Dusting Tom Thumb

Not too long I bought my first spinning wheel. I didn’t know enough about buying them at the time, but I was impatient and bought it anyway. It was a used wheel called a “Tom Thumb” which is from around 1980, made in New Zealand. It’s missing a few parts, most notably four knobs that match the two I have. One goes to the orifice hook, one goes to the second lazy kate, and the third goes to.. I can’t remember what. The maiden head was cracked and my husband managed to sand and repair it last year. We had intended on refinishing the entire piece and getting it running properly, but then kiddo made his early appearance and it got put aside.

I took it out today to give it a bit of love, shine it up and make sure she still runs (which she does). I have it set for double tension right now, but I need a piece to hold the footman to the wheel, I’m using a paperclip right now and lets just say it’s awkward. Ideally I’d like some sort of nut or bolt along with some felt so that the footman doesn’t rub and make a lot of noise (like it does now). I also bought a new orifice hook for it, it won’t match exactly, but that’s alright. In the meantime I set out to see if I could find a woodworker who could make matching knobs for me. I’d like to restore this wheel to her former glory, it’s an incredibly solid wheel that I’m sure has seen some good years.

Ideally, in the (far) future, I’d like to purchase a new wheel. Maybe an Ashcroft Traveller. I also own a few drop spindles (one wooden and two 3D printed) that are a lot of fun to use. In order to get better at spinning you need to practice practice practice practice – and I just haven’t had the time on top of everything else. If it’s a hobby you enjoy though, to make the time and find it some where. So that’s what I’ll do. You can see the yarn I’ve spun so far over on my Ravelry page – some people have amazing yarn. That’s the level I want to get to, and I will, with practice.

Knitting Hats for Winter

It’s getting pretty close to winter here in British Columbia, Canada and my kid has out grown all of the cute little newborn hats that he got last year when he was born. I made him a handful, a little pumpkin and some plain ones. He was so small that in the NICU his hat could have been worn as clothes.

Instead of buying him a new hat that he would just outgrow in another year I decided to knit him one. Hats are fast knits and it’s rewarding to see something you’ve made being worn. He’s too young to appreciate anything fancy, so I picked a simple pattern by Tin Can Knits called Barley.

There’s an issue with the pattern before the decreases. You end on a knit row and continue with another knit row to establish the decreases when you should end on a purl row. That’s the weird wonky line at the top before the hat starts to curve. It doesn’t affect the warmth of the item at all and it’s something my kid certainly won’t care about so I decided to just leave it be and finish knitting it. It’s made from an extra soft acrylic yarn from KnitPicks called Might Stitch. The hat is (of course) too big for him but I figure he’ll grow into it. Hopefully not too quickly.

Crafting Pet Peeves

Hey, it happens. Sometimes things bug us or rub us the wrong way. Today while I was working on my scarf I came across a pretty big pet peeve. In the screenshot above you’ll see one skein of yarn that transitions between pink /purple / blue and various shades of those. It’s ‘chroma’ by knitpicks, and it also varies in thickness from thick almost bulky, to thin, almost lace. The problem is smack dab in the middle of that picture where it abruptly shifts colours with no transition even though the rest of the scarf has transitions.

Turns out the yarn was split in two places, and it threw everything off.

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I don’t mind the thick / thin consistency as it’s advertised when you purchase the yarn, but I don’t like splits in yarn, and I don’t like the issues caused by those splits. In this case that bright pink should have slowly transitioned to a light purple and then to a blue but instead a huge chunk was missing (all of the blue, and two purple transitions). I didn’t have enough yarn to fix the problem manually so because I was already near the end of the scarf I decided to just try to ignore it and cary on.

I’ve been working on this scarf since August 19th. Scarves are a LOT of work – and this is probably the first and only time I’ll make a scarf in fingering weight (she says unconvincingly). It is much quicker to knit something in bulky weight yarn, or at least worsted. I tend to like fingering weight yarn because it’s lovely sock yarn which is my favourite thing to knit. My yarn stash has a LOT of fingering weight (you can find me over on Ravelry as Stargrace, of course). Thankfully, the scarf is now done, and it looks great on me. We don’t get a lot of really cold weather here, so I wanted to finish it in time for fall to get the most use out of it. It’s one of the only pieces I’ve actually knit for myself.

Do you have any knitting or crochet pet peeves? What do you do to combat them (if anything can be done) and how do you avoid them from happening in the first place? Let me know in comments!

Casual EVE Online Streams (Maybe?)

I love playing EVE Online, but every time I return I tend to forget whatever it was I was working on or working towards – it’s just that sort of game. I’ve been flying around in a Tengu for some time now, working on faction missions in order to be able to work with higher level agents for R&D (research and development). It’s what I’ve been working on for what feels like years now, because I tend to wander to and from the game.

Now that I’ve got a schedule set for streaming (see previous post) I felt like I could add some sporadic streams in there too, ones that don’t follow a schedule and don’t have a whole lot of hands on required. EVE Online lends itself to this very well – at least the way I intended to stream it. I did a practice stream today (you can find it over on my twitch channel along with my YouTube channel) where I don’t have my microphone active and I just fly around space looking at interesting things. It’s a relaxing chill stream with absolutely no pressure, something where you can listen to the EVE Online music (which is just fantastic) and if anyone has a question or two I’m around to answer them but things are pretty quiet. These streams are very different from my scheduled ones in which I’m doing a lot of talking and my little guy is roaming around yelling into the microphone. I can’t promise they’ll happen every weekend, but I’m hoping they do.

I noticed my computer was having issues trying to keep up with the stream this time around. I’m wondering if it’s my video card (a gtx 760) which is quite dated. The rest of my computer shouldn’t be too bad as I did upgrade it not that long ago. Video cards are pretty expensive and I can’t afford to go all out right now for one. Life is full of expenses, especially once you bring kids into the picture, and we’ll be moving in January to some where we don’t even know yet, and we have to prepare for stuff like that. Who knows how long it will take for our stuff to arrive. So I’ll have to see if I can tweak some settings and get the stream running smoother. For low intensity games like RimWorld I don’t seem to have many (any) issues, but for graphic intense games (EVE Online is an amazing looking game) I get a message from xsplit mentioning my computer is a bit strained.

Anyway. We’ll see how it goes. It’s nice to be flying again, and I’m sure I can come up with some things to do now and again. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Crafting, and Legendaries..

There has been some discussion lately on twitter regarding legendaries and ascended bits and crafting – and it inspired me to maybe go after my own. I don’t own any of the legendaries, and the only ascended stuff I even know about is the vendor sold stuff at the laurel merchant along with the PVP merchant. I didn’t know there was crafted stuff (side note, the website gw2efficiency.com is amazing).

It’s inspiring to watch other people go after these huge items – but when I look at what’s involved, it’s also completely daunting. Still.. I could use a big in-game project, no?

Have you gone after any legendaries or ascended items before? Was it as daunting a task as it sounds? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!