Book Review: The more of less

I didn't not like this book. It was a quick and enjoyable read. The book is written by the creator of a minimalist blog. I'm not sure what I was expecting from this book, but it didn't seem overly helpful. It made the idea of minimalism seem nice, but since I have already been wanting to get rid of my extra stuff that wasn't a high bar to reach. 

I think the problem with this book is that it isn't a book about how to be a minimalist; it is an autobiography about a man who became a minimalist. In his book he shares his personal stories and other stories he has come across, but there is very little practical advice. One chapter about halfway through the book gave a starting suggestion about getting rid of some of your stuff. 

Another book about minimalism I read recently was The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Her book also shared many of her personal stories, but she also had a lot of actual advice. I didn't agree with it all, but it was at least there. The more of less doesn't have that, and I think without more actual methods or practical advice it isn't very useful of a book. 

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Not a hat...

My latest project is not a hat, but it is a way to enable me to make more hats. One of my knitting needles sets is HiyaHiya. I like the needles a lot, and they are the ones I always use for hats. The case they come is is pretty, but useless. 

Here are two pictures of it from the internet. I was too lazy to take my own. But these even have the same print. 

 

I originally liked the case, because it was pretty and not bulky. After using it for awhile I have noticed it isn't very good at the one thing a case should be good at: holding my knitting needles. The little flap goes over the needles, then the top section comes down, then the needles fall out the side. One time I lost one in a book for about a month. I have managed to not permanently lose any, but still not good. 

I wanted a case that looked like this case but had an all around zipper. As well as two pockets for the stuff that goes in the two pockets of the original case. I decided to make one. After searching the internet for patterns I found one I could modify in a book I already owned. Mostly I needed directions on how to do the all around zipper part. 

If I am being a perfectionist there are things to complain about. But, I'm still new to sewing and my case works for what it needs to and manages to look like the original as much as I think it could. 

I started by making the needle pockets. This was mostly a figure it out as I went. I made one big pocket and sewed lines to make smaller pockets. I got them the right size by drawing lines with fabric chalk and then sewing on them. It seemed to work out ok.

The top I tried to mimic the design of the HiyaHiya case. My embroidery machine wouldn't let me easily squish my font, but I think it was close enough. I pieced together the front mostly by sewing scraps of fabric at the angle I thought matched and then trimming to size. 

The outside came together pretty easily despite by having almost no pattern. When I tried to sew it all together and add the all around zipper, things stopped being quite so easy. I think that is something that will get easier once I've been sewing longer.

Here are the pictures of the finished project.

And here is a picture of the huge mess I made. Luckily my cat didn't eat it. I think...

Last minute trip

We realized we had a mostly empty weekend, and couldn't let that happen. We decided to squeeze one last ski trip in. Our original plan was to go to Sierra at Tahoe since there a lot of easy routes there. A bunch of things happened, and we ended up going with a different friend to Northstar. I had a bad impression of Northstar because the last time I went there someone mistaken my rental skis for theirs. I was also concerned because mountain map had mostly blue and black trails. Our friend assured us that their blue's weren't as hard as other places blue's. 

In order to avoid getting up at 4 am, we drove up Saturday afternoon. We got lucky and found a cute little place near the lake. It had a table big enough to play games, and lovely view of the sunset. I will consider staying there again. Maybe even in the summer, since it is right on the lake. 

It turns out Northstar has all the runs Squaw is missing. Squaw has great beginner runs, and I assume great black runs, but not so much in between. Northstar's blue's are a lot easier and wider. It was a lot of fun skiing them. We even managed to do a Black Diamond route, partly because our crazy friend tricked us. We spent the whole day doing blue trails. It was nice having things that were just the right amount of challenging. Northstar is my new favorite place to ski.

We had lunch mid mountain. This is a picture of my overpriced, but delicious burger, and the view I had while eating it. The hill behind my burger is the one we went down after lunch. Crazy! It was the first time I ever skied on the back side of a resort. 

