Never Stop

I learned how to do the seed stitch. Some of it doesn't look so great because I wasn't really paying attention to it. I was watching Up. I forgot that sometimes you have to learn how to do things slowly before you try to do them in a dark room with only the light of the TV helping you see. I messed up near the needle part. I'm learning. I used bigger sized needles for the yarn because I thought I'd be able to see it better. I guess I could. There are more holes when you use bigger needles than the correct size for the yarn. I believe the yarn is size 4 and the needles are size 13. They're new! And they are also really nice to knit with. Maybe because I've never knit with such large needles before. I just finished watching the movie Juno. It was good! Also I really like the soundtrack. I really needed a good movie after a full day of doing....absolutely nothing. That's always nice. However, I don't like wasting days. Even though that's what I did today. I watched all the episodes of the latest season of Brooklyn 99 yesterday and today. It's a good show. I made some lunch for myself today. Pasta. Classic stuff. Also tomorrow is my last day before I go back to school. I'm going to miss having the opportunity to do nothing all day. It is nice but also anxiety producing because I feel like I have so much I should/could be doing. I kinda packed today. I complained twice on my snapchat story about how the movie that's coming out, Split stigmatizes mental health because it kept showing up as ads while I was watching wholesome, good show, Brooklyn 99. I mean, that movie would be SO cool if it wasn't for the making Dissociative Identity Disorder seem dangerous. Pretty productive, huh? I'm going to set some more small knitting goals for myself! This is a seed stitch. I learned it! I want to learn how to cable next. Since I won't have as much time to knit when school starts, small goals are more accomplishable. Is that a word? It is now. It's my world...well my blog.

I MADE A FREAKING SWEATER

Hello how are you? Guess what? I made a freaking sweater in less than a month! Almost a month. Can you believe it?! You can do anything, everyone. Last night at 4:00 am I finished this. My overall opinions are that I am very proud of myself. I don't really like it, but sometimes I love it just because I made it and I worked really hard on it. It definitely has some points that look really wonky. Like at the front there is this weird dip thing. I had to improvise a lot with the sewing because some points didn't match up. Whoops! One sleeve is longer than the other, The collar is a little wonky. However, it does have a lot of heart. The sleeves look kinda cute with their floofy-ness. You can tell it is a sweater. It is also big on me, and I knew that while I was making it. I think all the ribbing work I did looks good and generally the stitches look good and it overall doesn't have a lot of holes or anything. 

Last night as I was finishing this sweater at 4 am (I have no control over my sleep schedule...) I was listening to the Stuff Mom Never Told You podcast episode called Oprah Wasn't Built In A Day and it was very inspiring and helpful for my mental health during this slightly stressful sweater making process. The podcast was about failure and specifically failure pertaining to women. During the making of this sweater over this past month-ish it was mostly fun and I learned a lot. I also knew the sweater would NOT be perfect because it's the first sweater I've ever made! However, towards the end of the making of the sweater, I had some moments of panic. I felt like I've been working on this for basically a month and I felt like it would turn out like a blob not resembling a sweater at all. This would mean I would have wasted a month in my mind. However, this podcast has helped me realize the importance of failure, but also there is a weird culture surrounding failure. A lot of people who generally have a lot of privilege will encourage failure, while people who don't have that luxury will not have failure as an option. Also it is typically men who are pushed to welcome failure, while women are taught to avoid it. (surprise surprise!) However, I don't believe that this sweater is a failure. It is unrealistic of me to expect myself to make a perfect sweater when I've never made one before, had to learn a lot of new techniques, am self taught, and this sweater was self taught made. 

Something I've been doing a lot is making the same thing over and over again. This can be great because I master a certain thing. For example, I've made so many of those ribbed hats. I recently found an old ribbed hat that I had made and it is so bad. It has holes in it and it was made on straight needles not circular needles so I had to sew up a side and I it looked gross. I still need to work on my sewing skills. I am the type of person who doesn't read the instructions for board games and then gets frustrated when I don't get how to play. That pertains here because I just wing it and then it looks like shit and I get pissed at myself. Back to the ribbed hats, I recently made one and it is literally perfect in my eyes. I love every inch of it. I would never have gotten there if I hadn't made that hat SO many times. 

