#HOW DO YOU DROP SO MANY STITCHES AND DOUBLE KNIT THE OTHERS AT THE SAME TIME OR TWIST THE OTHERS

[martyrbat]

finally looking at my knitting from the pens v flyer game (was working on something else earlier) and getting so mad at myself like was i even looking at the needles for any of this or.

[digitalusmarket]

Knitting vs. Crochet: What’s the Difference?

Are you looking for a new obsession but not sure which to choose? Knitting and crocheting are great options for you! Both crafts are incredibly relaxing and fun and can be used to create everything from blankets to hats. But what’s the difference between crochet and knitting, and which one do you have to try first? This full post will compare Crochet and knitting and help you choose which is perfect for you.

Knitting vs. Crochet

Let’s begin with the basics: crochet and knitting are popular needle crafts that use yarn to create fabric. While you can do various projects with either craft, each has unique characteristics.

What is knitting?

Knitting is a craft of needle that uses two knitting yarn and needles to create fabric. The stitches are moved from needle to needle, creating an interlocking loop fabric. Knitting stitches are commonly uniform in shape and size, and the completed fabric has a bit of a stretch to it. The knitting texture can be highly texture or smooth, depending on the stitch pattern you select. Knitting is often used for accessories and garments such as scarves, sweaters, and hats. It can also be used to make home decor items like pillows and blankets.

Read More: How to knit: A Guide for Beginners

Key Characteristics

Uses two knitting needles held in both hands.

Usually, the Knitted fabric is stretchy and smoother as compared to crochet fabric.

Often used for socks, sweaters, and gloves.

Tools

To knit, you will need a pair of needles and yarn. Knitting needles come in different types and sizes, from very thin needles used for elegant projects to thick needles used for knit projects.

Straight knitting needles

Circular knitting needles

Double pointed needles

Cable needles

Tapestry needle and other notions

Note: Each type of knitting needle has its own specific uses, and you might need more than one needle type for any individual project.

Basic Techniques

Here are some basic techniques you will need to know to get started knitting:

Cast on: This is the first step in the knitting process, and it makes foundation stitches for your project.

Knit and purl stitches: The knit and purl stitches are the basic building blocks of knitting

Binding off: This is the final step in knitting that secures your stitches so they don’t resolve.

Stockinette stitch: This is the ultimate knitting stitch pattern, which is created by alternating rows of purl and knit stitches.

Garter stitch: This is another basic stitch pattern that is created by knitting rows.

Knitting Pros and Cons

Now that you know about knitting, then let’s take a close look at some of its pros and cons about it:

Pros:

Knitting is compatible, and you can knit just about anywhere. We love being able to take a project to work on while passing the time on long car trips or waiting for appointments.

Once you know all the basics of knitting, learn new stitches and knitting techniques. It is relatively easy for you. Most stitch patterns build upon the basic purl stitch and knit.

Knitting can create a different variety of fabric types, from light to thick and cozy. Also, you can knit with thin lace-weight yarns to create shawls or bulky yarn to make chunky hats and scarves.

Knitting can be very methodical, and some people like the repetitive structure of knitting every stitch across the needle.

Knitting with many colors is a very beautiful way to create patterns. You can check the intarsia and Fair Isle knitting.

Cables and other textured stitches add interest and dimension to your knitting projects.

Cons:

Knitting can be complicated for beginners because you have to grip two needles and manage various live stitches together. It takes a while to evaluate how to grab or hold the yarn and needles and manage everything at the same time.

If you drop a stitch or while knitting, you make any mistake, then it can be challenging to solve.

Knitting needs a more extensive set of tools than crochet.

What is Crochet?

Crochet is a needlecraft that uses crochet yarn and hooks to make fabric. The crochet yarn is wrapped around the crochet hook and pulled through to create stitches one loop at a time.

Crochet stitches can be of unique shapes and sizes, and the finished fabric is less stretchy than knitting. The plain crochet texture is not relatively as flat as knitting, but that’s not always a bad point! In fact, crochet has a few unique textures that you cannot get while knitting.

Crochet is versatile because you can make accessories, garments, different home decor items, and many more things. Most people say that crochet is too stiff and bulky for garments, but that’s not always right. If you use the right stitch and yarn pattern, you can make beautiful, drapey garments.

Read More: 25 + Best Gifts for Crocheters In 2022

Key Characteristics

Use only one crochet hook held in the controlling hand

Sometimes Crochet fabric is a bit denser as compared to the knitted fabric

Often used for Amigurumi, blankets, and home decor projects.

Tools

Crochet hooks

Tapestry needles and other notions

There are different styles and sizes of crochet hooks, to be sure. Wood, plastic, aluminum, and resin hooks are all famous. But in variation to knitting, you don’t need to have DPNs or circulars for crochet.

Basic techniques

Chain Stitch: This is the foundation of a crochet project.

Single Crochet: The most basic crochet stitch.

Double Crochet: This taller stitch works up much faster than a single crochet.

Treble Crochet is very helpful when you want your work to overgrow.

Half Double Crochet: This is a little bit longer than a single crochet but shorter than double crochet.

Slip Stitch: This stitch is used to move along the row without joining rounds and adding height.

Crochet Pros and Cons

Now that you know about crocheting, then let’s take a close look at some of its pros and cons about it:

Pros:

This is just as portable as knitting. Some common crochet motifs, such as granny squares, are even easier to work on the go.

Once you understand the basics of crochet, learning new stitches and techniques is easy for you. Even the most complex crochet textures are made up of consolidations of basic stitches.

You need one crochet hook for most projects rather than various needles. And, unlike knitting, crochet is simple to pick up and put down in the center of a row.

If you wish to use a hook for your other project, then you can take the hook out. Then, place a stitch marker to protect the last stitch and come back to the project whenever you are ready.

Crochet stitches are very stable and less to unravel if they slip off your hook accidentally.

Crochet excels when it comes to Amigurumi and 3D shapes. (in order to make Amigurumi with knitting, you have to learn more advanced skills)

Crochet can feel less “Strict,” and it is more forgiving than knitting. In fact, freeform crochet is a well-known technique for creative makers who really want to experiment beyond traditional patterns.

Cons:

Some people find crochet hard to get the hang of because you have to grip in one hand and manage the yarn in the other. Also, it can take quite a little practice before you feel convenient tensioning the crochet yarn in your non-dominant hand.

In that exact way, it takes practice to learn where to insert your hook to make your next stitch. And in the beginning, you will need to count stitches in each row to ensure that you have crocheted the correct number of stitches.

Crochet uses more yarn. Commonly, you can expect crochet projects to use 25-30% more yarn than a knitting project, depending on the pattern of stitching. This means that crochet garments might feel a bit heavier.

Crochet fabric is less stretchy than knitting. But with the correct yarn and pattern, you can create beautiful wearable garments.

Which is easier to learn?

Beginners usually want to know which is easier to learn, crocheting or knitting. And the truth is that both crafts will be tricky and a bit frustrating at the beginning. So here are a few aspects that make one craft simpler to learn than the other craft.  

Dexterity

Some people find crochet simpler and more accessible than knitting because there is only one hook to accord with, rather than two knitting needles.

But on the other side, crochet requires you to tension the yarn with the non-dominant hand. And knitting gives you the option of tensioning the yarn with the dominant or non-dominant hand.

Number of basic stitches

Knitting can be simpler to learn because, in the starting, there are only knit stitches and purl stitches to learn. If we compare crochet, then crochet has a few more basic stitches to learn, such as single crochet, chain stitch, half double crochet, slip stitch, double crochet, and treble crochet.

Making stitches across the row

Some people find that knitting is much easier to learn because all the live stitches are cleanly lined up on the needles. In order to make a stitch row, you just need to go down the line, working every stitch on the needle.

Compare knit to crochet, where you have to develop your skill of “reading your stitches” to see where to insert your hook for the next stitch.

Fixing mistakes

To fix mistakes, crochet is easier to rip out your work and start over again. Also, you can add or remove stitches as needed.

On the other hand, knitting can be more complicated to fix mistakes because the stitches are interlocked. Also, you can still frog your knitting, but it’s a bit more time-absorbing.

So which is more straightforward: it totally depends on your learning style. Knitting may be the better choice if you like structure and learning a few stitches at a time. Crochet may be the perfect way to go if you want the freedom to fix mistakes quickly.

Which is faster?

Crochet is much faster than knitting. Part of this is that the crochet stitches are commonly taller than knitting stitches, so you can wrap more around with every stitch. But, like anything else, it totally depends on your practice. The more you crochet or knit, the faster you will get the result. And if speed is not your goal, then take your time and enjoy the procedure.

Which is cheaper?

Some people want to know which craft is cheaper. Knitting needles are a bit more costly when they come to tools than crochet hooks. For example, you can buy a complete set of crochet hooks for $50. But, a collection of interchangeable knitting needles will run $100. And if you get an interchangeable needle set, you will still need some sets of cable needles, DPNs, and other small notions.

But remember that crochet projects tend to require extra yarn than similar-sized knitting projects. Once your needles or hooks are squared away, the primary charge will be the yarn.

Which one should you try first?

Here are a few things to deal with as you choose which craft is perfect for learning:

What type of projects do you like? If you want to begin with Amigurumi, then crochet is the excellent way to go. But if you are interested in making socks, then knitting is the best option for you.

How much time do you have? If you want to complete your project quickly, crochet might be a perfect choice because crochet works a bit faster than knitting.

What’s your budget? A whole set of knitting needles can be more expensive than crochet hooks. So if you have a low budget, then crochet might be the best choice.

How to get started with knitting?

Suppose you are interested in knitting crafts, then you will need the following things to get started in the knitting process.

Firstly, you will need a little yarn. We recommend starting with soft, worsted-weight yarn.

After that, you will need a pair of knitting needles. Wood or bamboo needles are the best choices you can find at any craft store or order them online.

Lastly, you need to check some free knitting tutorials and free patterns.

How to get started with crochet?

If you are interested in crochet crafts, then here are some supplies you will need to get started:

Firstly, you need yarn. Just look for soft, smooth, worsted-weight yarn in a light color.

Second. You will need a crochet hook. Aluminum is good to start, but ergonomic hooks are more admirable because they are cheaper.

After that, once you have grabbed all of your crochet supplies, you will need to check some free crochet tutorials and free patterns.

Final Verdict

Some of us enjoy crocheting, while others go for knitting. As a beginner, you can select either one. The tools and techniques are unique from one another, but both require practice to excel in skill. In this detailed read above, you will find the complete differences between crochet and knitting, along with the advantages and disadvantages of both crafts. Also, we will explain to you which option is fastest, cheapest, and most accessible.

Source:https://hariguide.com/knitting-vs-crochet/

[percabethfiles]

Charlie

Uh... Hello? Anybody still here? I haven't been around in years and years. But I keep my fandoms stored in some corner of my brain waiting for something to tug them out. And of all things this time it was Taylor Swift re-releasing her old songs, because I used to imagine so many percabeth scenes listening to "Fearless". So have this little something that's been sitting unfinished in my archives for years now.

Remember that time Percy saw Sadie Kane and thought “Hey, this is what mine and Annabeth’s daughter would look like”? Yes.

(Also there are small nods to that fic I wrote about Logan, Hidden Heritage, but I've been meaning to re-write it someday because there were SO MANY PLOT HOLES omg)

When they find out it’s a girl it’s a bit too soon to know for sure, or so the doctor tells them. They’ll have to wait for the next appointment to know for certain. “So don’t go buying any tiny dresses yet,” he jokes and they laugh along, but they’ve been together for approximately eighteen years now, they can tell what the other’s thinking with a glance and the ecstatic grin that breaks through their lips lets him know they’re on the same page. Too late. They’re already thinking plush bow and arrows and a Merida costume for her first Halloween.

Percy tries to keep his cool. As the weeks progress, he tries not to get his hopes up, but in his heart he knows already. They hadn’t really had a preference before, they’d been too happy knowing their baby was fully human and had all its limbs (with the number of deities they’d pissed off, you never knew), but a little girl? It feels right after their two boys, it feels like their family will be complete.

(He thinks about a slight blonde girl with streaked hair and a British accent dropping from the sky on a magic camel, remembers thinking “if Annabeth and I had a daughter…” and his chest squeezes tight with happiness so raw he has a little trouble breathing)

When the doctor beams at them next appointment and says “Congratulations, Jackson family, it really is a girl,” he’s not surprised, but no less elated. He doesn’t hear the lame joke about Jackson Five, he’s too busy trying to be a manly man and not burst into tears because he’s going to have a daughter. When Annabeth’s in the other room paying for the appointment, and he’s waiting for the doctor to print the really impressive high tech 3D picture of the ultrasound, the man asks him “So did you go ahead and buy a tiny dress anyway?”

Percy blushes.

The man shakes his head in amusement. “Every time”.

His work colleagues, proud dads of little girls themselves, try to terrorize him with tales of tea parties and future boyfriends, and Percy thinks somewhere in the middle of all that teasing they mean well, but really, he’s mostly annoyed. It’s not like he’s new to parenthood, he’s got two sons already and they seem to be turning out okay, and before, when Logan and Nathan were just a nice dream for the future, there was Estelle, the little sister Percy had never expected, but loved to bits all the same.

And then Charlie is born.

She’s tiny, warm and pink, all curled up in her yellow cable-knit blanket, a tuft of blonde hair peeking out of a tiny, tiny beanie, features scrunched into the most adorable variation of a grumpy face. He’s not new to parenthood, he’s been here twice before, but the rush of affection and protectiveness and awe and raw love is just as genuine. He’s smiling like a dork, can’t seem to stop, walking from side to side, avidly searching her traits. She’s bigger than Nate was when he’d been born, but smaller than Logan. Her hair was light, like Nate’s, would it stay blonde or darken with time? Would her eyes be like his or Annabeth’s? And oh, she had her mother’s nose (they all did).

It never fails to amaze him how such a small, vulnerable being can shake up his whole world until it’s made a space for her. And he’s done this before, he’s no first time sailor this time, he’d thought he had it all under control. But she blinks and looks up at him with half-lidded eyes and a frowny face and—they’re green. Her eyes are the blue-green Logan’s are, Percy’s are.

(He’s got two sons who are his life, and he does love all his children equally, but holding his daughter for the first time, he thinks he understands his friends’ warnings. He doesn’t love her more, it’s just… different. It’s special.)

When he goes back to work, Nick takes one look at him and bursts into laughter. He claps him on the shoulder in commiseration.

“I told you.”

He’s completely wrapped around her finger already.

It’s not too different, he finds out. Especially having been pre-trained by Estelle. He’s got to brush up on his Disney princess knowledge, and hair braiding skills. He hasn’t gotten much better at color coordinating the polka dotted bows and tiny shoes, but Charlie is really forgiving. She is a very happy baby, much happier and easy going than any of the boys had been.

She’s also fucking crazy.

