Sacha's Nation

I haven't knit or crocheted anything since my last entry, so there is nothing to show.  It may be a combination of having an adorable puppy to take care of, getting married soon, and possibly burnout.  Usually when I knit a project very quickly or if it is more than my usual sock/hat/scarf, I tend to stay away from the needles awhile.

So, apologies for drifting away...I go through these phases where my interests focus on other things.  I've been reading a lot and playing videogames as well as dealing with the puppy and wedding I mentioned before.

Little everyday things don't seem very blog-worthy and even less so if  I don't have photos to share.  I'm probably wrong to think this, but it's hard to break old habits.

Anyway, I will at least try to re-connect.  In the meantime, I have some pictures of Nugget up on Flickr.

Cute puppy here.

Welcome our new member of the family, Nugget.  He is five weeks old now and we'll take him home the first weekend in June.  He is a Puggle, a mix between a Pug and a Beagle.

Yes, I love my new job.

I can work barefoot if I want and wear whatever I want barring anything offensive or too revealing.  I get to work on videogames with Jake...maybe the same one!

Today we learned about the finer points of finding art bugs.  Tomorrow, I get to test missions. 

This post will be sort of a rant. At the end I have balanced it with happy lace crochet stuff. Fair warning.

If you haven't heard already, there were some thefts at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. I've heard that money, samples, and inventory was lifted. I've also heard that some of the animals were let loose, but were found again.

Am I bothered by this? - Of course!

Am I surprised? - Of course not.

Maryland Sheep & Wool to a thief, must look like easy pickings. It's very crowded, money is changing hands everywhere, and to me, it doesn't look like there is much security to go around.

What bothers me about this is the shock that some people have that this could possibly happen at a fiber festival. 'Our People' aren't capable of petty theft. Just because we have fondness for fiberly things does not make us instant saints.

Sanctimonious might be a better word to describe a lot of the behavior I've seen. If fiber people are so kind, giving, selfless people that 'get' my knitting hobby (or so I hear), why did I get such catty looks and remarks when I didn't notice the line at The Fold last year. I didn't even go in the booth, not that I could. I'm sure that 'My People' would have crushed me in a fit of rage.

I'm also not crazy about how some of "Our People" use their title of knitter (or crocheter, spinner, etc.) as a means of threatening companies when they don't receive the service they are deserved. Don't get me wrong, we all deserve good customer service within reason. If I have problem with an online yarn shop, I'm sure not going to tell them that I'm a knitter, I'm connected, and I'm going to take them down unless I get what I think I deserve. That's childish.

So, perhaps this is why I'm sort of a lone knitter. I'm not crazy about the whole collective attitude displayed by some of the fiber world. I have no desire to be part of "Our People". I want to be known as Sacha, a nice person who happens to knit.

So don't be surprised when there are 'bad things' happening in fiber world. It happens everywhere. Conversely, fiber artists do good things too. Look at all of the charities knitting and crochet have been a part of. It's nice when the power of fiber art is used for good.

Speaking of good things, the Doctor Who group at Ravelry is putting together an (afghan) or two to auction off for charity. The specific details are being worked out. We're thinking of Doctors Without Borders (haha, get it?).  They are asking for 4-inch squares in any sort of fingering weight yarn.  So if you have leftover sock yarn over, put it to good use and make a square.  I've already started.

I also worked more on my crochet lace experiment.  I don't know if I'm reading the instructions right, but it still looks neat.

Somehow, I managed to lose my ball of Sugar & Cream sunshine colored yarn that I was using for my amigurumi duck.  It's not like it was small either; duck amigurumi didn't take a lot of yarn to make so far and I just had one more wing to do!  Argh!

So, I hopped in the car to head to the Hobby Lobby craft mecca.  I've lived in Maryland in New Jersey for any extended period of time and neither had a Hobby Lobby.  This place is massive; surely I would find my sunshine yarn!  Hah.

Who am I kidding.

They had Sugar & Cream of course, but only in yellow.  Their version of yellow is pale and sickly, I need the bright sunshine stuff.  I went to Michael's too since it was on the way home, but their selection was worse.  It still had that vomit-like yellow...but no.

However, I was attracted to the crochet thread on display.  A bright rainbowy round cone of a thing.  I leafed through some lace and filet crochet pamphlets.  It looked interesting, so I brought that ball of thread home with me along with a microscopic crochet hook.

Then I locked myself out of my house and had to call Jake from work to come get the keys out of my locked car. -_- 

Here are the results of my tooling around.

This is an attempt at filet crochet.  This one has all open meshes.  Full meshes would have full little squares.  One can created 'pixelated' images with filet crochet.  A perfect kind of craft for an 8-bit nerd like me.  

This is a double crochet ring.  I started the chain for the next row too, but I'm still trying to completely understand the directions before going on.  The awesome thing about crochet is that it's much easier to 'frog' back than knitting. Lace knitting looks amazing too.