Squidventures

My giant squid, Flower, is probably one of my favorite projects I've ever made. Although there certainly isn't any practical reason for having one, it was one of those things that I saw and just knew I had to make!

I made Flower in February and March of 2014, knitting a lot of it during class (it was a favorite topic of discussion in my Indigenous Literature and Film class) and finishing it on a road trip to Portland, Oregon that my fiance and I took over spring break. I've been meaning to make another squid for awhile, and bought the yarn for it several months ago. I just got around to it this past week, knowing I would have lots of knitting time as my fiance and I took a week off to drive up to the north shore of Lake Superior for some camping.

We ended up cutting the trip a bit short (but still taking the whole week off) because we were both feeling anxious to get back to our place and work on getting things moved and organized. This is when I happened to discover a little issue with my first squid.

During my move, I packed Flower into a garbage bag along with some other knitted animals (like a Big Snowy Owl that still needs eyes and a beak) and when I finally got around to opening the bag, I noticed a familiar unpleasant smell.

Cat pee.

As it turns out, my cat peed on Flower's poor, unsuspecting squid head at some point - I kept the squid on top on my bookshelf which my kitty Alaska liked to hang on and around. She isn't usually one for peeing on things, so I'm still a bit confused as to why, but that's cats for you.

She's too cute and fluffy for me to stay mad at.

I was pretty disheartened about the stink and grossness resulting from the cat pee, and figured I would have to try it out and re-knit the left fin and re-knit/re-stuff the top of the head if it didn't come out. Thankfully, my new place has a super fancy HE washing machine that doesn't have the middle bar (like the machine at my old place), which I think would have made it really difficult to machine wash her otherwise.

This afternoon, I apprehensively put her in the washing machine on the most gentle wash and spin cycle settings, keeping my fingers crossed that my poor squid baby wouldn't come out mangled.

She survived the wash, getting a bit misshapen in the process but otherwise looking (and smelling!) so fresh (and so clean, clean) and I decided the dryer might be a good idea as well, especially considering that it has a delicate cycle and extra low heat option.



Now that she's clean and mostly dry, I set her up to dry on top of my mannequin because it was the perfect size to fit her underside on so she can dry nicely. It also has the added advantage of making her look like Octodad.











I've made some pretty serious progress with Squid #2 the past week, with all eight arms finally done.

Which is good, because I think I might have lost my mind if I had to knit one more of those damn bobbles. I made the underside last night, and am now dreading all of the seaming on the arms, because seaming is more or less my arch knitting nemesis. I think in the end my motivation to finish Squid #2 (think of all of the squid cuddling possibilities!) will let me power through the rest of the pattern... wish me luck!

New Yarn Storage and Organization

Recently I moved out of the house I had been in for my entire four years of college and in the past month I have been busy moving into my new place. It's a basement apartment with lots of space and a huge spare room that I instantly knew would make a great office and craft studio space.

When I first started to envision how my craft studio would look, I of course thought about how and where I would store my yarn. I had my ikea cube shelf in mind, as I had used it for yarn,as well as books and other things, in my room at my past house:

The shelf hiding behind my loft bed

Sadly, the base of my beloved shelf (literally) fell to pieces; it had suffered sump-pump failure a few times at my college house and although it seemed to be holding together fine after, once I took it apart to move it, the damage was apparent. I had thought I could fix it, but once I saw the inside was covered with black mold, it was obvious it was beyond repair.

Since the rest of the shelf is in good shape, I still wanted to find a way to use it again. My mom asked my uncle if he could build a replacement base, and he was able to. I was very pleased I wouldn't have to get a totally new shelf!

Putting it back together was more labor-intensive than I had imagined, as the new base isn't as thick as the old one and my mom and I needed to drill deeper holes into the other boards to get the wooden dowel pegs in deep enough to fit in the shallower base.

Now that it's together, I've gotten nearly all of my yarn onto in and fairly well organized as well. I was surprised at the amount of space left over, but I think the open shelves will be great for fabric storage and maybe scrapbook storage as well.

I primarily organized my yarn by fiber type, with all the acrylic yarns together (and sorted by warm, cool, and neutral colors) and my wool, cotton, and alpaca yarns all together. I also used a shelf for all my bare yarn to be dyed for my etsy store, and a shelf for all of my New Zealand yarns as well.

I'm looking forward to having a more organized stash and getting more of my crafting supplies organized on the shelf!