She is smaller and skinnier than her brothers, likes to wear frilly dresses and talk to plush animals and dance around the house in a pink tutu, but she’s wild. She never learned to crawl, just held on to the couch until she was wobbling on two feet, and it seemed like the very next day she was running across the house, the mall, the park, and if he turned his eyes away for one second, she was shooting off in the streets and nearly getting run over.

He’d found her dangling from the kitchen cabinets, trying to reach the cowering cat. She had a phase when she thought she could fly and she would climb furniture and stairs and the window sill and just… Launch herself into the air expecting her flying powers to manifest spontaneously. If they hadn’t been trying to raise them away from the whole mythological world, he would have sat her down and clarified that she had the wrong Olympian Grandparent in mind. She might have had more luck jumping into the ocean.

She had a way to jut out her lower lip, and turn those big green eyes on him that could render his every effort to be a responsible parental presence useless.

Besides, she was so funny. He could never muster enough anger to discipline her, because if he found her on the kitchen table covered in peanut butter, somehow sporting a very sticky Mohawk, and looking entirely unapologetic, well, he just couldn’t stop laughing.

One day he’s coming home from work and he hasn’t even pulled the key from the lock when Charlie calls out ‘you’re back daddy,’ in what sounds vaguely like a new jersey accent. He finds her sitting on the floor of the living room, drowning in one of Annabeth’s bathrobes, pink plastic barbie sunglasses on, holding a pooh bear sippy cup with one hand and a pinky stretched out.

“Charlie, what are you doing?”

“It’s wine Wednesday, daddy.”

“It’s what?”

“Wine Wednesday.”

He had half a mind to check if her sippy cup actually contained wine because they hid their alcohol way up in the cabinets she can’t reach but that girl could climb like a monkey. He knows he should follow that remark up with some kind of questioning of where she’d even heard of ‘wine Wednesdays’ and then explain that kids don’t drink wine or some other kind of responsible parent speech, but a sudden burst of incredulous laughter bubbles up in his throat and he takes refuge in the kitchen, lest he encourages her behavior.

He finds Annabeth there, hand over her mouth, clearly in stitches over their daughter’s performance. He wants to question if she gave her permission to wear her bathrobe but finding his wife nearly doubled over in silent laughter in the kitchen is too much and he finally lets out the guffaw he’d been trying to hold on to.

It’s not the first time Charlie leaves them breathless with laughter, and he’s almost scared of what she’s going to cook up in the future.

Charlie is a hellion.

There isn’t one person safe from her pranks, but she’s so adorable she hardly ever catches hell for it, and she’s learning to use it in her favor – thankfully, just in time for her parents to develop immunity to her puppy eyes. And she’s… difficult, yes, but not always, and not in a terrible way. For all her climbing the roof, organizing illegal cookie sales, getting in fights with her classmates, she’s not a bad kid. She’s got Percy’s penchant for befriending the kids no one wants to go near, and defending her ragtag team of losers. She’s loyal to a fault, and it gets her in trouble often.

She and Nate have epic jealousy fights over everything, including – but not limited to – Logan’s attention, the crayons, the biggest piece of cake and all the videogame characters in the world are not enough, they will always want whatever the other picked. It gives them many, many headaches. Logan, on the other hand, positively spoils her, and whenever Charlie gets in trouble they can be sure to find her hiding behind her big brother while he gives them this solemn look and says “It’s ok, mom and dad, Charlie promises she won’t do it again. We’ve talked.”

When the whole “Logan being attacked by a dracanae in school and thus finding out his Olympian heritage” debacle came to pass, and they started frequenting camp again, there was nowhere in the entire Camp Charlie would rather be than the stables. She’d spend hours there with the Aphrodite kids, brushing the pegasi and talking to them endlessly about all her classmates and her friends, and her dolls, and her new dress, and the new book grandma gave her. It was all really cute until Percy realized the pegasi were talking back, and she fully understood their replies.

And it’s funny, really, because Logan had taken after Percy, to a point where bathing him had been hard as a child because he tended to stay dry in the tub, and Nathan was Annabeth to a T, but Charlie was a perfect mix of them both.

He guesses it makes sense it would be so explosive.

When Charlie is twelve, she gets kicked out of school.

Percy is not overly worried about it himself – the number of schools he’d been kicked out of reached double digits, and this was only her first – but he is worried about how she will feel. Getting the boot from a place that’s housed you for years, where your friends are, where everyone already knows you and having to start over is never pleasant, no matter how used to it you were.

He’d expected the school to have gotten tired of all her pranks and misbehaving, which was fair, he guessed. But when Annabeth comes home from the meeting with the school director, she is seething, and not at their daughter. Charlie is angry too. In fact, it’s the first time he’s ever seen his daughter well and truly pissed off. The two of them are a sight for nightmares, both blondes standing side by side ranting with righteous fury, they look ready to start a revolution. What he gets from her angry snarls and Charlie’s rushed rambling is that Charlie had talked back to a teacher that was picking on the autistic kid and demeaning the thirteen year old who was repeating sixth grade.

She’d called him a brain-washing small minded overgrown bully who, he was quoting, didn’t get enough love from his parents.

And Percy is so proud his eyes even get a little misty.

Because he’s getting old and sentimental and raising kids is very hard. No one knows what they’re doing, not one person, not even the fancy psychologists with those books on raising perfect, well rounded, high-achieving members of society that Annabeth insisted on reading when she was pregnant with Logan. You do your best and you hope for the best, and you don’t know what you get until it’s basically too late to do anything about it. And even if he did have the best mom in the history of the entire world to draw example from, he was also half of an absent Olympian father whose heritage condemned him to dance in and out of battlefields half his life.

He’s always been terrified of being a crap father.

He looks at Charlie cussing out with every mild version of actual cuss words, stalking around the kitchen like a little lioness in a cage, furious at the unfairness of the whole situation, caring less about being expelled and more about who was going to defend her friends from that awful teacher when she’s gone.

His daughter is only twelve, but she’s already so brave, such a force of nature. She won’t stand for injustice, and she won’t take insult lying down. And she’s so kind. She’s growing up, and the person she is slowly turning out to be… is good.

And something in his heart shifts and settles down, smooths over old fears and anxious thoughts.

Percy doesn’t mean to brag, but he thinks he’s not doing half bad as a parent.

[jackalgirl]

Stubbornness

Me, yesterday: Today, I am going to get all caught up with my correspondence.  And I’m going to experiment with the sewing machine so I can finish the Hellvet Bag.  And I might even fell down some of the hems of the linen tunic I actually sewed, with only a single drop of blood to appease the demon sewing machine, and which actually fits the Next Generation (the tunic, not the sewing machine).  But first, I will knit the one part of Nikki Van De Car’s “Maile Sweater” that is actually hellaciously difficult for me, so that it is out of the way.

Me:  There!  Done with the sweater part and ready to move on!  Why do I feel exhausted?

Me, looking at the clock, seeing that it is eight-thirty in the evening, and having accomplished absolutely nothing else: Time for bed!

TL;DR: there’s an error in the pattern plus I made some mistakes, and it took me all day to figure it out, because dammit I’m not going to let a pattern beat me like that.

I have placed the fix to the pattern, followed by the full story*, under the cut, if you like gory knitting stories.

* I’ve Suffered For My Art and Now You Will, Too...but only if you wanna.  Because I absolutely hate the “shaggy dog” style of recipe or crafting instruction, where you have to endure a story before you get to the actual instruction.  So I put the correction first.

First, the pattern: https://beacon.by/nikki-van-de-car/maile - it is free and adorable and is one of my two go-to patterns when I’m making jackets for friends’ freshly-sprouted or soon-to-be-sprouting sprogs. 

In the Yoke section, the first part should read:

K yoke to 8 sts before marker, ssk, pm, k6, remove m.  K7 from the 1st sleeve, pm, k2tog. K to 3 sts before end of sleeve, ssk, pm, k to end of sleeve.  K1 stitch from back, k2tog, k to 3 sts before marker, ssk, k1, remove m, k1 st from second sleeve, pm, k2tog, k to 9 sts before end of sleeve, ssk, pm, k to end of sleeve.  K6 sts from left front, pm, k2tog, k to end.

The bolded part is what’s different from Nikki’s original pattern. 

When you are done with this row, you should have 203 stitches on your needles, separated into seven (7) sections:

The middle section (”center back”): 59 stitches. 

The two sections on either side of this (”shoulders”): 36 stitches each. 

Continuing outwards, the next two sections (”lace sections”): 13 stitches each. 

Finally, the last two sections (”jacket fronts”): 23 stitches each.

The pattern’s error is that is has you place the fourth marker two stitches too early, and you end up with 57 stitches in the center back and 38 stitches in the second shoulder section.

Note: from this point onward, you will be decreasing by 8 stitches in every odd-numbered row.  You will repeat lace pattern #2 a total of three times, losing 120 total stitches overall.  This means when you finish the lace pattern’s row 9 for the third time, you’ll have 83 stitches on your needle (8, 13, 6, and 29 sts in the jacket front, lace, shoulder, and center back sections respectively).

The pattern tells you to stop when you have 83 stitches, but go ahead and knit a “wrong-side” button hole row, so that your jacket ends up with four (4) button holes.  Then continue on as per the pattern until you are done.

The pattern doesn’t tell you you have to seam up the sleeves on the undersides, but you do.  Take care to close up the hole in the armpit that is a consequence of inserting all those sleeve stitches between two adjacent jacket stitches.

Oh, look!  A shaggy dog!  (Abandon all hope, etc.)

The original pattern has you knit the sleeves in the flat (from the cuffs upward).  Then, after you’ve knitted up the bottom part of the jacket, this first part of the Yoke section has you knit the sleeves directly into the jacket: after having knitted up the bottom part of the jacket, you knit some stitches, then knit across the first sleeves’ stitches (with some decreases thrown in), then return to the jacket stitches (so you’ve just inserted all those sleeve stitches between two adjacent stitches of the jacket, which is tough), knit across the back, add the second sleeve in the same manner, then the rest of the jacket. 

You’re adding stitch markers along the way -- those sections are to allow you both to knit a section of lace on either side of the jacket’s front, but also to shape the jacket around the shoulders and neck.  So the sections -- and the markers -- are really really important. 

But the pattern does not have any indication of how many stitches should end up in each section.  Nor does it give you an overall stitch count when you are done with that row.  You finish the first part of the jacket with 119 stitches, and then you do this (IMO) technically difficult** step of knitting the sleeves directly into the jacket, with some decreases thrown in for good measure, and end up with...???

** I make it more difficult, of course, by not knitting the sleeves in the flat, so I am attaching tubes (much tension -- many strain) to the jacket instead of relatively flexible flat pieces.  More on that later, if you have not given up on me by then.

I feel like this is one of those patterns by a very accomplished and exceptionally skilled knitter, who is perhaps not taking into account that lesser knitters (like myself) are bound to make mistakes, and for me (ymmv), having stitch counts are really important for keeping track of whether or not I’ve made a mistake.  The lack of stitch counts isn’t a big deal, as long as you don’t make any mistakes.  And this also assumes that the pattern doesn’t contain any mistakes in the first place.

The two previous times I’ve knitted this jacket, not knowing about that error in the pattern and not having a stitch count to compare, I ended up with a not-symmetrical number of stitches in the shoulders of the jacket after attaching the sleeves.  I had chalked it up to a) making mistakes, as I do, and b) always getting excited to continue The Next Part and forgetting to double-check before I do so.  I in each of my previous two jackets, I ended up hiding a decrease in the second shoulder section and forging onward.

This time was no different and, naturally, I only noticed this until about five rows after, because I didn’t remember to double-check until then.  Also, I’d made some mistakes, because the shaping -- although absolutely lovely when it’s done -- is arranged in such a way as to form a pattern that is not sticky for the way my brain is wired to see patterns.  But this time, I remembered that this had happened the previous two times.  Though I was willing to admit that I’d made mistakes again, I began to suspect that there was a problem with the pattern itself.  And I was going to figure it out, by George!

I ended up breaking out the iPad and doing some drawing/counting illustrations in order to figure out what you’re supposed to have after that row of attaching the sleeves.  That’s what helped me recognize the error in the pattern, and why I was ending up with unequal shoulders (in addition to my mistakes).

Rather than frog all the way back to the sleeve attachment (I did not want to go through that again), I simply frogged that little bit of the jacket between the back and the incorrectly-numbered shoulder back to the row where I attached the sleeves, and (I used double-pointed needles for this) knitted the dropped stitches back up with everything shifted over so that the dividing line ended up where it needed to be.  I did the same thing to the other parts where I’d made mistakes (by forgetting to decrease where I was supposed to).   That finally got me to the correct stitch count for the row I was on, with the correct number of stitches in each section. 

This was much more difficult than I’m making it sound, and figuring it out took me all day (and made me cranky, for which I profusely apologized to the Better Half who, to give him credit, demonstrated the “Better” part of that moniker, for which I am very grateful).

Aunt Lorenza’s Modifications - or - Oh look! Another shaggy dog!  (if you’re still with me, blessings be upon you)

As mentioned, I didn’t knit the sleeves in the flat.  I knitted them using the magic loop method, on a circular needle, two-at-a-time.  I did cut the yarn (Nikki recommends you not do this) after they were done, but left a decently long tail (3-4 inches, or 7-10 cm) to take care of the underarm hole.

If you want to do the sleeves this way, you will need extra equipment: five (5) US x double-pointed knitting needles, and an additional set of US x circular needles with a decently long cable (the longer, the better, but no fewer than 24″/61 cm).

Note: I say “x” because what size needle you use depends on your yarn and what size you’re shooting for.  I used fingering-weight yarn and US 4 (3.5mm) needles, but you might end up using something else.  Just make sure they’re all the same size.

First, knit the sleeves, using the magic loop method for circular knitting.  I modified the pattern by casting on using the Chinese Waitress cast-on for the sleeves, so that the cuff would be extra stretchy.

When you are done: transfer the first sleeve to DPNs as so:

from the start of the sleeve’s round, 11 sts on the first needle, 12 sts each on the second and third needles, 11 sts on the fourth needle. 

Note: This is going to help split up the strain on the tube as you’re knitting it into the jacket.  It’ll be easier on your hands, your needles, and also the fabric.

Leave the second sleeve on your original needles and set aside.

Take up your second set of cable needles and knit the jacket.  I used the crochet cast-on so that I would have a braided edge, taking the extra step of deliberately twisting the stitches so that it would be a twisted braid.  I also added a stitch to either side (I cast on 133 sts vice 133) and slipped the first stitch of each row purlwise, knitting it on the return, so that the edges would also have a twisted braid.

In the Yoke section, when you get to the first sleeve (on its DPNs), use the fifth DPN to knit the sleeves’ stitches off of the first DPN, when then becomes your right-hand needle.  Continue in this manner, knitting around the sleeve stitches, as per the pattern.

