#topic tuesday

This past year and a half, I decided to pursue the “Master Hand Knitting Certification” through TKGA (The Knitters Guild Association). There are 3 levels, and each level is intended to improve your knitting and knitting knowledge through practice and study. I had no idea what I was in for and I had to resubmit my Level 1 work several times to pass haha. After passing level 1, I decided that I was crazy enough to try for level 2. Level 2 has required more reading and research!

I have really enjoyed it! I thought I would share what I am currently reading for the program. While looking into books that may be helpful on this crazy knitting journey, I found this one,”Knitting in the Old Way”. This has turned out to be one of my favorite books I have read for the program so far!

Written by Priscilla A. Gibson Roberts and Deborah Robson, the book discusses how over time printed patterns replaced “intuitive design skills and the understanding of technique”. Many regions lost crafting knowledge after industrialization occurred. This book was written to help interested knitters help themselves gain control of the craft with information on folk sweater construction and sweater formulas. The book discusses sweater crafting from several areas of the world: Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, Iceland, Faeroe Islands, Samiland, Cowichan Sweaters of Canada, and American Folk Art designs. 

The authors mention their goal is “to help knitters create freely from the many styles and designs of knitted folk sweaters, returning to the old way of simply understanding what to do rather than duplicating a printed pattern.” They also mention not to cling to the past, but to preserve what is good and to adapt to today's needs.

NEW VIDEO!

So I figured we could try something on this blog, a little weekly thing called Topic Tuesday where we have a topic that’s discussed all day and advice is given, you can rant about it, whatever you need to do. Praise really good parts, problem solve areas you have trouble with, all that good stuff.

So for the first one, I wanted to start out easy.

Titles!

How do you pick your titles? What inspires your titles? Is it hard for you? When do you title your work? Can be fanfic, fanart, anything with a title!

Suggested by @youreviller, this week’s theme will be:

Skills and Hobbies ~

(01/18/17)

I want to get to know YOU! Whether it be a hobby, interest, talent, skill, or profession, this week show me all those things you guys enjoy doing outside of tumblr! From pictures of artworks to cool work uniforms, pics/gifs/vids of you doing an activity/of the activity on its own, to the finished product (whichever one applies to your hobby) I wanna see it!

Submit those gifs/pics/vids relating to the topic before the deadline and they will be posted this coming Tuesday, along with a little shoutout to the submitting blog :D

Submissions will be accepted all week until the end of next Tuesday

I am currently working on a pair of color work mittens (and have been working on several color work hats, pattern here.) and I thought I would share some information on color dominance in stranded color work. When I first began knitting with two colors I was both amazed and frustrated. I was amazed at how you could combine two colors of yarn to create something so beautiful and I was frustrated because my work always seemed lumpy. There are a few reasons why stranded knitting can make a lumpy fabric, but this focuses on how color dominance can influence it.

When working color work, one color will always be the dominate color which will “pop” out of the fabric, while the other color will seem to recede.  In Swatch 1 the dominant color was white. The white knit stitches seem to “pop” out of the fabric. Swatch 2 shows what happens when the colors are reversed and the dominant color is coral. The white seems to shrink into the back. Swatch 3 shows what happens when there is no dominant color and it varies from row to row. *SURPRISE* this is what I was doing on my stranded knitting and it was creating lumpy results).

in honor of me finishing finals this week, let’s talk about finishing things. fics, art, playlists, anything at all.

how do you know when you’re finished with a project? 

what’s your process for putting the final touches on a project? 

are you ever truly pleased with the final outcome of a project or is it just “this is as good as it gets” type of done? 

do you work better with a hard deadline or just whenever you want to work on something?

what do you do to celebrate finishing something? 

it’s another topic tuesday! and i’m on time this week! so i thought we have quite a few followers around here and we’re all interacting on here and having a good time, so i thought it would be a good time to kinda introduce ourselves, maybe make some new friends, etc. here’s a little template that you can fill out. feel free to add or subtract any of the sections. :)

(user)name: 

age: 

what kind of creator are you (writer, artist, podficcer, reviewer, etc): 

fandoms: 

pairings: 

favorite tropes: 

favorite discussion topics:

fandom goals (like i wanna write x number of fics or i wanna host a kind of challenge for my fandom):

changes you’d like to see in fandom: 

other social media: 

anything else you wanna add: 

Topic Tuesday is up!! This week we talk about how to be yourself, fully and authentically! We touch on the subject of drinking and having fun with friends, and also about how to live authentically in the church AND the LGBTQ community. Phoenix Pride was this past weekend, and although we weren’t able to go to the actual festival (although we may or may not be at San Diego pride this summer 👀) we learned a lot about what pride truly means and how to celebrate it. Head over to the channel to watch!