Still Alive and Knitting!

      Hm, yes, despite my thesis' best efforts, I am still alive.  My apologies for the disappearance, but the past year has been hard.  For anyone who has done a doctorate, I hit the rough patch where nothing works and there is no plan and I wake up at 4am and wonder what am I doing AAAAAHHH!!!  I kept swimming and got past it.  Knitting was there for me and it was either that or take up some rather unhealthy habits.  Things are slowly getting better.  I am hoping for Transfer Panel in the next month.  For anyone unfamiliar with academia, this is when you meet a panel of three people and present the revised version of your thesis project and a sample chapter for feedback.  It's the halfway point of the Irish Ph.D.  While things will still be stressful, and I'm sure I'm going to have more 4am freakouts, I will get a vote of confidence in my project.  I can't wait to get it over with.

     Back to the knitting . . . the last several months has been using knitting as a coping mechanism.  I have no mental bandwidth at the moment, so I have been focusing on garter stitch shawls and vanilla socks.  Coming up is The Knitgirllls Stash Dash.  This is a craftalong run by two podcasters that runs from late May to late August.  The goal is to craft a certain amount of stash yarn; the set levels are 3km, 5km, 7km, 10km, and 15km.  Goodness knows I have enough WIPs and balled yarns lying around from the autumn, so here we go!  Normally I compete in the 5km category, but I will challenge myself this year and aim for 7km.  I already have an almost-completed pair of vanilla socks, but I've already made a list of current and hibernating WIPs to complete:

Current WIPs:
  Mithral in Fyberspates Cumulus: 30% completed
  Meriboo Cabled Cowls in Louisa Harding Orielle: 0% completed

Hibernating WIPs:
   A Second Chance for Mr. Rushworth Socks in Knitpicks Stroll: 45% completed
   Winterchild in Zitron Fil Royal: 75% completed
   Innsmouth Bodice in Baa Ram Ewe Dovestone DK: 0%
   Hurricane Ridge cowl in Malabrigo Finito: 0%

Also on the list because the yarn is already balled up:
    Bonny in Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace
    Cobweb in Malabrigo Silkpaca
    Almost Autumn in Malabrigo Merino Lace Superwash
    Narcissis pseudo-narcissis cuffs in Arucania Botany Lace 
    Riyito in Malabrigo Sock
    Pomme de Pin Cardigan in Wollemeise Pure 100% Merino Superwash
    City of Roses in Drops Baby Merino
    Maia Fingerless Mitts in Arucania Botany Lace
    Raitahullannus in Malabrigo Finito
    Heaven Scent in Manos del Uruguay Lace
    Cheddar the CraftLit Critter in Hedgehog Fibres Sock
    Florac Pumpkin in Lousia Harding Trenzar
    Geek Socks in Knitpicks Felici
    Leonore Socks in Knitpicks Stroll 

It's a long list and I know I won't get to it all, but it's nice to have some options and to clear out the WIPs.  I doubt I'll even get through this list before classes start again in the autumn, but it would be nice if 80% of it was completed by the first day of autumn (September 22).  Onward Knitty Soldiers!

Moving Again and Yarn Storage

While I was away, we moved again.  The past few weeks have been spent on opening boxes and reorganising things in the new house.  The house where we currently live is unfurnished, so we're having to make do with what furniture we have to hand. Currently my room looks like this:

I still need to put together a canvas wardrobe so I have somewhere to hang clothes, but I've been able to assemble a bookcase to store a few things and decorate the place a little.  My substantial stash has proven very useful as room decor.  I am using a ceramic bowl that I got in Seville back in March and a glass one from Tiger in order to display some pretty skeins of Hedgehog Fibres and my Boo-Knits Shawl-a-long yarn.  With this rainy "summer" we're having, I need all the shine and sparkle I can get.

The lack of storage space has caused me to rethink my knitting plans for next year.  I don't really have much room to store more yarn other than a bit of space under the bed.  I technically shouldn't be buying yarn anyway since I vowed to stashdown 10km of yarn by the end of this year, which is going rather disasterously I have to say.  It's clear I need to knit up what I've got here before I can bring anything over from the Mother Stash, which rules out all the plans I had made.  I looked at my queue and saw that most of the yarn I had here already were either for shawls or sweaters.  Since it's physical space that is the issue, I decided to "air" the stash and pile up the yarn according to project type to see which was bigger.  The sweater pile looked like this:

The shawl piled up like this:

I think you can tell just by looking that the sweater pile takes up more, but just to be sure, let us compare them side-byside, bearing in mind that I took away a few skeins from the shawl pile before taking this photo:

Yep, sweater pile is bigger.  There are about eight sweaters/tops' worth of yarn in there, so I think I will join IntSweMoDo or International Sweater-a-Month Dodecathlon for 2016.  12 sweaters in a year is a bit nuts to say the least, but I will need sweaters more than shawls next year.  I've also learned that to have a project-oriented approach to stashdown is much more effective than trying to reach a number.  I'll just be having to pick up four more sweater quantities to make this work, which should be easy enough as I tend to go home twice a year.  Most of my Irish Stash is 4ply/fingering weight, so I'm leaning towards my sweater quantities in heavier weights to fill in the gaps.  Perhaps in 2017 when I'm in my fourth year of Ph.D. I'll declare it Year of Accessories as that might be all that I'll be able to pull off while I finish my thesis.  It's the plan for now, anyway.