When you reach the end of the sleeve, pick up the next jacket stitch with your original (circular) needle.  This part takes patience, because all these needles want to be in the way of each other and the yarn, and of course the DPNs want to slide out of the loops.  So go slow for this part.

Follow the pattern until you have gotten 10 or so stitches across the back -- or until it feels relatively secure to you.

You’re now going to need to get the sleeve stitches onto your cable needle (pulling up a loop in the middle of the sleeve so that it lays flat) and free up the DPNs for the next sleeve.  As soon as you get two DPNs free, stop and get the second sleeve off of the other end of the holding cable (half of the sts on one needle, half on the other).  When all of the DPNs are free, set up the second sleeve as you did the first.

Continue with the yoke, adding the second sleeve as the pattern directs.  Leave these DPNs in the second sleeve stitches after you have finished attaching the sleeve so that they can take up the strain.

When you are done with this row and the sleeves are on, knit your wrong-side return -- the DPNs will help you manage the strain on the fabric when you reach the sleeves.  Eventually, as you keep adding rows, you’ll get far enough past the sleeves that you’ll be able to remove the DPNs and the extra cable needle.  And then you can just knit as the pattern is written and you should be fine.

Enjoy!

[everyday-is-brighter-with-you]

CRYING IN THE (WINTER)CLUB

Before starting the ID I want to say there are some OC characters in this, and I’ve described their general appearance in this google doc for ref!

[ ID: Wide front view colored art drawn traditionally and colored digitally. Every character is in fullbody except Dr Habit whos drawn till above legs. In the scene many people are gathered out in the winter snow at a backyard. Snow falls everywhere. Overall pic is light blue toned. There is slight pale vignette around it.

Dr.Habit is looking away and wiping a tear, smiling. In the artists interpretation he has yellow fur, pink hair, stitches on hands, deep red nails.He wears long brown fur coat, big white knitted scarf, black fingerless gloves, black fur ushanka with orange fruits and green leaves design. Wears hair in a long plait. A dark grey maine coon leans into him.

Putunia is laying down, hands on cheeks making a ''ooo'' face in anticipation and glee. In the artists interpretation she has long dark brown curly hair. She wears a purple petunia shaped dress, blue pants, short brim straw hat with fake purple flowers,  thick yellow socks. Wears hair in big pigtails tied with pink bobble ties. She is looking at Lil Habby( the puppet) holding a fire gun to a melting chocolate bar, melting into a cup for making a drink. He wears the usual with a pink flower in hair. He has long thin simple shadow arms and legs here.

Marigold is sitting idle on the grass, looks curiously at snow on his petal hair, maybe even irritated. Near him on a pink cushy sofa with green highlights and little yellow flower designs sits Rose playing his flute eyes closed and legs kicking casually. In this picture his hair is longer. His hair tie rests on a sofa arm.

Behind him the Carlas are making a Snow Carla. Fortune Teller Carla is smiling and keeping a camellia on the snow figure. A red sleeveless dress and red gloves are drawn on her, wears hair in double buns with sparkling grey flower bands encircling buns, green eyeshadow. Another Carla laughs heartily, adding more snow.  A green buttoned dress with yellow ''fluff''  and striped brown cap with same fluff is drawn on her. The third Carla's face is away from viewer, she too is adding snow. A blue dress like Elsa's icy dress and a purple flower crown is drawn on her, though the cape is actually worn. The Snow Carla has one swirly eye dug in, a button eye with leaf lashes and branch eyebrow, carrot nose, red wax lips stuck on. From the camellia tree behind the red-clothed one, a pair of green cat eyes with thick brown brows stare.

Farther away on the other side Kamal is walking in, holding a half eaten pitha in hand while approaching. He holds a bag with a box saying ''To Kamal, with love''. In the artists interpretation his face is acne scarred. He wears a blue-black sweater, purple scarf, blue pants, brown winter shoes with white fluff at the top, one gold earring, frog shape chew necklace, hair is in a bun.

At the center Trevor is reaching up  with a stool and fiddling with a giant vibrating hot chocolate machine. He wears his usual coat with added blue jeans, red scarf with yellow and black stripes, leopard print heels, green goggles, mask for mouth, silver ear piercings. Hair is in a mullet and nails are sharp and black. The machine has a funnel streaming black smoke, and many bright devices on it. In the center of it is a radioactive symbol. On one side to its bottom is a part reading ''DEVIL MODE'' in allcaps with fire graphics, a big red button in a glass case is above it with a note that reads ''Never(underlined) touch'', stuck with a smiley face pin. There is a mounted fish figurine on one handle. The hot chocolate is fizzling over the brim.

Behind him a long table laiden with food is seen. There are swirl designs on the wood's sides. There are red and green apples, borscht, three colored drinks, yorsh, glintvein , 3 tier chocolate cake, shchi, cut open peaches, cut round bread, bowl with sweet bread cakes, three small buns, full breasted chicken in aluminium foil. Lily is looking over the table edge, grinning with the aim of stealing the cake.

There are plants around, a winter garden. In some places a green color overtakes the snow with grass growing. All over the yellow fence, to the left side, are huge clumps of winter jasmine.

To the horizon trees in blue-green shades with snow coverings are seen, closer and then farther and farther away. In that distance the silhouettes of Jimothan smiling and waving to Trencil, while dragging Parsley through the snow behind him are seen. Trencil stands and smiles, a little of his towering purple castle with red highlights, many turrets, visible.

end ID]

DESC UNDER CUT 

yisssss MFERS I made a winter piece before winter was FUCKING OVER sobsob

heres my yearly tribute to the season of nosebleeds cracked lips and flies aND SNOW!!!!!!!!(NOT WHERE I LIVE ;W;)

Also my birthdays really soon. Like next week soon

Ermmm ahffjd to talk a little about what I drew...hmmhfhg...well idk if the perspective( god i tried) makes this look different so ill just throw it out there thats Habits not looking at my sonaJDJVNJ hes looking away and crying due to found family feelings. Carlas doing some gay shit. Pabit+Putunia about to start a small localized natural disaster. I mean how else do u make hot choco without setting chocolate on fire tbh. Hotted chocolate. aNd YeS mY fAmIlY SeLf iNsErTs ArE ThErE tOo >:3. The machine will explode tommorow but its OK. They can make bath bombs from the carnage. Hrhggh I had a different idea but then my sis changed my HC so Im just gonna say Habit built it but with Trevors help hence the flashiness nd DEVIL MODE. Now that ive watched hlvrai i cant stop dropping references this series is so quotable .   Sawww those guys in the back? Honestly Trencils probably a winter person with the low light, fog and blocked sun.

---

EDIT: WELL MY BIRTHDAY GOT OVER AND JANUARY ALMOST TOO DAMN..GETTING OVER MY HEAPING ANXIETY AND POSTING

I dont Expect a lot of notes or anything but I suppose its alright, one of the important things to me is just archiving my art somewhere.

I know the IDs long but I’d recommend reading through if u also wanna like know the specifics of what I drew, OVER 15 PLANTS I THINK   I’d be flattered,

If you reblog with tags i’ll be happy though!!

[ID: The same drawing but with no editing- no vignette, snow overlay, blue overtone or color correction. end ID]

EDIT: Shortened the rlly long ID, but if someone wants to know the plants i drew under ‘winter garden’;  The flowers and plants visible at front are virginia rose, red chokeberry, snowdrops, a single frost covered rose, piers japonica in pots. To the middle inkberry, more snowdrops, colored hellebores patch,  glory of snow, black hellebores patch, pansies, cyclamens, yellow aconite, some more snowdrops. A little farther are two winterberry plants, a camellia tree, witch hazel, english primroses, staghorn sumac. 

[primonizuto]

do u have any crochet tips for beginners? im making a baby blanket for my nephew but my fingers hurt and i always feel like im doing something wrong 😭

AHH okay first of all good luck!!! i’m sure it will be a treasured blanket regardless of how it turns out and always remember that any mistakes you make are going to be very obvious to you but mostly not to the people looking at the blanket unless you point them out – and even then it’s just another little thing that makes it homemade!

this got super long so i’m gonna put the rest of it under a cut kajsdlgks

as for tips, i think one of the main ones for me was not to worry about how i was holding the yarn/hook as long as i was getting good tension – i find it really difficult to hold the yarn how you’re “supposed” to because it’s more comfortable for me to hold it a different way, so i just did it that way and my projects came out just as good! so if your fingers hurt it might be a case of holding your yarn in a way that you find uncomfortable, maybe try a few different ways of holding it to see if that helps?

i actually find that watching youtube tutorials from a variety of crochet youtubers gives me a lot of peace in terms of holding yarn because they all do it so differently. sometimes i just watch their tutorials even if i have no intention of making whatever they’re demonstrating just because i like to see how they hold their yarn lmao? i think the person closest to how i currently hold my yarn is hooked by robin but there are sooo many people who wrap the yarn around the hook with their left hand like i used to. i think this also helped me become more familiar with the shapes of stitches and identifying them in different circumstances/with different yarns tbh! i literally watch it’s all in a nutshell videos because her voice is so sweet and soothing, but she’s SO comprehensive in her tutorials about pointing out where everything goes lmao, a lifesaver!!!

also, i used to crochet super tightly, but i feel like my stuff comes out better now i have a better grip on my tension, and i only really got used to the idea of loosening my tension after i did a big project in tunisian crochet. idk if you know what that is, but basically it’s like hybrid crochet/knitting where you’re always on the same side of the piece rather than turning at the end of each row, and you load a bunch of loops onto your hook on the ‘forward pass’ and then pull them off two at a time on the reverse pass (there’s a really great basics video on it here). if you crochet REALLY tightly with tunisian then your fabric is so angry and curled up that it’s difficult to crochet into the next row, so i really had to work on making all my movements super loose and then when i went back to regular crochet i found it so much easier to modulate my tension because i knew what crocheting more loosely was like, if that makes sense? ANYWAY that’s just the way i personally worked out my tension, there are definitely other ways to loosen up and i’m sure that will help with any finger troubles!

i know that a lot of beginners struggle with their work either getting wider or narrower as they crochet which can be super frustrating (it happened to me SO MUCH). most of the time that’s either because they’re adding/skipping stitches where they shouldn’t be (usually by missing the last stitch on the row), or because they’ll change their tension as they’re crocheting without realising. if you’re worrying about things like how you’re holding your yarn and your stitch count and not making mistakes you’re gonna be crocheting really tightly, and if you’ve relaxed into it you’re probably gonna be crocheting with less tension than you started with, so it’s super important when you start out that you know whether you tend to skew tighter or looser with your tension and really try to match that at the beginning. again, though, if your blanket is a little bit wonky there are things you can do like putting a border on it or trying to block it a bit, but also remember that it’s either going to be folded up or tucked over a baby, so nobody’s ever really going to see it stretched out completely flat and if it just has a SLIGHT discrepancy it’s honestly no big deal!!

besides stuff about tension i would generally say that reminding yourself you’re going to make a few mistakes as you’re learning is really important. like, i’ve been crocheting for a few years now and i still fuck up and have to frog yards and yards of yarn because of a mistake, but unless you get really bent out of shape about mistakes and it’s like upsetting you that you made a mistake (or it’s something that would throw off the rest of the pattern in a way that really needs to be fixed) then i would also suggest not being too strict with yourself! i empathise with the feeling of needing everything to be perfect, but if you wanted something to be perfect you would just go buy a blanket online somewhere right? if you drop a stitch somewhere and you only notice that you’ve done that like three rows later, just throw in an extra stitch somewhere in the row you’re on and you’re gucci!

i also think it’s good practice as a beginner to count your stitches and mark the first/last stitch on each row so you don’t accidentally miss ones there since i know that’s a really common mistake! i know counting your stitches is a pain, so you don’t have to do it every row, maybe just every few rows as you get more confident – also, if your blanket is massive and there are TONS of stitches in a row, you can use stitch markers to mark every 10th/20th stitch or something, so you’re just counting to 10 or 20 instead of 120 stitches in one go. 

also, this might sound crazy but if you’re just doing a blanket that’s plain single/half double/double crochets or something, it might actually help you to switch to a pattern that has a slightly more “complicated” stitch pattern, like a granny stripe or something – that way it’s not as difficult to miss stitches by accident, you can see exactly where you’re working your clusters so there’s no mistakes about where to put them.

ultimately like i said up there, mistakes are noticeable to you because you’ve been staring at this thing for ages and you remember seeing the mistake and you see it every time you look at it, but i promise you NOBODY is going to pay that close attention, and if they are and they think less of this thing you’ve made because of a mistake then fuck em! the most important thing is being comfortable while you’re crocheting so make sure you’re holding everything in a way that makes the most sense to your hands and it will help you even out your tension if tension is an issue, and will also let you work for longer without getting uncomfy!

also, again, GOOD LUCK!! the blanket will be amazing and much loved because you made it! every project you make is practice with a new technique or a new stitch or a new yarn or a new hook so there’s always going to be some readjustments you’ll have to make but the more you crochet the better you’ll feel about everything. lmk if you need help with anything else!! 💕💕💕💕

[ripplestitchskein]

I hope you don’t mind I took this to a post but I can’t post pictures on the replies and there’s a character limit.

It actually took me a long time to get comfortable with knitting. I wasn’t able to purl for the longest time and that’s because the books I was teaching myself from weren’t very clear on where the working yarn should be so I was essentially just knitting half my stitches in a really awkward way because I wasn’t moving my yarn to the front to purl or the back to knit. That was before YouTube so it was dark times.

So knit stitches are when the working yarn is in the back behind the needles and you insert the needle at the back from the bottom up:

Purl is backwards knitting so you move the working yarn to the front, and then insert the needle at the front from the top down.

That’s how I think of it anyway? Some people do it differently I guess, but my stitches always look like they should at the end of the day and I’ve been doing it this way for years so I’m doing alright I suppose.

The best way to get comfortable is to find some easy projects that are good for beginners on circular needles. Christmas ornament balls are great for this because you get used to circular needles, increasing, decreasing and working in the round. If you do Julekuler you also learn about multi-stranded knitting and carrying yarn (I love making them).

Hopefully this will make sense, but if you want to start on non-rectangular projects like hats or balls or socks or birds you’ll need some DPNs (double pointed needles). I use some cheapo bamboo ones I got on amazon. A full set of like 20 sizes is like 8 bucks but most projects use smaller ones. They break easy but it’s taught me to not be so tight and they are so cheap I just buy multiple sets.

I find this an easier way to knit in the round than circular needles. I don’t know why, I just do. You might like circular needles better, I just find the cord and getting the stitches off the cord and onto the actual needles to work really cumbersome. I have never had a success with circular needles but I make tons of shit on DPNs with no issue at all.