Here we a picture of us courtesy of Northstar that proves I made it to the top of the mountain. They have a place called Tȱst. It has fire pits and waterproof beanbag chairs you can rest in while admiring the great view. At 2 pm they have a champagne toast. I wasn't sure I was going to make it because I was really tired after the back mountain runs. The timing was perfect, so right after finishing the back mountain I could head right up there and then just one more run down then I could rest. I'm glad I went, but getting down was crazy. Of all the trails to not be a easy blue... It was crazy, narrow, crowded, right near an edge, and since it was the end of the day it was slushy bumpy snow. I think going down the black route may have been easier. 

It was a fun trip. Hopefully I remember how to ski next year.

Book Review: Eleanor

I was having brunch with a new friend and we got to talking about books. She had similar taste in books to me and recommended this book. I added it to my to read list. When I got home I posted my last review and went to look for a new book, and there was this one. Happy coincidence. 

I did enjoy this book. It was very engaging and I didn't want to put it down. My impression while reading it was that is was really weird. It starts out as a sad story that is completely plausible in the normal work. Then it gets strange, but not necessarily a bad strange.

There were two things I did not like about the book. The first is a spoiler, so if you don't like those don't read it. The end of the book negates the rest of the book. There is a lot of weird stuff including time travel. The character manages to undo not only her past, but part of her grandmothers and most of her mother's. The second is I didn't like a half of the characters. Many seemed completely incapable of dealing with their reality, and let their tragedies destroy not only their lives and the lives of their families. 

Coffee sock

I have named this project "Coffee Sock", because while knitting everyone kept thinking I was making socks. This yarn would make beautiful rainbow socks, so this may happen in the future.

This was made with the leftover ball of mini mochi. I made a hat with rest of it, this is almost exactly what I had left. I'm not going to write an official pattern, because I incorporated the lace pattern from another pattern. But I will share how I did it.

Instructions:

Step 1: Go to Starbucks. They were selling these travel mugs a year ago, maybe they still are. The idea was you can open it and write notes to yourself with a dry erase marker, then put the clear cover back on and the notes stay undisturbed. I saw this and bought one to make a knitted coffee cup.

Step 2: Pattern
With DPN Cast on 6 stitches.

This makes a flat circle for the base.
Row 1: kfb 6 Times (12 sts)
Row 2: [kfb, k1] 6 Times (18 sts)
Row 3: [kfb, k2] 6 Times (24 sts)
Row 4: [kfb, k3] 6 Times (30 sts)
Row 5: [kfb, k4] 6 Times (36 sts)
Row 6: [kfb, k5] 6 Times (42 sts)
Row 7: [kfb, k6] 6 Times (48 sts)

Rows 8-10: Knit

Begin Lace Pattern:
You can find the lace pattern here: It is free.

Repeat Lace Pattern 5 Times.

Knit 3 rows and bind off.

Step 3: Fiddle with the coffee sock to get it positioned properly around the cup. No blocking is necessary.

Bags not hats

It seems that my sewing equivalent of hats is bags. I have been focusing more on getting through some projects I had been meaning to sew but never seemed to get around to. With the help of a wonderful friend who has been helping me figure the patterns out, I have finally started getting things finished. 

The first project was inspired by a shopping trip before christmas. I had purchased a learn to embroider kit. The patterns were very cute. It took me a while to get started because the beginning involved an iron, which was on a different floor than my project. Once I got started I really enjoyed making it. I thought it would be a lot harder that it was. I had a book of sewing projects that had a bag with a hand embroidered bird. That bird was a different one, and on a hexagon shape. but I don't didn't think that was a crucial detail. I found some cloud fabric to go with my bird and made this little bag. It is a perfect size for a small knitting project. 

Project number two was from the same book. It is a pencil case with pieced pencils. It would be more useful if I still actually used pencils on a regular basis. This one took a long time to get started because it requires lots of little scraps of fabric. I get the impression that most serious sewers get this after a while. I am still new to the sewing, and I am not inclined to keep tiny bits of things I may never use. I managed most of the colors, but my wonderful sewing friend gave me some colored scraps that worked perfectly. The way this is pieced is very forgiving; you just end up with different shaped pencils. The zipper on this pouch was not as cooperative as I would have liked. Overall I am happy with how it turned out. 