Anyway, It's also really nice to be making new things and also knowing I have so much more to learn! I love learning. Maybe one day I'll make a sweater with intarsia and it'll be so cool. I want to make one with a giant middle finger on it. That'd be so meta. SO META! I am so excited that I made a freaking sweater! Also I made it in less than a month. I put a lot of work into it and I succeeded in the goal I set for myself. I also made a zine! I worked towards goals that I set for myself during break and I'm super proud of myself. My sister wore my sweater today and it made me happy. Even though it looks pretty crappy, my sister wore it in the house. It's a snow day today! I didn't go outside, though... Maybe I will at some point. I don't know. I'm tired. I stayed up until 4 am working on this sweater. I love this sweater! Imperfections and all. <3

ps. Here's the podcast

pss. I need to knit more!!!! Never stop! 

I made this

I worked hard and the hard work paid off

Hair messed up from WORKING SO HARD

The sleeves are slightly different lengths, but ARTISTIC FLAIR

Artistic flair

I made this

Guess who's BACK....BACK again

Side view

I MADE A SWEATER OMG

Almost Done???

I'm almost done? I'm almost done? Excuse me what? What is this?! I'm so pumped. Here I finished the collar and started sewing the pieces together. The collar looks slightly weird with the binding off creating a different look than the stitches on the collar. It's so cool how you make it! You put all the stitches you saved on to circular needles and knit and purl both sides together. Isn't that so cool. It's been really interesting learning how sweaters are made, because I am a lover of sweaters. When you sew the sleeves on to the sweater you lay out the connected front and back and then lay out the sleeves all unrolled and use the mattress stitch to sew them. You sew through the Vs on the sleeve and through the ladders on the sweaters part. I sewed the pieces together while listening to the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You. They don't make new episodes anymore, but it's a really good feminist podcast. I recommend. I listened to an episode on Buffy The Vampire Slayer and an episode about failure called Oprah Wasn't Built In A Day.

I did something wrong...I'll try to hide it.

Close up of the collar

sewing the sleeves on! very tiring when you have to lean over for so long.

suave

Sleeve #2 Done ft.Sadie < 3

 Well well well. Guess who made a sleeve in 48 hours? It was me! Suck it, world! Because of the speed, some of the quality may have been sacrificed. I always say quality over quantity, but in this case I have neither quality or quantity because I have only two sleeves. Yes, I do wear the same PJs two nights in a row. No, this is not lame. Guess who came to join me in my quest to knit a sweater? Sadie! My cat. Today I went to the dentist. I don't really like the dentist. It's snowing! I was supposed to go back to the dentist tomorrow, but now that's it's snowing I can't! Hahahahaha. This snow season has not canceled any plans that I didn't want to go to yet....until now! Mazel Tov to me! That's really at the core essence of snow season. It's not fun unless you get out of something that you didn't want to do. Winter break is almost over. I have about 5 days left. I'm almost done with my sweater, and I'm done with my zine. I have to make copies of my zine, though. I can't though because of the snow!!! I'm excited and nervous to go back to school, but I am not ready to be eyeballs deep in school work again. I am super pumped for my gender class, though. I am worried that I won't like it because I'm really excited. Wow. Pessimistic much, self? I saw the movie Jaws today. I have not seen this movie ever. I get the hype, but also I don't get it. It's good, but it's not the most amazing movie I've ever seen. I'm also almost done with reading the book The Glass Castle. It's a really good book! You should read it, viewer of this post. (That viewer being me, which I already am reading it so thanks for the suggestion anyway). I hope the two sleeves are the same length and look identical. I haven't checked yet. Whoops! Please enjoy pictures of me featuring my beautiful cat, Sadie! I love you, Sadie.

 Next day:

In love

One Arm Down

Welcome back! I finished one of the sleeves. This is what it looks like. I think this took me about a week or like 5 days. I can't keep track of time now that I'm on break. What is life? I got this dress. I wanted it for New Years, but it didn't come back in time. I think it's really pretty, but I want to figure out a way to wear this casually because I don't go to that many fancy events. Anyway, I've learned so much while making this sleeve. I learned how to increase stitches. I also learned PSSO awhile back. It's just slipping a stitch and then knitting the next one. Then slip the slipped stitch over the knitted stitch like you do when you bind off. I finished my zine! I still have to figure out where to copy it. I tried it on my copier at home and it's really shitty. Hopefully I can figure it out.  I've been watching Parks and Recreation recently and I want to be like Leslie Knope. I've known this for awhile, but I am reminded now. I am hungry right now. I want ice cream, but I haven't had dinner yet. I think I need to figure out how to pick up my speed while knitting. I also want to learn some new stitches and how to cable. I think I can do that when I go back to school instead of taking on a bunch of big new projects. However, I am very much liking this big new project. I want to have little goals instead of big goals like I did last year. I honestly just forgot about the New Years Resolution List or I was just like "I got tiiiiime!" So I think I can accomplish these better. It's so hard to find time to knit at school, but I always find myself missing it. 

Working on the next arm

I Finished The Front Of The Sweater!

Wow! I finished the front of the sweater and I am so pumped! I'm learning so much and I'm so excited. This took me about a week to finish. A little less. Maybe like 5 or 6 days. I knit a big chunk of it on the 16ish hour car ride to and from L.A. To be clear, to LA was 16 hours and back was 16 hours. It was a nice vacation. I bought a pound of Midnight Blue yarn and I'm almost done with it. I think it's size 4. I hope I have enough for the two sleeves. I've been learning so much about the construction of sweaters. Like when you make the collar (at least with this pattern), you knit part of one side then slip some more stitches on to a stitch holder (I just used another needle because I'm cheap af) and then use another strand of yarn for the other part and then knit those two parts separately. You use two needles for it all, though. It's so cool! I think I can finish this before I go back to school! When I compared the front and back, the front was smaller, so that make the final product look kinda funky. Oh well. I learned how to p2 tog tbl (purl two together through the back loops). The cool thing about this book that the pattern is in, I Can't Believe I'm Knitting, is that it shows you how to do the abbreviations it introduces you to. It's more like a magazine-y type book thing. It has the cheesiest name ever, though. This sweater is going to be pretty big on me because I don't know how to do gauges and I also avoid math as much as possible in my day to day life which makes me look like an idiot whenever I am forced to do mental math in public. I want to create some knitting goals for the New Year. Maybe I'll do that. We'll see. It's always such a nice feeling to learn something new while knitting. Whoop whoop. I'm so pumped. I think I'm going to start the sleeves soon. So far I have a sweater vest. Score! I also watched a whole season of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia today because a new season came on to Netflix. What an accomplishment. I've been listening to Lady Gaga's Joanne album and I like it so far. I am only 4 songs in, but I've made a quick decision and if it changes that's fine. Life is change. Also shout out to YouTube for all the help when I was sure I would not figure out how to do something that pattern called for. Shout out to this tutorial channel for helping me out and also singing while you knit. It's so cute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7bGSWtNHgA When will I actually do things I need to do? Stay tuned for the disappointing answer. 

All these pictures have pretty bad lighting. I'll face the other way next time. 

In action

The front and back

Shaping the neck

Everybody makes mistakes. This is me in the process of making one (?)

Remember when I had a New Years Resolution To Follow This Knitting Plan?

Remember when I had a New Years Resolution To Follow This Knitting Plan? Let's see how I did:

Here was the plan:
Hey hey hey! I'm making a knitting plan for the new year! Let's see how it goes.
Here's the plan:
Overall goal by the end of the year: get better at knitting

By the end of the year I want to :
1. Make 15  new items I haven't made before. (This can be different kind of stitches, a different item, etc.)
2. Learn 5  new kinds of stitches. (ex: brioche stitch, cable, seed stitch, etc.)
3. Make 3 somethings I would post on Instagram AND wear/use in public. (You don't have to post it on Instagram, but basically something you would be ok to be shown in the public).

Here are the results:

15 Items I haven't made before- Tank top from Tank You Very Much, Cactus from Thanks, Youtube, Blanket from Blankettt, a bag from It's In The Bag, Part of a sweater.


5 New Kinds of Stitiches- Intarsia bag from on FIREEE, 

3 Things I would post on Instagram AND wear/use in public-Gray hat from Sarit May Earn Some Money, Green hat from Off To College, Green hat from I'm Knit Sure I Have Too Many Puns Left.


Yay! So I've done a lot of knitting this year, but didn't accomplish all my goals. That is ok! I still got better and I tried a lot of new things. I am proud of myself. Whooooooo.