Which brings me to my first tip. Wood is less slippy than metal needles. I used to drop stitches like whoa on metal because they just kind fly off. This might be a controversial opinion but I’ve had way more luck with wood/bamboo needles personally. If they are a bit rough or snag you just sand them down a bit.

My second tip is Use Stitch Markers. It’s really important to know with circular knitting where your row/round begins. With DPNS, depending on the pattern, it’s more which needle starts the row. I don’t go crazy, I just stick it in on the side somewhere so I know “This is the start”

Double pointed needles seem really awkward at first but once you realize you just need to forget about the other needles it’s a lot easier.

Basically, you have stitches distributed across 4 needles (or less spending on pattern) and you have one needle with no stitches that you use to knit with. The stitches get transferred to this “blank” needle as you work and when you reach the end of your working needle it is then free of stitches and becomes your new blank needle (hopefully that’s not too confusing).

I hold mine in a diamond shape like so:

So in the 2nd pic above my working yarn is on the needle on the right (the yellow string kind of at the back) and the needle I’ll be knitting on is the needle on the left (under my thumb) and it’s the first needle of stitches for the row because my pink maker indicates that this side of the “diamond” is the start of my work.

I recommend watching some videos of people knitting on DPNs. That helps me with knitting/crochet in general to see how they move their hands to do certain things. I like Arne and Carlos they are the makers of the pattern I use for my birds and my Christmas ornaments and they taught me short row heels. They are also adorable. But there are other people with clearer videos and closer tutorials as well. I always watch multiple videos when perfecting a skill to get as many viewpoints as possible and everyone has different tips.

Next tip: With DPNS you should “lock” your stitches on the needles you aren’t using my sliding them to the middle. You get kind of in the flow of:

1. Slide stitches to the front for the needle you’re working on. Knit/Purl the pattern as necessary.

2. Push stitches to middle when finished to lock them.

3. Turn the work slightly, a quarter turn, to the work on the next needle.

4. Slide stitches to the front of that needle to work on them.

5. Knit and purl as necessary.

6. Slide stitches to middle to lock them when done with that needle.

7. Quarter turn to work on the next needle.

5. Repeat all the way around.

I hold my work like this in my left hand:

I use my thumb to push the needle I don’t care about out of the way, and ignore the needles that are kinda poking out on the side. and then I just work on the stitches on one needle and knit like I would if I was only using two needles. The rest of them don’t exist as far as I’m concerned.

I also keep my pointer finger of that same hand at the top or near the top of the needle with my stitches on it, to keep from pulling them off. It’s a bit slower but it helps with dropped stitches until you can get faster because you are literally holding the stitches you don’t want to move. Like this:

I’m kind of exaggerating it, but I keep my finger/nail pressed to the stitches I’m not working, knit/purl the stitch I am, pull it off the needle and then slide my finger down to let the next stitch up to be worked. Like a conveyor belt of stitches I guess. Or like, one of those gates that keep cows orderly at the slaughter house? Or turnstiles. I dunno.

This probably isn’t the best way to do it. It’s just how I taught myself and how I keep from dropping stitches.

I dunno. I love circular knitting, it’s all I do really. I can’t remember the last time I had a project on straight single pointed needles. I make a lot of birds and socks and hexapuffs and ball shaped things.

Hopefully this was helpful and not confusing. Sorry it was long. Let know if I can help!

[amusedmuralist]

🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻

OKAY HI TIME FOR 5 RAMBLES I GUESS

it took my sister stealing my wool and then me buying wool I was more interested in to get me to learn how to knit properly, but even when I was dropping and adding stitches like a thing possessed I found tension reasonably easy to maintain 

i really dislike the way literature is taught at a bunch of institutions I know of. Liek? British Literature, American Literature, World Literature????? ACTUALLY FUCK YOU. 

NERVOUS CONDITIONS by Tsitsi Dangarembga has a lot to say to a great deal of English Language literature written by British Authors, and that’s part of the point, the exclusion from the canon while feeling its lingering affects of cultural malaise and distrust, and the doubling of self! 

At some point I need to write my article abotu Hurricane from Miranda’s Hamilton simply because it has a lot to say about the same issue, the concept of writing back from a position of being made external, and a source of data and not a source of academic knowledge and skill, and how the metaphor of the Hurricane specifically informs Neruda and other Caribbean writers, especially Olive Senior’s engagement with and direct critique of canon 

You got me started I’m sorry, I’m attaching some of the essay I wrote now 

From “I Picked Up a Pen, I Wrote My Own Deliverance” Wolfe, (2015):

Neruda’s poetry mimics the thread he speaks of, making a long, winding spool down the page. Senior speaks of problems, of threads “too knotted to decipher, too clotted with blood” to be what she wants of it. She engages not only with Neruda’s demands, but admires his life and expands on his work while acknowledging her own, Jamaican context. Her thread, her link to the past, is described in the stanza 4 as “a chain-link of miles strung out across oceans/ a creole spider-work of many hands.” Senior’s country’s history is inextricably tangled in a history of slavery and the crossing, and so is her work. She expresses this in stanza 5, saying “I’ve been seeking a thread to tie up the bundle which has been growing unwieldy with the cries and the whispers of the ones I can’t name”. She ends the stanza with the proclamation that though she has forgotten some parts of her ‘thread’ that has caused her to “Let loose the hurricane”. She says of the hurricane that it “cleanses, it unburdens and purifies.” It is not an unmixed blessing, breaking the thread, though she says she will “mend it and restring with fresh beads.” 

 I found [the hurricane] an apt metaphor for what Senior was doing, something that I had also seen done in Hamilton. Hamilton caused a stir on Broadway due to almost all aspects of its construction. It is a hip-hop production, and has won a Pulitzer Prize and eleven Tonys; it has earnt one billion American dollars (Brokes, 2016). It draws on the story of the Founding Fathers of America, but shows it to be an immigrant story, one that almost all of America can draw on. To say it was “reimagined” thus does not ring true: the Founding Fathers were immigrants, and this is especially true of Alexander Hamilton, the protagonist of the musical, historical figure, and Caribbean born orphan. The song Hurricane happens midway through the musical, and describes his anguish about his legacy. It ends in his remembrance that he “picked up a pen/ [he] wrote his own deliverance” (emphasis mine) before leading into the chorus, a description of the hurricane that enabled Alexander Hamilton to leave the Caribbean and gain the acclaim he craved. The Hurricane is both destructive in that it destroyed the life he knew, and reconstructive, in that it was his writing about his troubles that allowed him to leave and make his own way, shaping the United States. This insistence that Hamilton be able to write his way out of trouble is larger than this. Hamilton opens the historical canon to interpretation, and “by telling the story of the founding of the country through the eyes of a bastard, immigrant orphan, told entirely by people of color, [Miranda] is saying, ‘This is our country. We get to lay claim to it.’ ” (Mead, 2015). 

[zodiacal-dust-and-curls]

Knitting

Warnings: Kissing and the briefest mention of ‘adult activities’.

Word Count: 2.3k

A/N 1: Thank you to @daughter-of-ophelia for the request! I hope this was worth the wait! I certainly enjoyed writing it. Also a huge thank you to my beta and PSM @mollymarymarie (ilysm 🖤) Without further ado, I give you Joe fluff.

It all started on Pinterest.

You needed something to do on your long flight to Anaheim, so you looked for easy projects on Pinterest. That was mistake #1.

You looked to your left and let out a sigh at the sight of auburn hair fluffed up from being pressed against the window of the plane.

Joe was always able to read or sleep or watch a movie. You envied him. But reading made you feel sick if you tried to focus for too long, movies were never long enough and strained your eyes, and sleep never came easy when you were surrounded by so many strangers.

Whoever said that you could knit a hat in two hours was LYING. You should have two cute hats by the time you landed, one for you and one for Joe. You’d planned a lovely deep green beanie for him (it just went too well with his pale complexion and auburn hair) and a sweet cream for yourself (it went with almost every outfit you packed, plus who doesn’t love neutral colors).

But your hands were being dumb, so dumb. Why was it so hard to hold these needles? And how tf did she cast on so many stitches so quickly? This video was not helping you at all. The article with descriptions and pictures wasn’t helping either. You snapped.

“Babe, wake up.”  

“mmm. Wha?”

“Take some of this from me. I’m about to throw it,”

“What? Why?” Joe’s brain was still catching up to his current situation. You were honestly amazed at how deeply he could be asleep in under thirty minutes, possibly even a little jealous.

“Take this,” you basically threw a skein of cream-colored yarn at him, “and hold it before I yeet it down the aisle.”

“Okay. But maybe I should take the needles instead?” He rested his hand over your wrist to keep the knitting needles in your lap. “You know, because they’re pointy and can damage someone.” He slid his hand down and took them from your grasp.

“I mean, I guess they could hurt someone if I threw them hard enough,” you rolled your eyes and looked out the window, “but they’re so light I doubt I could get any real distance.”

“Whatever you say, champ.” He moved the yarn and needles to the side farthest from you and began to rub soothing circles on your knee. “I just think that we shouldn’t maim anyone on the flight.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you grumbled. “Well, now that you’re awake, you can help me.”

“And I will, but maybe first we calm down a little?” He quickly lifted the arm rest between you and then opened his arms for you to snuggle into.

You were hesitant, but you did take him up on the offer. After just a few seconds of having your face pressed against his chest, you felt less like screaming and throwing things and more like giving the project a second chance. Even with the new found calm you had, you weren’t exactly ready to let go of Joe. The reassuring rhythm of his heartbeat and the comforting smell of him, of home, were too hard to give up when you were frustrated.

A few minutes later, Joe kissed the top of your head. “Mkay, are you ready to try again?”

You just nodded, with your face still pressed to his chest. Slowly, you sat yourself back up in your seat and held out your hands. “I’m ready and I promise I won’t throw anything.”

With pursed lips and a quirked eyebrow, Joe handed back both the yarn and needles. “Only if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure, but I still need your help with this one. I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong.” You slid down in your chair and let your knees rest firmly against the seat in front of you. “I don’t get how I can crochet no problem, but attempt this and suddenly it’s like I don’t know what yarn is.”

Joe just looked at you with his same pout. It was almost like he was trying to decide what would be worse: learning how to knit with you or listening to you rant for at least another hour. Eventually, he extended his hand, “Phone, please.”

You handed it over with the infuriating video still pulled up. Joe watched in an almost uncharacteristic silence for a few moments, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“Okay, you come here,” he lifted the arm closest to you, “and put your back to my chest. I’ve got an idea.”

You raised an eyebrow at him. How on Earth could he have an idea about helping you knit that required him to hold you?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quit giving me that look and just get over here.” He motioned with his hands for you to make your move or continue pouting.

With a roll of your eyes, you caved and settled into his embrace.

“So, according to the video,” he reached towards your hand that held the yarn and one needle, “we have to cast on so many stitches and then we can actually do the stitch and all the dropping and what not.”

You just nodded and let him guide your hands while he talked you through the whole process. It was surprising how his hands moved with such grace through a process he’d never attempted before. The creamy yarn seemed to pass over, under, and through his, and your, hands quickly. The movements were mesmerizing to watch, and the warmth and assurance in his embrace only added to the fogging of your mind. Before you knew it, it was time to cast off and finish the first hat.

“It looks wonderful, baby. Will you try it on to show me?” Joe whispered into your ear, mindful of the other passengers that had nodded off during the long flight.

“Yeah, just give me a second to arrange it correctly.” You murmured back, finally being pulled from the warm and fuzzy feeling of watching the yarn move through your combined hands.

The hat had turned out wonderfully for a first attempt. It seemed to be very flexible and thick enough to keep the wind out of your ears. Thankfully, it was your hat and not Joe’s so you could improve your technique.

You slipped it onto your head, mindful of your hair, you didn’t want to mess up your part for the rest of the day, and began fixing its position. It seemed to take forever for it to feel right on your head, but when it finally did, you double checked it with your phone’s camera. You’d actually managed to get it to sit just right in the front with a decent slouch in the back.

Joe waited expectantly for you to face him again.

“There’s my girl.”

His eyes softened as he took you in, his  umber colored eyes taking on a slightly burnt, yet soft, color. He couldn’t help but smile at you. “You look quite cozy in that. Almost too cozy. I wanna try it.”

“Mkay. Hold, please.” You took the creation off of your head and carefully placed it on Joe, making sure to run your fingers through his hair before positioning it just right.

“You look absolutely dashing, babe. Let me take a pic.”

Joe struck a pose (one hand on his head, the other on his hip, sticking it out as best he could while sitting), and then another (pouting while sticking out his tongue and crossing his arms), and another (so many more, the man is a master at ridiculous poses) until the two of you were a giggling mess in your seats and you had at least 20 new pictures in your gallery of the two of you in various stages of wearing your hat.

Joe had fallen back asleep shortly after our photoshoot, still wearing your hat. He did look very cute in it, but it was just a touch too snug around his forehead. Something to keep in mind for the one your were about to begin working on.

You started the video again, just to refresh your mind over what the process should look like. There was a phantom feeling of arms around you and hands guiding yours as you lost yourself in the trancework of knitting yet again. Since, you only had one set of hands to watch this time, your mind decided to wander.

It made its way back to the first time Joe had watched you crochet.

You had been working on a new afghan to conveniently leave at his place, how he lived with it that cold you would never understand. Joe was busy watching the Yankees game. Which, although you loved baseball, you could never cheer for that particular team (you did, however, concede to not cheer against them unless they were playing your team). So, you decided to keep your hands busy and your eyes off the screen.

“What are you doing?” Joe looked over at you while supporting his chin with his hand.

“Making myself a blanket.”

“Why?” He furrowed his brows.

“Because you keep this place an ungodly temperature, Joseph. Aren’t you supposed to be watching the game?” The Yankees were playing your number two team, so you technically couldn’t cheer against them, but you were still pissed they were winning.

“Yeah, but it’ll be an easy win.” He teased, wanting you to take the bait. “This looks far more interesting.”

“You’re not wrong.” Anything is better than this damned game right now, you thought.

To be honest, you had found several skeins of yarn in the perfect shade of gray to hide well enough in his living room. He always kept his apartment too cold for you and your were finally taking action to solve that problem. You were kind of hoping the game would keep his attention long enough for you to finish it up.

He ended up watching you more often than the game, mesmerized by how your hands could manipulate the material, and missed the walk-off double that cost the Yankees the game. By 6pm that evening, you had not only finished the blanket, but gotten Joe so worked up over the loss that you managed to hide it without him catching you.

That particular blanket had since been moved to the arm of his couch to use at your discretion, and for post-season cuddles and some other not so cuddly uses.

You had just cast off the last stitch of Joe’s hat when the captain announced your final approach to the airport.

Joe didn’t stir until you had safely tucked both beanies back into your carry-on, and the touch-down of the plane literally jerked him awake.

“Did you have a good nap, babe?”

“The best.” He let out a yawn. “ I dreamed I was still holding you and watching us create more things together.”