The next bag I am not happy with. This was a sewing club project. I braved dealing with the new teacher there, it was a mistake. I was really excited about this bag. I thought it was cute, and a good shape and size. The construction is also very interesting. I could have done without the zipper tab on the side, but a minor issue. The major flaw with this bag is that despite it having a lining fabric all the inside seams are visible. I remember my first sewing club class we made a bag and the teacher thought it was awful to have a bag with no lining so she told us how to modify the pattern to add one. That teacher, Michelle, would never have left this bag as is. The biggest issue I have with the current teacher is her inability to alter the pattern. I made the bag as is, but I don't like it. I doubt I will ever use it. 

The last project is very similar to the first. This time it is a tea cup with tea themed fabric. This bag I managed to remember how to do make it without any help. This time I didn't have a string, so I made one out of some left over cashmere yarn. Fanciest string ever. I have one more bag of this type on my to make list, but I haven't made the embroidery yet.

Stitches West 2016

Every year I say I'm not going to go to this because I don't need more yarn, but every year all the knitters I know get all excited about it and I end up going. This year I signed up for a market class  as I usually do. I like being able to go on Thursday evening as it not nearly as crowded. 

I thought I was going to be wandering around by myself Thursday, but I ended up finding 3 friends. It made the whole evening so much more fun. Also hugging a giant felted dinosaur makes everything more fun. 

I saw these adorable little jellyfish. I thought the lady said the kit to make them was $25, but the sign as I noticed later said $15. That's a lot more reasonable, I might have gotten them in that case. But they are so cute. 

Friday was the day of my class and a day to go see all the yarn things I wanted to get a second look at. It was another lucky day of running into people. I found 4 people I knew before I even walked through the doors. 

I had a project list with yarn requirements. I didn't want to end up with a bunch of single balls of yarn that would just end up as hats. I found a lot of very pretty yarn that would have fallen under this category. I resisted all but one ball of this, and that was was 80% off so not too bad. 

One very clever thing I saw was this odd things called "sock blanks". They take two strands of sock yarn, machine knit it, then dye it in crazy colors. Then when you want to knit your socks you knit two at a time right from the blank and you end up with two identical crazy colored socks. I thought this was an awesome idea, but I didn't want crazy socks. Maybe striped socks, but they didn't have a blank for that.

After shopping for a bit I headed to my class. I walked right by the information desk, so I asked where it was rather than figure it out myself. The lady directed me the opposite direction I thought I was supposed to go. I figured she probably knew what she was talking about, and it made sense with previous year's instructions. I walked over there, my class was not there. I looked at my badge with the class location, and tried that. Which was on the complete opposite side of the convention center. When I got there a hotel lady was blocking the hallway saying the door was locked. Pretty soon the rest of the class started to show up, also confused. The lady from the hotel went to go figure out what to do, so I walked down the hall. My class was not on the list for the room it said it was in. As a group we decided to walk to the information booth to find out where to go, and found the teacher for the class. She directed us to a room on the second floor completely not where anything said to go. But, it was a room full of looms, so perfect for a rigid heddle weaving class... Except we weren't allowed to sit at the looms. The looms were for a different class. We all had to crowd around her little teaching table at the front of the room. Some people didn't even get chairs. The entire "class" was watching the teacher warp her loom and weave a few rows. It wasn't much better than a live youtube video. I went and complained after, and was promised a refund (which I have not received). Not a happy experience.

This is my very healthy lunch... They screwed up my order as usual, but I got it free!

Another stitches find this year is a thing called Creativebug. They seem to be trying to be Craftsy. I don't think they have succeeded. Craftsy is awesome because they have in detailed classes. CreativeBug seems to be more project based, like a video pattern. Their site is subscription based, I have no plans at continuing it past the year I got. It is very overpriced for what you get if you don't have the Stitches deal. But with the stitches deal, it is worth a year of new random crafts. 

One project was a beaded bracelet, so I went to the bead store at Stitches. I found these lovely metal beads. 

All the things! The ball "Wool and the Gang" was my free creativebug yarn. I had been looking at this yarn online for a while, so it worked out. The coolest thing I found was two different kinds of retro reflective yarn, so I can now make nighttime safety hats. I took this picture with a flash to show how bright they are. I found some neat buttons; some heart shaped ones, and some buttons that look like already sewn buttons. Both are super cute. The most unexpected purchase was the cute knitting and sheep themed fabric. It will be perfect for future project bags.