then they get a gift card to Amazon.)

-Gift inspiration (Giftspriation?  No.  That’s too cutesy, even for me.)

-Yarn-related gift wrapping (cooler than it sounds.)

So, slide up a chair, pour yourself a mug of hot apple cider, wrap a blanket around your shoulders (and pull on some wool socks, a hand-knit sweater or two, maybe a hat, and don’t forget the fingerless mitts… I’m cold, can’t you tell?) and get ready for a month-long gift-giving extravaganza!

 

*If you’re not one for the whole “Christmas” thing, that’s OK too.   Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all religious on you (although I can’t promise there won’t be a Rudolph or two in the following posts).  Everyone gives gifts at some point, or at least gives gifts to themselves from time to time, so you’ll probably (hopefully) be able to find something useful here in December.

Giving Thanks (Better Late than Never)

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I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving weekend, I know I did.  I got to go visit my brother and parents down in San Francisco.  It’s a pretty cool town, and we got to eat a lot of really great food and walked way way way more than I usually do.HappyThanksgiving[1]

Now, because of my busy weekend, I failed to come up with a plan for today’s post.  I’ve always thought that those “What I’m Thankful For” lists that you see on Facebook are kind of dumb, and just used as filler for when you don’t know what else to do.

But I don’t have any good ideas right now, so I suppose it’s as good an idea as any.  Here’s what I’m thankful for (in no particular order):

– My awesome family (and especially my husband).  They totally enable me in whatever crazy project I decide to try.  Want to get a spinning wheel? Awesome.  Want to drop a couple hundred bucks on wool and dye, just to “try out this idea I had?” Go for it.  Want to take over the living room with dozens of yards of fabric so that I can manufacture project bags for everybody I’ve ever met?  Super.  They’re amazing.

-My day job.  I’ve always been super academically inclined and really into planning and making lists (which is why I ended up going to school until I was 25, and graduating with a Masters in Neuroscience… yeah… that happened.)  But, when I left school, I realized that science, while enjoyable, wasn’t what really made me happy.  My new job is my first real artsy-fartsy job, where I work in a ceramics studio making custom tiles.  I get to play with clay and glaze and fire stuff in the kilns.  It’s pretty much the best thing ever, and I totally lucked out in getting it.

-My night job (which sounds shadier than I meant it to), roller derby.  I spend about 20 hours a week rollerskating and doing other roller derby-related things, so I consider it a pseudo second job.  I don’t get paid (unfortunately), but I enjoy it enough to not worry about that much.  And, on top of skating being fun, all my teammates are awesome people, and a great network of friends.

-My other night job (also not shady), my blog!  I’ve been working on the blog for almost a year now, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how it’s turning out.  I get so excited when I see your comments, and looking at everyone’s finished projects posted on Ravelry makes me smile like a crazy lady.  I am constantly thankful for every comment, like, and follower.

But enough sappiness!  I’ve got some good stuff planned for December, and I can’t wait until I get it out of my head and onto my computer screen.  Happy knitting and happy (late) Thanksgiving!

This is Where the Magic Happens

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We (my husband and I) just moved to a new house!  It’s very exciting.  And, while the process was crazy stressful and we still have several (maybe more than several) boxes to unpack, I’m so happy with our new place.

One of my favorite things about the new house is that I get to use the spare bedroom as a craft room (if this knitting thing ever turns into a real job, I’ll get to call it a studio, but for now, it’s a craft room).

In the old house, I kept all my craft things up in the finished attic, which was also nice. The only problem with the attic was that I am 5’10”, and the attic was only about 6 feet tall at the highest point (I don’t know what the word is for that kind of roof, but it was all slanty, and constantly threatened me with concussions).  Needless to say, I didn’t use the attic craft room as much as I should have.

But, here, in all its new crafty glory, is my new craft room.  The nerve center of all things On the Needles.  This is where the sausage gets made (or rather, will get made, once I finish unpacking the rest of the house). OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Behold: old issues of knitting magazines, a pile of finished (and unfinished) knitting projects that need to get photos for the blog, bins of random craft supplies that I can’t bear to throw away because “I might need them some day.”  A bookshelf complete with not one, but two copies of Stitch-n-Bitch (that I received as Christmas gifts from two different friends the same year, but I still haven’t given away for some reason).  A comfy old hand-me-down chair from my folks, and a desk that we salvaged from a dumpster more than 15 years ago (and is still perfectly good).

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOh yes, I will spend many happy, productive hours here, with my needles (and my keyboard) clicking away to bring you lots of knitterly goodness.

Where do you do your crafting?

Because I Haven’t Got Enough on My Plate

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nanowrimoHave you guys heard about this cool group of online nerds called NaNoWriMo?  It’s short for National Novel Writing Month, and it’s an organization of folks that get together (in real life and online) during the month of November and they write first drafts of their novels.  It’s 50,000 words in 30 days and it’s kind of insane.  But also, amazingly popular.  This year there are almost 300,000 participants (of course, not everyone finishes, but still).

I heard about it years ago, back in high school (which is now more than 10 years ago…eep!), when a friend of mine attempted it.  I thought it was sort of crazy, sort of cool, and promptly forgot about it.  But, this year, I thought hey, why not?  I’m only working part time, after all, and I do like to write.  And, I thought, it might be a good way to exercise some creative parts of my brain that I don’t use too often.

Anyway, if you notice the blog being a little neglected this month, comments going unanswered, a few less patterns going up, that’s what’s happening.  I’ve only just started, and I don’t know if I’ll reach my 50,000 words by November 30.  And even if I do, I have no doubts that story will be way to terrible to let other people see it.  But, I thought it was a cool concept, and a great way to get my creative juices flowing in a totally non-crafty way.

What do you do to stretch your creativity?

100!

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Guess what?!  This is my 100th post!  How exciting!

100-fireworksWho would have guessed back in February that this little project would still be going more than 100 posts later.  And, I’ve got no plans on stopping any time soon.  I’ve got a bunch more ideas and tons of patterns in the works.  (Now, only if there were enough hours in the day to work on everything I want to work on!)

And, of course thanks to you for reading my yarn-fueled rambling.  I hope I’m at least a little entertaining, and that you get to learn something along the way.

Now, on to the next 100!