“Awe, Joseph, you sap.” You pressed a kiss to his cheek, feeling the hours-old stubble seemingly exfoliate your lips. “But we should prepare to get out of here, I’m ready for a nap now.”

“Whatever you say, baby.”

Getting off the plane and collecting your luggage was, thankfully, uneventful. Allowing you time to admire Joe while he guided the two of you through the airport. He’d chosen a very understated outfit for travelling, much like yourself. The black jacket, gray sweater, and dark jeans would look fantastic with the green of his hat. You couldn’t have planned this any better if you’d actually tried. 

Although you’d been travelling to Anaheim, a usually sunny locale, the weather had decided to take a turn for the frigid and windy as of late. As you walked towards the passenger pick up area, you turned to Joe and pulled him off to the side.

“You better put your hat on, babe. I don’t want the wind to mess with your ears while we’re here.”

“Baby, you’re wearing the only hat we have.” He looked puzzled, brows furrowing and lips pursing as he took in the sight of you in seemingly the only hat between the two of you.

“No I’m not.” You presented him with his own patch of knitted green. “This is for you. I hope the color is okay.”

He grabbed the swath of green from you and felt the material in his own hands.

“It’s perfect.” He leaned in to wrap you into a quick hug and gave you a chaste kiss. “Put it on for me?”

You nodded to let him know that you gladly would and stepped back to admire your handiwork. You had done an excellent job of choosing this color for Joe. He was a little pale from all the cloudy weather you’d been faced with for the last few months, so the jewel tone of the hat. coupled with his hair and stubble, was doing an excellent job of making his eyes stand out. You even noticed that the usually deep brown had flecks of green being pulled to the surface courtesy of your creation.

“I think this deserves at least one selfie, don’t you?” You’d almost missed the mischievous glint in his eyes from being lost in the depth of them.

“Are you sure Ben won’t be jealous?” Ben seemed to feel anytime you did something too cute with Joe. It was like he had a sixth sense about this, which was hilarious in all honesty. You were glad to see Joe so happy while interacting with any of his co-stars.

“Nah, he’s got Gwilym in London at the moment. I think he’s suitably distracted.” With that he pulled you into his embrace and snapped a pic while you were still laughing.

@/joe_mazzello: get you a girl that looks at you the way y/n looks at (the hat she made) me #shesthetalent #andthebeauty #lookatthatsmile

A/N 2: Just pretend the pic is not in the woods, okay? Thanks. I hope you enjoyed it! (If you’re curious, the teams I was thinking about as my #1 and #2 teams are the Astros and the Rangers, respectively.)

[imyourliquor-youremypoison]

Big Spook (Peter Parker x Reader - Part 3)

Synopsis: Aged Up!Peter thinks he’s done well with leading a double life. He’s studying what he likes, he has his own place, he’s dating the girl he loves… but that doesn’t mean life is easy all the time. Even superheroes have bad days - and sometimes worse days.

Tags: Aged Up!Character, College AU, Established relationship, Whump, Angst. Does not take FFH into account. SPOILER FREE.

Word count: 2.6k

Part 2 <<< >>> Part 4

MASTERLIST

When (Y/N) woke up – she couldn't remember when or how on earth she managed to fall asleep in this situation – she was lying on a couch in what she could only assume to be the Avengers' compound, a blanket draped over her, the blinds hiding the sun. It was about ten in the morning, and she quickly rubbed the sleep away from her eyes and threw the blanket away.

She had never even dreamed of stepping into this place, let alone spend the night. But she didn't have time to gush over being in the Stark Tower, because she knew Peter was somewhere on a lower floor, half dead.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y,” (Y/N) called, hoping she worked the same as E.D.I.T.H and thanking heaven that Peter was a huge nerd who had gushed over his glasses for ages when she asked him about them.

“Miss (Y/N),” the A.I. Greeted her, waiting for her to speak.

“I need to see Peter,” she said, a stone dropping to the bottom of her stomach as she said his name. Let him be alive, let him be alive.

“Right this way, Miss.”

The panels of a seemingly normal looking wall moved to reveal an elevator and dinged when the doors opened. She stepped in and the doors closed on their own, F.R.I.D.A.Y taking care of letting her off on the right floor.

She ran out as soon as the doors opened again, and she recognized the white walls of the medical wing. Thanks to muscle memory only, (Y/N) found her way back to the surgery room Peter had been brought in, but the sign next to the door said it was currently empty.

Going back, the looked at the sign on every door, trying to find someone, anyone, who could point her in the right direction.

“(Y/N),” an all too familiar voice called her name, cutting short to her increasing panic. When she turned around, she saw a puffy-eyed May Parker standing by a door down the corridor. “He's here.”

She jogged over to her and the two women crashed into each other for a tight hug. (Y/N) heard May cry softly, but she found she could no longer shed a tear. She had cried so much yesterday, and the shock of it all finally hit her, numbing her to everything around her. She needed to see Peter.

“He'll be okay, he'll be fine,” May whispered against her head, placing a kiss on top of it. (Y/N) knew she said it for herself, she tried to speak it into existence.

“Happy called you?” (Y/N) croaked out, clearing her throat.

“As soon as you passed out,” she said with a nod, gently stroking her hair. May always showed her maternal love, and (Y/N) often wondered why she had never had kids of her own. “We're waiting for Dr Cho to tell us what's going on.”

When (Y/N) looked over May's shoulder, she saw Happy standing beside a bed, where she knew Peter laid, though she could only see the shape of his legs under the white sheets. May quickly filled her in on what she missed and told her he came out of surgery around six this morning. Dr Cho went to sleep, having earned her rest and left Peter in the capable hands of the nurses.

The three of them waited inside Peter's room, silently watching his chest rise and fall and finding comfort in that, and that alone. Because they didn't know anything else. Most of Peter's body was hidden under the sheets, but what little they could see was not reassuring at all. Half his face was bandaged up, because of the head wound (Y/N) had nearly lost her mind over, and he had obviously gotten several stitches for other open wounds on his upper body. That was without mentioning the purple bruises littering his arms, or the split lip, the small gash on his left eyebrow, or the swollen black eye.

There was a growing emptiness in the pit of (Y/N)'s stomach, and she was afraid it would consume her like a black hole. May squeezed her hand when Dr Cho entered, holding a pad in her hand with a few papers on it, startling (Y/N) out of her daydream.

“Let me put your worries to rest,” the doctor started, walking around the bed and taking a small flashlight out of her pocket to inspect Peter's eyes. “The surgery went well, I was able to stop the bleeding and stitch him up without causing any brain damage, and his vitals are good.”

Happy stood beside May now, and (Y/N) drank in Dr Cho's every word.

“That said, he sustained a great number of superficial wounds all over his body, and it will take time to heal, superpowers or not. It's difficult to assess the full extent of the damage his head wound has done since he hasn't woken up. This is the bad news: Peter has fallen into a coma.”

Her face became serious, and she stopped her examination of Peter to look each of them in the eye, meeting their distressed gazes with a neutral face.

“A coma?” May croaked out. (Y/N) could tell by the sound of her voice that she was close to crying again, while she did not even feel the usual tingle behind her eyes.

“Yes. It's the body's natural response to the physical trauma,” she explained. “As long as he doesn't wake up, I cannot do anything else. I have treated every other wound. He’s lost of lot of blood,” Dr Cho said and paused, then looked at (Y/N). “We don’t know how long he stayed on your bathroom floor before you found him, but he was in severe condition when you brought him in, and his head wound must have sent him in shock.”

“How much blood?” (Y/N) squeaked out, feeling her throat tighten to the point of discomfort. It was her fault. If she hadn't fallen asleep...

“Enough,” was the only answer she got out of Dr Cho. “I’ve transfused him blood, so he should regain some colors very soon. He does also appear to have several shattered ribs and a broken cheekbone too, but there’s no internal damage, which is good.”

The list of bruised, cut, shattered and broken body parts Peter had made (Y/N) want to vomit all over again, and she hadn't even eaten or drunk anything in over sixteen hours.

“What can we do now?” Happy asked the doctor just as she was about to leave.

She stopped in her tracks and showed them the shadow of a smile – a sad one.

“It's out of ours hands now. Peter will wake up when he's ready.”

*

(Y/N)'s finger tailed along Peter's arm, following the veins running from his wrist to his elbow, lost in her contemplation. It felt like she hadn't moved in forever. She vaguely remembered Ned and Betty coming by to see Peter, but they didn't stay for most than a day – she thinks – because Peter wasn't technically family and they couldn't leave work on ground that a friend was in a coma.

God knew how long coma could last, no one could get off work for this long. (Y/N) saw them off – she thinks – and it was only her and May again. Happy came and went again, checking in whenever he had a chance, and making sure the psycho who had put Peter in this bed would get what he deserved.

(Y/N) didn't care. (Y/N) didn't care about anything. She barely found enough strength to look away from Peter, let alone care about other things. Sometimes she went to the bathroom attached to this room, and that was it.

May had to bring her food or she would forget to eat altogether. It had been days now, but (Y/N) couldn't tell how many because she hadn't moved, she hadn't slept properly, she hadn't watched the news since the first day.

She had been sitting still on a wooden chair next to Peter's bed, eyes fixated on the TV screen hanging on the wall across from the bed. She had clutched Peter's hand in hers, like she had been doing for the last few hours – she wasn't even sure she could move it anymore – while listening to the news.

They had gotten him. The criminal Peter had been chasing for days and days, they got him. The police found him tied to a lamp post, covered in blood that wasn't his, and knocked unconscious on the same night Peter came back half dead. (Y/N) had smiled when she heard the anchorwoman say that he had been arrested, she had turned towards Peter to celebrate the news, but reality had hit her like a ton of bricks.

Peter wouldn't be celebrating his latest arrest any time soon.

Feeling ill again, (Y/N) had turned off the TV and unplugged it, for good measure, and since then, the hours spent in Peter's room had been silent for all of them. May didn't sleep here but she came in the morning and left late at night. She brought yarn with her and knitted, or a book to read, or pictures to look at. She had tried to show (Y/N) the album she brought on the fourth day, but (Y/N) merely stared blankly at the pages, as if she couldn't see the pictures at all.

May hadn't tried to gain (Y/N)'s attention anymore after that, she merely made sure she was fed and got some sleep. She slipped a sleeping pill in (Y/N)'s coffee on the fifth day because the girl looked a fright! She hadn't had any shut eye in days and her eyes were dry and red because she stared at Peter all day long, wordlessly urging him to wake up. He needed to wake up.

On the seventh day, May saw a change in (Y/N)'s behavior. It was as though she received an electric shock – or perhaps the lack of food and sleep was getting to her finally. She stood up, and took her phone, and she spent the day answering all the worried text messages she and Peter had received since he came here, she also called their faculty and internship supervisors to keep them updated.

“Yes, yes I know,” she said in her phone, her back turned to May.

Her voice sounded fake, it was a customer service voice, May noted, eyes darting from her knit-work to the young woman's back. She knew (Y/N) was on the brick of insanity, she was driving herself mad with worry and her health suffered from it too. She bore dark circles under her eyes and her cheeks were hollow.

“I'm sorry about that, I know I should have called but I barely leave the hospital room,” she sighed in the phone, clearly arguing with her supervisor about her prolonged absence from work. “I'll come back as soon as I can, and I will catch up on my work. No, I-”

May waited, curious to see what she was going to say to this person who so clearly had no idea what (Y/N) currently endured.

“Well I'm sorry if it's an inconvienience to you, but like I said, I will not be able to come back to work as long as my fiancé hasn't recovered from his accident. What's so hard to understand? Would you go to work if your wife's life was in danger?!” (Y/N) shouted in the phone, holding it away from her ear and simply yelling the words to the screen. “Have a good day!” she snapped before ending the call.

May's eye slit up and she stood up, leaving aside her knit-work.

“Honey, don't let it get to you,” she went and took (Y/N) into her open arms, rubbing her back when the young woman buried her head in the crook of her neck. “Everything will work out, you'll see. Peter wouldn't want us to lose hope so soon. We have to believe he will wake up.”

“I know, I know this,” (Y/N) hiccuped. “But it's so hard. I don't know how much longer I can do this- I- I feel like I'm holding my breath, and I just- I can't breathe, May. I can't- I can't breathe.”

(Y/N) was slowly crumpling down, her breathing becoming uneven and sharp. May recognized a panic attack when she saw one and held (Y/N) in her arms, lulling her gently and whispered reassuring words into her ears while she gave in to the daunting sadness crushing her heart. A dam broke inside her, and the tears began to flow again, and she cried and cried and hiccuped against May's flowery blouse, wishing her own mother was here with her.

“Shh”, May said in her ear. “It will be fine. I know my Peter, and I know he won't abandon you, he'll fight to come back to you,” she told her in a soothing voice before pulling away.

(Y/N) had calmed down a little, only silent tears ran down her cheeks but she had regained her breath and her body had stopped shaking. May tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“You need to go home, honey,” May told her, meeting stubborn refusal. “You haven't had a full night's sleep in a week now, you'll end up in a the hospital if you don't take care of yourself.”

The rational part of her brain knew that, but how could she leave Peter? How could she leave her boyfriend alone in this sterile place, between these lifeless white walls while she was in their home?

“Oh, please don't cry anymore.” May pulled her in again and wrapped her arms around her. “He'd hate for you to torture yourself like this. You know it's not your fault. The one responsible has been arrested and will answer for his crimes.”

“It is. It is my fault. I should have stayed awake, then I would have been there when he needed me. Instead I let him bleed out on the floor, like a- like a-” a hiccup again, and she burst into tears once more.

“No, no, you can't think like that. You just fell asleep, it happens! No one could have predicted what happened that night. Peter leads a dangerous life, and you have nothing to do with this.”

There was no point in arguing. (Y/N) knew she was at least partly responsible for Peter's current state. If she had woken up a little sooner, maybe...

“Please, just go home. Have a bath, go to sleep, eat a real meal,” May urged her. “If anything new happens, I'll call you right away, I promise you. But in the meantime, do not come again until you've had at least ten hours of sleep. You need to rest.” She tucked another wayward strand of hair behind (Y/N)'s ear, who, like an obedient little robot, nodded.

She took her jacket that she's threw on over her sweats the day Happy brought them here, and was about to leave when May spoke up once more.

“Oh, and honey!” she called her. (Y/N) turned around and saw her smile. “I'm so happy for you two. Peter finally proposed, huh? I know he was waiting for the right time to ask you, I'm glad you said yes.”

Swallowing thickly, (Y/N) tried to reciprocated the smile, but quickly turned around to leave, before May could see the horror on her face.

.

.

.

.