Meanwhile, in between thesis chapters . . .

Life happens and it is often insane.  That's never been so true for me than during the last few months.  I've been on a rollercoaster health-wise with my student clinic doc not really knowing what's wrong with me since my symptoms are all over the place.  Then finals hit.  Essays had to be written; essays required Olympic level mental gymnastics since I can't make things easy for myself; essays had structural issues; essays resolved themselves.  Then my bike got a flat.  Then my computer crashed.  I had a thesis to write.  Insert whatever expletive you prefer here.

Yet my knitting community was there for me.  If they thought I sounded like a whiny brat, they never showed it.  They helped keep me sane, even when it felt like literally everything kept breaking.  Thank you guys.

Now I am knee-deep in thesis.  Most of the writing has to be done in the month of June as a lot of profs are off on vacation or conferences in July.  Mine leaves two weeks before the thesis is due and arrives just before I have to turn it in.  I am now writing like mad so I can get as much feedback as possible.  Well, except for today, where my brain feels like old rubber - remarkably unflexible.  I have a rough draft of chapter one done and am a third of the way through chapter two.  I feel I am making good progress considering.  I am happy with my work and can't wait to continue onto Ph. D. work. 

Nevertheless, I do need knitting for my sanity.  I finished the sweater before it got too warm to wear.

Mom's socks got out in time for Mother's Day. They are knit in Knitpicks Felici, colorway Cochineal.

And then something happened.  It seemed I somehow bent the space/time continuum and got a lot done in a short amount of time.  I got my sister-in-law's present done really fast, for a laceweight.

Okay, I didn't give my SIL a stuffed dog and a big ball of yarn for her birthday.  Apparently the finished photos wandered off and got eaten during the file transfer to the new computer.  Just imagine an Almost Ovals in many shades of purple and oh so soft from the silk.  This is a Hedgehog Fibres creation; Silk Lace in colorway Poison.  It was very pretty.

I also got my Mom's birthday present done and it awaits shipment; I know my mother well enough to know that if it arrived early she wouldn't wait until her birthday to open it.  It's the Debussy Shawlette in Alpaca Silk from Blue Sky Alpacas.

I love the color of this yarn.  It's an incredibly intense fuschia, and now I want a sweater's worth of this color.  The yarn is like butter in your hands (without the grease), a 50/50 blend of alpaca and silk.  I may or may not have bought a skein of it in chocolate brown. *Cough, cough*

Continuing the gift train, I also finished a hat for one of my brothers.

This is the Semi-Swedish Hat knit in Knitpicks Stroll Sport.  I planned on using up the leftovers from the boys' gloves to finish this hat.  I had a skein and a half of each color and thought I would be done with them, but however I still have a skein of each.  It looks like someone will be getting a grey and black scarf for Christmas.

Yes, I said the Evil Word: Christmas.  I have already started my gift-knitting, partly because I always knit gifts in the summertime, and partly because I will be leaving Ireland for a 6-month hiatus between my MA and (hopefully) Ph. D.  Looking at my local stash (as opposed to my Mother Stash back in the States), most of the projects with lots of balls are marked for gifts.  My current plan is to knit all the presents I can and then ship them back to the States so I don't have to carry them around with me in Scotland.  (Oh yes, I am going to Scotland after my Master's thesis is completed.  Carrots, my friends, carrots.)  I also plan on pulling out a few hibernating WIPs to finish off because, in addition to writing a thesis, I've decided to enter The Knitgirllls 4K Stash Dash this summer.  Nope, I don't like to make things easy for myself, not at all.

So what have I got on my needles at the moment?  I've barely started the Gramps Cardigan for my nephew.  I plan on making the 2 year old size since it will be a Christmas cardigan.  That's what I plan on working on the rest of the day since my brain apparently can't process poetry.  Even with a lot of caffeine, I feel a lot like this guy:

Our neighbor, Mr. F. Fox, sleeping off a night on the town

Although the weather has been nice, tomorrow will see me tied to the computer.  I hope the Muse comes back to me.