A/N: This is by far the angstiest piece I’ve ever written. *Pokes my readers with a stick* y’all still alive? How ya holding up? Hang in there

TAGLIST: @palindrome-teddy @complete-trash-101 @keeperofhopesanddreams @i-love-whumperflies @golden-guide @marauderette130

Comment if you wanna be tagged in part 4 :)

REBLOG TO SAVE A WRITER

[bemusedlybespectacled]

I was just skimming through your knitting tag out of curiosity bc I've always wanted to learn, and now I have the irresistible urge to pick up knitting. Problem: I have absolutely no clue anything about knitting. Like. Not even the slightest. WHAT DO. I WANT TO JOIN THE KNITTING CLUB. WHERE AND HOW DO I START.

Hey! Welcome to the club! Settle in because knitting is a Thing I Like To Explain and it can get Intense.

So to start ANY knitting, you’re going to need to know three things:

How to cast on;

How to knit a knit stitch; and

How to cast off/bind off (they mean the same thing).

The best way to learn how to do this, IMO, is to knit a scarf. Scarves are easy because you don’t need any fancy techniques, you can make them out of any material, it teaches you the above three basic things, you have to practice the same stitch over and over again because scarves are long, and at the end of it you have a scarf. (If you don’t have the patience for a scarf, you can do a potholder.)

There are three kinds of needles: straight (them’s your classic needles), circular (basically two needles but held together with a plastic cord), and double pointed (they’re pointed on each end instead of having a point and a little bulby thing). Fuck the latter two, we don’t care about them. You’re going to learn on straight needles.

Go out and get yourself decently cheap yarn. This is not the time to get, like, some alpaca cashmere blend. You also want to get yourself a set of needles. I first learned how to knit a scarf using size 10 straight needles and Lion Brand Hometown USA yarn. I like that pairing of yarn and size because it means the scarf gets done quicker and everything is bigger (therefore easier to see). I would get a couple of balls of the same color in case of accidents or if you just want a long scarf. You might also want a needle with a huge eye (they’re usually sold as tapestry or darning needles), a pair of scissors, and maybe a crochet hook for emergencies.

I don’t know if you prefer reading or watching your tutorials. I tend to favor a mix. So:

Casting on (i.e. putting the stitches on the needle): reading tutorial and video tutorial. (This is just one way to cast on, but I like it better than other methods)

Knitting a knit stitch (i.e. the thing you’re going to be doing a lot of): reading tutorial and video tutorial.

Binding off (i.e. finishing the damn thing): reading tutorial and video tutorial.

I am linking you to tutorials for English style knitting. There’s such a thing as Continental style knitting but I don’t know how the fuck it works and therefore I cannot explain it.

So. Get your needles. Cast on like 12 stitches, or however many stitches across as you think good for a thing that goes around your neck. Practice the knit stitch, going back and forth, until you reach the end of the ball (here’s how to add a new ball of yarn and/or a new color if you want to be really daring and try stripes). Doing only knit stitches is called garter stitch. Once it’s long enough for you, bind off.

It will look wonky! It may meander, or be wider in some parts and thinner in others! This is unimportant. It’s a scarf. If you get a hole while knitting, you probably dropped a stitch (here’s how to fix it) or accidentally added a stitch with yarn-over (in which case you will probably need to frog).  

You’ll notice I’m not explaining purling. You can move on to purling after you’ve made a scarf. You will do this by making another scarf, this time all purls instead of all knits. This is also garter stitch! Here’s how to purl: reading tutorial and video tutorial.

After this, every single pattern is going to be a mix of knit and purl stitches. A fancy thing like lace or cabling might need some special technique, but the base is always knitting and purling and anyway you can google the fancy stuff.

And before I end, some common knitting phrases:

A row is one line of stitches. So if you start with the first stitch in the row and go to the end, that’s one row.

When a pattern says something like K1, that means “knit one stitch.” K3P3 means “knit three stitches, then purl three stitches.”

Knitting one row and then purling a row is called stockinette stitch. 

Going knit-purl, knit-purl is called 1x1 rib. K2P2 is 2x2 rib, etc.

M1 means “make one stitch.” You’re not there yet, but it basically means adding a stitch, so if you started with 10 stitches cast on, now you have 11.

YO means yarn-over. It’s a way of making a new stitch that adds a hole.

I hope this helps. If any of this is confusing, feel free to PM me.

[fabrichut]

I Want to Learn to Sew...Now What?

So you got a sewing machine for the holidays. Congratulations! A sewing machine is a great investment for your new hobby! …Now what?

1. Stock up on essential items There are some basic things every sewist needs in their arsenal, no matter what you are sewing.

Seam ripper – every sewist has to rip something out, no matter how long they have been doing this. Everyone makes mistakes! You want to be prepared to backtrack if needed.

Scissors big and small – A good pair of scissors stays sharp for a long time. Your kitchen scissors that you keep in the junk drawer are not going to cut it this time (get it?). You want scissors that have never touched paper, and you never want to let them touch paper. You will need more than one pair, and in more than one size. Some heavier fabrics will need a larger pair, whereas some of your lighter fabrics will not need as much heft in the cut.

Extra bobbins – Bobbins are so small and so easy to lose, you are going to want some extras. You also want to be able to keep as many filled bobbins as possible so that when you need to change colors, you will have the bobbin ready. You also want to be able to fill a bobbin with the thread you are working with without having to unroll another bobbin to do so.

Needles – Chances are that your machine comes with a few extra needles for when yours breaks. However, you are going to want to use different needles for different projects. Schmetz has a great chart depicting what needles should be used for different projects, as well as this link which shows what the points of certain needles look like and what each of the band colors mean for what you are working on.

Thread – Always keep spools of black and white thread handy. Black and white are the most commonly used colors in projects, followed by neutral colors. You don’t have to match every color in every project you make, but if you love purple and know you’ll be sewing lots of purple things, then by all means get purple thread!

Tape measure – A tape measure allows you to measure areas that are not necessarily straight and flat and thus harder to measure with a ruler or yardstick. They come in 60” and 120” lengths and can often come in fun colors!

Pins or clips – No matter how much control you think you have, you will never have complete control over your fabrics. Pins keep things in place where you put them while you are working on other parts of a project. Pins keep a pattern stuck to your fabric while you are tracing it or measuring it. Clips help when you are not too keen on poking holes in your fabric or if you are working with several layers of fabric.

Pin cushion – (or other storage device) This one should be self-explanatory. No one likes stepping on a pin, do they? There are plenty of fun ways to keep your pins, from your typical tomato-shaped pin cushion to a magnetized saucer or pin cushion for your wrist.

A few other supplies you may want to try include a rotary cutter and a self-healing mat (to make cutting fabric much quicker and easier on the hands), tailor’s chalk or marking pencil/pen (for tracing patterns onto your fabric without permanently marking said fabric), the aforementioned Wonder clips, pinking shears (for cutting edges of fabric so that they do not fray), or if you do not want to get pinking shears – Fray Check (which seals the edges of your fabric).

2. Take a Class You sit down at your machine to start a project, and a space-ship control panel looks back at you. What do these buttons do? How do I do a zig-zag stitch? What is a blind hem stitch? How do I change stitches? Overwhelmed, you stand back up and walk away, only to come back a week later to the same dilemma.

Fear not, beginner sewist! Even the most experienced seamstress had to start somewhere, and more often than not they had someone to teach them, whether it was a mother or grandmother or a Home Economics teacher. Fabric Hut offers free classes with machines purchased in its store, or you can sign up for one of our classes online or over the phone. In your class you will learn the ins and outs of your machine at a comfortable pace. Able to learn on your own? Read through the manual. Modern machine manuals tend to be very user-friendly and often explain things in layman’s terms so that when you are confused by a certain setting, you can check the manual and it will help.

3. Choose a starter project Even if your end goal is to recreate Marie Antoinette’s most elaborate gown, you have to start small. A pillow case, a zipper pencil pouch, a drawstring bag, or a rice heating pack can all be great starting projects. Most starting projects will have very few instructions and will be fairly self-explanatory. One of the main reasons new sewists quit sewing early is that they try to get too complicated too fast.

Play with your machine. Find some scrap fabric and sew some stitches with it, seeing how it feels pulling through the machine, what certain stitches look like on cotton vs. knit vs. heavier fabrics. Get comfortable with your machine and find out all the cool things it can do, then use those features to your advantage later on when you have a more complicated project to work on. Looking for tips? Check out our Sewing Know How Pinterest board for some informative articles and necessary knowledge.

4. Find a pattern While you may think you know how to make something as simple as a pillow case, it is always a good idea to have a pattern available – even if only for visual reference. This will keep you from having a pillow case shaped like a triangle or a zipper pouch shaped like a blob.  You can find patterns from the major companies like McCall’s and Simplicity in most fabric stores (including Fabric Hut!)

There are also lots of independent pattern companies that sell downloadable PDF patterns. An easy way to find them is to search Google or Pinterest for the type of pattern you want like “leggings sewing pattern” or “elephant stuffed animal sewing pattern” or “baby quilt pattern.”

Read the directions on the pattern. Does something look funky? Are you unsure what the numbers and letters on the back of the pattern mean? Ask questions! We get questions about patterns all the time and we are more than happy to answer them when you bring them in.

5. Dive In!

Double check before you cut. Make sure the pattern is laying the right way. Check the directions again as you go. Stitch slowly so you can control your fabric. Make sure to trim and tuck in all your threads when you’re done!

6. Be easy on yourself. When a kid learns to do something new, they don’t care if they’re perfect the first time, they know they’re learning. You are too! Sewing is a skill that takes practice. Don’t give up if you finish your first thing and think it looks bad. It was a learning experience, and I bet you’ll have figured out at least one thing to do next time and one thing NOT to do.

7. Find a community. Getting in touch with other people that sew is so beneficial.  If none of your friends or family members sew, see if your area has a local chapter of the American Sewing Guild or find out if there’s an “open sew” time somewhere near you. Online there are many Facebook groups devoted to different kinds of sewing and plenty of Youtube tutorials (check out our partner Dad Sews!). There are also sites like Textillia and Craftster with forums. Even Instagram is a great resource – follow hashtags like #sewing, #quilting, and #sewingtutorial.

Here at Fabric Hut we have our classroom open on Wednesday for open sewing time (bring your machine!) and host American Sewing Guild chapters once a month. Interested in forming your own group to meet here? Drop us a line and let’s get something started!

Learning to sew opens up new worlds for people. Have fun! Experiment! The possibilities of fabric combinations and techniques are endless!

Have more suggestions for communities, tools and resources? Let us know in the comments!

Want to find a sewing class at Fabric Hut or buy some supplies? Check out our inventory at http://www.fabrichut.com

[unholyhelbiglinked]

For Better Or Worse | 002

CHECK OUT THE STORY FROM THE BEGINNING HERE

A soft purring from the engine was the only sound between the two of us. The stranger’s breath was low as she gazed out the window. Every once and a while the yellow edge of passing headlights would sweep over the cab of the truck.

I had haphazardly thrown all the empty water bottles and candy wrappers into the backseat- all while she watched with a certain bit of entitlement in her gaze. Her hair was still falling into that stormy gaze of hers, jaw clenched as she breathed in carefully. Her fingers were wrapped around the dashboard as she steadied herself from the shaking leather seats. I would glance over every now and then, sometimes making an electrifying contact with hers.

I was silent, adjusting my grip on the leather wheel as a few drops of rain rushed against the double paned glass. It was blue near the edge of the seam, dirty from a couple weeks of not washing. It stormed too much here- I didn’t ever need to whip out a bucket and some soap. There was enough grime during the summer to warrant one, though.

“So, what brings you to Haven?” I asked, voice a bit tight as my stare averted to hers for a moment before I focused back on the road. “Other than a second-hand bookstore…”

She let out a thick sigh, one that filled the car as I cocked an eyebrow slightly, not bothering to send my attention that way. She ran her hand through her coarse hair. The edge of her blazer was pulling up slightly at her waistline. “Listen, I appreciate the ride and everything, but I’m not much for small talk.”

“Then what are you much for?” I asked with a slight scoff. “Picking out sensible outfits is clearly not it.”

I turned slightly onto the side street, it leads to town- a large stretch of trees and one-off rivers wound through the bark that was aged and peeling. The scent of wet soil always filled my lungs around this moment. It was nothing to be put off about- there were worse things to smell, and better things to experience.

“I’m sorry?” She asked, offense laced in her voice as she turned slightly in her seat. “And being ratty lumberjack is a better sense of style?”

“Better than an uptight flight attendant,” I mumbled under my breath. I knew she could hear me, there were only two of us here, a red glow from a traffic light in the middle of town shaded her face. It stretched her features and contorted them- like we were in a vape shop, or maybe even a one-off club. I had a deep smirk on my lips, knowing that I was riling her up as her mouth gaped open. “Or a realtor.”

“I have you know, I am one of the top sellers in my region.” She pointed a well-painted finger my way. I lifted my chin, a bit impressed. I didn’t realize that I was right on the nose with the second guess there. It didn’t’ quite explain what she was doing in our little town. She was too interesting to sell the old and rickety house at the end of the block.  

“Well congratulations, Red.” I blew air from my nose. “That’s very impressive.”

“Was that sarcasm?” She scrunched her face up “Fish… person.”  

“Fish person?” I laughed, the smile still fresh on my features. “No, that wasn’t sarcasm. That was a genuine compliment.”  

The rain was falling in sheets now, the wipers rushing back and forth as run-off rushed against the side of the rough glass. Another set of dark headlights rushed past the two of us. She was silent, just listening to the dull soundtrack of the engine mingling with the rainfall.

“Well,” She squared her shoulders, sinking into the leather seat, those same jarring eyes softening a bit. “Thank you.”

Fabric from a soft pea coat pressed against the nave of my back, it’s stitching soaked as my breath stopped pooling in front of me. The weather in Haven was privy to change, it’s once humid morning would turn to cold and weary nights. Ones that kept me at bay when all I wanted to do was curl up and watch cheesy love flicks.

The girl that had just stormed out of my car was still on my mind. I didn’t know why- there was no reason. She was stuck up, smelling of fancy soap. Her collar was pressed with a hot iron, no wrinkles or flaws other than a bit of blood from the gashes on her hands.

I hated her. The way she seemed to turn her nose up at anyone who was less than her. I just didn’t know if it was breed or learned. Either way, it made my blood boil. The realtor was someone who knew Aubrey, apparently, and that was enough cause for curiosity.

“I am so sorry I’m late,” I started to pull the fleece scarf away from my throat. It was sopping wet, my hair damp as I swallowed roughly. “How is she?”

The girl that stood in front of me raked a hand through her hair- her white shirt stained with different things that I hoped was baby food. The rest of the daycare was empty, the lobby lit with a deep yellow glow as a blue one fused from a film that was playing in the other room. A musical sequence was bouncing off the walls.

“Bec’s you know I love you-“Stacie sounded out carefully, lifting her sore arms behind her head as she pulled the black hairband from her wrist. She seemed to do it with ease, tying the ponytail up as she lifted her chin slightly. “And I really don’t mind covering for you with my grandmother, but things got close tonight.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” I willed “There was some girl at the docks, she needed help- and… you know what, it doesn’t matter. Just… thank you. I promise I’ll make this up to you.”

“You better,” She shoved my shoulder playfully, a dumb grin on her lips. “I don’t know how many times I can convince Grandma that I love Aladdin enough to rent the sing-along a few times a week.”

I scoffed, squeezing the bridge of my nose slightly. Stacie had been a life-saver these past few months. Addison was old enough to take care of herself, I knew she was. But it had been a rough year for everyone around town. I would never leave her alone, not like my mother used to do during long and taxing nights.

The six-year-old clung heavily to the door-frame, her eyes sleepy as she watched the two of us interact. She had a dazed look in her eyes- the very eyes that mimicked my dad’s. They were wise and caring, a deep chocolate brown that could melt your resolve.

Stacie handed me her coat as I knelt down, giving her a kind smile. “Hey, Addy,”

She smiled back, it was a cute an innocent gesture, her hands at her sides as I pulled her coat over her shoulders. She watched me in a careful silence as I zipped it up, fishing in her pockets for the gloves that I had to replace every couple of months. These were on their final leg- I was surprised she hadn’t lost them already.

The quiet was something I was used to. At first, we thought it was shocking. I didn’t want to speak after the fire either. Not for a long and crippling time. But after a couple of months, the stress of planning two funerals died down and the worry for my little sister kicked in. We had called speech therapists, had the long skype calls with specialists. Nothing changed. They said she would talk when she was ready.

I shouldn’t push it. I didn’t’ push it.

“Alright munchkin,” pulled on her collar, making sure that it was nice and fastened. It was. The pain of the day hit my muscles as I stood, keeping my hand outreached to her as she wrapped her fingers around mine. She was warm, the gloves scratchy, but bearable. “We gotta get some dinner in you.”

Stacie nodded softly as she made eye contact with the mousy-haired girl that clung to my side. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Addison.”

She nodded, sniffing at the cold that was biting at all of us. I mouthed another thank you before walking towards the car. At one point, my kid sister was dragging me behind her. I laughed slightly, letting her do it as she crawled into the backseat of my truck- crunching over the water bottles and paper bags. She gave me an odd look as I started the car. I shrugged my shoulders.

“I’m a mess, Add’s, we know this.”

She giggled, the only sound I ever got a chance to hear from her, aside from crying. It was two opposite ends of the spectrum, but I loved her through every inch of it. The custody battle was a rough and unrelenting one- but at this point, I didn’t care. I knew I would die for her.

“So,” I looked into my mirror as I started the car. “I was thinking, we could have Amy whip us up some of her famous grilled cheeses.”

The little girl in the backseat lit up, lifting her shoulders as she drew in a breath. I narrowed my eyes with a sly smirk. Again, she said nothing, but I knew the different signs, the way to read her like no one else. “Oh, right, so that’s a no then? You want fish sticks again?”

She knit her eyebrows together in disdain as I chuckled, putting the car in drive. “Alright then, grilled cheese it is.”      

[A/N: I would say this is a filler chapter but it’s not, I have to bring some backstory!]    



[knitcrate]

What’s in Your Knitting Tool Kit?

This begins an ongoing series where we ask knitters of all skill levels what they carry with them in their ‘knitting tool kits’ - the items they always have in their project pouches, totes, bags and fanny packs! This week, Greg (KnittingDaddy on Ravelry) shares what he’s a fan of with us.

What's in you knitting tool kit? This is a question that I hear with some frequency. It's a question I love to answer, because I love showing other knitters the tools I use and I love seeing what other knitters keep in their tool kits, too.

Let me show you my primary tool kit. Actually, I have two kits — a couple of little pouches that friends of mine made for me. They are perfect for keeping the various little things I find myself needing when I'm knitting. Sometimes, I'll use one pouch more than the other, sometimes I'll switch. If I'm working on multiple active projects, I might be using both pouches at the same time, in different project bags. The pouches are about the size of my hand and easily drop into whatever project bag I need to drop it in.

Let's take a look at the tools I keep in my pouches!

First, there are the measuring tools. Probably the most useful tool to have is a tape measure. Small, 5-foot tape measures are often given out as promotional items. You can also find really cute tape measures and tape measure covers at your local yarn shop. In addition to a standard tape measure, I've discovered that a 2.5-inch acrylic square ruler is a great tool to have handy. The square ruler helps with gauge measurements, and I think it’s easier to measure the brim of a hat with a hard ruler than with a flexible tape.. You can find it at many of the big-box craft stores and quilting shops.

The next important tool to have is something to cut my yarn with. I have some snips, I have little scissors, and I have a small pocket knife. I find that I keep going back to the snips as the easiest to operate quickly. I should probably take the pocket knife out of my tool kit. I don't really use it since I have snips or scissors.

I keep my yarn needles for weaving in ends in my tool kit. I have metal needles in various sizes. They live in the cylindrical container that they came in, and that container fits very nicely in my pouch. I particularly enjoy the needles with a slightly bent tip. The bent tip makes it easier to get the needle exactly where you want it when you're weaving in ends. In addition to weaving in ends, these needles can double as a cable needle in a pinch.

What's a tool kit without stitch markers? Ring markers are nice to have around, but I find that I usually get all the ring markers I need when I start a project. What's really helpful in my tool kit is the locking stitch markers. I use them all the time to secure dropped stitches, mark certain features of my project (the right side of my work, when I started an increase/decrease, etc.). I like to attach a locking stitch marker (or two) on the container that my yarn needles live in so that I'm more likely to have one when I need it.

Every knitter makes mistakes, and I usually have several adventures in correcting errors on every project. Because of this, I keep a few tools for picking up dropped stitches handy. When I first learned how to pick up dropped stitches, I used a small crochet hook. Since then, I've found a few tools specifically designed for picking up and laddering dropped stitches. With all of these tools being smaller than a crochet hook, they fit in my hand better when I'm correcting mistakes. The pointed end on the metal tool makes it easy to use as a cable needle if needed. The flared point on one end of the wooden tool makes it easy to push through the fabric when laddering stitches. And hooks on both ends of the plastic Fix-A-Stitch makes it easy to fix a dropped stitch in garter. Depending on what kind of project I'm working on, at least one of these tools will be in my pouch.

Finally, I have a digital row counter that I can wear on my finger. I love the convenience of just mashing a button to increase my row count, but I find that I use this tool less and less. Over the years, I’ve had a few instances where the counter was accidentally incremented — I assume because the button was hit when it was jostled in the bag. As a result, I don’t fully trust it. But it’s still mighty convenient, so it’s stayed in my kit. For now.

Those are my go-to tools for my tool kit. I also have a couple of special-purpose measuring tools that I use frequently. Most recently, I’ve been doing a decent amount of sock knitting. As a result, I'll drop my Sock Ruler in the project bag. I love how the curved end nestles right into the toe or heel of a sock, making it easy to get an accurate measurement.

There you have it: tools to measure my yarn, cut my yarn, and manipulate my yarn when I make mistakes. That pretty much covers my tool kit. So now I'm asking you -- what's in your knitting tool kit? Leave a comment and let me know.

Keep on knitting for the ones you love!

This post was written for us by Greg, who we affectionately know as KnittingDaddy on Ravelry. Greg is a fixture in our group boards and a regular reviewer of Knitcrate shipments on the his podcast, the Unraveling Podcast. 

Get great notions in our Artisan and Sock Crates to help build your own knitting kits here! 

[ifishouldvanish]

Finishing Stitch

SUMMARY: Epilogue to my RCIJ story Alterations, in which Lennon proposes to Belle. RATING: T WORDS: 2,890

 [Read on AO3]

Lennon pat his pocket one more time when he reached the front door of the library. It was still in there, safe and sound. It wasn't anything like the ring Greg had given her, but he never felt it suited her anyway. This was smaller–much, much smaller. Three stones, the largest no more than a quarter of a karat, on a modest rose gold band.

Tucked under his arm was a book. Her Handsome Hero– the first book she'd personally recommended to him. In one hand he gripped his cane, and in the other, a bouquet of roses.

Belle practically already lived with him and Bae, coming over for dinner and spending the night more often than not. It had been a little over a year since they moved into the little pink house with her help, and things were so much better. Bae smiled more often, and Lennon's sewing machine was getting more use than ever before.

Lennon felt like he should probably be more nervous, but he wasn't. He checked the hours on the door and peered through the window. It was past closing time, so there wouldn't be any visitors. Just Belle.

Sure, he could do this at the house one evening when she came over for dinner, but he wanted to do this at the library. The place where their story began. It was strange to think that there was ever a time in his life where Belle hadn't been in it. But in a sense, he supposed there wasn't– because those times were from a past life, a different one, and that was what he'd been thinking about when when he decided that wherever this new life took him, he wanted her to be there with him.

So it had to be the library. The place where they fell in love. Three years of stealing glances at each other, blushing whenever he asked for her help finding something. Having long discussions about the books on the monthly reading lists she curated. Staying after hours and helping her close up when he could tell she'd had a stressful day. Belle's friendship was a gift, but he never imagined that one day he'd have her companionship.

He could see her seated at the circulation desk, brows creased together with tired focus as she finished up some paperwork. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the door open, feeling his heart grow two sizes the instant she picked her head up to receive her visitor.

Flashing a brilliant smile, she dropped her pen and stood up, rounding the corner of the desk with a skip in her step. Lennon could see the precise moment she noticed the flowers in his hand from the way she tilted her head and pressed her lips together.

“What's this?” She asked, biting back a smile.

He carefully handed her the bouquet, careful not to lose the book tucked under his arm. “For you, sweetheart.”

Her eyes sparkled and she stopped trying to fight her smile, letting the full radiance of it come through. “Oh, Lennon… They're beautiful.” She held them up to her precious little nose and closed her eyes. Taking a deep breath and relaxing her shoulders, she opened up again. “What's the occasion?”

He figured she might ask. After all, gift giving wasn't something he could afford to do often. He closed the distance between them and tucked her hair behind her ear, the bouquet rustling between them. “The occasion… is us,” he answered simply, meeting her for a kiss.

“Oh.” Belle giggled and kissed him again. “Well, thank you.” She studied the flowers for a moment longer and smiled back up at him. “Where uh… where's Bae?” She asked, her blue eyes darting toward the front lobby to look for him.

Lennon cupped her cheek, bringing her back to him. “He's perfectly safe and sound at home.” He assured. After a beat of hesitation, he leaned into her ear. “I've ah… hired a sitter for the night...”

“Oh.” She blinked. “Are we going somewhere?”

“That's entirely up to you, sweetheart.”

She shifted on her feet and brought her free hand up to her chest to toy with the pendant she wore around her neck. “Just what are you up to, hm?” She asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

It was difficult to plan a surprise for Belle, Lennon had to admit. She was far too observant and far too clever, with a mind that never stopped looking for the next puzzle to solve– And she could figure him out without any trouble at all.

“I ah… I've a book to return.” He said, laying it flat on the counter.

Belle knit her brows together. “You can just drop it in the bin...” She reminded him skeptically.

Lennon scoffed and glanced away for a moment, thinking how best to proceed. He cleared his throat and leaned into her ear. “I could.” He murmured. “But… I'd rather check it back in in person.”

She pulled back and tilted her head, eyes still narrowed and lips still pursed. It was the same face she always made when she was starting to piece something together.

“You see, I've a ah... bit of a crush on the librarian.” He said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “So, any excuse…”

She smile slowly crept across her face and she set the flowers down on the circulation desk, freeing her hands so that she could drape her arms over his shoulders. “Do you, now?”

“Aye.” He grinned. “I've been smitten ever since I first came in and she gave me my library card.”

“Well….” Belle wet her lips. “What if I told you she's been mooning over a certain gentleman who comes in quite often?”

He blinked owlishly in feigned concern, betrayed by the smile that bloomed across his face at the sight of her own. “I’d be terribly jealous of him.”

“You shouldn't be…” she murmured.

For a time, Lennon worried that their relationship wouldn't quite survive the transition from platonic to romantic. But now, the gentle teasing and flirtation felt so completely natural. Now there were so many things they could say to each other with a gentle touch, a soft kiss. New ways they could bring a smile to each other's faces. In short, he felt closer to her than ever.

He settled his hands on her waist and tugged her a little closer. “Is that right?”

“Mhmm…” Belle let her hands slide down to his chest and reached up on her toes to give him a kiss. Closing his eyes, Lennon gave a surprised little hum and kissed her back. She kissed him again, and he started gently nipping at her lips. Belle didn’t hesitate to open up for him, running her hands back up his chest, around his neck, and through his hair. Her thumbs rubbed at the area behind his ears and she let out a little laugh at the shiver it sent through him. It was a quirk she'd discovered some months ago, and been delighting in ever since.

Belle wasn’t without her own quirks, though. Lennon brought his hand down to the hem of her shirt, tucking his fingers underneath and dragging them up her side. She shuddered as he reached her shoulder blade, drawing a sharp gasp that just as quickly turned into a deep moan. She deepened the kiss and started waddling backwards, luring him with her as she backed herself against the circulation desk. Now it was Lennon’s turn to laugh, and the two of them couldn’t help softening the kiss as they smiled against each other’s mouths.

“I love you,” she whispered, pulling back just enough to wipe a bit of saliva from the corner of her mouth before pressing her lips to his again.

He permit himself to get lost in her until it was time to catch his breath. “And I... love you.”

Rising to her toes, Belle began shimmying herself on top of the desk. She clutched at his hair and pulled him in for another kiss, slipping her tongue between his lips and slinging a leg around his hip. It was rare that they had the privilege of being spontaneous with their intimacy like this– always having to plan romance around Bae's schedule. In a moment like this, was easy to get carried away. He brought his hand to her thigh, gliding it up her skirt.

“Mm, yes...” She sighed. “Lennon, please.”

He let out a little scoff. “Right here?”

“Don't care.” She said breathily. “It's all I've been thinking about since were interrupted last time. ...And the time before that.”

Lennon scoffed. “You know, you still have a perfectly good bed upstairs…”

Belle pulled back. “What's the matter? Afraid of a little adventure?” She asked, wiggling her brows.

“Is that what this is?”

She rolled her eyes and huffed.

Lennon smiled and gave her a peck on the forehead. “Every day with you is an adventure.”

She nibbled her lip and reached for his belt.

“Nah-ah-ah,” he tutted and peeled her hand away. “Not so fast, sweetheart. There's still the matter of this book that needs returning.”

She pulled back and narrowed her eyes at him. When he didn’t budge, she let out a huff and pouted. “Alright…” she grumbled. He watched with a pleased smile as she hopped off the counter, straightening her skirt and taking her position behind the circulation desk.

While she settled in her chair and pulled up the library's management system, Lennon took a moment to discreetly tuck the ring between the pages of the book. Specifically, pages 358 and 359, the point in the story where the hero asks for his love's hand in marriage. And it was fortunate that the ring was so small, Lennon thought to himself, because were it any larger, he wouldn't be able to even begin to close the book with it inside– Unless of course, he carved a space out of the pages for it. But Belle would never stand to have any book desecrated in such a manner, let alone this one.

“Alright.” Belle said, typing a few loud keys and looking up at him. “What have you got for me today?”

He double-checked that the ring was safely nestled inside and slid it across the counter.

“Oh. I didn't know you were rereading this…” She observed with a proud smile.

“Well, it does have a certain… personal meaning to me.”

Belle gave him a curious look and glanced down at the book again, furrowing her brows at the obvious gap between its pages. “What's–” she slid it toward her and began opening it up to the page where his question awaited her. “ Oh.”

He looked to the floor, suddenly too nervous to meet her eyes.

“Lennon… Oh Lennon, it's beautiful…”

He swallowed and waited, giving her a moment to make the connection between the ring and words on the pages.

The silence was cut off by a gasp. “...Yes.”

He finally dared to look at her, a timid smile tugging at his lips.

“I mean yes!” Belle shook her head and laughed. “Oh my God, yes!” She threw a hand over her mouth and squealed, scrambling to get out of her seat. “Lennon, yes!” She scurried around the the desk, eyes already watering and nose already sniffling. He raised his brows and tilted his head to ask if she was certain, and she nodded, reaching her arms out toward him.

He pulled her tightly against him, and Belle tried her best to give him another kiss while she began to laugh and cry all at once. She tucked her face in his shoulder and Lennon stroking her hair, swaying them from side to side until she calmed down. After a moment, she untangled herself from him, wiping her cheeks and snivelling.

Lennon was grinning so hard his cheeks hurt. Through her tears, Belle managed to shoot him a scolding look for having the nerve to laugh at the mess she’d become. He reached across the desk to take the ring, and she nodded at him as he began awkwardly settling on one knee with the aid of his cane.

“Belle.” He began.

She sniffled loudly and started up again, turning away to wipe more tears from her face.

“Sweetheart,” he chuckled, reaching out and taking her hand.

She shook her head and looked at him again, fanning herself and laughing though her joyous tears. “I’m sorry! I’m just–” She cut herself off and took a deep breath, nodding for him to continue.

“Belle,” he started again, trying not to laugh at how ridiculously cute she looked. If he waited for her to settle down though, he'd be on his knee until morning. “Belle, when you first met me, so much of my life was cloaked in darkness.” He said softly. “I was alone, and I was afraid. But then– Then you shared something with me. The beautiful gift of your friendship.”

She sniveled again– and by now her sinuses were loose, making the sound so loud and wet with mucus, he couldn't help being endeared by it. “You were my best friend!” She choked out, wiping her nose with the back of her arm.

“Aye.” Lennon squeezed her hand and smiled. “And you were mine. You lit a candle and brought light into my life, Belle. And no matter how dark and bleak the night became, well… that one little flame of your love and your friendship was always there. When I’d run out of hope, run out of strength– you selflessly gave me yours. Bae and I… well, we’re happy now. Happier than I ever imagined we could be. And it’s because of you.”

She shook her head and opened her mouth to speak.

“I know. I know what you’re gonnae say,” he chuckled, and she rolled her eyes. “I had it in me all along?”

She nodded and sniffled again, wiping her eye with the back of her hand. “You did!”

“Well, that may be the case,” he laughed, “but I’d not have found it, without you.”

Through her tears, she managed an indignant little huff. “Okay.”

A little chuckle escaped him, and he wet his lips. “Belle. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Lennon took a deep breath. “I… I don’t know what the future holds, you know? And that used to scare me, but– Belle, whenever I’m with you, I can’t help but feel hopeful. I can believe. I know– that no matter that the future brings, you and me… we can overcome anything together.”

She squeezed his hand tightly. “Me too.”

“Belle…” he gave her one last smile and readied the ring. “Would you wear this ring? Will you marry me?”

She took a slow, trembling breath and nodded. “I will. Oh Lennon, I will.”

He smiled up at her for a moment and began parting her fingers so he could put the ring on, but then he hesitated. “...Are you sure?”

She shot him an exasperated look, and the corner of his mouth tugged up into a smirk, happy to see her good humor still intact. “It’s forever, sweetheart.”

“I’m going to put it on myself in a minute,” she warned, giggling despite herself.

“Understood.” He chuckled and slid the band up her finger. He slowly brushed his thumb over it a few times, smiling up at her, and she started impatiently gesturing for him to get up.

Lennon took his time, enjoying the bit of frustration that wrought Belle's features the longer she had to wait to give him a hug. She nearly knocked him back when she did, burying her face in his chest. Stroking her hair, he pressed a kiss to the top of her head– and as she relaxed against him, he pulled back and lifted her chin so he could give her another on the lips.

Her bottom lip quivered and she tucked her face away again, like a turtle hiding in its shell.

“What is it, sweetheart?” He whispered.

She sniffled and gasped, poking her head back out. “I'm just… I'm so happy.”

He huffed out a little laugh. “That's good.”

Belle shot him another defeated look and sighed. “It's just… Last time, I–” She cut herself off and shook her head. “It didn't… didn't feel like this, you know?”

He smiled down at her and nodded. “I do.”

Her chin wobbled with the next impending wave of tears and she buried her face in his neck again.

“I do,” he said again, holding her close and starting to gently sway them from side to side again.

“I love you!” Belle cried into his shoulder, and Lennon didn't miss the emphasis she had put on the word. She felt a love she'd almost sentenced herself to live without. She'd displayed no joy when she told him about her engagement to Greg, nor had he felt anywhere near as much when Milah had agreed to marry him. But this– this outpouring of love and excitement was what it was supposed to feel like. They'd each gotten a second chance at happiness and a family, and how lucky was it, that they found it with each other?

“I know. I know, sweetheart.” He hushed. “And I love you too. So much.”

A/N:  I kinda wanted to cover more in this epilogue, but I also really wanted to get this up before I start on RSS, so... I may write more one-shots for this 'verse next year :x

[reaping-cain]

67) “Don’t look at me like that.”

This was sent a month ago ;A; apologies for the delay!

I thought of this cute modern apartment au where Cullen and Kaeran are neighbours who wage petty wars against the other. Meanwhile the other tenants in the 6plex are begging them to stop or are rooting for certain sides.

Cullen x Kaeran (modern rivals!au) 1837 words

Cullen had the day off from work and if he was honest with himself, it was a Makersend. Too many long hours, endless meetings and deadlines and troubled sleep made him feel like a walking corpse. Unfortunately for him, it was impossible to go back to sleep. He thought about spending the early morning reading in bed with a hot mug of tea. He couldn’t even remember the last time that he indulged in something so simple.

With nothing to do but wait for the water to boil, Cullen leaned against the window looking on to the backyard and shared garden space. The summer had odd weather but Josephine, the owner of the building, still managed to make the garden flourish. Though Cullen seriously doubted he had the gift of a green thumb, he still appreciated the sight of various flowers and their fragrances. Josephine had even planted lavender for him and saw to drying the buds for his personal consumption. He hadn’t expected that kindness and reciprocated by baking her a batch of his mother’s butterscotch cookies.

Moving into this small community had been one of the best decisions he had made. The last two years being some of his best years in recent memory and it helped that he didn’t feel so lonely. He had a longstanding rendez-vous with Dorian every Wednesday evening to play chess and trash talk. He also got to know Dorian’s boyfriend who insisted on being called The Iron Bull (“But you can call me ‘Bull’, all close friends do”). Cullen always enjoyed picking Bull’s brain about anything from military history and workout routines to baked goods.

He also got to know Sera. His first impressions of her were…explosive. Yet as time went by, their interactions evolved from her shouting “Oi, you!” to her smuggling jars of homemade honey (the lid was always sticky) to his kitchen table. At first it bothered him how she managed to get into his place and despite the number of times he’s asked her to stop doing it, he resigned himself that as long as nothing else was done to his place (or anything stolen) that having a free supply of the liquid gold appear at random was a small price to pay. He leaves handwritten cookie recipes for her to consider through her mail slot (they test the recipes together every two weeks and have only had to use the fire extinguisher twice).

The owners of the building lived there too. Josephine acquired it through her family and insisted on living there to be readily available for any issues. It had been her first home away from home and had grown fond of the place. Cullen once asked her why, that surely she would want some peace away from her tenants and perhaps move into a bigger place, Josephine would smile and say that she had grown too fond of her place and the sense of community that was fostered among the tenants. Like the garden she brought to life, she couldn’t part from the place where she re-established herself.    

It should have been the hissing of the kettle that brought him back to the present. Instead, it was the new neighbor above him.

“Hey!”

He never caught her name but knew she was Dalish. He couldn’t remember if she was a teaching assistant or a tutor. If he was honest, he didn’t care much and only got word of her through his other neighbors.

“Come on, don’t be an asshole!”

Maker, she had only moved in the previous month and was already insufferable. He recalled the first week how she kept stumbling and dropping things in the dead of night; the crashing of unknown (yet always heavy) items startled him awake and he barely slept well.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she huffed.

Absolutely insufferable. Who was she even talking to?

Cullen poked his head out of the window to catch a glimpse of something small and grey rushing down the spiral staircase. A slight pinging sound alerted him that small pebbles were falling from above. Only they weren’t pebbles. Were those…?

He wasn’t going to get involved in whatever shenanigans his upstairs neighbor was doing. Contenting himself with making a relaxing brew, he focused on his tea. He was about to grab a teabag when he heard something thud against the backdoor.

“What in the…” He had drawn the curtain from the window only to jump back in alarm. Staring back at him was a squirrel, its beady eyes searching for more delectable snacks. Why it thought that Cullen would have it, he couldn’t rationalize. The fact that this squirrel was daring enough to dangle itself from the window screen to pester him was of concern to him. Where would it end?

The squirrel maneuvered around the screen, flicking its tail and making odd chirping sounds, almost cooing, as though it could endear itself to the human and trick him into feeding it something. Cullen thwacked the screen to jostle the rodent, which only responded with longer squawks, now seemingly annoyed. As though Cullen was at fault for not following protocols, that it was his duty as a human to furnish food upon demand.

That’s it, he’d had enough; Cullen turned the knob, alerting the squirrel that took it as a cue to jump off the screen. If Cullen wasn’t so annoyed he would have appreciated the parkour move. Tea abandoned, he walked past the small back porch to assess the situation. The same squirrel ignored Cullen and raced to snatch a peanut that seemingly fell from the sky; from there, it launched towards the garden to hide its prize.

Another peanut fell from above, nearly hitting Cullen. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was nearly pelted with the peanut, the scavenging squirrel that was ruining Josephine’s hard work, or the fact that when he looked up he saw a scurry of them lounging about the various steps that made the spiral staircase. It was, quite possibly, a combination of all three. Seeing the intruder, they all scrambled for the safety of the trees, some even crossing the electric pole lines with no care for how high off the ground they were as long as they escaped the angry stranger.

He obviously had no nuts to give them, so why stick around?

Cullen thought he would have to knock on his neighbor’s backdoor but instead found her lounging on a patio chair (her legs stretched to rest on its twin) wearing nothing but the smallest shorts he’s ever seen (he hoped that it wasn’t her underwear), a thin tank top with holes on the bottom hem and the most ridiculous cardigan that nearly consumed her; despite how it practically engulfed her, it was the only decent thing she was wearing at the moment.

She glanced up from her work (knitting something dreadful, he surmised) before fussing with the yarn, carefully transferring the loops from one double-pointed needle to a vacant one without losing a stitch.

“Morning, you must be my downstairs neighbor. How can I help?”

The fact that she barely gave him eye contact frustrated him further but he had to remind himself that he wanted to make this quick. His plans for relaxation had no room for lecturing his neighbor about common courtesy.

He also seriously doubted that she would be receptive to that kind of talk.

“I’ll make this quick since you seem busy but I’m Cullen, I live in the apartment below you and I noticed that the squirrels have become a bit, well, bothersome.”

“Bothersome,” she repeated, this time her hands paused as she looked at him. He wasn’t sure if the look on her face was confusion or incredulousness.

“Yes, I was in my kitchen and this, this squirrel was hanging from my window.”

“Well, that’s unusual,” she said, “have you been feeding them or something?”

Maker, what a silly line of questioning.

He didn’t know how to proceed, this entire conversation was absurd and it was clear to him now that it was useless to talk sense into this woman. The only rational alternative was that she was being purposely obtuse about the whole matter. 

That had to be it.

“You must be joking,”

“Well, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“You’re obviously feeding the squirrels,” he said, trying to keep the edge of disbelief from his tone.

“Well obviously I’m not if they’re hanging off your window screen,” she replied coolly. The fact that she maintained eye contact with him while knitting with ease was unnerving.  

“That makes no sense! If I was feeding them then why would I come to you to complain about it?”

“Beats me,” she shrugged while showing no signs of slowing down the movement of her needles. Cullen felt his eye twitch slightly, convinced that this was an act of intimidation.

Blessed Andraste, this woman was difficult.

“Nice try, but you’ll have to do a lot better than that. I practically tripped on one of your tree-rats just coming up here.”

“Well that’s rude. First of all, they’re squirrels, not ‘tree-rats’,” as if her mocking tone wasn’t already grating on his nerves, her exaggerated air quotes further raised his hackles, “and maybe avoid stomping about so much like you’ve got anvils for shoes.”

“I do not stomp!”

“Listen, Callum…” she began.

“It’s Cullen,” He really didn’t want to bite her head off but she was truly testing him.

“Right, anyway, tell you what, I’ll take into consideration what you’ve told me and if you’ve still got a problem, my visiting hours are from one to four on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“That…makes no sense, we’re Friday.”

“Consider this a courtesy from me to you. Was there anything else?” She even smiled, which only made him feel less at ease.

“Um, n-no?”

“Awesome,” she resumed her knitting, but not before shooing him with a wave of her hand.

Cullen pondered about the encounter as he descended the steps, noting that for now the squirrels kept their distance. He realized about halfway down that he was carefully walking on the balls of his feet, his neighbor’s earlier comment making him embarrassingly aware of how bullish he might’ve come across. Not wanting to stick to that particular train of thought, he tried to dispel it as he reentered the kitchen, trying to remember what he was doing before the strange encounter.

He didn’t have long to think, witnessing the kettle furiously sputtering hot water and steam from the element, now red-hot from being left on the entire time. Cullen notched the dial to ‘off’ and carefully poured the remains of the scorching water into his mug, careful to not get any of it on himself.

Now seemingly quiet, Cullen went to his pantry for a teabag. He barely had time to dunk it into the mug, letting out a sigh, before he heard the telltale clawing coming from his screen door.

He should’ve just gone to sodding work.